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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5 Ways Presenting Skills Can Grow Your Business

No matter how hard we try, the reality is… it’s getting harder and harder to stand out online. It’s getting more challenging to have people pay attention and stop their scroll and engage in what we’re doing online.
 
Your ability to present and be confident on video, when you’re speaking to people in person and to groups is directly related to your income.
 
And if you’re not great at writing, then you really need to get great at speaking. Because we need to share our words for people to get to know us. 
 
There are only two ways that we can communicate with our clients. Either through writing or by speaking. And obviously there’s body language and all the other things that come into it, but those are the two main ways we communicate.
 
A lot of people tell me, “I don’t want to write blogs, I don’t have time to write blogs.”
 
So if you don’t want to spend your time writing blogs, and if you’re not naturally a great writer, if you haven’t studied the art and the science of copywriting, which is writing to influence, then you need to get good at presenting.
I’m very passionate about helping people with their presenting skills, because we all know that the online space is getting more and more crowded.
Presenting to a group is the best way to leverage your time because if you’re still doing one-to-one, it takes a long time, my friend, I’m sure you’ve realised that.
You will not have the massive impact that you want to have in the world if you keep going one by one by one by one.
 
I realised this when I was a Personal Trainer in the U.K. I had been to so many different conventions and conferences and seminars, and I remember watching the speaker on stage time after time after time.
 
And I remember thinking, “I want to do that, but I’m scared. I don’t want to get up in front of all those people. I’m an introvert, I don’t have the skills, I’ve got massive anxiety around getting up in front of people.”
 
I remember having all these limiting beliefs around it, all these fears around speaking to groups, I was so nervous about it.
 
But I got to that point where I was just fed up, and I remember watching this speaker, and he was not a good speaker, but he got so many people engaged.
 
And I remember thinking, “I reckon I could do a better job than him, but all he’s doing is he’s confident and he’s owning it. And so I want to learn the craft, I want to learn how to speak like that so that I am not going one by one by one.”
 
I was only doing one-on-one personal training at that stage. I’d done a little bit of group, but not to the level that I wanted, and I kept falling back on one-on-one because it’s where I felt confident and comfortable.
 
Maybe you relate. Maybe you’re working one-on-one with clients, but you know that your time is limited, that you want to have more freedom.
 
Especially if you’re working closely with people, it can be quite draining doing long hours. So you kind of set yourself up for a job, instead of setting yourself up as a business where you can work less and make more money.
 
So I decided that day, “I’m going to learn this craft, no matter what it costs me, no matter how much time and money I’ve got to spend, how much fear I’ve got to overcome, I’m going to do it.”
 
If you think about it, 50 years ago we had to only work with people in person.
 
But now we have the ability to reach thousands, millions of people by doing Facebook Lives, by doing YouTube clips, by doing podcasts.
 
We’ve got the ability to reach a lot of people and take our message way further away, to way more people that actually need help, right?
When I moved to Sydney in 2012, I barely knew anyone here. I had a couple of acquaintances, but it didn’t have a network of people or friends, I didn’t have any clients.
 
One of the first things I did was go to an event that was run by Shaune Clark, and he was running an event called Six Figure Speaker Training.
 
And I went along, it was a half-day, it was $97, and something dropped. I thought, “Yeah, you are going to teach me how to present.”
 
So I signed up for his course, it was about $3,000, thank you Shaune, shout out to you.
 
And it helped me change my whole thinking around how to craft a message.
I went on to do 4 other presenter training courses and they have all totally changed my business and changed me.
 
So I want to share with you five ways that you can use presenting to grow your business as well, and how presenting skills will help you make more money.
 
It’s the skillset that you learn and the mindset that you learn will help you make a lot more money and help you impact a lot more people and reach a lot more people.
So here are five ways that presenting skills can help you grow your business:
 
#1: Presenting skills help you get attention
 
We are in the attention economy where we’re all fighting for attention. Not like, “Look at me, look at me,” but, “Stop and engage with my post,” because people are scrolling so fast, they’re like this.
 
You see it on public transport, people waiting in queues at shops, they’re scrolling. You literally get a few seconds to grab people’s attention. So online is very difficult.
 
I am a huge advocate for positioning yourself correctly online and doing online marketing, you need to.
 
But I also advocate, not just online, but offline strategies, combining presenting together with online marketing.
 
If you get those two together, boom, a powerful combination. It helps you get attention.
 
Because if you are willing to put yourself on a platform, which most of the population are not willing to do because they’re scared of it, public speaking is apparently the number one fear.
 
So because most of your competitors are not willing to do it, you will get the attention because you’re actually positioning yourself as someone who is willing to stand out and be outstanding, and not just blend in with the crowd and everyone else online, right?
 
So you get attention.
 
There’s a new study done that shows that we actually need seven hours, we need to produce seven hours, of content, people need to consume seven hours of us before they make a significant buy-in decision.
 
Seven hours.
That’s a lot of Facebook posts, it’s a lot of doing Facebook Live videos, it’s a lot of blogs, it’s a lot of emails.
 
Whereas if you run a workshop for one day, your seven hours are done. It’s done in one day, so you can get people to sign up for your offers and your programs in a very short period of time by running the workshop.
 
And that was how I kind of got started, by going out of the one-on-one model, was running small little seminars at my gym. I ran them in the empty studio at my gym and had people come along, and I taught them what I knew, I was teaching on nutrition at the time.
 
But then when I moved to Sydney, I would hire my local library, Gladesville library, and I paid $18 an hour and had people come in, and I taught them stuff.
 
So that’s where I started out. And now I’ve run over 100 workshops and I’ve tested and measured the things that work in business.
 
There are lots of things that do work, there are a lot of things that don’t work, so I’ve made a lot of mistakes.
 
And it’s why I love teaching people this now because there are a lot of things you can do wrong.
 
A lot of people have fear about people not showing up, so there are strategies that you need to do to make sure that people come, that you get people in the room.
 
But it’s one of the fastest ways to get people’s attention. It’s very hard to get people’s attention unless you have a massive brand or you have a big budget behind you for Facebook Ads, right?
 
So if you’re starting out, it’s a very cheap way to get started fast and get clients fast.
 
#2: It gives you the ability to connect deeply with people
 
Before I was running events, I was stuck behind my laptop so much of the time, and I wasn’t spending enough time getting to know what people wanted.
 
I was just dealing with people one by one by one, and I also had this comfortable group of clients that I’d had for years.
 
I used to have my clients for years, so I wasn’t really improving my ability to connect with people and be able to influence large groups of people, all different types of people because I was kind of stuck in this comfortable one-by-one model.
 
I was very good at my very safe little world with my clients that were one-on-one.
 
Whereas now I can talk to so many different types of people. I know how to read an audience, I know how to keep people engaged, and it’s improved my people skills so much.
 
I never used to be a people person. I remember at my granddad’s funeral years ago, I got up and said, “I don’t like people very much. They are not many people that I like, but I like my granddad.”
 
I can’t believe I said that!
 
I love people now. I absolutely love people, and presenting has helped that so much. And to be successful in business, you have to like people. You have to, it’s essential because business is about relationships. Every time you make money, there’s a person who’s put that money into your account, right?
 
Business is about relationships. So it’s a great skill, to be able to connect deeply with people.
 
#3: It helps you to be able to influence authentically
 
Authentic influence is helping people create positive change in their life. And you do it ethically, and genuinely.
 
It’s not manipulating people to do what they don’t want to do.
That’s not what true influence is about, it’s about helping people get what they want, solving their problems for them.
 
It’s about finding out what they want to avoid, become, what they create, reduce, and get away from. That is influence; helping them overcome their fears and their false beliefs. That’s part of the skillset of presenters.
 
A big part of presenting is actually helping people overcome the things that are holding them back from getting what they want.
 
And that’s a very important skill that you can develop as a business owner, and one of the fastest ways to do it is to do it to a group.
 
You don’t have to be on a big platform, but to be able to get in front of group people.
 
The more I do videos, the more I do workshops, the more my ability to influence improves, by mastering the craft, by doing it and doing it and doing it.
 
Also, because I’m doing it, I’m always going to seminars and learning about the craft of influence to get better at it. So that’s something that presenting gives you a massive advantage in your business.
 
#4: It helps you to be able to speak with confidence
I don’t know about you, but I never used to want to get up and speak in front of people. I never wanted to do Facebook Lives, that was the freakiest thing ever, I refused to do it for ages until I realised it was here to stay and it wasn’t going away.
 
But I’m so grateful now, because now I can confidently speak.
 
The other day I was at an event and they said, “Right, we’re going to divide the room into four,” it was a massive conference room, they divided us into four groups and they said, “One of you from each of the four groups,” there were probably about 150 people in the room, “One of you is going to get up on stage.”
 
And I thought, “That’s me. I want to get up on stage.” Any opportunity to get up on stage, to help get closer and closer to that confident person that I want to be in every situation.
 
So I put my hand straight up, and went on stage and spoke, and it was incredible. A few years back, before I had been presenting and running workshops, I wouldn’t have done that. So it’s increased my confidence a lot. I used to be super shy, introverted, and not have any confidence at all. I would go red, I would shake, I’d be so nervous.
 
But it’s not a talent, presenting is not a talent. It’s training.
 
I’ve been trained, I’ve practiced and practiced and practiced, and that’s how I can now speak in front of lots of people and not get nervous at all. I love it.
 
#5: It helps you attract your ideal clients
 
This is something that I talk about all the time with my clients.
 
If you want to attract your ideal clients, one of the fastest ways to do it is to position yourself as someone who’s not afraid, someone who’s taking bold actions, someone who’s willing to do the hard things.
 
And one of the hardest things that you will ever overcome is your ability to stand in front of a group and risk being rejected and put on your own event. It’s not easy, it’s not for everyone.
 
But if you know that you’re not like everyone, that you don’t want to be mediocre, if you know you want to be one of those ambitious people that is a one-percenter…
…someone willing to stand up and have something to say, to have an opinion, to risk having haters, then the world is your oyster.
 
Every entrepreneur who’s successful has some haters, doubters, people who do the ‘thumbs down’ thing on YouTube.
 
If you’re willing to risk that, presenting is your golden ticket, it really is.
 
So those are the five things. Get attention, connect deeply with people, influence authentically, speak with confidence, and attract your ideal clients.
You have a message that the world can benefit from, that the world is actually waiting for.
No one can express it like you, and if you don’t present it, then the world loses it.
 
Because your unique combination of skills, abilities, stories, experiences, they are unique, and that’s what makes you outstanding, that’s what differentiates you from the rest of the market.
 
I am working to influence you to learn this skill because I know it can be a game-changer for you. It has totally changed my life. It has changed who I am as a person, and it has completely changed my business. About 90-95% of my clients all came because I learned how to present.
 
If you would like to learn how to use presenting to attract more clients, I’m running a free online workshop on Saturday 24th October called ‘How to Get Clients With Online Events’.
 
I’ve invested over $20,000 in learning the craft and run over 200 events. So if you want to learn this presenting skill, I would love to show you the best of what I’ve learned and help you fast track your ability to attract your clients and grow a profitable business.
Here’s the link for more details and to claim your free ticket:

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