Kat Millar

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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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5 Things You Need To Create An Effective Business Strategy

 In this video and blog post, I share with you how to create an effective business strategy.

 

 

There are 3 main problems that I see entrepreneurs face when they’re wanting to create a living, doing what they love, and making a big impact in the world.

1. Lack of strategy

Firstly, many people lack an effective strategy in business. Their tasks and content are random and ‘ad hoc’.

They end up doing all sorts of different tactics that they learn from all different sources (often free), without an over-arching, cohesive strategy…

…applying a little bit from here, a little bit from there, and trying to piece it all together. This rarely works.

2. Lack of systems

Many people don’t have their business systems set up properly. Things aren’t automated. And they’re running this really clunky, manual business.

They’re running a business where they’re trying to just remember things. They are trying to quickly come up with a post or just randomly write a blog post.

This is costing them time, energy and money.

3. Lack of support

Many people are trying to do business alone. Again, this doesn’t work.

When they don’t have people helping them, they’re wasting time struggling alone.

Many people think they can figure it out by themselves. But successful people know they need to invest in help and support.

In this article, I share about the first problem – a lack of strategy.

Without a strategy, you don’t have clarity on where you’re headed.

If you don’t have clarity, you don’t have peace of mind.

You start doubting yourself, you get stuck in overwhelm, procrastination, you get stuck doing things that aren’t helping you find your ideal clients.

Without a strategy, you can end up really frustrated.

When I ask people what the outcomes are in their business in the next 1,2, 3, 5 years and what are their targets for the next quarter, I find that a lot of people don’t have clear goals and targets.

They don’t know their numbers, they don’t know how much money they want to make, they don’t know how many clients they want to attract.

It’s really important that you have an effective business strategy.

In most cases, you need to go back to basics and lay a proper foundation for your business before you start posting content and trying to apply random tactics.

The other thing that happens without a strategy, is people get really resentful because they’re stuck in uninspired action instead of inspired action.

They get stuck doing things like creating the perfect logo or tweaking their website until it’s perfect. Or making sure that their business card’s perfect, and they still don’t have clients.

So it’s really important that you have an effective business strategy, and that you almost go back to basics and lay a proper foundation for your business before you start posting content and trying to apply random tactics.

My motto – strategy before tactics.

So, what is a business strategy?

A business strategy is a high-level working plan, not a plan that you write, and you just put on the shelf and never see it again. It’s a high-level working plan for reaching your business outcomes.I want to talk to you about having an effective strategy.

This includes knowing the What – What your business stands for, what exactly is helps people with.

Also, the Why  – why are you actually doing what you’re doing, why you want to make the difference that you want to make in the world, why you want to help people with what you want to help them with.

And also the How – how you’re letting people know that what and the why throughout your online marketing.

To create an effective business strategy, there are five things I recommend that you identify.

1.  Your business values

We need to know what our business values are. Sometimes, these are slightly different from our personal values.

Your personal values might be things like love and connection, adventure, music, family, things like that. You can actually have personal values and business values on a separate list, and I recommend that you do.

Some examples of business values might be integrity, congruency, authenticity, passion, creativity, structure, systems, excellent customer service, and empathy. So for clients achievement, winning awards could be a positive social contribution, it might be innovation.

These are all great things, but what are the few that you really want to be known for?

You need a strategy for your business values. You need to know what your values are, and what actions you’re taking in your business to make sure that you’re reaching these values.

It all starts with the business values, I recommend that you do that first.

2. Your business’ vision and mission

If you don’t have a clear vision and mission, like if someone came up to you on the street and said, “Hey, what’s your business vision or mission?”

(I don’t think that happens very often…) But let’s say it did, would you be able to give them a clear answer?

Would it be concise and snappy? Would you be able to just kind of fall it off your tongue?

Or you need to consult some documents that you wrote a few years ago to the workshop?

How clear is it? And how clearly are you putting it out there for the world to see what your vision and your mission is?

Is it in your Facebook profile is that on your website, people know what you’re all about?

The difference between a mission and a vision, the mission is how you’re going to actually how you’re going to make your vision happen. So your vision is what the world looks like in your imagination, and the future as part of you having your business and your mission is how you going to make that vision happen.

My vision is to inspire over a million people to make a living doing what they love, creating, contributing from a place of abundance and freedom to see living fulfilled, authentic, inspired, and the fullest expression of their potential.

Those words are really powerful and meaningful to me, I love helping people to become fulfilled living out of the authentic expression, living a life where they’re living up to their full potential where they feel inspired, feel fulfilled with what they’re creating and contributing.

That’s a vision of what I want to create.

The mission to actually get there is to equip and support business owners to create a profitable business doing what they love. It’s very simple. That’s my mission.

My values lead into the vision and mission. The vision and mission come from the values, and then the values, the vision, and the mission drive the goals.

3. Your business goals

You need a strategy for your business goals. You need a strategy for what outcomes you want, how many clients you want, how much money you want to earn, when, do you want to do workshops, when do you want to do webinars, what’s your marketing campaigns. You need a strategy for how you going to spend your time in your business.

Your actions are determined from the goals that you set.

So you need your big vision, your mission and then you need strategies underneath that. Basically, what are your initiatives? What are you doing to make that vision happen?

So these are things like having a podcast, running regular workshops, running regular webinars, running retreats, writing a book. These are the big kind of strategies, and then under those, you need goals to make these things happen.

Let’s say the goal is to write a book. The actual actions that you’re going to take, you might say, I’m going to write 10 pages a day, or I’m going to write 100 pages by in quarter three by the end of quarter three.

You want clear numbers, and you want to make sure that you have dates for those numbers as well.

You need to have the strategy for what to do before the sale,  during the sale, after the sale. The strategy for before launch, during launch, after your launch.   A strategy for all your campaigns, your advertising – everything needs a strategy.

Make sure that the goals are specific, they have numbers and dates attached. And you’re making them from your big-picture goals all the way through to your 1-year goals, your quarter goals. And then you break that right down to your weekly goals and then your daily goals. So every day you open your laptop, and you know exactly what to work on.

There are so many people that are scattered and overwhelmed and stuck in procrastination because they haven’t got goals.  They know how to set goals, but knowing and doing are two different things, and to know and not do is kind of not to know.

You need to realise the importance of the power of it.

This is the main thing that I recommend people look at when they’re first starting a business because otherwise, they’re just running off with all these different directions without their overarching strategy.

So we’ve got to lay that foundation.

4. Your Core Message

Next, you need to identify your core message,  your one thing.

Gary Keller has a great book called “The one thing” it’s excellent.

He talks about – what is that one thing that you want to be known for?

Why are you different?

What’s that one thing that you going out to, that one problem that you want to solve, that one outcome that you want to help people achieve, you should know what that is and clearly communicate that to the world.

You need a strategy for your core message and why you’re different and how to express that value.

5. Your Ideal Client

Number five, you need a strategy for how to identify your ideal client and how to communicate with your ideal client.

A lot of people are posting online, but they don’t attract ideal clients. They try to kind of reach, everyone.

One minute they’re talking about health, next minute they’re talking about manifesting, next thing they’re talking about mindset. Next, they’re talking about how to attract your soul-mate – they’re all over the place. They don’t have a strategy.

It’s really important that you’re really clear on who your ideal client is, where are they hanging out? How old are they? What are their interests? What are their biggest problems? What are their fears, their frustrations, their dreams, their desires?

Do you know how to help them solve their biggest problem, the thing that’s keeping them awake?

Where are they hanging out? What do they need from you? What’s your unique genius zone that you can help them with? What is that one thing that you know that you’re a master at, because you’re gifted in it and other people don’t have the unique combination of skills that you do?

Usually, your ideal client is you a few years ago before you solve the major problem that you wanted to help people solve. So that’s a really good clue about, you know where to start with your ideal client. But I’ve got a whole strategy around it. And it actually takes a bit of time and thought and effort.

A lot of people say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I know how to do that. I’ve got my avatar”. But when I look at other people’s answer when I look at my client’s answer about that ideal client, most aren’t clear, most of them are really vague, they have a really wide age range. They’ll say something like”its women from 30 to 40, living in Sydney”. That’s not an ideal client, that is a massive target market.

You want to pinpoint right down to the dreams or desires and fears or frustrations, and most of all the problems that you’re going to help them solve.

Remember, marketing is not about what they need, but it’s about giving them what they want. In your marketing, you’ve got to give them what they want. A lot of people trying to sell things to people that they think they need, and people don’t actually want it. You need a strategy for that.

So to recap, the five ways you set up your business strategy is to get clear on:

1. Your business values
2. Your business vision and mission
3. Your business goals
4. Your core message
5. Your ideal client

You might be wondering, what if I don’t know where to start with all this, like, it sounds good, that makes sense.

But I don’t really know how to apply it to me. And this is really common that people know that they need a strategy, but they don’t really know how to actually put into place,  how to create one.

And that’s exactly what I love helping people with.

Would you like to know how to apply this to you?

How to make sure that you have a great strategy in your business, an effective strategy, so you don’t wake up in the morning, and spend time on low-value tasks,  actions that aren’t actually getting you any results…

Because that’s going to lead to burnout, overwhelm, and frustration.

When you wake up and you feel like your to-do list is never-ending. And then you get to the end of the day. And it’s like you haven’t even done anything. You haven’t even done anything meaningful or fulfilling or worthwhile, and you’re not seeing a good return on your investment for time.

I know this because this is exactly what I’ve been through. I’ve been through, really running around with all these different tactics and trying to fight things trialing and erroring, and making a lot of errors.

And now I really love helping people to avoid all that pain, all that wasted time, that wasted energy. Those years that you’ll never get back.

 

 

Would you like to know how to attract and sign up new clients?

Join us at my upcoming 1-Day Workshop in Sydney, Saturday 17th August

‘How To Attract Your Ideal Clients’

 

 

This event is for people who are ready to roll up their sleeves and grow their business.

ALL the enthusiastic, positive, grateful clients imaginable are out there right now, ready and waiting for you.

All you need is the right system to attract them into your business.

You’ll learn the best marketing tools and a proven system to attract them.

If you’re unhappy with the money you’re earning, you HAVEN’T applied the right system yet. At this workshop, I’m sharing a rarely-utilised strategy that will be your new secret client-getting advantage.

Earlybird offer available until Sunday, 11th August

So if you are building a business or wanting to build a business – check it out.

Learn More

 

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3 Do’s When Starting Out In Business

 

In this video and blog post, I share with you three do’s when you are starting out in business.
 
These are three of the most important things to do when starting out as an entrepreneur.
And no matter where you’re at in the entrepreneurial journey, these are great fundamental reminders.

 

(The video has 3 Do’s and 3 Don’ts. I’ve separated them on the blog post.
You can find the 3 Don’ts here)

 

Here are the 3 Do’s:

 

1. Do be visible, and share your journey

 

Being visible is important. A lot of people want to hide away until they get everything perfect. And THEN put themselves out there in the public eye.
 
So what I’m encouraging you to do is share the journey with people while you’re in transition, while you progress.
 
Tell people what you’re up to.
 
So, for example, you say “Hey, friends, this is what I’m doing, Who wants to join me?”
 
Basically, what you’re saying to your tribe is…
 
Join me as I make epic fails… as I take lots of imperfect action… as I give it a crack… as I learn and as I grow.
 Join me as I have some failures, and some successes.
Who wants to come on the journey with me?
 
A lot of people are scared to say that.
But I’ve found that it is powerful when you say to people, honestly, “Hey, I’m starting out, come with me on the journey, come and share the highs and lows with me”…
 
…instead of hiding away for a year.
 
And then trying to make out like you’re really big overnight.
 
This is really common because none of us want to start small.
 
We can’t fear small beginnings.
 
We often want to start out and say I’ve been in business this many years, or I’ve got this many clients, or I’ve done this many speaking gigs.
 
I recommend that you’ve been visible straightaway.
 
Don’t wait until you have loads of clients to start posting testimonials.
 
Don’t wait until you’ve got it all sorted.
 
Don’t wait until you’ve got a beautiful website and a perfect logo.
 
Don’t wait for that.
 
Get out there and start sharing your message.
 
Because you actually DO know enough about your topic.
 
You know enough about what you’re going to be helping people with. You have a lot to share with someone right now.
 
You can get out your phone right now and share some of your wisdom, some of your knowledge – NOW!
 
People love it when you get vulnerable, when you’re real.
 
So don’t wait until everything’s all perfect.
Be visible and share your journey.

 

2. Do spend lots of time with other entrepreneurs

 
There’s an entrepreneurial mentality. And then there’s a 9-5 mentality. There is some crossover, but they are two different mentalities.
 
If you spend too much time with people who don’t understand the entrepreneurial world, you can start to doubt yourself.
 
I know because this happened to me.
 
And it’s happened to a lot of my friends.
 
I was speaking to a client on the phone today. And she told me that she’s done some market research on her friends. And they feel that actually, there’s a bit too much out there that she’s doing.
 
So she’s starting to want to pull back and want to go on visible again and not put herself out there.
 
What I recommended to her is, yes – we’ve got to listen to people. But we’ve also got to remember that people who haven’t started their own business have a different mentality.
 
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur and make your dreams happen. If you want a sustainable business, and not just ‘dip your toe in the water’… if you want to void going back to your 9-5 job…
 
…if you want to be in this for the long term, you’ve got to have an entrepreneurial mindset.
 
It doesn’t come from merely reading. I love books, I listen to books every day.
 
But you’ve also got to spend time with people who have the mindset you want because it starts to rub off.
 
If you don’t have a group of entrepreneurs that you spend time with, you need this.
 
I don’t mean just having coffee. I mean people who can grow you, support you, encourage you, and celebrate your wins with you.
 
People who you can bounce ideas off.
 
And also be honest with you.
 
Iron sharpens iron. When you have the right people around you, you sharpen each other.
 
You both bring your strengths and weaknesses, and you help each other grow.
 
You do masterminds and brainstorming sessions with each other.
 
You need people who contribute ideas to each other, a group where you share your wins and your failures… we all need that.
 
Business can be quite lonely, doing it on your own. And it’s something that I wish that I had grasped earlier.
 
When I started off, I spent so much time on my own. And then when I did catch up with my friends on the weekend, a lot of them were nine to fivers.
 
And they would always say to me things like “You’re always working”.
 
And they wanted to go out at 6pm.
 
For me, my workday doesn’t finish at 6pm. It finishes when the work is done.
 
It’s a completely different mentality.
 
So we need to spend time with other entrepreneurs.
 
If you don’t have them in your friendship groups, you can find them through meetup groups, Facebook groups or networking.
 
There are lots of options out there for you.

3. Make the commitment to keep going, no matter what

 
If we want to make it in business, we need to commit to keep going, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how we feel.
We can’t rely on how we feel if we want to last in business. Because our feelings are up and down.
 
You’re not always going to feel like jumping on and doing a Facebook Live…
 
Writing a blog…
 
Emailing people…
 
Running a webinar…
 
Following up sales calls…
 
But you just need to make that decision that no matter what, I’m taking action. It’s not about my feelings. Especially if you’re an emotional person.
 
You can’t let your feelings dictate your day. Your emotions are signals. They’re not be all and end all.
 
You’ve got to make a commitment and show up because it is actually the higher part of you who wants it.
 
The part of your brain responsible for executive functioning, the prefrontal cortex, makes the decisions for your future.
 
It’s responsible for the reasoning, the planning, the visioning. That’s not made by your emotions, it’s actually made by a very smart part of your brain.
 
Your feelings often come from your hindbrain, which just wants you to be warm and safe and comfortable.
 
So of course, that part of your brain is going to think “It’s easier to stay home today”
 
It thinks “I don’t want to go to that networking event or it’s cold”
 
or “I don’t want to go to that seminar today”
 
or “I’d rather watch Netflix than an educational webinar”
 
We’ve always got that temptation.
 
But if you’ve got the commitment, which actually comes from your why, it will keep you going.
 
The only reason I work so hard in business is that I have such a big ‘why’. I’ve got such a big vision to build a very big and impactful business.
 
To make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives, to reach a lot of people, to train and support and help a lot of people.
 
It’s all about what I want to do for people, and the lifestyle that I want to live as well.
 
And that’s what makes you committed.
 
So no matter what, I know that I won’t give up on my business.
 
I’ll do it till I die as long as I’ve got a passion for it.
 
The passion comes because it feels like it’s part of my purpose and my calling. It’s bigger than me.
 
You are going to have highs and lows, doubts and fears, you’re going to have the temptation to go back and look for a job. That’s normal. It’s all part of the journey.
 
So you need to spend that time with other entrepreneurs to get through those tough times.
 
And make sure that you have a ‘why’ that’s bigger than you commit to it, no matter how you feel.
 
So here’s a recap of the three don’ts when starting out in business:

1. Do be visible, and share your journey

2. Do spend lots of time with other entrepreneurs

3. Make the commitment to keep going, no matter what

So as to not overwhelm you, I have put the 3 Don’ts in a separate blog post here.

Want more like this?

 

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7 Reasons You May Be Struggling To Get New Clients

Would you like to build a profitable business doing what you love?

I believe it's currently the best time in history for you to create a lifestyle business. There are opportunities everywhere for you to connect with your ideal clients and help them solve their problems.

There are more entrepreneurs than ever out there absolutely smashing it and earning a huge income helping people, and of course there are a huge amount of entrepreneurs who are broke.

I know you're probably reading this because you want to share your message in a meaningful way. You want to make a difference doing what you love and help more people. And you want to work with your ideal clients and build a business that aligns with your ideal lifestyle.

If so, this is for you. I want to show you 7 potential roadblocks that are currently tripping you up or could trip you up in the future if you're not aware of them.

Here are 7 reasons you may be struggling to get new clients:

1. Not enough focus on D.P.A - Dollar-producing activities

This was by far my biggest problem when I first started my business.

In my recent blog 'How to Avoid the Perfectionism Trap' I shared a story about when I moved to London and started working at a new gym. I had no clients and no money and it was in the recession.

I'll always remember that lesson about how getting clients is about focusing on the dollar producing activities, like making offers, not the fun stuff like creating a logo, business cards, brochures or hanging out on social media.

The single defining factor in your success is how you spend or invest your time.

Sometimes we can feel that we're doing things that matter, but really we're just doing 'busy' work. Productivity means you actually produced something. Dollar producing activities directly lead to you making dollars.

2. No clear goals with deadlines

One of the main reasons I see people not producing the results they want is that they don't have clear, specific goals with deadlines attached.

We all know that when our brain is left to its own devices without clear commands and instruction, it takes the path of least resistance.

I had 'Write a blog' on my to-do list for years (still do) and barely managed to get it done consistently.

The single thing that got me to take action to produce regular content for my ideal clients was booking workshops. I'd book the venue, pay a deposit and then I HAD to run the workshop.

Or I'd decide on a date for a webinar, make it public, and that would give me the incentive to produce the content. I'll easily let myself down but I don't like to let others down.

Once you create contents for things like workshops and webinars you can leverage it everywhere.

If you struggle with inspiration for your organic content, create an event, book a date, set some deadlines and you’ll create more amazing content than you ever have before.

You need to fail fast, get things out the door as fast as possible and refine as fast as possible. A lot of people won't do this because they're scared of looking bad. But you can't be afraid of failure. It's the only way to truly learn and grow fast.

3. Lack of structure, systems, and support

Something I see a lot is incredibly well-educated people who have a lot of experience and knowledge in a range of modalities, but where they get stuck is joining all the dots together and making it work.

They don't have the structure or the systems in place behind the scenes.

If you lack structure, systems or support, you’ll struggle to be successful. Business is too hard to do without these things. They are crucial. All profitable business owners know this.

4. Being unwilling to invest enough time or money

I’ve had so many people over the years tell me that they’re not getting clients. I ask what their marketing strategies are and discover they haven’t spent a cent on Facebook ads, or they’ve put down $20 for one campaign, it didn’t work so they gave up.

A lot of people are brilliant at the modalities they teach, but not brilliant at business. Unless you want to work for someone else for the rest of your life, you must invest the time and money on learning business skills.

You need to know how to market yourself effectively, use social media profitably, write influential content, position yourself and your brand properly, know how to invest time and money and a range of other different skills.

The good thing is, everything is what I called overcomable. It's all workoutable!

Every skill you need to learn in business, you can learn. Business is a skill just like learning to cook or drive.

5. Not working with enough clients

There are two categories that most people fall into that are struggling to attract enough clients. Firstly, they haven't worked with enough people and they want to charge too much from the get-go without having enough experience or skills to charge that amount. So people don't end up signing up.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are severely under-valuing themselves.

They wonder "Who am I to charge for this? I love it! It comes easily and naturally to me!"

The main reason they do this is because they have unconscious competence around their genius zone. They assume everyone can do or knows what they do and so they don't value it enough.

Another reason people don't work with enough clients is that they are scared of rejection. So they offer cheap prices or don't charge at all, then people don't value them. Or they can't make enough profit to sustain their business so they end up stuck in a job they're not passionate about.

6. Having too broad a niche

Having a vague or broad niche is definitely one of the biggest reasons why people struggle to get clients. They try to be all things to all people. They don't understand that marketing is about attracting some people and repelling the rest.

You know the old saying - if you try to chase 2 rabbits you'll catch none.

If you want to get great results for people, it's better to be a specialist rather a generalist.

Here are some examples of the difference between a broad niche and a micro niche.

Broad Niche:

“I help people improve their mindset and motivation”

“I help people improve their health and fitness and create a happier life”

“I help people create a thriving business”

Micro Niche:

“I help busy women declutter their homes in 6 weeks or less”

“I help busy Mum’s to improve their energy and reduce their stress with simple-to-follow exercise programs they can do at home”

“I help Coaches and Trainers to build a 6-figure lifestyle business”

One word of caution - don't let choosing your micro niche be another trap that stops you staying in action.

It takes time to develop your micro niche. It took me years. But don't let that stop you from moving forward.

If in doubt, choose 'you' a few years ago, before you learned what you learned to overcome a problem you'd love to help people solve.

Just decide and get out there and help people.

7. Giving up too easily

Business can be simple, but it's not always easy.

I bumped into a friend recently who had done her coaching course at the same time as me back in 2014. I ask her how her coaching is going and she says “Oh, I have a lot going on at the moment” which we all know is really code for “I’ve given up for now”

The truth is, it's never really the right time. I procrastinated for years on creating a lead magnet and a funnel and kept buying into the story that I didn't have time. But that's not true.

The reality was that I did have the time, it’s just that I didn't think I did.

I've been running my own business since 2003 and I estimate literally thousands of challenges that I've had to overcome and hundreds and hundreds of little things I've had to learn. You simply have to make one decision - to not give up!

When you delay your decisions, you delay your dreams. Life is always going to be busy.

If you think it's going to get easier the longer you wait, it's not. Things get harder not easier when you delay them.

If you know that having a business you love helping people is part of your destiny, and you feel you have it in you to do it, do it now!

The world is waiting for you

Would you like help to overcome these client-attraction challenges?

I am running a NEW 1-day course in Sydney on Saturday, 16th March.

This event is a MUST for service-based small business owners who want to know the best client attraction strategies for 2019.
 
You''ll learn how to build a profitable service-based business you love, without sacrificing your lifestyle.
Spaces are filling fast, so don't miss out.
 
Details Here:
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