Kat Millar – Page 13

July 30, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

The #1 Thing That Made The Biggest Difference In Growing a 6-Figure Business

There is one thing that has made the biggest difference in my coaching business and helped me create a 6-figure income.

Today, in this third blog of a 3-part series, I will be sharing the final essential key you need to attract your ideal clients.

In the first blog of the series, I talked about business strategy and how to develop a strategy.

In the second blog, I talked about the essential skills you need as a business owner. I covered what the skills are, and how you can develop those skills.

Today, I want to share with you a little bit about the key points in my entrepreneurial journey that have made the biggest difference in my business and helped me keep going when I’ve wanted to give up.

Research shows that as many as 50% of businesses fail within the first 5 years and 70% or more in the first 10 years.

Business is not easy and it’s definitely not for the faint-hearted.

But business is the best thing I’ve come across for personal development. There has been nothing that has developed and grown me more than having a business.

When you are a business owner, you have to overcome your fears and doubts. You cannot afford to get stuck in your limiting beliefs. It isn’t always easy to keep showing up, but you cannot allow yourself to get stuck in negative emotions, you’ve got to keep moving forward.

When I decided in 2003 that the 9-5 world wasn’t for me and I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I made a decision and took action and left the corporate world.

Since then I’ve been focused on building my business, honing my skills and consistently working hard to get new clients so I never had to go back to a full time job.

I’ve had a few contract jobs that have kept me going in the quieter times, but I’ve been so determined to make business work.

What has kept me going in the hard times, has been the support of my mentors, coaches and community.

As I’ve been moving through the entrepreneurial journey and going through all the ups and downs that come with business, the thing that’s gotten me out of the difficult places every time, has been support.

When I used to get tempted to look at full time jobs, it was my ‘why’ – which is to help others who are struggling like me – and the support around me that helped me to keep going.

If you want to make it in business, you need:

Business Strategy
Business Skills
Business Support

Support of a Coach, Mentor, and Community

Too many people are walking around thinking they can do it on their own in business.

I was like that as well. I didn’t think I needed to invest in a coach. I didn’t think I needed a community. I thought that I was a strong, independent woman and I could do this on my own. But that was just my ego getting in the way.

There was one particular moment that stands out to me. I wasn’t getting clients, and I was completely torn. I didn’t want to get a job, but I also didn’t know what to do because I didn’t think I could afford to invest in getting help.

I remember going to an event in 2013 with Benjamin J Harvey and Dr. John DeMartini. I was new to Sydney, and things weren’t working in my business.

Ben talked about when he decided that he was going to commit to investing in himself, and at the time he was in $137,000 worth of debt. Despite that, he spent $17,995 on a program on his credit card.

That program was the thing that catapulted his success. He now he’s a multi-millionaire and has helped thousands of people. He said something woke up within him.

The exact same thing happened when I went to his event. Something woke up within me. I had no money and was completely broke. I had $500 in my account which was to cover two-weeks of rent.

I decided to back myself and it was one of the scariest moments, because I had no idea where I was going to come up with that money.

But I knew that the missing thing in my business was support. I didn’t have someone to ask questions who was above my level. I had other friends in business, I had books and YouTube, but without a mentor and without a community, I was struggling and I knew that I wasn’t going to make it if I didn’t change something.

Since investing in getting support, I’ve made my way more than my investment back time and time again.

I grew a 6-figure business in less than 12 months and was able to go full-time in my business a coach working from home.

Ben Harvey has a 5-step system that I wanted to share with you because it’s simple and I love it. There’s a lot we have to navigate in business, but we often overcomplicate things, so I love the simplicity of this.

Ben Harvey’s 5 Steps to Success

1) Decide What You Want

It sounds so simple, but a lot of people aren’t able to articulate what they want clearly. Take the time to get clear on exactly what you want and decide to get it.

2) Commit to Doing Whatever It Takes

Make a commitment to yourself that you will do whatever it takes to grow your business. Honour yourself and your commitment and keep showing up, no matter how hard it gets.

Determine that you will not give up on yourself, or your dream. Commitment is a game-changer.

The world of online business is expanding all over the world and the ones who are succeeding are committed to it.

3) Find Someone Who Can Help You

I have not met ONE person has ever made it on their own. There’s not a single athlete that doesn’t have a coach, yet there are so many people trying to grow a business without support.

Everyone who’s ever achieved anything, has had someone help them.

The fastest way to get success, is to model what other people have done that have gone before you. Don’t copy, but model.

If you want to succeed, spend as much time as possible with the people who are moving in fast in the direction you want to go.

4) Learn Everything You Can

Find someone you resonate with, someone who you like – you like their energy, style and you enjoy learning from them and spending time with them. That’s how I choose my teachers, I like them.

Choose teachers and mentors who are experienced in the result you want to get and are able to get you great results too. They need to understand you and speak your language.

5) Follow The Exact Process

Too many people are taking a little bit from this person, a little bit from another and trying to combine it together with little or no success.

People take different strategies and mixed methods and try to piece them together. They end up confused and overwhelmed.

You want to make sure that the person you choose to coach you, has the method that you want and has achieved the results that you are looking for. Then you need to follow their exact process.

Three Reasons You Need Support

1) Clarity

Clarity is one of the most priceless things you can have in business.

I’ve had about 15 coaching sessions this week, and about 90% of the people I coached said they wanted clarity. Clarity is knowing what the next step to take is.

There’s so many things that you can be doing, consuming or outputting in your business.

This is where support can help you have that clarity, because you know exactly what to stop wasting time on and what to start spending time on. Clarity is such a gift in business.

If you can get clarity, it stops the noise that’s stopping you from doing dollar-producing activities. You know those things that we waste time on, that don’t really move us forward in our business.

Having an expert guide you and help tweak your direction is so valuable.

I was on a coaching call with a mentor the other day where he completed changed my next move. I could have spent so much time going in a different direction, but he knows my business and having him give me clarity saved me so much time.

I always ask myself what successful multimillionaires who earn a seven or eight-figure income do. I ask myself what they would spend their time on, and then I spend my time on that.

2) Critiquing

If you want to grow, you need to be able to receive feedback. Many people are not willing to accept feedback. They defend themselves, get offended, and they shut down. Feedback is someone’s gift to you. If you don’t take the gift, then it just drops to the floor and is wasted.

Our egos can be fragile. But if you don’t have someone that can critique your business and help you tweak it, it may take you years to progress in business. Having someone that can critique you, give you feedback and be someone you’re accountable to, is invaluable for your business.

3) Community

When I first started my business, I just did it on my own. I didn’t understand the importance of having a community.

I was living in London and New Zealand and I was struggling and feeling so alone, but I didn’t want to tell anyone how much I was struggling.

Having the right community around you challenges you, inspires you, champions you and holds you to a higher standard.

If you’re in a start-up stage, have people around you who are also in the start-up stage. You want people who can give you feedback, support you, and be a cheerleader and cheer you on.

You want people around you who inspire you because they’re also doing great things.

Join a group of a small inner circle, like a mastermind of people, where you are keeping each other accountable. In large Facebook groups, you don’t get the intentional planning and support that you do in a mastermind group.

I have a few mastermind groups, where each week, we have a person in the hot seat, who lays out their challenges, and other mastermind members give input. There’s incredible growth that happens in a mastermind group.

Having support in business is crucial.

If you need extra support and have not yet had a free clarity call with me, you can book in for a 45-minute clarity session here.

I’m also running a free online workshop on Sat Aug 8th, called ‘Attract Your Ideal Clients’.

I’m sharing my best tools and strategies to develop your skills and grow your business.

I’ll be sharing how to attract clients and apply the principles of having the right strategy, the right skills and the right support.

I will also be unpacking my proven automation systems so you can pick up the tools that you can use to create a pipeline of consistent clients. I’m also going to show you step-by-step how to create a marketing roadmap.

You can learn more about the workshop and register here

See you there!

Kat

July 17, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

3 Essential Keys For Getting Fully Booked With Clients

Wondering how to get more clients?

In this training I share with you how to get fully booked with ideal clients who are reliable, consistent and pay you what you are worth.

Over the years I’ve been so blessed to work with hundreds of business owners, and I’ve noticed there are 3 main problems that many business owners face, when it comes to getting fully booked with clients.

1 – Lack of Strategy

The first problem is a lack of strategy.

Many business owners don’t have a clear, effective roadmap to put all the pieces together and join the dots. They find themselves busy, but not productive.

When you have an effective strategy with clear action steps, you can create a consistent pipeline of clients and a reliable income stream.

2 – Lack of Skills

The second problem is not having the skills. If you’re not regularly attracting paid clients, it’s probably because you haven’t developed the right business skills.

These skills include packaging, offer creation, marketing, content creation, funnels, selling, presenting, and technology.

If you’re willing to learn these skills, you will fast-track your results, so you can have a profitable business doing what you love.

3 – Lack of Support

The third problem is a lack of support. Without support from the right community and mentor, many people struggle to make it in business.

There’s nothing more valuable in accelerating your business growth than receiving clarity and guidance from an expert who has achieved what you want to achieve and believes in you.

This includes having a community, coaching (getting feedback on your business from an expert) and clarity.

Today I’m sharing about the first main problem, which is a lack of strategy.

Lack of Strategy

Having the right strategy is key for your business.

Do you ever find yourself sitting at your desk and staring at a blank screen, struggling to create content?

Do you try a little bit of one person’s ideas, then a little bit of another, and feel like you’re busy, but you still don’t have enough paid clients?

Maybe you’ve put out some free content like videos, but you’re not getting the results that you want?

Without an over-arching business strategy, you can find yourself busy, but not productive.

There are 3 areas that need to be addressed when building your business strategy.

1 – Predictable Pathway

You need a predictable pathway that’s going to give you a pipeline of clients, that’s going to give you a reliable source of income and a steady stream of clients.

Having a predictable pathway is having specific things that you do step-by-step, every day, week, month and quarter.

This way you can guarantee that if you do these specific tasks, and you follow this path every single week, then you are guaranteed to get clients.

If you’d like a free checklist of things that I suggest that you do every day, every week, every month and every quarter to actually build your business to get more clients, you can download it here.

Part of your predictable pathway may be you are going to get a certain amount of discovery calls booked in every single week. Or it could be that you are doing a certain amount of webinars or workshops every week, month or quarter.

With this you know that if you do this output each week, month, quarter and you know that you have a 50% conversion rate, you know that from 10 discovery calls, you will get 5 new clients.

Your strategy might be to run a webinar once a month, and a free workshop once a quarter. Based on your conversion rates and sending out a certain amount of emails and posting a certain amount of social posts or social ads, then from this you can work out your predictable client signups.

When you follow a predictable pathway, you can get consistent income within your business.

2 – Personalised Plan

What a lot of people get wrong is that they try and follow all sorts of mixed information and they are doing what I call ‘pick and mix’. They’ll use a little of one person’s method and then they’ll try another person’s method.

You need to think, ‘What is the best plan for me and my business?’ Don’t do a podcast because someone else is, and don’t write a book because someone else is.

You want to make sure that your plan is personalised for three different things…

1 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Unique Personal Preferences

It is really important that you enjoy your business and there is a really big difference between people who are doing what they love in their business and people that are not. This is where identifying your unique personal preferences is important.

What are your unique personal preferences? You might not like showing up on video, but you might be a great writer. Instead of forcing yourself to be on video initially, determine to write a blog once a week.

I personally feel we all need to show up on video, so if you are struggling with that, I recommend working on that area. But in the meantime, you might have be a really good writer, so determine to show up every single week and write a blog.

If you love doing Facebook Lives, but don’t like writing, pay someone to transcribe your video into a blog for you. Choose what you love to do in your business that you are good at and outsource the rest.

I do recommend if you’ve been doing one-on-one coaching, that you definitely consider overcoming whatever your block is, so you can start doing one-to-many.

Your personalised plan might start with one-on-ones and when you get to 10 clients, then you will start doing one-to-many. Or your plan could be that you are going to research for 3-6 months and then you will start to create an online course.

Your plan needs to be tailored to suit your preferences of what you enjoy, so your business does not become a burden around your neck.

I love creating content and videos for my online course. I love updating my content. I love running webinars, plus online and live workshops. I don’t love writing blogs, so I get my Facebook Lives transcribed for me into blogs.

2 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Ideal Clients’ Needs

What do your ideal clients’ want? How do they want you to show up? Do they want videos or do they want a podcast from you? Maybe they want to read your book or they might want to do a mini course or a six-week course?

What type of topics do they want to hear from you? The only way to get answers for these questions is to ask your ideal clients!

When I first started my Facebook group, I put up a poll asking people what they wanted. I talked to hundreds of people and asked them what they were struggling with and what their challenges were.

I started creating content specifically for my ideal clients based on their needs, not what I felt they needed.

Your personalised plan needs to be designed precisely for the kind of clients that you want to work with.

3 – Personalise Your Plan Around Your Values and Vision

You want to make sure that your plan is designed around your values and your vision. What is your 5, 10 or 20-year plan for your business?

My vision for my business is to have a big company, that’s helping thousands of entrepreneurs every year. I aim to employ coaches and have offices in other countries, and I aim to do national and international tours and retreats.

When I’m setting my goals, I’m always thinking about that vision and how can I get closer to that vision all the time. I ask myself what skills I need to master in order to get to that big picture vision.

I ask myself; What systems do I need to put in place to get to my vision? What support do I need? Do I need different coaching? Do I need an assistant? Do I need a virtual assistant? Do I need a marketer or a copywriter?

So you start with your values, then your vision and then you set your goals. I have my annual goals and then quarterly goals, so I’m always setting my strategy according to that quarterly plan.

My goals are always output focused and not always result focus. I do put results in terms of numbers and targets. I find it really motivating to say I’m going to write 50 blogs, so therefore I’m going to do 50 Facebook Lives in a year that will get transcribed into my blogs.

I encourage people not to always be focused on the results, but on the output you are doing. When I was a personal trainer, I would encourage people to focus on what they’re outputting over the results.

So if the goal is to run 100k’s a month, then aim for that and not the result of losing a certain amount of weight.

I recommend that you set goals for yourself and for your business, quarterly, and also weekly, where you have a set amount of output that you’re doing. With that output, you know if you are doing that, then you will get a great result.

Make your personalised plan that fits into your strategy, according to your skills. If you’re brilliant at coaching, then make sure that you focus on coaching as your core product. If you’re terrible at designing a funnel, then outsource it to someone.

If you think of it like a matrix, you’ve got the things you love and the things that you’re good at. These are the things that you should be spending your time on. This is strategic planning.

There will be things that you love and the things you’re good at. Then there will be things that you love, but you’re not so good at.

You need to decide if you should keep doing those things or if you should outsource them. And then you’ve also got things that you really don’t like but you’re good at them.

It’s important that you enjoy your business for sustainability. I just have to enjoy my business.

I have to have passion and I need to be smiling every day. I enjoy the people I’m working with. Because it’s your life and every hour you spend in your business is an hour of your life that you’re not going to get back.

It’s really important that you set your personalised plan according to your skills, the things that you are good at in your genius zone.

So many business owners spend their time faffing about on things that they either don’t like or they’re not good at, and it’s such a waste of time. We want to be putting out energy into things we love and things that we’re great at.

3 – Profitable Product

The third one that we need to think about when it comes to strategy is having a profitable product. Now by product, I don’t mean a physical product.

A product can be that you’ve pulled together your services into a program and offering that might have multiple pieces.

It’s like a fruit salad. You don’t just want to sell someone a banana. You want to cut up that banana, mix it with some cut up apple, melon and other fruit and sell it as a fruit salad. You’ve got to package it as a product.

I got this concept from Dale Beaumont. He says if you try and sell an apple for three bucks, but someone thinks they can go and buy it for 80 cents from the supermarket. But if you cut it up with other fruit and you mix it into a fruit salad, you can sell it at a café for $15. People eating a fruit salad aren’t asking what the fruit cost the café.

If you’re a service-based business owner, you want to think of your service like a product business, as if you’re selling something that has multiple paths to it. It’s not just time exchanged for money.

Time exchanged for money means you’re always going to be stuck and it’s not scalable.

You want to make sure that you’re starting to systemise and automate things. You package includes video trainings and you’ve got group coaching programs and you’ve got a community online – this is what I mean by having a fruit salad.

If I say to people, I’m $180 per hour, then people break that down and think $3 a minute is expensive. So you want to make sure that you’ve got this product that is a whole bunch of components that maybe includes one-on-one time with you, but then it also includes other things.

Maybe you have people join your private community, where they can network and get their support. Think about how to make a product and program that’s really appealing, irresistible and profitable.

When it comes to having a profitable product there are 3 things to think about:

1. Pain Points

Your product needs to address and solve people’s biggest pain points.

It’s not that your product improves people’s lives a little bit. Your product needs to actually solve the pain points your ideal client is dealing with. That’s what will make it profitable.

2. Practicality

The second one is practicality. You can sell a course to help people with their mindset. But how practical is it when they do change their mindset? What will they do with a new mindset?

It’s like selling weight loss. You need to be talking to people about what kind of clothes they will be wearing and where they will be going once they lose the weight. Maybe they’ll be dating or doing some rock climbing?

It’s not just about the scales and the losing weight, it’s what will people do once they’ve lost the weight. You have to explain the practical reality of what your product will bring into people’s lives.

3. Packaging

When it comes to having a profitable product, your packaging is so important. You need to package your product to be irresistible. There needs to be a clear price and a clear payment plan. I recommend you have a paid in full option and a payment plan option.

Your product needs to be branded well with nice design and show a step-by-step path so there is a clear start and end, with the result promised for the end. Then you’ll have a great profitable product.

What this means for you is that you will have a business which is an asset that will keep providing for you and is sustainably profitable. This gives you the flexibility, freedom and funds you deserve.

Want to more about know how to best attract new clients?

I’m running a free online live masterclass for service-based business owners who want to know exactly how to attract more clients and build their business.

You’ll discover a proven client attraction formula, step-by-step and pick up the tools that you can use to grow your business.

Click here for more info and to register your place

Remember – the world is waiting for your unique brilliance!

Kat

June 11, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

5 Powerful Ways To Be Engaging And Effective On Video

Would you agree that it’s pretty important in this day and age to be effective and engaging on video?

Have you noticed that there are some people who are charismatic on camera, and there are some other people who are boring, and cause you to switch off straight away?

Have you seen people who have great knowledge to share, but don’t deliver the content well?

Right now so many people are online, more than ever before in history!

So it’s even more crucial that you have the ability to be able to show up on camera confidently and be able to connect with people, fast.

Do you want to be able to show up and be able to connect with people super effectively on video?

Would you like to create a better connection with your audience so you can build rapport with them and influence and serve them better?

In this video and article, I share with you 5 powerful ways to be engaging and effective in your videos.

1 – Speak to Your Ideal Client

It’s so important that when you’re sharing on video, that you speak to your ideal client.

The reason that so many people get nervous, is because they try and talk to everyone. They’re talking to the masses.

Right now, for example, I’m not talking to the masses, I’m talking to my community. You have chosen to read this if you’re an entrepreneur or you want to be an entrepreneur.

So that means I don’t have to get nervous and fearful because I know that I’m speaking to you, one person at a time.

I know that you want to hear what I’m talking about otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this!

So, it’s so important when you’re sharing a piece of content that you don’t get worried about what people might think and that you’re not trying to speak to everyone.

If you try to speak to everyone you miss everyone, and no one connects with you.

It’s so crucial that you use the right language that’s going to connect with that person so that they feel like you understand them, that you understand the problems and challenges they are facing.

Many people struggle to do Facebook Lives, so if that’s you, you’re not alone – you are among the many people who struggle.

I definitely struggled when I first started. I resisted doing them for some time because of fear. Our bodies do interesting things when we are nervous and fearful, but it’s the meaning we put to it that determines our body reactions.

Being nervous is a similar physiological effect to being excited.

So instead of saying to yourself “I’m scared” or “I’m nervous”, tell yourself that you’re expanding. You’re growing, you’re stepping out of your comfort zone – and this is exciting. It’s an amazing way of developing your self-worth.

Make sure that you keep showing up and proving to your brain that you’re fine. No one died and nothing dangerous happened!

2 – Aim to Be Professional and Personable, Not Perfect

You want to be professional. By professional I mean, be organised, structure your knowledge, make sure that you have it set out in an organised way.

Have 3, 5 or 7 points. Our brain loves odd numbers and it’s been proven by research. If in doubt go with 3 points! The brain loves that number 3 as it feels like completion.

Make sure that you show up in a way that’s beneficial to your viewers and that’s what I mean by being professional. You do not need to be super polished and perfect. In fact, the time that you do a perfect Facebook Live, it may well be a boring one!

The things that go wrong last minute, make you human and real. Make sure that you’re personable, friendly, tell stories, and be humble. Don’t try and show that you’ve got it all together. People can relate to you not being perfect.

Make sure that your content is digestible for people, so it feels easy to apply. Don’t use a lot of jargon or confusing words. People want simple, real, authentic and they want it to be personable so they can relate.

3 – Maintain a Quality Connection

There are 3 main problems that I see that people come up against when doing a live video when it comes to maintaining a quality connection with their ideal clients.

1 – I notice people don’t use a formula or structure, so people are winging it and go off on tangents, losing their connection with the viewer.

2 – People focus on themselves and not on their message. People are concerned about how they look or are coming across instead of being present. Not being present when speaking to people is a big way to lose connection.

3 – People don’t know how to effectively maintain a quality connection with people on video. To maintain a connection, be sure that your camera is set up at eye level so you are looking eye-to-eye with your viewer. Make sure you look into the lens.

Finally, don’t use notes. Trust yourself that you know your content and stick to your genius zone.

4 – Speak Within Your Genius Zone

Make sure that you are speaking about topics that you understand and that you are an expert. This will help you with not needing to use notes. Always stick within your genius zone.

Don’t be researching, an hour before you’re about to go on Facebook Live and reading everyone else’s stuff. Stick to speaking about your real-world, tangible results and talk about the things that you’re the expert at.

Don’t just state facts and information. People can get information from Google. They are showing up to listen to you on video because you have personality. You have different ways of saying things, stories you can talk about and share with people what’s in it for them.

3 really powerful words you can use that are simple little words that make a huge difference is ‘so you can’.

If you add ‘so you can’ to the end of your content and insert the benefits your clients will achieve, suddenly your content comes to life.

An example of this is saying, ‘Do you want to show up effectively on video so you can be the trusted expert in your field?’ ‘So you can’ raises your level of positioning in your client’s mind.

I’m also clear on the benefits of what I do as a business coach. I’m not afraid to talk about those benefits, because I’ve worked with hundreds of people that have had life-changing results.

You’ve got to be confident in your benefits and don’t just talk about the features of your coaching program. Talk about what’s in it for them and why they should invest this money and time into your coaching program.

Finally, have fun, smile, and enjoy it.

How do you feel when someone’s super serious and rigid, like they’re giving a university lecture?

You lose interest right away, right?

So smiling, and having fun helps build and hold a connection with people.

5 – Follow a Formula

Following a formula allows you to build a deeper connection because you won’t be going off on tangents, trying to think about what to say.

Instead, you’ll feel organised and structured, speaking with a framework. You can be intuitive within the framework, but you don’t want to just rock up and rely on your intuition to tell you what to say without any planning or organisation.

The best speakers in the world all follow a formula. They are not just winging it. If you think of the best speeches you’ve ever watched or some of your favourite speakers, they have practiced and rehearsed it following a structured formula.

When you’ve practiced, created a great structure, you’ve got your points and you really know your topic well, you can be more intuitive and it will come across natural and will flow.

If you don’t have that structure or formula, that’s where you get nervous and can ramble.

So it can help to have the values, benefits and plan in your mind when you’re delivering a piece of content.

Would you like to learn the full presenting formula that I use and teach, so you can grow your business?

I’m running a workshop on Saturday 4th July that will show you how to use online events to profit from presenting and make a bigger difference in the world.

In this workshop, you’ll pick up the tools that you can use to run effective online workshops….

…so you can not only be successful in your presentation, but get people to show up, engage and take action.

I’ll be going through all of the strategies that I’ve used to not only present effectively, but how to use online events to attract clients and build your business.

Learn More About The ‘Grow Your Business With Online Events’ Workshop

Kat

May 14, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

5 Ways to Future-Proof Your Business

We’re in interesting times and things are changing day-by-day. More than ever we need to be investing in our businesses by keeping up with trends, the current technology that’s available to us as business owners, and making sure that we’re not getting left behind.

If you’ve ever had thoughts about whether you want to go into business full time, part-time or have a side hustle for yourself, then you’ve probably thought about the fact that the world is changing a lot at the moment.

You may have questioned what this means for business owners? We’ve always got to be up-skilling and keeping current, so here are 5 ways that you can make sure that you future-proof your business.

Number 1 – Be Tech Savvy

Technology is evolving at a rapid rate, and if we want to future-proof our business, we’ve got to be able to keep up with it. As a business owner, here are 3 things I recommend you’re on top of regarding technology.

1. Video

Doing videos is important, especially at the moment as we can’t run live events. It’s so important that you get your skills up to speed with video software, Facebook Lives, plus online platforms like Zoom, where you can have group chats and conversations online.

There are so many amazing functionalities with Zoom. I was crewing and assisting in a coaching certification course over the last six days, where there were about 70 participants on the Zoom call. The International Coaching Federation changed their rules during the COVID-19 season, to be able to qualify coaches online.

We are now in a world where people can coach each other in an online platform, and I was able to jump into the different breakout rooms and assist and help people by observing their 1-1 coaching. It went from 10 am to 6:30 pm for six days.

At the end, they did a poll and 79% of people said that they enjoyed doing the event online, more than they did the live event, which I found fascinating.

It’s so important that you stay up to speed with technology and you don’t have to be a total tech whiz either. There are so many programs that are really user friendly, but you’ve got to learn it.

2. A C.R.M System

I also recommend that you make sure that you have a C.R.M (a customer relationship management system). It’s so essential to being able to email your clients in a professional and effective way.

Using a platform like Mail Chimp, you can separate out your audiences, segment your email list and target different people for different needs.

You can automate your emails and link it all to your other platforms.

And you CAN have a really automated business that runs smoothly and streamlined without losing a quality client experience.

3. Funnels

You also want to make sure you have landing page software. I love using ClickFunnels, it’s by far is the one that I find most user friendly, and it has most functionality for what I want to do.

I host my webinars, online course, and landing pages for 1-1 sessions, freebies, and events on ClickFunnels and it’s all automated and synced to auto-responders.

Funnels are life-changing! They allow simple automation and save LOADS of time.

I never thought that I would be the kind of person that would sit down and learn how to create marketing funnels, but I’m so grateful that I have because now I’ll get an idea, create the landing page in the funnel and everything is all set up.

I can do it in about 45 minutes now from start to finish. From an idea that I have in my head, all the way through to having the funnel set up in less than an hour.

4. Online Calendar

Automation is key with business. You want to make sure that you’ve got an online calendar that people can easily book in with you and also change appointments. I use Calendly and really like the functionality of it.

It saves loads of time going back and forth with people, and means people are more likely to book in because they’re doing it on the spot, rather than waiting for you to get back to them. It’s a game-changer.

5. Online Payment Processing

Having an effective online payment system is something you need when looking at automation, so you can take payments from people – and not end up being a bank! You don’t want to chase people for money. You want that system to be seamless.

You want to be able to send invoices to people, and it’s all done in an automated way rather than manually, so you save loads of time.

I promise you the technology is there, you can do it, but you do need to up-skill in that area.

Automation is an important key for how we future-proof our business. There can be a lot to learn, but if we don’t we’re just going to be left behind.

Number 2 – Build Your Personal Brand

Building your personal brand is so important.

A brand isn’t a logo, it’s not your pretty colours. That’s part of your branding. The most important thing in branding is that you’re showing up that you are giving value, and that you are helping people.

You are providing value with your content, your videos and through your writing. It takes intentionality.

You always need to be visible, out there and talking to your people. There’s a tribe of people that you are here to serve.

You need to grow and develop your community and be a community leader. Step up as a thought leader. You have skills, knowledge, experience, stories, hard work and personality that makes up who you are and your brand.

No one is like you, as no one can do it the way you do it. No one has got your unique D.N.A, your unique mission here on this planet.

People are struggling and you can help them. You help people by showing up to your Facebook group and to your communities online, jumping onto video so that people can connect with you, giving value to your community – it’s all part of building your personal brand.

Number 3 – Extend Your Network

At the moment, we’re not going to in-person business breakfasts, seminars, workshops or conferences, but we’ve got an incredible opportunity to network in the online space.

What I recommend that you do in order to position yourself as someone who is a thought leader, has influence and adds value, is to start running your own online events.

There are a whole lot of things you can do – like a webinar, summit, Facebook challenge or one-day online workshops.

This helps you raise your positioning which can open up opportunities for you to be a guest speaker in other people’s spaces.

I’ve done about seven of these during this pandemic season. People have asked me to come on their podcasts, and I’ve done a range of summits and talks.

Put yourself out there by showing up online with value, so that you’re more likely get invited to be a guest speaker about your expertise.

It really gives you exposure and expands your reach. It puts you in touch with other audiences and networks. If you don’t have a big email database, then you want to tap into other people’s communities.

The reason I get invited is that people have gotten to know me, because I’ve built a Facebook group and a YouTube channel and I’ve consistently put out content. That’s when you start to really extend your networks and people start inviting you to speak and introducing you to their networks.

Number 4 – Develop Your Key Skills

There are five main skills that I recommend that you develop if you want to future-proof your business.

1. Marketing Skills

Marketing skills are so important and investing in these skills will only help your business.

Be honest and rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 regarding how good you are at marketing, how good you are at attracting clients and running Facebook adverts. If your skills are on the lower end of the scale, then invest in some marketing training.

2. Sales Skills

How good are you at having sales conversations and being able to connect, engage and influence people? How good are you at getting money into your bank account by these conversations? If this is an area you are lacking in, then up-skill in sales.

3. Copywriting Skills

Having the ability to write in a way that draws people in is a key skill. How good are you at writing landing pages, sales letters, emails, captioning your social media posts? Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10. If you are on the lower end, then up-skill in copywriting.

4. Your Ability to Present

Your ability to speak on camera is key. Being engaging, building rapport and connection is important for future-proofing your business.

Being able to stand up in front of a group and present is a skill that if you can do it, you will easily be able to get clients and you will also position yourself as an expert authority.

5. Technology Skills

Developing your tech skills is so important. Learning how to create funnels, put together landing pages, set up Zoom, synch your emails and calendars are important tech skills that are needed in business at this time.

I recommend that if things aren’t working for you, if you know that you’re not making as much money as you want to and don’t have as many client’s as you want, then commit to up-skilling to future-proof your business.

5 – Build a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset embraces challenges. It loves a good challenge! That’s the entrepreneurial mindset. When problems come along, you don’t get dramatic, you don’t get emotional, you don’t get stuck in the problem, you don’t blame others and you don’t make excuses.

You are on! You’re switched and when the challenge comes, you know you’ve got this! This is a growth mindset. There are a lot of people that start in business and don’t make it, because they’ve got a nine-to-five mentality. They’ve got a fixed mindset.

It’s so important that we keep up-skilling and investing in our businesses, because businesses are an asset.

If we continue to invest time, energy and money, we will continue to future-proof our business.Want to know how to apply these strategies to your own business, so you can attract new paying clients?

I’m running a FREE half-day online workshop on Saturday 23^rd May ‘Attract New Clients With Ease’.

I’m sharing my proven 5-step Client Attraction Formula. It’s been tried and tested and it works.

Click here to learn more

Hope to see you soon!

Take care,
Kat xo