You’re ready to invest in yourself and your business? Hold your horses…
I’ve spent well over thousands upon thousands of dollars on business courses and programs this year to “grow” my business. Let me tell you, it’s NOT totally worth it like all of those testimonials you’ve read.
You are told you need this one more course.
But you don’t. What you need is to figure out what YOU need. Unless you know your specific problem, that course won’t get you anywhere in your business.
Instead, some Googling and Youtube-ing will do you tremendously.
➞ Check out my curated list for free business advice and resources HERE.
The reality is, everyone on the internet now is a marketer and business consultant. The competition is so cut throat that they’re willing to say anything to get you to buy.
If you pay close attention, that last webinar you watched totally glossed over the “Who is this NOT for”. Instead they went broad with “Who is this for” by pretty much saying that if you have money, this offer is absolutely suits your need. URGH!
“What if I don’t know what I need?”
In this online business corner, there are only a handful of things you can come across:
1. You don’t know what to sell or still feel like your offer is just not quite “it” yet
2. Your offers are not selling (i.e your conversion rate is <1%)
3. You don’t know how to sell one-on-one (i.e what do I say on the discovery call to get a yes?)
4. You don’t have enough people checking out your offers (i.e less than 200 sales page views)
5. You are burnt out (i.e you need to delegate or else)
If your offer is still not quite there:
Highly recommend you check out Carly Jo at https://WholeCoMedia.com
She’s one rare diamond among million other messaging experts that actually go deeper than the basics of “Who do you want to serve?”, “What podcasts do they listen to?”, “What are their 5 pain points?”, so on and so forth – you know the drill.
I’m not even an affiliate. I just haven’t paid her that much money at all and already received more value than coaches I’ve paid >10K for.
Why focus on Messaging? Because it’ll position your offer in a way that’s super attractive to your Right Fit Buyers, and/or reveal interesting ways to solve their problems (new offer ideas!).
If your offers aren’t selling:
It’s most likely a copy issue. Your best bet is to buy a sales page template (or two, so you can mix and match).
If you’ve got some money to splurge, hire a copywriter for their service.
** Sometimes it’s your offer that sucks (and here’s how to fix that!)
** This is often not your REAL issue ➞ check your traffic. If you don’t have enough people (more than 200) looking at your offers, you don’t have enough data to know for sure if your offer isn’t selling.
If you don’t know how to sell:
👇 A template agenda to start with (you adjust as you see fit):
5 minutes ✨ of rapport building: chatting about the weather, finding common grounds, etc.
10-20 minutes ✨ of focusing on them: you ask questions to determine who they are, what they do, what are their goals, what solutions they’re looking for, what they’ve tried and what they expect from your solution
10-15 minutes ✨ of introducing your solution (if appropriate, if not, just say you don’t think you can h): walk them through step by step of your solution right after they pay, what results they can expect and what’s required/expected of them to succeed – lastly, ask them if they have any questions.
5 minutes of ✨ closing the deal: give them info about when they need to make a decision (could be on this call, 48 hours after, etc.), decide if the deal is won or temporarily lost.
If you don’t have enough eyeballs on your offer:
There’s a bajillion successful ways to get you more traffic. If you’re lucky (aka money to hire a team), you’ll get on fine with half of these options. But if you’re like the rest of us on the internet, only a couple of these traffic sources would make you happy, and money, of course (yay to high standards🌻).
Content creation (The Algorithm Gods, pleasee!): Instagram, LinkedIn, FB groups, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok
Paid ads: Google, Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): blogging, podcasting, YouTube, Pinterest
Relationship building: guest blogging, guest podcasting, affiliate partnering, building your email list (through freebies, quizes and newsletters), connecting one-on-one via social media, Clubhouse, PR
** If you’re lost and overwhelmed, just pick a platform, google your way to doing it imperfectly for at least a month as an experiment. If you end up hating it (whether or not it was working), try the next thing (use this list above☝️I promise that is all there is to marketing). You’ll thank me later for not throwing $997 at that blogging or Instagram course that you definitely won’t make back your investment from.
** Beware of funnel courses and programs! They often require you to have an email list first. If you don’t yet have an audience – save those courses to your wishlist for later.
If you’re burned out:
Your first thought would probably to hire a VA. HOLD YOUR HORSES!
Almost all business owners have been burned hiring the “wrong” team members, especially the first VA.
You don’t know what you need, how you need them done. In other words, you haven’t established your standards for what kind of work you would accept from your VA and how you will support them to get to that point.
You most likely will need to do a business overhaul. Organize your files in an intuitive way, figure out your budget, document (even simplify) your process and workflows, journal to figure out what you want to do, what you can delegate and how long those tasks typically take.
➞ Check out things you can automate in your business HERE.
At this chaotic stage, you might benefit most from a coach to take you one baby step at a time to get organized and make scaling business decisions at the same time.
FREE information gives you perspectives.
Don’t buy into courses and programs that claim to have some secret information or framework, cause let’s be honest, one “proven method” won’t apply to EVERYONE. The “secret sauce” is often shortcuts such as templates, done for you processes and or done with you planning and coaching that are worth investing in.
If you’re buying a course, make sure it’s a framework you understand so you can trust the process and participate. Otherwise, you’d be better off consuming free info on YouTube, blog posts and freebies to first figure out what your ONE next step is and who in the market is best to help you achieve that result.
“I don’t have time to google around. I’d rather pay someone who’ve already curated all the information for me.”
Sure – but bare in mind that you’re going to consume ONE single person’s perspective of the supposedly “same” information. One perspective however rounded is still very biased.
Take me for example. I know lots and dare I say, almost everything about building and running online businesses because I’ve worked in this field since 2017 with clients from all sorts of industries. But that’s not true. I’ve only worked with creative course creators and teachers, coaches and some full service agencies. And I only really know funnels, online courses and strategies to scale businesses with automations and systems. I wouldn’t be able to help someone with social media or paid advertising (although I do know who to refer you to!)
