Your Dream Business

Getting All the Love… But Where Are the Sales?

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m sharing a tough but important lesson from my own business—what it looked like when I was getting all the engagement, support, and “love”… but barely any sales. I break down the three biggest mistakes I made that caused this disconnect, from unclear messaging and trying to speak to everyone, to avoiding proven marketing strategies, to not showing enough proof of results.

I also walk you through exactly how I turned things around. From niching down and getting crystal clear on who I help, to confidently using ethical sales strategies, to finally owning and sharing the results my clients were getting—these shifts completely changed my business. I also talk about what happened when I decided to fully commit to selling an offer I truly believe in, and how stepping into a “main character” mindset helped make this my best year yet.

3 Key Takeaways:

Clarity Converts, Confusion Doesn’t

When I tried to speak to everyone, I ended up resonating with no one. Getting specific about who I help and how I help them made my messaging stronger—and my sales followed.

Ethical Selling Still Requires Strategy

Avoiding tactics like deadlines, bonuses, or urgency didn’t make me more authentic—it just made it harder for people to take action. When used with honesty and integrity, these strategies actually serve my audience.

Proof Builds Trust and Drives Sales

People need to see what’s possible. When I started sharing testimonials, case studies, and real client wins (while being honest about expectations), it became much easier for people to say yes.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Why Your Small Audience Is Your Launch Superpower

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m busting the myth that you need a huge audience to have a successful launch. I share why a smaller audience can actually be your superpower, especially when you focus on building genuine connection and trust. Through a real client example, I show how a list of just 130 people generated over £10,000 by refining the offer and aligning it with what the audience truly needed. I also walk you through the simple strategies I recommend before, during, and after a launch—from warm-up content and personal outreach to DMs and follow-ups based on engagement data. The key message is that small audiences can convert incredibly well when you lean into personal connection, intentional effort, and learning from post-launch feedback. 3 Key Takeaways: A Small Audience Can Be Your Biggest Advantage With a smaller audience, I can create more personal conversations, deeper trust, and stronger relationships that often lead to higher conversion rates. Manual Connection Drives Launch Success Personal DMs, voice notes, direct follow-ups, and warm conversations can make a huge difference when growing sign-ups and increasing sales. The Launch Doesn’t End at Cart Close The feedback I gather from people who didn’t buy helps me understand objections, improve messaging, and make the next launch even stronger. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

Everyone thinks that you need to have a big audience in order to succeed in the online business. And while I won't disagree, it's a numbers game, it doesn't mean that you can't have a successful launch with a small audience. In today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you the things that are your superpower when you have a small audience to help convert more people. If this is the first time that you're seeing me welcome, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing, and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online business. After being in the online space and having my own business for 11 plus years, I have seen everything there is to see and have been behind the scenes in some very successful launches. Within my programs, I have helped hundreds of online businesses launch and grow their business. And in these episodes I help to give you some of the strategies, the tools, and the tactics that are working right now in the online space so that you can grow yours As an online business expert, it is remiss of me not to talk about the fact. It is a numbers game. [00:01:00] If you've watched my videos before, if you've listened to the podcast, you know I will talk a lot about expected numbers, and it always starts with that first initial thing of how big is your email list. And then from your email list, a percentage will go onto your launch list and from your launch list, a percentage will buy. And that percentage can seem pretty small. And it is. And often people get very disheartened because they go and do a launch and they don't get as many sales as they would like, and they think that they've done it wrong. And then when they come to me and I ask them their numbers, I actually realized that the percentages are bang on where they should be, or in some cases even better than they should be. And the key thing at the beginning was they didn't have the numbers in the first place to get those bigger numbers. However, I want to talk to you today about how you can still achieve a really successful launch. With a small number on your email list, just like the amazing Rosanna Sanna worked with me where she had put together an offer that didn't feel right, and we tweaked it and changed it, and we made sure that it really [00:02:00] aligned with her, her audience and what she wanted to deliver. We put out her offer in a launch through a challenge to her list of only 130 people, and she managed to finish that launch making over 10,000 pounds from a teeny tiny list. So it is possible, yes, I always want you to grow your audience, but it is possible to make good money from a small audience. And in fact, I'm gonna show you today how it's your superpower. So let's talk about how you can maximize your launch. And I'm gonna be covering off two main areas. Before the launch, IE is you're trying to get people to sign up to your launch experience and then actually selling, because obviously the more people we can get into your launch experience, the better. Okay, so before the launch, what can you do to help maximize as many people in your audience to get onto your launch experience? Well, one of the things I teach is talking about pre-launch content. The more you can warm people up, the better. So if you are literally one day talking about one thing, and then the next day [00:03:00] saying, join my webinar or join my challenge, then it comes a bit out of nowhere. So doing pre-launch warmup, doing content that warms your audience up ready is a really good idea, and I would recommend that to any one of any audience. Size the difference when you have a smaller audience is what I would put in that is some engagement and is some outreach. So during that pre-launch, how can you engage with people that are following you online? Can you start conversations not about come and join my launch, but just genuinely doing good engagement on social media. The second thing you can do is once you actually start talking about your launch. Experience IE your challenge, your bootcamp, your masterclass, whatever it might be, is you can actually go and do personal outreach in your dms to tell people about it. Now, I would say doing this personally is much, much better. Again, if you haven't got a massive audience. That's way easier to do when someone has a bigger audience and they do that. Sometimes someone on their team reaches [00:04:00] out and it just doesn't feel the same. Also, it's a blanket outreach and that doesn't feel nice. Whereas if you are having a conversation with someone and you then happen to say, oh, by the way, I just wanted to check that you'd seen this, or, you know what we were talking about the other day, well, I'm actually gonna be covering it in this. Thing. It's so much better, and the likelihood of them signing up to your launch experience is so much better. The third thing you can do is you can go out to your connections and ask them to share it. I don't do this every time, and I wouldn't necessarily suggest for every single launch unless you have the loveliest connections ever because it's going to wear a bit thin. But if you are just starting and your audience is. Small. Then why not go to the people you know online, your friends, your business colleagues, and say, is there any chance you could share this with your audience? Could you literally just share the post for me or could you talk about it or could you mention it on your stories, whatever it might be. Ask them if they can share it. And like I said, when you've got a smaller audience to get them to help you do that. And the first instance is really, really helpful. And finally, why [00:05:00] not go and ask anybody that you've worked with, if they know anybody that would be good for this masterclass, for this launch experience, for this bootcamp, whatever it is that you are doing. Go and have a conversation with someone that you've previously worked for and said, do you know anybody that you think would be interested in this? And could you refer them to me? So again, these are very manual things, which. Always sound a bit odd when I talk about an online business 'cause it's all about scale. But in the early days, we have to do these things. There's a story about the people that own Airbnb that in the first few years of owning Airbnb, one of the things they identified was the photos weren't very good. So they personally went out and photographed people's places. There's. Talk of the person that owns Uber, of actually going and doing Uber and driving Uber so they can experience what it's like in the early days. Even when the business ends up being massive, they're not working at scale in the early days. They're doing things that can't scale. And the beauty of having a small audience and the beauty of getting started is that you [00:06:00] can do those things. 'cause once you scale. You can't do them as easily. Okay? So those are the four things that you can do to actually get them to sign up to your launch in the first place. So let me recap them for you. So the first thing is doing that pre-launch content, but when you have a smaller audience, do some outreach and engagement and some building the conversations just in the dms anyway, not specifically by the launch. But doing some engagement to help your own social media get further out there. Number two was personal outreach. Once you've started those conversations and you have then announced you're doing a masterclass, webinar, bootcamp, whatever it might be, actually go back into those conversations and personally outreach people to let them know that you're doing it. Number three is to go to some of your connections and ask them if they'd be willing to share that you are doing this launch experience. And number four is to go back to some of your existing or previous clients and ask them if they know anyone specifically that your launch experience might be suitable for, and would they mind referring you. Okay, so once people are actually in your [00:07:00] launch experience and you're going through it, how can you then help them convert to buy, and what kind of things can you do when you do have a smaller audience? Because the number of people coming into your launch is gonna be small, and therefore we wanna maximize the purchases as much as possible. One thing I would say in my experience of working with hundreds of launches is that the smaller the audience, the actual bigger percentage take up, we tend to get. Because you can actually have that more personal touch. So in order to actually help people convert and buy number one, the first thing that you can do is go and follow everybody that took part in your launch experience. Again, that list is going to be fairly small because you have a small audience. So let's say 50 people sign up for your webinar. Literally get that list and go and find those 50 people on social media and connect with them then, because you are connected with them. Number two on my list is make sure that you are putting the sale conversations and the reasons to buy out on your social media and out on your. Stories. Yes. The chances of someone who [00:08:00] isn't in your launch experience, then buying can often be slimmer, but we're trying to think of those people we've already connected with that are in your launch experience. It's another touch point. It's another place to see, so make sure you do that. You do some stories. You talk about your actual offer on your social media. Number three. Send personal voice messages to the people who are in the launch experience. Now, this is something that I've done before. I really don't like it if I'm honest. I find it quite uncomfortable, but I make myself do it because it opens the conversation so it. Even if they don't buy, it's giving you a real insight to what they thought of the launch experience, to what their objections are, what they're dealing with right now. So I would send a voice message that said, hi, whoever it was, and I do that to make sure they know that this is a actual message for them. Thank you so much for being in the webinar, the bootcamp, the challenge, whatever it is. I really hope you've enjoyed it. I loved meeting you in there. I would love to know what you think about [00:09:00] joining whatever it is that you're selling, and if you have any questions, I would love to have a chat with you about them. I would always add something like, this is not any sales pressure. I'm just genuinely interested. I think you'd be a great fit if I genuinely think there'd be a great fit. So you could do that for pretty much. Anyone that came through your launch experience, again, small list means yes, you'll probably sit down for an hour or two and do it, but promise you it'll be worth it. And then finally, the fourth thing that you can do, because not everyone answers their dms, and maybe you didn't connect with them on social 'cause you couldn't find them. Keep an eye on the emails that you're sending and look at who's clicking, who's opening, and maybe think about sending them personal emails off the back of that. So if someone has gone and clicked, maybe drop them an email that isn't a broadcast one that is directly from you. That's. Says, Hey, I saw that you clicked. I'm just wondering if you got any questions. It's all about opening those conversations because when we open those conversations, we understand what's maybe holding them back, what their concerns are, why they might not [00:10:00] buy, and it just helps you then for future launches. And again, once your launch gets big, we can't do that. That's much, much harder to do. It's gonna take way more time. So those eight things, the four before you actually start selling, and then once you start selling, will really help you convert and maximize those sales online when you have a small audience. One thing I wanna note. When you finish the launch is try and still outreach to those people and find out why they didn't buy. Again. If you can open a conversation and have a conversation with them, then it's really gonna help. Next time you launch. It's really gonna help you get ahead of those objections or tweak your offer to make sure that some of the things holding them back are now in the offer going forward. I would do this a couple of ways. I would make sure that you send out a quick survey. To everybody on email, but also I would try and have conversations maybe in the dms. You could even offer them an incentive to jump on a call with you to explain maybe why they didn't buy this [00:11:00] time, which like I said, then comes brilliant information when you are then doing your next launch in 2026. This personal connection, this. Personal outreach is really winning when it comes to launching and when you have a small audience, you are the most perfect place to do it. I know it's not the easiest thing. I know it can feel uncomfortable. I too don't like it when I do it, but I promise you what you will gain in sales. And in knowledge will be worth every single second you spend on this. I want you to stop seeing your small audience as a disadvantage, and I want you to start seeing it as your superpower because you can do things that people with big audiences can't, and that means you can actually get a much bigger percentage conversion than maybe people with big audiences can't. I really hope this has helped and inspired you to go out there and have those conversations and have that personal touch when you next launch. Also, if you are launching and you want some help in terms of what to do when, and a bit of a to-do list, then make sure you download [00:12:00] my launch toolkit. If you are watching on YouTube, then you can just scan this QR code here. If you are listening on the podcast, then go to teresaheathwareing.com/toolkit and get your free toolkit today. I will see you in next week's episode.

How to Increase Revenue Without More Leads: The Offer Ecosystem Advantage

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I break down why relying on a single offer just isn’t enough if you want to grow your revenue, especially when only a small percentage of your audience will actually buy during a launch. Instead, I walk you through the concept of an “offer ecosystem” and how layering additional offers around your core product can significantly increase how much each customer spends—without needing more traffic. I also explain the difference between where you place offers (like order bumps, one-time offers, and thank-you page offers) and what actually makes up the ecosystem itself—things like bonuses, upsells, downsells, and cross sells.

I dive into how each part of the ecosystem works and how to use them strategically—whether it’s upsells that enhance the main offer, downsells that capture people who aren’t ready yet, or cross sells that provide complementary support. The key is making sure every piece feels aligned and genuinely helpful, not random or overwhelming. I also share common mistakes I see—like adding too many choices, pricing downsells too close to the main offer, or not positioning them properly—and why mindset and ethics matter when increasing revenue this way. By the end, I encourage you to think beyond just your main offer and start building a simple, intentional ecosystem that better serves your audience and boosts your results.

3 Key Takeaways:

Your Revenue Is in the Ecosystem, Not Just the Main Offer

Most people won’t buy your core offer, so having upsells, downsells, and cross sells gives you more opportunities to serve different needs and increase overall revenue.

Alignment Beats More Offers

Every additional offer should support your main product and solve a specific problem—random add-ons or too many choices can actually hurt conversions.

Small Tweaks Can Drive Big Results

Simple additions like order bumps or downsells can noticeably increase your average customer spend without needing more leads or a bigger audience.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

What Training My Puppy Taught Me About Selling Online

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I share a fun but surprisingly powerful story about how getting my six-month-old golden retriever puppy, Nelly Mae, turned into a real-life lesson in online selling. Within just three hours of discovering a dog trainer on YouTube, I found myself not only binge-watching his content but also purchasing his £250 “Perfect Puppy” course. That experience made me stop and reflect on exactly what worked—and how those same strategies apply directly to our own businesses. I walk through five key selling lessons I took from that journey, including the importance of creating bingeable, easy-to-find content that builds trust quickly, offering a lead magnet that truly matches what your audience is already looking for, and tapping into your audience’s pain and urgency at the exact moment they’re searching for a solution. I also talk about how powerful it is to build trust through proof—like testimonials, results, and visible expertise—and why presenting your offer at the right time, especially for lower-cost products, can make all the difference. By the end, I encourage you to look at your own business and spot where you might be missing opportunities to convert ready-to-buy customers. 3 Key Takeaways: Bingeable Content Builds Trust Fast When your content is easy to find and naturally leads from one piece to another, people stay longer, trust you more, and move quicker toward a buying decision. Alignment with Buyer Intent Is Everything Your lead magnets and offers need to match what your audience is actively searching for. When the timing and message align, conversions feel effortless. Timing and Trust Drive Sales When someone is already feeling the urgency of their problem, and you show up with proof and a clear solution at the right moment, the decision to buy becomes easy. If you’ve ever wondered why some people can turn viewers into buyers so quickly—or how to make your own content work harder for you—this episode will give you practical insights you can apply right away. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

This is a picture of my six month old puppy Nelly Mae, and in today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you what getting my puppy taught me about the online space and how I went from not knowing someone to three hours later spending money with them online because they could fix my problem. If we have not met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches, and I help them grow online businesses in a way that feels aligned with them, their offer and their customers. And in today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you how an unlikely story of getting a puppy taunt me stuff about the online business and what it can teach you to. Let me start by just telling you a little bit about this story. So I have two dogs. I have two caucus Spaniels, Woody and Teddy. If you're on YouTube, here's a picture of them. Anyway, in summer last year, we decided to bite the bullet and get a golden retriever. So. My husband was away for [00:01:00] three months and I was getting the dog on my own, and I had never actually trained a puppy or dealt with a puppy because my husband always dealt with the boys as puppies, and we had had them from four months old, whereas I was getting her from eight weeks and I was honestly freaking out. I was like, how do I manage this? What do I do? How do we do this? And I was taking it really seriously as one would hope you do when you get a puppy. So she came along and I was like, I'm gonna need some help. So I started watching or looking for some content, and I went to my favorite place, which is YouTube, where I watch a lot of content. I started searching for, how should I look after my puppy? What do you do in the first 24 hours of bringing a puppy home? Like all the things. And I searched all these questions and then of course, the minute I started searching the algorithm on YouTube started throwing up more videos I might like, and I stumbled across this guy called Will Atherton. And Will had got loads of [00:02:00] videos on how to deal with a puppy and what a puppy should do and how to basically train it. And he also talked about the fact that if you didn't train your puppy, the problem you were going to get down the line is you were going to get a really unruly dog. And one of the considerations I had was I had got this puppy who was a golden retriever, and she was going to be a big dog. So how on earth would I make sure that I didn't have this big, massive dog on my hands that I couldn't control? So after watching. Video after video, after video. I was there for a few hours watching all these different videos. At the end of every video will talked about a program, a perfect puppy course, and obviously being a marketer for one, but someone who had the problem. The pain of, I've got a puppy. I don't want it to be unruly, and I also don't want a big grown dog that I can't control. I went and had a look at the Perfect Puppy course while I was there, and while I was in his content, I managed to find a free mini [00:03:00] course that he had about training your puppy. And I opted in for that. I watched it and basically that, and the videos gave me enough confidence that this guy knew what he was talking about and. I went and bought the Perfect puppy course. Now, when I bought it, it was about 250 pounds, and within the space of about three hours, I'd gone from not knowing who this guy was to giving him about 250 pounds. And the reason I'm telling you this story is because there are five key things that he did that I think you can take away and learn from this when you are selling online. Step number one, he had bingeable content that built my trust. So when I found his first video, I was able to then go and see. He had loads of other videos, and then I went down a rabbit hole of watching these videos, and then I went and found him on social media and saw he was all over social media. So for me. I was able to really get to know this guy really quickly because he had [00:04:00] content. Now, someone might not buy after watching one video, but after watching video, after video, after video, after going down a rabbit hole and looking at someone's social media, after seeing that there is lots of content out there and binging the content, they are much more likely to buy. So step one, have that bingeable content. So if you do not have bingeable content, IE. If I can't find you online and watch what you do and how you do it, then you are gonna make it very difficult for me to even engage with you, let alone buy from you. Number two, he had a lead magnet that captured the intent to buy. Okay, so his lead magnet, his freebie, his mini course, was a perfect prerequisite for the thing I wanted to buy. It was an introduction for some of the basics that you need to know about getting started with your puppy, which was almost step zero. In the steps of wanting a trained puppy. Now, it's interesting. Normally when I would talk about a lead magnet, [00:05:00] I would talk about getting them onto your list and then you nurture them on your list. However, in this particular case, I barely read an email that he sent me other than getting the email to actually log into the little mini course that I could take a look at. I wasn't actually paying attention to his emails because quite honestly, he couldn't have sent me enough emails in time because I did it in such a short space of time. So he delivered a lead magnet that I could then also binge watch because I did. I went through it fairly quickly, and in fact, I don't even think I went through the whole thing. I just got past some of the first couple of videos before I was like, yes, I absolutely need this, because the next thing he did in step three. Was he basically reconfirmed the pain and the urgency within the lead magnet. So within the lead magnet, within the video, he reconfirmed why I needed the course even more. And it wasn't so direct as selling. It was talking about like he would [00:06:00] introduce a concept and then we'd talk about the fact of if we don't get this nailed now, or if we are not learning how to. Deal with this now, then down the line, this is gonna cause a bigger problem. So he was really addressing all of my fears. My fears of, I've got a big golden retriever dog that basically is going to be so hard to deal with. I'm not gonna be able to walk because she's gonna be so big and she might pull, and I need her not to jump up because she's gonna be really big and it's gonna be really hard work. So during the videos I was watching in the first place. And the free video mini course that he gave me as the lead magnet. He was basically reconfirming my problems and the urgency for the problem to be fixed at that point. The other thing that's good to know is at the point that someone is searching for that content is the point that they have for problem. Now, if I'm thinking of getting a puppy, I'm not going to be searching what to do with a puppy when you bring them home. I'm not [00:07:00] gonna be searching how to help them sleep for the first few nights. At the point I'm getting, the puppy is at the point, I'm looking at the content, and he understood that really clearly. And during the videos and the lead magnet, he really pushed that pain and he really pushed that urgency. Number four, he built trust the whole way through. He talked very much about the work he's done, the qualifications he's got, and the results he's got for his clients. The other thing that he did, which. If you can do is great, but it's, this is just like a cherry on the top is he actually had remarketing ads. So in the very short space of time that I was looking at his content, I did actually get delivered an ad that was a testimonial. When I went onto his social media, I saw testimonials. So I saw other people like me who had not had experience with dogs or puppies before who were really concerned, who wanted to make sure [00:08:00] that they could train this puppy in a way that aligned with them and. It had done it. It had fixed the problem. So he was confirming to me that I could trust him. He was confirming to me that he was the authority on this, and he was showing me in practice how he had done it for other people. And number five, he presented the offer at the perfect time. Now. I would be guilty of this, that sometimes in some instances you should wait to warm someone up and nurture them in order to make the offer. Now, as you've heard me talk about before, my offers are much higher touch, they're much more personal, and therefore they are higher cost. So it isn't necessarily going to be a very quick decision. However, in his case, it wasn't a high touch. It wasn't a high cost offer. I paid roughly 250 pounds and I could make that decision fairly quick. So therefore, the fact that he made the offers so quick and so often was key to me buying it meant that I didn't have to think about it too hard. He had presented all the details to [00:09:00] me. I had had some content from him that build trust. I'd watched videos that made me realize that I liked how he trained and I liked who he was. He showed me authority. That I could make that decision very quickly and I needed to make it quickly because I was bringing my puppy home and I needed to know what to do with that puppy. If he had waited to make the offer, the chances are I either would've gone somewhere else or I wouldn't have bought it 'cause I wouldn't have thought I needed it. So let me run through those five again. That led me to going from not knowing someone to giving them 250 pounds in a very short space of time. One. I had bingeable content that I could watch, and they were everywhere. I was able to find them. I was able to see what they were doing, and I was able to build trust that they were actually legit in what they were talking about. Two, they had a lead magnet that captured my intent. So it was almost step zero of where I was. That basically said, well, if you are downloading this, then you are definitely wanting to get the course. Three. He. Made sure that he talked about the pain [00:10:00] and the urgency of fixing the pain a lot, which made me realize I need this thing more than ever. Four. He built trust through everything that he did, through the quality of his videos, through him showing up through his testimonials through. Through his qualifications. I built trust very quickly and built authority with him very quickly. And number five, he made the offer. He didn't wait to give me an offer. He gave me the offer, presented it when I needed it. So those five things you can now take away and look at your online business and see where maybe you've got some gaps that you can plug with some of these things. And by the way, the course was excellent and I was able to train my puppy. Now she is a puppy and she's six months old, and she is massive. However, it really helped me understand how they needed to be trained and what to do. So I, for one, was very happy with the purchase I made. If you found this episode helpful or you know someone else who might find it useful, then please go ahead and share [00:11:00] that with them. I will be back next week with another episode.

10 Signs You’re Ready (or Not Ready) to Scale Your Online Business

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I talk about how to know whether you’re truly ready to scale your online business — or whether it might be better to focus on strengthening your foundations first. Scaling is often talked about as the next logical step in business growth, but I explain that it doesn’t have to mean building a huge, low-touch company. In fact, I share why I personally love smaller, higher-cost, high-touch programs and how they can still scale in a meaningful and sustainable way. I walk through five signs that show you’re ready to scale, including having a proven offer you’ve sold multiple times, reaching capacity with delivery like one-to-one work, and having real clarity about your audience and the problem you solve. I also share five signs that you might not be ready yet, such as constantly changing your niche, lacking consistent leads, or not having a repeatable sales process. By the end of the episode, you’ll have a clearer understanding of where you are in your business journey and what your next best step should be. Teresa Heath‑Wareing regularly shares strategies for growing online businesses through her podcast and teaching. 3 Key Takeaways: A Proven Offer Is the Foundation of Scaling Before you scale, you need an offer that has already sold successfully multiple times. When you know people want it and it consistently delivers results, you have the confidence and data needed to expand it. Consistency Creates Growth Opportunities Scaling becomes much easier when you consistently show up with content and have a reliable strategy for growing your audience. When people clearly know what you’re known for, your visibility and authority naturally increase. Strong Foundations Matter More Than Speed If you’re still changing your niche, struggling to generate leads, or don’t yet have a repeatable sales process, scaling may not be the right move yet. Taking the time to strengthen these foundations will make future growth much easier and more sustainable. If you’ve ever wondered whether you should scale your online business now or focus on strengthening your foundations first, this episode will help you assess where you are and decide on the smartest next step. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube or take the Quiz

Transcript

When most people come into the online industry, they dream of having an online business that they can scale, but how do you know if your business is ready to scale? In today's episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you the five signs that you are ready to scale, and the five signs that tell you probably not to scale just yet. If we have not met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches to help them grow their online businesses. And that's the dream in most cases, to have an online business that you can grow and scale so that you make something once and you sell it over and over and over. Now, before we get into that, actually just one quick thing that isn't necessarily the dream for every online business. I have an online business, and when I first came into it, I dreamed of having that massive launch with those thousands of people coming through the doors and all buying, and I realized the more I got into business, the longer I did this. I've been in business now 11 years, actually, that doesn't fill me up. That doesn't make me happy. One of [00:01:00] the things that makes me truly happy is that I know the people I work with so well. I know who they are, what their business is, who their customers are. I normally know if they have children, what their partners are called, what they like to do on a weekend. I get to know the people in my audience and the people who buy my programs really closely because for me, the people that I work with, they've bought a lot of courses, they've done a lot of the things, and it's still not working. And the only way that. You can actually make it work, or the only way that we can start to understand is for someone like me, an expert in this industry like me, to come into your business more and to understand you more, buying another course or buying another program where you are just another face on a Zoom screen is not gonna move you any further forward than you are now. There is no magic trick that that online expert says they've got that is going to help you launch. There is no one. Thing that is going to help [00:02:00] you grow your business. It really comes down to what is working for you, your audience, your offer, your price point and the way that you like to work and show up. And when you have someone that takes that into account, then they can help you with all the tools that you've got and go. That's the one I would focus on or double down over here. So. Actually, my dream did start to have a big course that I sold, or a big program that I sold, and I created it once. I could sell it over and over and over and over, and actually in reality, that doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is working with people closely and having a smaller program so I can do that. Which means it's a higher cost program. Anyway, I just wanted to add that caveat because if you are looking at this going, actually that isn't what I want, then that makes perfect sense and that is fine, and I just thought I'd share my story on that, but. We can all scale. Okay, so yes, I want a program where it's very high touch, but there is still room to scale. So how do you know if your business [00:03:00] is ready to scale or not? Here are the five signs that you are ready to scale in your online business. Sign number one, you have sold your offer a few times and a few is a hard one because like if it's a low cost offer, then you probably want to sell it quite a few times. If it's a higher cost offer, then you only might need a handful of people to do it. But you know, it works. That is one of the most important things. In order to scale anything, we've got to have tested it and we've got to know that it works, and we've got to have experienced the thing and gone through the thing. So number one, you have an offer that you've sold a number of times, and you know the offer works. Number two, you are at capacity with your one-to-one or delivery. Often when people say to me. If they work in a one-to-one scenario or in a group coaching scenario, should I put my prices up? One of my first questions for them is, are you full? Right? Because if you're full, that is a sure sign that you could probably put your prices up. The same for whether you can scale your online [00:04:00] business. If you are at capacity with your higher touch things and more people wanna work with you, then there might be something that you could be having, or there might be a funnel you can put them into. To give them a different offer. So if you're at capacity with your one-to-one or at delivery, then yes, you are probably ready to scale. Number three, sign that you are ready to scale your online business is you know your audience really well and you know what their problem is that you are trying to fix. If you are not a hundred percent confident on this, then. Scaling is probably not for you at this point because in order to scale, we've got to know exactly who we're talking to because basically it's just amplifying what we're doing. It's just basically doing more of what we're doing or talking to more people. So if we are not. Talking to the right people or we're not talking to them about the right problem that they have, then scaling isn't gonna help that. Number four, you have been creating consistent content and [00:05:00] people know you for your thing when they think of your name. So when someone thinks of my name, I want them to think launching. I want them to think growing an online business. If people can't do that about you, they might need some more work that you need to do. But if you have been showing up constantly, if you've been creating content and you are known for your thing, then great, you are very much ready to scale. And number five. If you are growing an audience, IE you are doing a consistent growth strategy. And it doesn't have to be something crazy. It could be as simple as posting on social media, doing YouTube, having a podcast, whatever it might be. But if you are growing your audience. And you have an audience, then yes, you are ready to scale. If you wanna understand a little bit more personalized information of your business, where you are, and if you are ready to scale, then if you're watching YouTube scan at the QR code here or click the link in the comments and it will take you to my quiz. The quiz is all about whether [00:06:00] you are ready to scale your online business, and it will give you an action plan of things to do to help you get to the next step of your business. As I've said, either scan the QR code or head to Theresa Heath wearing.com/quiz and you can take the quiz, okay, onto the five signs that you are not ready to scale your business. Number one, you are changing your niche or offer regularly and you haven't been consistent with an offer or a niche for a while. This comes down to almost. One of my last points of if you're ready to scale, if people don't know you for your thing, then it's gonna be really hard to scale. If you've changed your niche a lot, if you've changed your offer a lot, it's going to be really hard to scale. So you are not ready if you have been constantly changing your niche. And your offer. Number two, you have no consistent lead flow, so you have no consistent way of getting people onto your email list. If you are not constantly bringing in people or constantly being [00:07:00] visible or finding ways to be visible, then it's gonna be really hard for you to scale. One of the most important things about scaling is either having the audience. Or the money to accelerate that audience. IE through things like meta ads. If you don't have either one of those things at this point, then it's gonna be really hard. 'cause you do need that audience. So if you don't have a constant way of bringing people onto your email list, that's gonna stop you from scaling. Number three, you have no repeatable sales process. So even though one of the things I talk about is launching and I see a lot of content online that talks about how exhausting launches are, and you don't have to launch and you shouldn't launch. Launches for me have been really, really effective. And for my clients, it's not to say it's the only way, 'cause it absolutely isn't. We talk about evergreen as well. However, launches are a sales strategy and we're. The way I teach launching is we build out the launch and then we repeat it, and we repeat it, and we repeat it. So it's not as [00:08:00] exhausting as you might think in the first place. So the first time you do it, there's a lot of work, a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things that you need to know and understand. But once you've done that, you can just rinse and repeat. So if you don't have a rinse and repeat way, whether it's evergreen or launching, or whatever it might be in order to sell. Then it's gonna be incredibly hard for you to scale. Number four, you are still trying to validate your customer's problem. As I talked about at the beginning of this episode, if you don't know really clearly what your customer's problem is, you are going to find it very hard to scale because as I've already said, scaling is just amplifying what is already working. And if you are not confident and know exactly what your customer's problem is, the chances are you're not. Effectively selling to them. And that means you can't amplify that if you haven't got a really clear pathway of, okay, this is the problem they're trying to fix. This is the offer I'm giving them, and this is the way I'm selling the offer. You are not gonna be able to [00:09:00] scale if you don't have those things in place. So you need to be really confident. What is. The problem I am fixing. And number five, if you feel like you've done it all by flute. Now this one has got a caveat on it. I have worked with some people where they have come to me with a really successful online business that they have managed to grow and they want to scale it further. But actually. They managed to do it without any of those other things in place. Now, ordinarily they do have an audience, which is very important, but they haven't done the launches as I would talk about doing launches. They haven't got the sales funnel as I would talk about it. However, they've got to that point and they want to scale so. Often what happens at this point is I have to go back and almost reverse engineer what they've done to date. Because what they've done to date is obviously worked in some capacity, but then bring in some of those foundations. So it's almost like they've managed to build this house without the [00:10:00] foundations in place. And now I'm going in and underpinning it. I'm going in and looking at it going great. If we could just put this thing in here, then that's gonna make that so much stronger and therefore we have got capacity to build. An even bigger house than we've got now. So if you have got there by what you deem as fluke, it might not be, it might be that you have an amazing strategy, but if you have grown and thought, this is awesome, and I've built this online business and I'm not entirely sure I've done it, it's not that you can't scale, it's that you might need someone like me to pull it all apart and work out why it works and how we can then use that information. To scale it further. So I would love to know, after listening to the five things that are signs that you can scale and need to scale, and five things that mean you probably are not in a position to scale, where are you right now? Like, how many of them are you ticking off? What kind of things do you need to work on? If you are watching this on YouTube, I would love you to let me know in the comments which of these things you need to work on in order for you to. Scale or whether you are ready to scale. And if you're listening on the podcast, then please [00:11:00] come and tell me in my dms over on Instagram, which is where I am the most. And don't forget to go and do that quiz where you will get your own report on what you are missing and what you need to work on in order to scale your online business. If you're watching YouTube, here's that QR code again for you to scan. And if you are listening on the podcast, then go to series, either wearing.com/quiz to take the quiz. I will be back next week with another episode. Until then, have a great week.

Why Your Audience Isn’t Buying (And How to Fix It)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I explain why growing your audience doesn’t automatically lead to more sales. Visibility is important because it helps more people discover your brand and join your email list, but simply having a bigger audience doesn’t guarantee revenue. Without the right strategy behind your messaging and offers, you can end up with lots of followers but very few people actually buying.

I walk through five reasons why this happens, including attracting the wrong audience, not having a clear pathway for people to buy, focusing too much on education without enough conversion content, and not building enough trust and authority. I also explain why having a strong conversion mechanism — like a launch or funnel — is essential. Ultimately, visibility creates opportunity, but it’s the strategy behind your marketing that turns your audience into paying customers.

3 Key Takeaways:

Attract the Right Audience

If your messaging is too broad or your lead magnets attract the wrong people, you may grow an audience that isn’t interested in your offers. Clarity about who you help and what problem you solve is essential for attracting people who are likely to buy.

Education Alone Doesn’t Convert

Many creators focus heavily on teaching and providing value but forget to include persuasive content that helps people see why they should work with you. Conversion-focused content is just as important as educational content.

You Need a Clear Path to Buy

Your audience needs a clear journey from free content to paid offers. Without a defined pathway — such as an offer ladder, launch strategy, or evergreen funnel — people may enjoy your content but never take the next step to become customers.

If your audience is growing but your revenue isn’t keeping up, this episode will help you identify what might be missing and show you how to turn visibility into real sales.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Why Free Launches Are Getting Harder (And What to Do Instead)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I explain why paid launches are working so well right now — and why they might be the smartest move you make for your next launch. I break down the difference between traditional free webinars or challenges and paid launch experiences, and I share exactly how my two-week, five-session paid bootcamp model works, including standard and VIP tiers. I also talk honestly about why free launches have become harder — from audience overwhelm and low show-up rates to freebie collectors and creator burnout — and then walk you through four powerful reasons to test a paid launch instead. While you may see fewer sign-ups, the quality, engagement, and conversions can be significantly stronger. 3 Key Takeaways: Paid = Higher Commitment When someone invests money, they’re far more likely to show up, engage, and implement — which leads to better results and stronger trust. Engagement and Conversions Improve Paid participants are more serious and qualified, meaning higher show-up rates, better interaction, and stronger conversion rates into your main offer. Your Launch Can Fund Your Marketing A paid launch can generate revenue upfront, giving you cash flow to fund ads and scale — rather than relying on a free event that only costs you time and money. If free launches have been feeling heavier, harder, or less effective, this episode will help you see why — and show you a practical alternative that could change the game for your next launch. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

After 10 years in the online space, I have done every type of launch that you can imagine, and there is one launch that is working really, really well at the moment, paid launches. In this video, I'm gonna be sharing with you what paid launches are, why they work so well, and the four reasons that you should consider trying a paid launch for your next launch. If we haven't met, my name is Teresa Heath-Wareing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches to help them grow their online business. And I have recently been given the award of Business Coach of the Year from the National Coaching Conference and Awards, which I am obviously over the moon about. And every single week I put out a new video and podcast. What I share with you. Tactical and strategic things that you can actually do in your business that is going to help you grow your online business without all of the overwhelm and with what is working right now. So if you haven't [00:01:00] subscribed to the YouTube channel, I urge you to hit that subscribe button and to make sure that you get notified every time I put a new video out, and I would be so honored if you could share this video with someone who was in the online space that you think could benefit from it. Okay, let's talk about free versus paid. So what do I mean by free versus paid? Now, most launch experiences have been free, so you would do a free webinar, a free challenge, a free bootcamp. So basically for them to come into the launch experience, and I call launch experiences, just the mechanism that you're using, like I said, a webinar, a masterclass, which they tend to be the same thing, a bootcamp, a challenge, a. Open house. Those are what I call launch experiences. And when I talk about launching, I don't necessarily mean for the first time. This is just basically a focused period of marketing where you are selling your online thing, like your course, your program, your membership, whatever it might be. So [00:02:00] in most cases. Up until fairly recently, most launches were free. So you would advertise that you were doing a free webinar, a free challenge, and people would sign up and come and join that challenge or come and join that masterclass for free. And then at the end of the thing, you would then present your offer, which would be your paid program, course, membership, whatever it was. Kind of marketing activity that you were doing to get them there in the first place was free. Now, let me explain to you what I mean by a paid launch experience. So ordinarily and what I've been involved with and what I teach is more about a paid bootcamp or a paid challenge, something that is a bit longer. I would say that you can do paid workshops rather than. Masterclass or webinars, masterclass and webinars tend to be about an hour or to an hour and a half. They're very much focused on the what and [00:03:00] the why and less so on the how. And your program tends to be the how, whereas when you are doing something paid, it normally means it's going into more depth. So let me explain to you my paid launching the I am using currently. I'm doing a bootcamp where basically the bootcamp is over two weeks, but it's five actual sessions, so it's two sessions on week one and three sessions on week two, and for that bootcamp, it is a paid thing. Now the. Cost of the, the bootcamp is low, so my cost of my bootcamp at the point I'm recording this is 49 pounds. But there is also a VIP level where if you join the VIP level, you get additional things. So for instance, rather than just the five sessions, you will also get some q and As with me where. I basically get to coach you. There are also things like you might get some other bonuses and some other nice bits that you would get if you sign up for the VIP. So basically there are two levels to my paid launches, the standard level, and [00:04:00] then the VIP level. But they're both paid. The standard level is 49 pounds. The VIP level I think is 97, like I said at the point of recording this. But the point is to come into that launch experience, which is a bootcamp you have to pay now. You might think, well, this doesn't make sense because I want them to buy the bigger thing, and if they're buying the lower thing, will they buy the bigger thing? We're going to address the reasons why you might want to consider a paid launch, but let me talk about why free are getting a little bit more difficult. Well, the first thing is the overwhelm is massive. There are so many. Free things that we can now do online businesses and launching has become way more popular than it ever has done and will continue to grow. And because of that, there'll be lots of free events, lots of free challenges, lots of free boot camps, which means there is often low commitment from the person that is engaging or signing up to them and the poor sharp rates. So when I started this back in. Or when I started in the online [00:05:00] space about 10 years ago, the show up rate for a webinar would be anywhere between 40 and 50%. Then when we hit COVID, it went up. It was actually like you could get 60%, which is great, and now we are seeing some as low as 15 and 20% show up rate, which means the number of people who signed up to come to say, your webinar only. 15 to 20% of them might actually turn up. And one of the key things is you want them to turn up because if they turn up, they're way more engaged. They're more likely to consider buying your thing that you're selling. At the end, you are also potentially attracting freebie collectors. So there are people that just like to sign up to free stuff and will busy themselves with going to all the webinars in the world. Therefore, you might attract some of them when you are doing a free thing. Often when we are doing free launch experiences, we tend to give information without implementation. And if you've watched any of my other videos, if [00:06:00] you've listened to the podcast, then you will know. One of the big things for 2026 is we need that implementation. That actually what we don't need is more content or more information. At this point, we need to actually get it done and we need ways to help us get it done. And sometimes when we're doing. Three things, rightly so, we are just giving them the information because there has to be a balance of like how much we give away when we are giving it for free. And this can lead to creators, to online business owners, to you to meet, burning out basically. Launching is not a very quick and easy thing to do. It takes work and time and effort. And sometimes you might find yourself feeling very resentful when you are putting in all this time and effort. You are delivering really good stuff and people just aren't engaging and they're not taking it seriously. So there are lots of reasons why free launches are not as successful and not as good maybe as they used to be. Now I am not. As [00:07:00] all saying that free launches are dead and you should no longer do them. There are many places where a free launch is very much appropriate and very much needed for the thing that you are doing. There are lots of reasons why for some people I would pick a free launch over a paid launch and often as I do in my program, Grow Launch Sell, these are the kind of conversations we're having on those coaching calls with me. Where every member of Grow Launch Sell, because it's a very tight program that I have, they get to ask me about their specific business, their specific launch, their specific offer, and I get to give them advice on what I think would work best for them. So I'm not saying that free launches are dead. I'm explaining to you why I think paid launches are something you should consider. So let's talk about why paid launches work so well and why you should consider them for your next launch. And I'm gonna be sharing with you the four reasons. Why paid launches work so well? Reason number one, [00:08:00] commitment equals better results. When you are asking someone. To pay for something. Their commitment level is way higher than when you are giving them something for free. Now you might think, but I'm being really kind, giving them something for free, and this is really useful and helpful of me to give them something for free. And surely because I'm being so kind and giving them it for free, they will take it seriously. Unfortunately, that is not the case and they don't always do that. However. When you pay for something, and this is same for us and true for us as it is for your customers, when I pay for something, I am giving it way more importance than I something that I am doing for free because I've put money down, I've got skin in the game, as they would say, and when someone has got skin in the game, they've got something to lose. So if they've paid for it and they don't engage with it, then they feel like they have lost their money because they haven't spent time [00:09:00] and done the thing they've paid for. So. When they've paid for it, it means they're more committed, which means they get better results. Ordinarily, in a challenge or a bootcamp, you are giving them something to do. You are asking them to try different things or experiment with something or do some work. And you know, as I do, when I get someone to do something in a bootcamp, the outcome they're gonna get at the end is awesome and is really going to help them. But they do have to do the work and getting them to pay to join the bootcamp means that they are more likely to do the work, which means. They get better results at the end, so it's a win-win for everybody. Number two, paid launches lead to higher engagement. If someone has committed by paying some money to do it, they are going to show up or they're more likely to show up. Now, are my paid bootcamps a hundred percent attendance? Absolutely not. I am yet to see one that ever is, but. [00:10:00] The engagement is considerably higher. So you are talking back around there's 50, 60% levels of engagement, whereas if it was free, like I said, we are looking almost as low as 15 and 20%, or we can be so. By getting them to pay, the engagement is higher, and because the engagement is higher, it's a better experience for everybody. Now, I don't know about you, but I have done a webinar to one person where one person showed up for a webinar back in the day when I first. Started, and that doesn't make for great engagement. It doesn't make for a great experience. It doesn't make for a great kind of, you don't feel brilliant showing up and trying to give a webinar to one person that can affect how you show up. Whereas when people are showing up. You get the engagement. They get the engagement. It just feels so much better, and as I've already said, when someone engages, they are more likely to consider paying for your thing or your program if they have engaged. Because the other thing about engaging [00:11:00] is they get to start to build that know, like, and trust. If someone has signed up for a bootcamp and they never show up to one of the calls and they can't get to see what I'm like or whether I'm worth working with, then. It's very unlikely that they're gonna buy from me. When they engage, they show up, they will realize whether they like the person they're watching or not, and therefore are more likely to consider buying your paid thing. Reason number three is when you do a paid launch, firstly you are being paid for it, and that makes it feel very, very different, which means you can actually earn some money before. Before you've even sold your actual program or your offer or whatever it is that you're selling, but secondly, you can use that money to fund. Scaling your launch, and this is really, really key. One of the things about launching is that we constantly need to be bringing people into our world, and one of the ways in which we can do that is through something like meta ads. Now, what you can do when you are charging for a launch [00:12:00] experience, if you are running ads to that launch experience and people are signing up, that in effect is paying for the ad itself, which means. If you are getting a positive ROI, it means you can put more money into the ads 'cause you know it's going to be paid for on the backend when they sign up for the program. So, for instance, if your program is 49 pounds or dollars and it is costing you 20 something pounds or dollars to get one person on the bootcamp. Then we just add more money in at the beginning. So you can use a paid launch to fund itself to basically increase and scale that launch. And number four, doing a paid launch will lead to higher conversion rate. Again, if you've watched my video, which we will make sure we link to in the notes below this video, if you've watched my video on. Numbers and what is realistic for you. When you are launching, you will see that often I talk about from [00:13:00] your launch list, which are the people who signed up for the way that you are launching your bootcamp, your challenge, or whatever it is. You can expect between one and 8% of those people to sign up to your program, to your paid offer. However, in the last few. Paid launches that I have done, I have been seeing conversion rates of 20 to 27% because the people who are in the room, the people who have signed up are serious. If they have paid to be part of a bootcamp or paid to be part of your launch experience, it means they really are considering. Working with you, or it means that they really do have the problem that you are trying to help them fix. You see, I might do a webinar that's for free and people might think, oh yeah, fancy. Going along and seeing what that's like. Well, actually there may not be my ideal customer, but because it's free. They're not losing anything per se other than a bit of their time. However, if I am saying, even if it's a small amount of money, like 49 pounds, you [00:14:00] have to pay 49 pounds to come and join the bootcamp. Then someone who's just doing it just out of interest is less likely to do that because they've actually gotta pay money for it. So number four is the conversion rate will be higher because the people in the room are more serious. Okay, let me recap those four reasons again, why you should consider doing a paid launch for your next launch. The commitment is higher, which means they will get better results because they are showing up and doing the work because. They paid to be part of your launch, you will get higher engagement and a high up show up rate, which again, will be better for everybody. Number three, the launch can potentially fund itself because if you are being paid to do the launch, you could always. Filter that money back into things like meta ads in order for you to get more people in the launch in the first place, and number four, you will get a much higher conversion rate because the people who are taking part in the launch are [00:15:00] much more tailored to be your audience. But there is one big objection that I want to just tackle before we finish this video that you'll get. Far less people signing up to this launch experience than maybe you are used to, and that is an important thing to note. But I really don't want you to let this stop you. If you are doing a webinar where you are currently getting a few hundred people signing up, then you can fully expect the minute you do a paid thing for that to dramatically decreased. But don't see this as a bad thing. One, you are earning money that you weren't earning when you did it for free. Two, if they really are your perfect customer, then they're going to sign up if it's the right thing. And three, they are much more likely to convert. So even though you have less people coming in at the top of the funnel, you are converting more coming outta the funnel. So for me. It absolutely has its place. It doesn't mean I [00:16:00] only do paid launches. Now I do happen to do a lot of paid launches, but I do occasionally do free webinars and they have their place too. But if you are serious about. Getting people into your offer, then I would definitely consider having a paid launch. And the great news is if you are a member of Grow Launch Sell, then coming up in the next few weeks will be a new module all about how to do paid launches for your next launch. And if you are not in Grow Launch Sell, then you can just click this QR code here and it will take you to the Grow Launch Sell page where you can find out more about it and get on the wait list.

The Missing Phase That Makes Your Launch Convert

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I explain why a successful launch actually begins before you start promoting it. I introduce the often-missed pre-launch phase and share how warming up your audience in advance makes your promotion, live delivery, and sales stages far more effective. I walk through two key questions to shape your pre-launch content — what your audience needs to understand first and what objections you need to address — so you can bring them to the same starting line and turn cold prospects into warm, ready-to-buy participants. 3 Key Takeaways: Your launch starts before promotion If you only begin nurturing your audience when you announce your webinar or challenge, you’ve missed a critical opportunity to prepare them to say yes. Pre-launch content removes friction By answering what they need to understand and addressing objections early, you reduce resistance before you ever sell. Get them to the same starting line Strategic pre-launch content ensures your audience is informed, aligned, and ready — making your promotion and sales phase significantly more powerful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

Most people think that a launch starts at the point where they open the doors to their launch experience. IEA webinar. Or a masterclass. Or a bootcamp. But actually your launch starts way before then, and today I'm gonna share with you one of the things that you can do prior to your launch to ensure that your launch is even more successful than it is already. If you are new round here, my name is Theresa Heath wearing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches, and I help them grow their online businesses and sell in a way that feels really authentic to them. Today we are gonna be touching on something that lots of online business owners miss out and it's at the detriment of their launches. You see, when most people talk about launching, they tend to talk about three distinct phases of the launch. Phase one is the launch phase. This is where you are promoting your bootcamp, your challenge, your webinar. [00:01:00] Then you have the live launch. That is when you are delivering the webinar or you are delivering the bootcamp, and then you have the sales phase, which is the bit where the doors open and you start selling. But what people are missing is right at the beginning, there's another. Phase, and I call this the pre-launch phase. And this phase is as important, if not more important than some of the other phases because this is where you are getting them ready to actually go through your launch. So let's talk a little bit about how this works now when you have a launch phase. That second phase, this is where you are promoting the bootcamp or the webinar or the challenge. But what we need to think about is how do we make sure that they are ready to sign up for that bootcamp or that challenge or that webinar or whatever it is. The very first thing that you need in place is actually to have a launch experience that they want to actually join. So what we need to think about is what are [00:02:00] you creating in that masterclass, or what are you offering in that bootcamp that they actually want? So that's the first thing that goes without saying that. We can't do an amazing pre-launch and we can't do an amazing kind of launch experience if it's something they don't wanna sign up to. So the very first thing you need to think about is you know what your customers need help with, and you are going to help them with that. Thing, and you have nailed it. You've nailed a really good launch experience. So how do we get them ready to actually take part in the launch? So I'm gonna use the example of bootcamp. Let's say I am running a bootcamp on how to do webinars. I know it's a bit meta when I talk about my own stuff because I'm talking about. Challenges and webinars. Anyway, you, let's stick with it. So I'm gonna talk about doing a bootcamp. Let's say that I am going to do my launch experience as a bootcamp, and the theme of my launch is I'm gonna help you plan your next webinar, or I'm going to talk you through how to do your next webinar. So there are a [00:03:00] couple of questions I need to ask myself to help me create content that is going to go out. Prior to me even sharing that, I'm doing a bootcamp. Okay? So whatever your launch experience is, whether it be a webinar, a bootcamp, a challenge for at least two weeks prior to even mentioning it, I want you to think about doing this pre-launch content. The pre-launch content is going to get them ready. When you are ready to actually talk about the thing and share the actual launch experience that you're going to do, so there's a couple of questions that you need to ask yourself in order to create that content. Question number one, what do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the thing that you are going to teach them in? Your launch experience. Okay, so my example, I'm doing a bootcamp. This is just an example just to [00:04:00] pretend I'm gonna do a bootcamp about how to do webinars. So what do my customers or my potential customers need to know or understand before I can teach them about webinars? Okay, so that's the first question. What do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the thing that you are gonna teach them in your launch experience? Question number two is what objections might they have about learning that thing? When we think about these questions, question number one and question number two, what objections they might have about learning that thing. What we're doing is we are getting them ready for the point where we start promoting the actual. Launch experience. So the challenge, the bootcamp, the webinar, whatever it is. In my case, in my example, I'm talking about a bootcamp, and the bootcamp is gonna teach 'em how to do webinars. I know it's. It's tricky when I do my own stuff, but we get it. Okay, so let me think about that. So in order for me to create my pre-launch content, [00:05:00] I need to answer those questions. So for instance, when I was doing, or if I'm doing a bootcamp that is talking about how to create webinars that finally convert, what are the answers to those questions? So as a reminder, question one, what do they need to know or understand? Four. I can teach them that. Well, if they don't know that webinars are a way to sell an online offer, then they need to know and understand that because there's no way they're gonna sign up for a bootcamp on teaching them how to do webinars if they don't know it's even a thing. For instance, one of the things come up in my world is the word launch. That often people think that when we say the word launch, we are talking about selling something for the first time. So they need to know and understand that if I'm talking about a launch that actually. I'm not necessarily talking about selling or launching something for the first time. This can be. For any of your online products and if you've sold it before, what else do they need to know or understand? Well, they need to know [00:06:00] that that webinars are still a thing. They need to know that webinars can be successful and get them sales. They also need to know that there is a very specific way in which you need to do a webinar that actually you can't just get on and do some free training. That's not what it is. So if that's what they thought it is, then they need to know and understand that. And then the next question is, what objections might they have about learning this? So I guess the example I just gave you is a very good objection. So an objection of, I know what a webinar is. Well, maybe not the way that I teach it, or I've done a webinar before. They don't work. Okay. How do I get over that Objection. So I might create some content that says. That you've create. You know, you've done a webinar before and it didn't work. These were the three reasons why, or I might create content that says webinars are dead, or you think webinars are dead. Here are the last results I got from webinars. What we're trying to do is we're trying to get your audience. All to the same point on the starting line [00:07:00] because if your customers are all at different points, are points of where, um, I hate webinars. Webinars don't work. Webinars are rubbish. Like whatever the thing is you are teaching, then. They're not even gonna be at the start line when I say I'm doing a bootcamp teaching webinars, because they'll be like, well, I don't think webinars work, so why would I sign up for a bootcamp that teaches me how to do webinars. So I want you to think about those two questions. They are so important in terms of creating content and having that content come out prior. To your launch experience prior to the point where you are actually doing your launch experience. To give you an example, some of the content that I put out, I did actually do some, it actually wasn't a, a launch experience. It was actually, um, a paid workshop about webinars, but it's the same sort of principle. So before I even mentioned the fact that I was doing this workshop. I created content and in the podcast at the time, I created episodes that were mastering the Art [00:08:00] of Webinars, a step-by-step guide to successful online launches. Then I did one about, uh, launch reality, understanding the realistic expectations. So I talked about what real numbers look like, because again, one of the objections might be, well, I did it and it didn't work. Whereas if I can educate them and go, well, actually this is what the realistic numbers look like, then maybe. They will then go, oh, okay, well mine did work. I didn't realize on social media, I put posts up that talked about webinars aren't dead. You might think they are, they're not. They work. They still work. They're still brilliant. Also, I included things like motivational posts talked about, you know, you could be just one launch away from your success. So things to inspire them and think, yes, great. I want to do this. So I'd recommend that for at least two weeks prior to you even mentioning the fact that you're doing a webinar, a bootcamp, a challenge, or whatever your launch experience is, that you start putting out this content. Now, this content can go out for [00:09:00] a month or two before your launch. Experience. It's really as long as you can give it. And I have to say when I watch some of the bigger launches that I watch or some of the big launches that I'm involved with, those pre-launch periods are quite long, and that content is really pivotal to getting everyone to the same place and motivating everyone and making everyone feel ready. For the actual launch experience. So I wanted to give you a couple of other ideas of, I've given you the idea of mine. If I was doing a bootcamp about a webinar, very confusing. Let's say that you are doing a webinar about Pinterest, so three easy steps to 10 x your traffic using Pinterest. Some of the questions and some of the things that you wanna think about in answer to those two questions are, if they've never used Pinterest, why should they try it? Pinterest only works for certain businesses or certain brands. You'd need to address those objections. I have to be using Pinterest, so you might talk about how to get started. You might talk about how easy it is to get started. You might. Put some content out about how [00:10:00] they should set up their account. I don't have time for another social media platform, so that objection of, I'm doing this already, how would I then add in another one? So you might talk about how if you were using Pinterest, it's so much easier and you don't have to do all these other things. And actually you can schedule everything. So you can see how I'm addressing some of those issues coming in. Before we even get to the fact that we're talking about doing the webinar, the masterclass, whatever. So then let's imagine you are in an industry where you are doing a launch experience where it's about five steps of being the best boss in 2026. Learn how you can improve your confidence and impact your leadership role if you're gonna do a launch experience about that. The content you need to think about in your pre-launch is. What does a good boss look like? If they aren't sure about what a good boss looks like, then are they gonna sign up for something about being a good boss, or if they think they're a good boss already, because they dunno what it looks like. So then. The question, are they a good boss? It could be a quiz that they take. Um, [00:11:00] what can being a good boss do for them? So it might be a, an objection of, well, yeah, why does it matter that I'm a good boss? Like, does it make me more money? Does it, what does it do? And then examples of good bosses from their life. So you might talk about, you know, this was a really good example of this. So remember, those questions are designed to help you really create content to get everyone to the start line. And then. When you start the race, that's when you're saying, sign up to this thing and come and join this thing. And at that point you should have matched their objections. You should have helped alleviate some of their concerns and fears, and you hopefully should have got them the answers they need to some of the questions that they might have about the thing that you're teaching. So one final reminder, let me just remind you what those questions are. Again, they're super important in terms of getting that pre-launch content so that when you put your launch out there, they're ready. So question number one was, what do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the [00:12:00] thing that you are teaching them? And question number two. What objections might they have about learning that thing? And if you are creating your content based on those two questions for the few weeks prior to your launch, you are gonna get everyone in your audience ready for the point where you put your launch experience out there that hopefully they are going to want to sign up and join you. Okay? I really hope that this has been helpful. If you are doing pre-launch, tell me below. Message me, send me a DM on social media. If you're listening to this on the podcast, I would love to know if this is something you are already doing, if not. I would love to hear your thoughts on today's episode. I will be back next week with another episode.

Stop Selling Features: Why Transformation Is the Key to Selling Your Online Offer

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I explore a powerful shift that can completely change the way you market your offer: prioritising the transformation you deliver rather than the details of the offer itself. In a crowded online space where people are constantly bombarded with features and promises, what truly stands out is a clear, compelling result. It’s not about what’s included - it’s about what changes. I explain this using my “two mountains” analogy, showing how your audience starts on one mountain (their current struggles and frustrations) and wants to reach another (their desired outcome). Your offer is simply the bridge between the two, but too often we focus on selling the bridge instead of the view from the top. I also share practical examples - like how airlines market the destination, not the flight and highlight how testimonials and case studies help prove that the transformation you promise is genuinely possible. If your marketing hasn’t been converting the way you’d hoped, this episode will help you refocus on the real driver of sales: the meaningful change you help people achieve. 3 Key Takeaways:

Market the transformation, not the product

People don’t buy modules, calls, or features, they buy the result those things help them achieve.

Meet your audience on their first mountain

Your messaging should clearly speak to where they are now, what’s not working, and what they truly want instead.

Use proof to make the transformation tangible

Testimonials and case studies bridge belief gaps and show your audience that the journey from pain to possibility is absolutely achievable. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

In a world where we have got more content than we know what to do with, and AI can produce us a course five seconds flat. There's one thing that we must ensure when you are marketing your online offer. If we've not met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online businesses through effective launches and selling online. So recently I've been doing is some talks and some sessions. I'm a speaker and I've been talking about what is changing and what has happened in the online space we should be doing in 2026 to help sell our online offers. And there is one thing that is so very important that's. Always been important by the way, but it's even more important that we get clearer on now than ever before. I want to talk about your customer's transformation. Now, before you already say, Theresa, I know this. I understand this. I want you to just listen to this video because if this video helps you understand your customer's transformation a little more, that is [00:01:00] going to help you sell more. Because in a world where we don't need more content, we are not bothered about buying something because it's got many, many hours of content. Or because there's all these lessons or all these courses when it's quicker for them to go to chat GPT, for instance, and literally type in a question and get the answer. So why are then people buying the thing that you're selling? If I can literally go and buy a course, why would they then go to the effort to buy something from me or you? They're after the transformation. So what they're not looking for is they're not looking for the product. They're looking for the thing that the product enables them to do. The way I teach a transformation in my world is I talk about two mountains. Okay? So imagine a mountain where your customers currently are, where they're, they are in pain, they have the problem, they are frustrated. And then where they're trying to get to is this other mountain over here, a mountain where. They have the transformation, where their life [00:02:00] is, where they want it to be, where they've achieved the thing they want to achieve. And the thing that gets them between the mountains from the pain mountain they're on now to the transformation mountain of the thing that they want is your product or service. Okay, so let me explain a example of what I mean. So for instance, when people come to me. They are on the mountain. They have the problems and the pains that they have an online business that they love. They just wish it would make them more money. They're frustrated that they followed all the advice, and yet it doesn't seem to be happening. They know people love the product that they sell. Just why aren't more people buying it And they are tired of generic advice and generic stuff. And they are tired of generic advice and they want to know and get deep into their business and understand why it's not working for them in their business, and they ultimately want to make more money and serve more people. So that's the mountain that they're currently on. Now, the mountain that they want to get [00:03:00] to is the mountain where. They have lots of customers, or as many customers as they're looking for, it's where their online offer is selling much easier, where they're not feeling burnt out, where they have a pathway or a strategy that they know works that they can rinse and repeat where their online business is giving them the life that they love. So that's where they're trying to get. So they're over here frustrated, and you might be watching this and you might go, yep. That is me, Theresa. I am annoyed. I thought I'd be further along by now. I have a great online business. I really do help my customers. I just can't understand why we're not selling more and I've done all the things and I want to be over here where I'm selling more and I am getting people to join my program, join my membership, buy the course, and I am actually making the money I want to be making from my online business. So. You are here, you want to be over here. And the thing that helps you get from one mountain to the other is my product and service. So, and interestingly enough, it could be any [00:04:00] of my products and services because I effectively help people do the same. There's just different ways in which they can do it. So watching YouTube doing this is helping you now it's doing it very slowly and it's not doing it specific to you. But if you watch enough of my videos, go back and listen to enough of my podcast episodes. I will help you move from one mountain to the other. If you join my Grow Launch Sale program, I will help you move faster and with a better structure. If you work one-to-one with me, I'm help you move even faster than that. So all my products and services take you from one Mountain and get you to the other one. Now, the truth is, it kind of doesn't matter the thing I'm doing in the middle. Okay? All you really want is to be from one mountain to the other. So if I was to say to you, go out with a sandwich board on, do you know what a sandwich board is? It's basically like a board that people, of course you do. But anyway, it's like a board that people wear on the street that has a sign on it. If I said to you that, that is working really, really well and that is going to get you to the other mountain. You might do it right, because what you want is to get to the mountain. You are [00:05:00] actually not that bothered of what that product and service is in the middle. It's the transformation you want, not necessarily the product and service. So let's just bring it back just a little bit to the online world, to courses, to memberships, to programs that you're offering. Whereas in the past, and this was probably three, four years ago, where it was all about like the offer stack, it was all about going, you get this and you get this, and the hours of training and all these resources and all of these things. It's less so about that now and it's more about the transformation. So if I was to tell you that I have one five minute course, I don't by the way, but if I was to tell you I have one more. Five minute course that is literally going to give you that transformation. Of course you'd want to do it, of course, you'd wanna take it in a heartbeat. It's the same way as like. We just want everything so much faster. So it's not that I want to spend days and weeks learning this stuff, I just want the transformation. But the problem is, one of the ways that we've marketed before [00:06:00] is very much talking about this is what the offer is, this is what I it does, this is how many courses you've get and how many calls you get, and the support you get. Where we really need to move the focus away from the actual product and focus more on the transformation. Talking about how we deliver the transformation. There's a really good example in the real world of an industry that has to do this, that has to talk about the transformation, not about the product, and that's the airline industry. Now, there are very few people who just love going on a plane, right? My husband is one of them, by the way. He. His ex-military, he works in aviation like he loves going on a plane. I like where the plane gets me now, when BA or Virgin send me emails, they're not sending me emails with pictures of economy. 'Cause quite honestly. That is not gonna cut it. Okay? It's not selling it. No one is gonna look at an economy seat and the food that you get in the [00:07:00] trade and go, oh, I really want to do that. I'm so excited. What they want is the destination. So when British Airways or Virgin send an email through to me, what they're doing is they're showing me destinations. They're showing me beautiful beaches with blue seas. They're showing me amazing lands. Escapees and mountains and snow and whatever it is that they're promoting, they're not necessarily showing me sitting in an economy flight for nine hours or whatever it is, because that wouldn't sell. So the airline industry know really well that what you want is to get from the one mountain, the one mountain being I'm at home. I am working all the time. I'm tired. I want to see the sun, whatever it might be, and the other mountain being I'm lying on a beach or I am visiting somewhere new that I haven't been, or I'm experiencing something I haven't done before. Or in my husband's case, I'm skiing down a mountain, like whatever it is. That's what they're showing. That's the transformation. They're showing that you are going from over here, [00:08:00] where you're at home and you're tired and you're fed up to over here to where you are visiting somewhere. Amazing. The thing that gets you there very, you know, realistically is a plane is a thing that takes you, but no one wants to buy the plane trip as such, they want to buy the transformation. So I know I've spent quite a bit of time really going deep on that transformation, but honestly, it is the most important thing because as if I don't have to remind you, your audience do not want your product. They want the transformation. So that brings me onto one more point, and this video's gonna be pretty short, but it's. A really, really important one. One of the things you need to do when you are writing your sales emails, when you're writing your sales page, when you're on your webinars, when you are doing your bootcamps, whatever it is to actually sell your online offer. One of the things that you need to make sure you're doing is. A, you are talking about that transformation you are talking about. I know where you are now and I understand where you want to be because again, [00:09:00] as a customer, I wanna read that and go, they get it, they get that. I'm frustrated. They get that. I'm annoyed they get that I have an online business that I love. I just want more people to buy. So we need to make sure they understand that we understand. Where they are right now, where the pain is, and then we need to make sure they understand that we understand what the transformation is and what they really want from the end of whatever it is that we're selling. Okay, so that's the first thing In your marketing, in your emails, on your sales page, on your webinars, we need to make sure we're having that kind of more softer conversation or that emotional conversation of. I get where you are now and I get where you want to be. In fact, the very first two sections of a sales page when I teach how to do a sales page is you do the headline, the kind of intro bit of like just grabbing their attention. And then section one is where are they now? And section two is where do they want to be? So that is more important than going, do you want to buy this thing? Because they don't, okay. They don't wanna buy the [00:10:00] thing. They want the transformation. Okay. The other thing that's super important when talking about transformation is we need to prove that we have done it. I have testimonials everywhere. In everything I do. I have them in every email that I send when I'm selling. I have them on my sales page all the way through my sales page. I have them in my webinars, my boot camps, constantly in my presentations. So we need to be proving that we can actually get them the results that they're looking for with various different testimonials and case studies all the way through. Okay. Like I said, this is gonna be very short and very sweet, but it's so very important. You need to understand what is it that your customer really wants, and what they really want is not necessarily your product of service, it's the result that your product and service can give them. And it's that, that we've got to market. If you found this video or podcast that's all helpful, I would massively appreciate it. If you could share it with someone, it would be so, so kind of you. This is obviously something I spend a lot of time doing every single week, getting these videos, getting [00:11:00] these podcasts out to you, and if you could share it, I would be so incredibly grateful.

My Honest Take on the Changes Happening in Online Business

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m sharing my honest perspective on the recent shifts happening in the online business space and why so many people are feeling anxious about them. With well-known industry leaders making big changes and new conversations popping up everywhere, it can feel tempting to question your own strategy or wonder if you’re doing something wrong. I talk about why it’s so important to stop making business decisions based on what others are doing and instead look at your own data, your own enjoyment, and what’s actually working for you. I also unpack how major events like COVID and the rapid rise of AI have permanently changed the online landscape and why change itself isn’t a sign that something is broken. Throughout the episode, I encourage you to evaluate your business through the lens of your current stage, not someone else’s. What works for a creator who’s years ahead of you may not make sense for where you are right now. This episode is a grounding reminder that your business gets to be built on intention, clarity, and informed choice, not fear or industry noise. 3 Key Takeaways:

Your business decisions should be data-driven and personal

Just because a well-known name changes direction doesn’t mean you should. Your numbers, your goals, and your enjoyment matter most.

The online space is evolving—and that’s normal

From COVID to AI, the industry has shifted in big ways. Change doesn’t mean failure; it means adaptation.

Context matters more than comparison

Always evaluate advice and trends through the stage of business you’re in, not the stage someone else is at. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

There has been a lot of talk in the online space recently because a couple of the very big players in the online space have made decisions to change things in their business. I am not jumping on the bandwagon of talking about this because I know it might get me clicks or might get me views. In fact, I'm not even gonna name the people who have made the changes, but I am going to address it because I think when something like this happens, there is a lot of people who have a lot of opinions and I have been asked my opinion, and there's a lot of fear that's spread in the online space about it's not working anymore or. This means something. So I want to do a really short, quick episode about my thoughts when things like this happen in the online space and what do I think is gonna happen with the online space, having been in it for about a decade. If we haven't met. My name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I help course creators, membership owners. And coaches grow their online businesses through launching and selling their offers online. And I have [00:01:00] seen a lot of things happen in the online space over many, many years. And to say it's changed is an understatement. Let's talk about first when COVID happened and the fact that the whole world had to go online and what was fairly new and misunderstood, suddenly had to be taught and get very comfortable with very quick, and the online industry boomed. It was really, really successful. And then as time went on, people got a bit tired of the online. The world opened up again, things changed. Also, at that point, it encouraged a lot of people into this. Space that shouldn't quite honestly have been in the space that were coming into the space 'cause they wanted to make money quick and really weren't the best people. And also there'd been a history of online sellers and some big online sellers basically. Not being very ethical and not using great sales tactic. And then the world opened back up again. People started going back out and they suddenly started to go, I don't really love this online thing as much. And then [00:02:00] AI came in and kicked everyone's backsides and it's changed everything again. And the online space, like pretty much every industry is constantly moving, but when a couple of the really key players make business decisions. It means everyone suddenly has an opinion about what that means. Now, the very first thing I want to say about this is I think people forget that it's their business and they get to do what the hell they want, and that goes for me And for you, it goes for. Anybody in business, and one of the things that I am so passionate about is whenever I am teaching or speaking or doing a video like this is my job, is to help you create a business that you love, to grow your online business, and to give you strategies that work, however, that comes with a massive caveat. And that caveat is it's your business and you get to decide. You get to choose. So if someone is sat there telling you, you must do [00:03:00] this to be successful, or you have to do this to be successful, or the only way you can grow an online business is if you do this, it's absolute rubbish. Okay? I'm telling you now, it's rubbish. I can show you people in different industries using different tools and strategies, being successful in many different ways. There's not a one size fits all, and that is really, really important. So that's my first point. When people make a decision to change something in their program, pull a program, stop doing something, start doing something. They can do what the hell they want because it's their business. Okay. Now they would've made a decision based on their own business and where they are right now. And I think that's another really important thing to note. Everyone's businesses are at different stages, serving different audience, doing different things, even if you are doing something similar to someone else. They're still very, very different. And to make a [00:04:00] decision that is right for you, you have got to know and understand your business. You have got to decide, okay, for the effort I put in, the time I put in. What return do I get from that? And is that return money? Is that return things that you enjoy? I have turned down and stopped things that have bought me a lot of money because I just don't like it. And someone else would've looked at that and gone, well, that's crazy. Why would you give up that money? Because I didn't like it and I'm the one who's got to do it. Okay. So that's really, really important. So if you are going to make a decision in your business, whether it's to start something to stop, something, to pivot, to change, you are the one who's got to understand the effect that it's having on your business. You will have the data, you will know whether it's doing what it should be doing, and you can make a decision based on that. So again, anyone that we are looking at, anyone that is humongous in the industry or that you look up to, if they make a business decision, that is what they've done. They [00:05:00] have looked at what they've done, they've looked at the effort they've put in, they look at the return they're getting, and they've made a decision on that. Okay? So that kind of brings me to my third point. This is a very relaxed, uh, video or podcast if you're listening to it. So my third point is this doesn't mean that it's not going to work for anybody else. Okay? So. People have stopped courses, people have stopped doing content like podcasts. Again, I'm not gonna mention names just because I don't wanna be seen as just doing it to get the views and get the listens, but that doesn't mean podcasts are dead. Because someone doesn't go all out on YouTube doesn't mean YouTube doesn't work because someone is or isn't on TikTok doesn't mean it's the strategy to use or the strategy doesn't work. It just means they are making decision for their business. It's very easy to look at someone making a decision, like to pull a a course or a program that they're doing and run over a very sweeping statement that no longer courses work, [00:06:00] or the reason they've stopped this is because it's broke and the industry's broke. That is not the case at all. Now, is the industry different to what it was? Yes. Has that person made a decision based on what they know about their business? Yes, they have and they have made the decision for whatever reason they have, and they don't owe us an explanation. Okay. I'm sorry to say, they don't have to tell us or they don't have to be. Saying things in a certain way as to why they made that decision. They get to make the decision they get to make, but it doesn't mean because they've made that decision. It doesn't work. So let's take the example of someone stopping a podcast. Okay. So someone very prominent has stopped a podcast. That person has done over 900 episodes. So the first thing I'll say about that is they have done the reps, okay? So if you are looking at this, having never done a podcast, having never done a blog, having never done YouTube or done [00:07:00] any content and thinking or reading into it, that because that person stopped, it means that it doesn't work. That is just not true. That person has done the reps, they have a bank. Those podcasts haven't gone away. They still sit there. There is still 900 episodes that people can go and listen to. They have put in the work, they put in the effort that they now get to make the decision that they don't want to do that anymore, and that doesn't mean podcasting is dead. If someone decides that actually they go all in on YouTube and they stop, that doesn't mean that YouTube's dead because they decide to stop. So don't read into it that it doesn't work. Like I said, I can show you someone doing. All the different strategies in different industries, and it works for them and it's great for them. The one thing I would say about this is you've got to enjoy it and you've got to want to do it because at the point where you are absolutely burnt out by it, and [00:08:00] maybe that's where they were, maybe they were burnt out and they were like, do you know what? I don't wanna do this anymore. And again. That's fine. They get to make that decision, but at that point you have to decide is it worth the effort and the time. But like I said, it doesn't mean that all those get deleted and that work hasn't been done. They've already done that. Okay. Just to clarify, in case I haven't quite said it the way I want to say it. When people make decisions about their business, it's based on the stage they're at, and you might not be at that stage. Okay? So if someone's made a decision, whether it be someone huge in the industry or someone who's just started, and you are looking at that thinking, should I do that or shouldn't I do that? They could be in a completely different position to you. I did. 400 odd episodes of my podcast before I decided to take it onto YouTube. Now, would I do it differently if I started a a podcast today? Yes, I would do it differently. I probably would go straight onto YouTube, but I was in a very different position. My team were in a different position. Our business was in a different position. We could afford to bring in [00:09:00] editors, we could afford to bring people to help us manage this whole thing. So that is why I based my decision. So the other thing I want you to understand is. Again, it doesn't mean it's not working. It doesn't mean that it's over. It doesn't mean that courses aren't selling. It doesn't mean that podcasters, podcasters. It doesn't mean that podcasts don't work. It just means where someone was in their point, in their business and therefore, if you are not in the same point, which I would argue that most people are not at the same point because these two people have huge online businesses and there's not many people who have businesses the size that they do in this space. I would argue that therefore you shouldn't necessarily take their decision as what to do in your business. The last thing I want you to do is make a decision for your business when you are on chapter three and they're on chapter 30. You know, it's very, very different. So I wanna kind of just wrap this up 'cause I realize that this hasn't been particularly structured. This probably won't make a very good YouTube video because I haven't necessarily given you. Great outcomes or a really good structure of the video. [00:10:00] But one of the things I do wanna say is if you are going to make a decision about your business, I a want you to at least tried it. Okay? If you try something and you've put some time and effort into it, and you have data about it, and that data proves that it's not worth the time and effort that you're putting into it, or what you were putting in, and what you're putting in now is bringing you different results, then absolutely fine. You make that decision. So I want you to look at, have you done it first before you make a decision of whether it works or not. The second thing I want you to look at is what data have you got based on this? So again, do you have actual facts that say, this used to work really well, it doesn't, and therefore I'm not gonna do it. And are you making a decision based on what you love and how you love to show up and where you like to hang out? So I really enjoy. Doing these episodes now, sometimes they're hard work. I'm not gonna sit here and say it's easy 'cause it's not. But I [00:11:00] do really love sharing my knowledge and I love talking about these things. So therefore it's easy to have done 400 episodes of my podcast. If I hated it, I would've stopped a long, long time ago 'cause it would've been very difficult to keep going and stay consistent social media, I am not consistent at all. I am terrible at it 'cause I really don't love it and I'm working on that. But. Like I said, it's gotta be based on you and your business. And yes, I watch all the other people in my space. Of course I do. I learn from them. I understand. I work with them. I consult with people. I am constantly looking at what people are doing. However, the decisions I make in my business are about me and my business and what's working and what's not working. It doesn't mean because someone else has made a decision in their business that actually we all need to pack up and go home because online courses are dead because they're really not okay. If you found this at all interesting or helpful, I would love to know what thoughts you have about this. Have you seen [00:12:00] lots of content? I have some very opinionated stuff about how it should have been done, what was done, and all of that good stuff. I'm just interested. My take is probably very different to what you've heard already, so if it is different and you've got some thoughts on it, I would love to know.

How to Validate Your Offer Before You Sell It

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m walking you through four essential questions I use to validate an offer before bringing it to market. If you’ve ever launched something that didn’t convert the way you hoped—or you’re in the process of refining an idea - this episode will help you pressure-test your offer before you invest more time, energy, or money. I break down how to make sure your ideal customer actually recognizes the problem your offer solves, why using their language (not yours) is critical for conversion, and how to tell if this is a problem they’ve already tried—and failed—to fix on their own. These insights help you move beyond assumptions and into real market alignment. I also talk about the importance of desire and delivery—making sure your audience truly wants the outcome you’re offering and that the format of your offer supports fast, meaningful transformation. Whether you’re a course creator, membership owner, or coach, these questions will help you create offers that feel clear, compelling, and easy to say yes to. 3 Key Takeaways:

Problem awareness drives sales

If your audience doesn’t clearly recognize the problem, they won’t buy—no matter how good your solution is.

Language creates connection

Using the exact words your audience uses builds trust and makes your offer instantly feel relevant and understood.

Desire + delivery matter

An offer must solve a problem people want solved and be delivered in a way that feels simple, focused, and transformation-driven. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

If you've been watching these videos for a while, you'll know that I will often talk about a failed launch. Doesn't mean that you have a terrible product or you need to change the offer. However, in today's video I want to talk to you about how do you know that you actually have an offer that will sell, and I'm gonna give you four questions that you can ask yourself to validate your offer and be confident that it's the right one for you and your audience. If we've not met, my name is Theresa Heath Waring and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online business. And honestly, I geek out on this stuff. I love it. I joke that I watch launches like other people watch Netflix series. And this is what I eat, sleep, and breathe. So it brings me so much joy to bring the podcast and the YouTube videos and give you real strategic, tactical advice on how you can grow your online business. Before we get started with today's [00:01:00] episode, I'm gonna ask a big favor. Is there any chance. That you could go and hit the subscribe button if you're watching this on YouTube or hit the follow button. If you are listening to this podcast, wherever you are listening, I would be so appreciative. Creating content is one of the things that I love the most, and being able to come every single week and bring you free content that helps you grow your business is something I adore, and I would just love it if you could just help me back just a little bit by hitting that subscribe button. Let's get started with the episode. I have four questions that I'm gonna walk you through that I want you to consider either when looking at your current offer or when you are considering your next offer. Question number one, what specific problem does your offer solve? And, and this is the key bit. Does your perfect customer know that they have the problem? Now, you might think that that's a bit of a strange question. 'cause surely if you're creating an offer, it's because your customers have got a problem and you are helping them [00:02:00] fix that problem. However, I have seen time and time again, people create something that they want to create and put together an offer of things that they think, yes, this is what my customers need. The truth is it might be what your customers need, however, your customers might not know that they need it, and to try and sell something to someone that doesn't even know that they need it, you are starting with an uphill battle straight away. So, for instance, one of the examples I give on this is I had a client in the past that helped women who were in peri and menopause stages. And when we look at this question, this is such an interesting one, because a woman of whatever age might not know that she is potentially going into perimenopause. So if she doesn't know that she's going into perimenopause, how does she know that she might be there and that this lovely client has [00:03:00] a problem that will help her fix it? So the key thing here is. Do they know they have the problem? Now, one of the ways in which you can look at this is when you are an expert in your field, you tend to know the words and the shortcuts and the, you know, the quick answer to the thing. So for instance, my lovely coach that I know who helps women in Perry and menopause stages, she might know by someone telling her her symptoms that yes, you're definitely in perimenopause. But they might not know that. So for instance, when she talks about her offer, if she was just talking about, I help women in perimenopause, you are going to have a whole audience who would think, well, that's not me. I'm not in there. But what they do know is the problems that they have. So instead, I'm using this as a very literal example, but instead of her necessarily talking about. Perimenopause. She might talk about the symptoms that someone has, which they can go, oh yeah, I have those symptoms. Oh, yes, [00:04:00] I have those problems. So. Are we trying to help our customers solve a problem that they don't know they've got, or give them the solution to something that they're not? They didn't know that that is the solution that they needed. So let me remind you of that first question. What specific problem does your offer solve and does your customer know they've got it? Question number two, have I heard my audience talk about this in their words? Not mine. Again, this is kind of attached to question number one, but this is super, super important because we as experts like to fill in the gaps. Okay? So someone will say to me that they are having a problem selling their offer, and I might be able to see really quickly that it's their launch mechanism Now. I've just used the term launch mechanism, which they might be like, I dunno what the hell you're talking about. And if I talk about offering a service that talks about helping your launch mechanism. You might not know [00:05:00] what on earth I'm talking about. So what have I heard my customers actually said in their words, not mine. One of the things that I encourage you to do is to actually have conversations with people, whether it's on Zoom, whether it's a video call, whether it's just you picking up the phone, whether it's in person. Listen to what they have to say, what are their problems? And one of the things that I have to be really careful of, so I try and record whenever I do this, is I will really easily put my own words in instead of using their words. And the truth is, if we want an offer to be attractive to your perfect customer, then we need to make sure we are using their words. So if your customer or someone you think, right, this offer I have in mind will be. So perfect for them. If they aren't able to articulate in their own words what they need help with, then you are going to have a real disconnect between explaining the author and explaining why it can help them. Again, this might seem particularly obvious, but if they're [00:06:00] not saying they have the problem. Then they're definitely not searching for a solution for that problem. Question number three, is this something they've already tried to fix and they've struggled fixing? A lot of these questions might feel like I am stating the obvious, but I promise you I have looked at so many offers and offers of people who are so passionate about the thing that they want to present to the world and they want to offer. And I've looked at it and thought, I don't think this is going to sell. Not because they're not brilliant and not because what they're trying to do isn't brilliant, but because they've created something that actually isn't something that their customers are asking for. So although these questions seem obvious, they're really important to ask yourself. So, as I've already said, question number three, is this something that they're trying to fix and have struggled trying to fix? It's one thing knowing you have a problem, it's an entirely different thing, wanting to fix that problem. And you might think, well, that's just stupid. If they've got a problem, [00:07:00] surely they'll want to fix. I can tell you as a woman who is 46 years old, who's a mom, who's a stepmom, who's a dog mom, who runs my own business, there are a million things going on in my world at any one time, as I'm sure that is in yours. And just because there is a problem does not necessarily mean that's a high enough priority in my life in order for me to go and fix it. So is this something that they want to fix? Because again, I've seen people create something or want to create something and they're like, this is a problem. But actually no one is asking them to fix it. And even if we know they need to fix it, even if we are so passionate about the thing going, but their life would be so much easier, but they would do this or they would earn more or they would feel happy, or whatever it might be. It doesn't mean they want to fix it or it doesn't mean they want to fix it bad enough. So have they tried to fix it and are they struggling to fix it? And question number four, if I said this offer out loud. Would someone say, IE, your [00:08:00] perfect customer say, yes, I want this. Would they be so emphatic of, oh, I need this in my life? Because if they do, then great. That is the goal. That is what we want. Now, when it comes to pricing the offer and if they'll pay money for it, that is a different matter. However. At this point, would they say, I need that. I really, really need that. 'cause if they do, then great. Okay, so those are the four questions. Let me recap them for you. Question one, what specific problem does it solve and does your customer know that they actually have that problem? Question two, have I heard my customers talk about this in their own words, not mine. Question three, is this something that they are trying to fix and struggling to fix? And question four, if I was to say out loud what my offer is, would my ideal customer go? Yes, I want that. There's a couple more points I want to make that are super important before I wrap up this episode. Format matters. Now let me explain. Let's say you [00:09:00] are a. Service where you offer SEO help or I'll help you write your website, something like that. And you want to create an offer that helps people write what goes on their website, and you decide that the offer is going to talk 'em through what needs to go on a website is going to help them map out the text and get them to write the text. So at the end of the transformation, they have a. Website full of perfect texts that they've done themselves, rather than paying someone else do it. Let's say that's your offer, okay, and you've done all those qualified questions and you're like, yes, this is something people want. Then let's say you decide you want to do a membership for that offer, that offer. Is very possibly not going to succeed. Now, it's not that there's anything wrong in the offer, per se, because you've already done that groundwork. You know people want it, but it's in the method and the delivery of that offer. If I take something like writing copy for a website and I take the mechanism of a [00:10:00] membership, a membership is about a long-term thing. Now, whether you join a membership for a month, two months, five months, 12 years, it doesn't matter. The whole concept of a membership is that you pay monthly and you are in it for as long as you need it. Now, someone creating their website doesn't necessarily want to think, I'm gonna have to be in a membership for six, 12 months in order to write the copy for my website. What they really want is to have that copy in and done, because even though your offer and the website copy that you are talking about. Is your core business. It's not your customers. Your customer is doing whatever it is they do, and their website. And their website copy is just one tiny part of their entire business that they've put together and that they're working on. So when you think about the offer in itself, great, yes, your customers might want help putting together copy that goes on their site. When we think about the mechanism in which you decide to deliver that offer, IE [00:11:00] something like a membership. That doesn't sit. Now, if you came to me and said, I'm going to do an offer that is a four week program or a four week course where they follow me along and they work with me, and at the end of it they have all their copy done. Brilliant. That offer sounds great because it's matching the importance and the time that someone wants to spend on doing that thing. Someone doesn't want to think that. For six months, they're still gonna be looking at the copy on their website, and once they've done it, they don't need to be in it. So your churn rate on your membership will be massive. Like I said, yes, those questions are super, super important, but the delivery method is also very, very important. And one final point, your offer doesn't have to be ginormous. One of the things that we have come to learn in. Looking at AI and how this is impacting the online world is that actually content is everywhere. [00:12:00] And what people want more than anything isn't more content. They want the transformation, and in all honesty, they want it as fast and as easy as possible. So where in the past and maybe a few years back, it would've been super important to have many, many lessons that went on for a long time to feel like we were getting good value. Now we just want the transformation. So if you can deliver the transformation in a shorter, more succinct method. It doesn't mean you have to charge less for it. It doesn't mean that it's any less of an offer. It just means that they're getting it quicker and easier. And in fact, in some cases people will pay considerably more for that. When I talk about creating the offer, it doesn't have to be this big, massive thing. It can be something very small and succinct and yet super, super powerful and also. The transformation can be very specific. It doesn't have to be that I'm gonna help you do 600 million things. I'm gonna help transform your business [00:13:00] and your life and your style and your health, and your like. No. It could literally be if the problem is enough and is strong enough and they want to fix it, it can literally help them fix one thing, and your offer can be as simple as that. So I urge you to go back to your existing offers and ask yourself those questions. And if you've got an offer that isn't selling, maybe it's one of those things, maybe you just need to tweak it and it's not a case of throwing the entire thing in the bin. Maybe you just need to go through those questions and understand them and make sure they fit to make sure that that your offer is something that your customers really want. If you've enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could share it with someone that you think will find this useful. Honestly, creating this content is one of the things I love doing the most, and you would be doing me a massive favor by sharing it with someone that you think could benefit from it.

5 Foundations for Thriving in Online Business in 2026 and Beyond

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m breaking down the five key foundations I believe are essential for thriving in online business in 2026 and beyond. As the digital space becomes more crowded and unpredictable, these foundations help you build something sustainable—not just trendy. I talk about why owning your audience matters more than ever, especially as social platforms continue to shift. We explore the power of niching, how it allows you to stand out and charge appropriately, and why a thoughtful offer stack is critical for both trust and long-term revenue. I also dive into the importance of marketing transformation instead of just selling products, and why a strong personal brand is no longer optional—it’s how trust and authority are built in a noisy online world. 3 Key Takeaways:

Audience ownership protects your business

Email lists and direct relationships give you stability and control, no matter what changes happen on social platforms.

Clarity beats complexity

A clear niche, a well-structured offer stack, and marketing focused on outcomes make it easier for people to understand, trust, and buy from you.

Personal brand is a growth accelerator

Your voice, perspective, and lived experience are what differentiate you. A strong personal brand builds trust faster and positions you as the obvious choice. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

Lots of online business owners won't survive over the next few years, and it's not because they're not brilliant at what they do, it's because they don't have the right foundations in place. Today I'm gonna be sharing with you the five things that you need to have in place if you want to build a successful online business in 2026 and beyond. If we've not met, my name is Theresa Heath wearing and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow an online business that they love. And I do this through helping them grow their audience by having a launch strategy that works a. And getting confident in selling online. If that's you, you are exactly in the right place. And make sure you hit that subscribe button to make sure that you don't miss any future episodes. We are gonna dive straight in with the five things that you need to have in place if you want a successful online business in 2026 and beyond. Foundation number one, [00:01:00] audience ownership is a non-negotiable. You have to have your own audience. We know. That social media is wonderful for growing an audience, for getting in front of people that don't know we exist. However, I cannot stress enough that the key aspect to this is getting them into your own email list. Having them on social is wonderful and great, but you don't own that platform. We have seen many, many, many times. With tech outages, with TikTok being shut down for a little bit in the states, what happens when these platforms disappear just for a tiny bit of time? So imagine if something was to happen more permanently. This is why we can't build our business on borrowed land, and that effectively is what social media is. Now, I'm not telling you to not do social media. It's great. It really does serve a purpose and it can get you in front of people that don't know you exist. However, I want you as [00:02:00] quickly and as easily as possible to get them onto your own email list. The other thing I wanna add, it's not just the fact of audience ownership, that you own your audience. It's having an audience. One of the things that I would highly recommend that you put a lot of time and effort into in 2026 is building that audience. An online business is a numbers game. The bigger the audience you have, the more success you are likely to have. So build that audience, but make sure it's your audience and you own it. Get them onto your own email list. Foundation. Number two is niche. The business owners who have a strong niche will do so much better than those business owners who are trying to serve a big, massive audience. When you have a niche, it becomes so much easier to stand out in what could be a very noisy, crowded market. It's so much easier to market what you do because you are. Doing a very clear thing, [00:03:00] and you are not saying, I can do this or this or this. When you have a niche, you can really clearly market what you do and clearly market the transformation and the key bit. When you have a niche, you can charge more. Alex Mosey gives this example in his book where he talks about if you're a salesperson, and I'm literally going to reference his book here. So he talks about if you're a generic salesperson, we're just saying you offer sales. Training. He says at a push you can maybe earn up to 500 pound, but it's more likely between 50 and uh, 200 pounds or dollars. He said, then let's imagine you niche into a particular industry and you say, I help gym owners sell more memberships. Then he thinks you could probably increase your prices to more like a thousand to 3000. And then he said, if you niche even further and talk about helping gym owners. Sell high ticket personal training programs, you could probably charge more in the region of five to 10,000. So the more niche you go, the more you can charge, but more importantly, you are going [00:04:00] to stand out in what potentially could be a very noisy market foundation. Number three, you need an offer stack. That makes sense. If you are just starting, I did a video about what I would do if I was starting an online business in 2026, and one of the things I said in that was create one offer. But that's only when you are getting started. Once you are in the online industry, you need an offer stack that makes sense. You need some low cost, some mid cost, and some high cost things. The low cost is going to help you build trust. It's going to have something that brings people into your world, and then the midco might be something that helps them do it faster, and then the high cost might be something where they get more of you and more of that one-to-one touch. By having an office stack, it really protects not only your income so that you're not putting all your eggs into one basket, but it also protects your energy. So when you have different things that you sell at different price points, it means that you're not maxing out all your time doing one-to-one or you're not being exhausted by trying to churn out lowcost thing after lowcost thing thing. [00:05:00] So having an office stack is key to the health of your online business going forward. Foundation number four, I talk about this a lot. But it's so important as are all these things. You have to get so clear on that transformation. In a world where we have more content than we know what to do with when our time is at an all time premium, the last thing we want to do is spend a long time trying to do something if it's not going to get us the transformation. So we have to get so clear on what is it you are helping your customers achieve, or what's the transformation they're getting to? And we need to give them that transformation as quickly and as easily as possible. And we need to remind ourselves that our customers aren't buying our course or our membership or our program. They're buying the transformation, they're buying the promise that we can get them closer. Two, the transformation that they're looking for. And I think as the online space gets busier and AI gets more prevalent, we're going to need to get even stronger on that transformation. We're going to have to [00:06:00] get even clearer on telling people how we can help them and what we can do. And we need to really focus on marketing the transformation, not necessarily marketing the offer or the product. And then the final foundation, number five, you need a strong personal brand. In a world where content is everywhere and there are so many options for things, one of the things that people cannot take away from you and AI can't replicate is you and your personal brand. Having a strong personal brand is going to pay you in dividends. People will buy from people they trust, people they see as an expert, and people they believe can help them. And if you are not out there as a personal brand, if you are not demonstrating who you are and what you can do, then. You will become faceless like all the other people in your industry and like ai, why wouldn't they go to a large language model to learn something over you if you haven't got a strong personal brand? It's [00:07:00] not that you need to be posting constantly and everywhere and shouty. You just need to be recognized and respected for the thing that you do. And it's almost like we're coming full circle because having that strong personal brand is going to feed back into creating that audience and getting that audience. So just to recap, the five foundations that you need to succeed in 2026 and beyond in the online space is one, you have to own your audience. It's a non-negotiable. We love social media. It's great, but you need to be getting them on your email list. Number two, niching equals leverage, and that's where you are going to find the most success. The more that you can niche. Number three, you need an offer stack that makes sense so that you have something at different levels to offer different people so that you are not absolutely wearing yourself out with one product or one offer. Number four, you have to get so clear on that transformation and make sure that you are marketing the transformation, not the product. And number five, you need that strong personal brand so that people can get [00:08:00] to know you, get to know what an expert you are. Learn to love you and trust you and want to buy from you. The online space has evolved quite a lot recently, but honestly, I see all these things as very positive moves and for the right people who want to put the work in, who care deeply about their customers and who are willing to show up, I'm confident that success is on its way for you. If you love this episode, then please go ahead and give it a, like if you're on YouTube, why not drop me a comment. And if you are willing, I would love it if you'd share it with someone that you think would benefit from it. And I will see you in the next episode. I.

How AI Is Really Changing the Online Business Industry

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m exploring the role of AI in online business growth—and how to use it without losing what makes you unique. I talk about how AI can support faster content creation, simpler systems, and more personalized marketing when used intentionally. I also unpack the challenges AI brings, including over-commoditized content, increased competition, and the risk of expertise feeling diluted. We look at why more content isn’t the answer—and what actually helps you stand out. Finally, I share practical strategies to navigate this shift with confidence, focusing on delivering real transformation, grounding your work in lived experience, and strengthening your personal brand so your expertise remains clear and trusted. 3 Key Takeaways:

AI can accelerate growth—but it can’t replace expertise

AI is powerful for execution and efficiency, but your lived experience, insight, and judgment are what create real value. Tools don’t build trust—people do.

Over-commoditized content makes transformation the differentiator

When content is everywhere, results matter more than information. Focusing on clear, fast wins helps your audience experience your expertise—not just consume it.

Personal branding builds trust in an AI-heavy world

Your voice, stories, and perspective are what set you apart. The stronger your personal brand, the easier it is for people to choose you—even in a crowded market. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

AI has changed the online space as we know it, but is it all good or are there some things that we need to look out for? In today's episode, I'm gonna take you through the good and the not so good that AI has given us in the online space and things that course creators, membership owners and coaches can be doing in order to help them grow their business with ai, but also came to act some of the problems that it brings us. If we've not met, my name is Theresa Heath wearing, and every single week I bring you an episode that helps you grow your online business. So if you are a course grader, a membership owner, or a coach, then you are exactly in the right place because I'm gonna be sharing with you real tactical and strategic things that you can do in your online business to help you grow. Having been in marketing for over 20 years and been in the online space for about nine of those, I help every single day, course creators, membership owners, and coaches create an online business that [00:01:00] they love. And in these videos, I hope I can help you do the same. If you haven't already hit subscribe on where you are listening, or if you're watching this on YouTube, then I would really encourage you to do so and that way you'll be notified next time I do a video. Let's talk all things ai. I'm gonna be sharing with you the benefits of having AI in our life, the problems that it might cause us, and the solution to those problems. So let's start with the good thing and some of the most obvious, one of the huge benefits of having AI is that it helps us create content quicker and easier. I am in AI every single day. My favorite is chat, GBT, and I am constantly dipping in and out of there, talking about ideas for YouTube videos, asking its thoughts on various different things. So it is. A hugely sped up the work that I do. In fact, as a marketer with over 20 years experience, I can't actually imagine how we survived without it for this long and how long things used to take. So [00:02:00] when it comes to creating an online business, the main part of an online business is that content creation piece. Not only. The content you are creating that you sell in your offer, but also one of the most important things of being an online business owner is that you have a personal profile and you have a personal brand. And one of the really key ways of doing that is creating content. So like me creating these videos, standing on stages, guesting on other people's podcasts, you need to be creating content. And AI has made this so quick and so easy. Even within some of the platforms themselves, they will map out whole courses for you or they will help you create that content a whole lot quicker. One of the other really good benefits to having AI in our world is that it is a low barrier to entry. So AI has given us. Tools and technologies that again, even like two, three years ago, we couldn't have imagined having. So being able to put [00:03:00] yourselves out there, create videos, edit videos, create podcasts, edit them, come up with blog ideas, put blogs out on things, create actual platforms or tech solutions for things, it has helped. A real even playing field out in the online space, because no longer do you have to have a tech part of your business that helps you create these things. You can come into this space for relatively low cost and create an online business and put yourself out there. So. If you are new to the online space, then you are coming in at such an amazing point because you have got things available to you that people just didn't have two, three years ago. And the last benefit that I want to talk about is the personalization when it comes to ai being able to personalize things. And I'm gonna give a really like simple thought, but one of the things that is so helpful is when I'm doing a launch for myself or helping someone in Grow launch sale or one of my consulting clients, and we are doing. Let's say sales [00:04:00] emails, and we have people who came to a webinar, people who didn't come to a webinar, people who have bought this thing in the past or didn't buy this thing in the past. Whereas in the past, writing emails for all of those different audiences would've taken a lot of time, and in most cases, people don't do it now. It's so much easier. You create one template for your sales emails and then you say to ai. Recreate these sales emails, but aimed at people who came to the webinar, recreate these sales emails, but aimed at people who didn't come to the webinar. And with a matter of minutes and tweaks, you have got all these different varying sales emails that are personalized. And that's not even to mention the tech that you have with AI where you can personalize things. For instance, some of the really cool platforms out there that enable really smart personalization, and the more that we can personalize things in the online space, the better. The more someone feels like we are talking directly to them, the better. So these are amazing features and have really [00:05:00] helped. Even the playing field have that online business be available to pretty much anyone. But there are some downsides and some things that we need to consider. So the downside and the problem of having content creation be so very easy is that content has now become over commoditized. And what I mean by that is there is so much content and actually there are plot. Forms out there that, well, for instance, I could go to chat GBT and I could ask it to create me a course that teaches me something based on what it knows about me, and it could basically create me a course. It's quicker and easier for people to go to something like a large language model and ask a question than necessarily head into your membership and log in and go and find the question. So how do we compete when there is content? Everywhere. So one of the problems is how do we compete where there is literally content everywhere. When we look at the next benefit of a low barrier to entry, the problem that that [00:06:00] gives us is that you are going to have more and more and more people entering this space. Now the online space is due. To grow phenomenally over the next 10 years, and that's great news for all of us in the online space because we are in it in fairly early doors, even though it's been around for at least nine, 10 years. Actually, it's still in its infancy. So if you are here, brilliant, keep going. Keep doing it because this is only going to grow. But because of how easy things are, it means that more people are going to be coming in. And it means that more people are gonna be coming in who aren't necessarily experts in their field. So this is a potential problem when we look at ai because anyone could go to AI and say, write me a course on how to start piano. I have no idea how to play piano. I. But technically I could create a course and put a call site there and try and sell one on a subject that I know nothing about. And that means people are gonna be moving into your industry and into your spaces that are potentially [00:07:00] going to try and take some of your market share, and they're not anywhere near as good as you. And then the last benefit that I talked about, which is personalization with ai, the problem with that is that there are. Fully created AI courses. Like I said, I could happily go to one of the large language platforms and say, create me a course that is personal to me and how I like to learn. And again, when you can get that level of customization. You then start to worry that why would they buy a course that isn't that customized to them? So as I've already talked about, there are some real benefits to having AI in our world, and as people who have online businesses or want start online businesses, having AI around to help us with that content creation, help us with personalization and all those other things are brilliant and having that low barrier to entry. But they each cause their own problems. So how do we. Counteract the problems that AI are bringing to us. So number one is you need to [00:08:00] focus on the transformation and deliver it to your customer as easy and as fast as possible. Because we have a huge amount of content out there. We don't need to create big in-depth courses that go into every single detail that everyone needs, when what your customer wants more than anything is the transformation. The reason they're searching for this content is because they have a problem that they're trying to fix. So. Whereas in the past we might have created a membership and the membership would've looked more attractive by having all of these things in there. Now it's about how can I create something that will deliver the transformation as quickly as possible. Also, while I'm on memberships. The other thing that you really need to focus on because of the over commoditized content that's out there, is the community aspect. So where is your membership? In the past maybe would've had, would've all been about how much content you'd got in there, how many courses, and how many experts you'd had [00:09:00] in. Now it's about giving them that transformation, but what's keeping them in the membership is that community. When it comes to a course, like I said, it's not about having 60 modules that are all an hour long. It's about saying this will deliver the transformation. As quickly and as succinctly as you can possibly do. The next solution for combating AI and all of its wonders that it has for us is to focus on the real person and real experiences. One thing that AI can't do is it can't tell you what it's like to sit and wait for a webinar. Pray and hope that people will turn up. It can't tell you what it feels like to open the car and have tumbleweed. It can't tell you what it feels like to finally sell out your offer because it's never experienced. It has no lived experience of those things. And yes, it's wonderful at mapping something out, but unless it knows and understands the nuances of you and your. Customers and the audience and the offer, then it [00:10:00] can't give you that nuanced result. Generic advice. Ends up with generic results. So our customers need to see that as well. Our customers need to see the real us, so they need to see us showing up on video. And what's been so interesting actually, about doing this YouTube journey, I've had my podcast for years and years and years and years, and my podcast was fairly relaxed and it was very me and very. Honest, and one thing that I found when I came over to YouTube is I wanted to obviously produce something that worked well for YouTube, but I realized that actually I wasn't coming over as natural as I normally do. And it has taken me a little while and I think it's still taking me a little while to create a video that will be good for YouTube and be searchable and people will find engaging. But also while being me and being as natural as possible, because for me, I don't know about you, but when I look at AI generated content, and it might be like video that [00:11:00] just isn't real, or images that absolutely are not a real person, it makes me want to see an experience and be even more real. So the more you can show that. The more you can show behind the scenes and some vulnerability and some real authentic, not only you, but your customers and what you've done with them, the better. So the more slicker and perfect AI gets. The more real I want you to show up. So the final thing that you can do to combat some of those things that AI are bringing in is I want you to show and demonstrate real expertise similar to what I've just said with point number two in terms of, of showing as real as possible. Again, AI doesn't have the experience. AI didn't build the business. AI didn't coach those people. So therefore, I want you to show and demonstrate that you have real expertise. That actually you are the solution. You are the thing [00:12:00] that can help someone with the problem they've. Got. So I want to see you on those stages. I want to see your personal brand and personal branding is as strong as it's ever been and is going to continue to get stronger in a world of AI and genericness. You need to stand out and you need to have a really strong personal brand and. That is going to build trust. Where there is a trust recession and a trust recession is that we just don't believe anything. And that's interesting 'cause that's actually changed. The trust recession used to be. People would go online and say, I can help you make millions. Pay me hundreds of thousands and I'll tell you how to do it. That's one problem we've got. The influencer is another thing that we just don't trust what they're telling us the truth. Do they really use that product? But also the trust of, is this real and is this advice real? And is this based on facts? Because so much of stuff that comes out maybe through AI is not facts that this is a time to lean into that trust. Even [00:13:00] more be showing, look, I'm here doing this thing. I got picked to do this thing. I'm speaking on this stage. I'm guesting on this podcast. Build your personal brand and make sure that you are demonstrating all the time that you are an expert. As you are aware, AI moves at the speed of light and at the point I'm recording this, I'm sure by the time it comes out, new stuff will be out and it can do even cooler things than it's already doing. But as business owners and as online. Membership owners, coaches, or course creators. We need to lean into the things that are the most important, that are going to help us combat some of these AI things. And as much as they're an amazing benefit to us to help us create content quicker, put ourselves out there more, there is also downsides to that, and we have got to lean into our strengths that AI can't do. So let me remind you of those three things that I want you to focus on as we move through 2026 in order to combat. Some of the benefits that your audience might [00:14:00] get from ai, I want you to focus on the transformation and deliver it as fast as you possibly can. It's not about more content, it's about the transformation. I want you to focus on being a real person and showing real experiences. Show a bit of the messy middle show up authentically. Show some behind the scenes. And finally, I want you to. Build that personal brand of yours and show up as the expert that you are and make sure that you are demonstrating that you really are an expert in your field. I hope that you find this episode useful. If you did and there is someone that you think this would be super helpful for them or you have an audience that you think could benefit from what I'm talking about, then please I would be so very grateful if you would be willing to share it. I will see you next week with another episode.

Not Sure What to Charge? Start With These 5 Pricing Considerations

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episIn this episode, I’m tackling one of the questions I get asked all the time by course creators, membership owners, and coaches: How do I know if my offer is priced correctly?

Pricing isn’t just about picking a number that feels good—it’s about making sure your price supports your entire business, your audience, and the way you want people to move through your offers. I walk you through five key considerations to help you evaluate whether your pricing actually makes sense, not just for one offer, but for your full ecosystem.

We talk about why pricing decisions should never be made in isolation, how to think about different customer levels, and why an Ascension model can create more ease, clarity, and sustainability in your business. I also share how intentional pricing can help your customers confidently move from one offer to the next—without confusion or resistance.

This episode is strategic, grounded, and designed to help you feel more confident setting prices that serve both you and your audience.ode, I’m tackling one of the questions I get asked all the time by course creators, membership owners, and coaches: How do I know if my offer is priced correctly?

This episode is strategic, grounded, and designed to help you feel more confident setting prices that serve both you and your audience.

3 Key Takeaways:

Pricing should support your entire offer suite

If I price one offer without considering the rest of my ecosystem, I create confusion and friction. My pricing needs to make sense in relation to everything else I sell.

Different levels of customers need different pricing

Not everyone is ready for the same level of support or investment. When I price with awareness of beginner, intermediate, and advanced buyers, I serve my audience better—and sell more effectively.

An Ascension model creates clarity and momentum

When my pricing helps people naturally move from one offer to the next, I’m not just making sales—I’m guiding transformation. Clear pathways build trust and long-term growth.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

One of the questions that I get asked the most when working with course creators, membership owners and coaches, is How do I know if I'm pricing my offer? Right? They have all sorts of questions around, do I need to put my prices up? Is it too expensive? Should I be charging more? How do I know if it's the right price, and should I just pluck a figure outta the air?

In today's video, I'm gonna be taking you through five things that you need to consider when you are next. Pricing one of your offers.

If we've not met, my name's Theresa Heath Wiring and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches build online businesses that they love. And in these videos I bring really tactical and strategic things that you can do to help grow your online business. Through growing your audience, through having effective launches and learning how to sell online.

If this is you, I would love it if you hit the subscribe button and every single week I'll be releasing a new video that helps you get closer to [00:01:00] the business that you dream of. So when it comes to pricing, it's one of the things that I get asked about the most. My customers want reassurance that they are pricing their offers correctly.

And that's a good thing. I'm really happy about that because obviously it means that the people I'm working with care deeply that they are providing a service that matches the price that they're putting out there. However, it's one of the most trickiest things for business owners to get, right. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through the five things that I want you to consider when you are next.

Looking at pricing, one of your offers. So the first thing that I want you to consider is that you don't look at pricing your offers in isolation. Now, what I mean by this is often when someone comes to me, they will say, I've got a new course and I'm thinking about charging this, or I'm creating a membership and I want to charge this.

I have an accelerator program, and what they're doing is they're looking at the thing in isolation. They're considering their offer on its own on an island, [00:02:00] and just considering the price of that. And that's the first thing that I want you to think about. I don't want you to consider pricing in isolation.

I want you, every time you bring in a new offer, every time you consider pricing something, I want you to look at your entire offer suite. I want you to consider. What price should that be against something else? So for instance, if you are currently offering a one-to-one service and you want to bring in a done with you or a do it yourself service, it has to make sense.

Which brings me on to point number two. The pricing has to make sense. So not only in 0.1 do we look at it alongside everything else. We make sure it makes sense alongside everything else. So for example, one of my amazing clients that I work with is a sleep consultant, and this sleep consultant offers a service.

Where you can work with her online, you have a [00:03:00] call with her, and then you have access to her via WhatsApp or through another call, and she charges a set amount for that service. She then has an in-person service where she will go for 24 hours. As a minimum, I guess, to someone's house and stay with them and their child and help them with their child and help them with the sleep problems that they're having.

And one of the things that we need to consider when we look at those two offers is that they make sense because what we don't want is one offer cannibalizing another one. Let me explain. So. If someone comes in and thinks I want to do the online service and I'm gonna make up figures, these aren't necessarily her figures and I'm gonna make them.

Wildly crazy. So you know that I'm not using her figures. So let's say it's 5,000 pounds to do the online service where you are having access to a via call, and then you have access to her [00:04:00] via WhatsApp. And then let's say for the service where she goes out to stay with someone, she wants to charge 7,000 pounds That.

Doesn't make sense. Now, the reason that doesn't make sense is yes, it's more expensive and you would expect it to be more expensive, but it's not enough, more expensive because someone is getting access to you where you are not having to travel. You're not having to spend time away from your home. And this is in this particular instance, obviously, you know.

Try and think about this from your own business point of view, but you are doing something online. You are not having hands-on experience. You are not seeing for, you know, firsthand what's happening. So to have someone come in and be that expert in their house, they need to consider the sleep consult needs to consider.

Does that pricing make sense? Because what might happen is she might cannibalize her own offer. What I mean by this is if someone is looking at the [00:05:00] 5,000 pound offer where they are considering working with her and then they see it's only 2000 more pounds, and like I said, I'm using ridiculous figures here, but they only see it's a 2000 pound more to go and do the other thing, then they might go, well, it's worth the money to get her to come to the house and see my child and work with me one-to-one in that way.

But what happens is. That one-to-one offer, there is only so much capacity for that because you are physically out of your home, your office, whatever it might be, and people might be wanting to shift up to that offer because that looks like a bargain in comparison to what they were going to pay. But what happens is, let's say.

Over here with the lower offer, she could take 10 clients a week, let's say. I'm literally making things up, but she could realistically only take two or three absolute maximum of the in-person clients. Well, she's gonna cannibalize her own offer over here [00:06:00] because people might look at it and go, actually, I really want this so.

You need to look at them in comparison with everything else. It has to make sense. Now, if her ultimate aim was to push people into the higher package and it actually didn't take so much of her time, then absolutely fine. We could price it in a way that it's like, well, actually, I could get this, or I could pay a bit extra and get this, and this looks like an amazing deal.

So. As you can see, it's so nuanced, but the, the theme I'm trying to get here is first thing, you don't offer it in isolation. So point number one, you don't look at your pricing in isolation. Point number two, when you are looking at looking at it against all the other stuff, it has to make sense and it has to make sense from a, how much time you're spending on it, how much time they get from you, what resources they get from you, the access they get to you.

It has to make sense and make sure when you're looking at it. It's not gonna cannibalize the other offers unless you want it to. Point number three, different [00:07:00] people at different levels and different stages need different pricing. Now what I don't mean is your one-to-one service, you offer it one price to one person and one price to another.

That's not what I mean. What I'm talking about here is. For instance, I have a program called Grow, launch Sell, and at the point I'm recording this, my program is 3,500 for six months, and you might have just discovered me and you might think. I really like this woman. I hope so. Uh, but you might think I like what she's saying.

I really enjoy her content and I really love to work with her, but I don't know her well enough yet. And therefore I am not willing to invest that kind of money again. I offer one-to-one services, and my one-to-one services are 12,000 pounds for six months. And again, you might think I'd love to do it one to one, but.

I don't know enough about her. I'm not confident enough, and therefore I'm not willing to pay that at that point. Now, the mistake that people can make is think that because someone might buy a lower [00:08:00] cost thing, they won't ever buy a higher cost thing, but the truth is they might need just to test you out and see what you are like before making that bigger decision.

Now, if you have nothing that they can buy at a lower cost, then that's gonna make it really difficult for them. What I'm talking about here is you might want to have a small thing, a guide, a template, something like that, that you are selling at a much lower cost or a small training that you are selling it as lo a much lower cost that you are not seeing as a.

Massive revenue arm, but more as a warming someone up. Now we can absolutely sell things at a lower cost and have that as a massive revenue arm and really focus on bringing in money from that. But all I'm asking you to consider is that it might be that you have something lower cost as something that someone can test you on, or at least get to know you and see how you are.

Now, this brings me nicely onto explaining the Ascension model. Now, if you're listening to this episode and not watching it on YouTube, you might wanna [00:09:00] head over to YouTube. To just see what I'm putting on screen now. But basically it's a triangle and it has various different levels, and the ascension model basically is that you have something at a lower cost, you have something at mid cost, and you have something at high cost.

Now, I've given you some examples of what I think the cost might be, but it's not hard and fast. Depending what industry you are marketing in and you are working in, your low cost might not be the low cost I'm showing on screen. It might be higher than that, and your high cost might be really high cost.

So again, I'm just showing you as examples. But for instance, a low cost offer might be something like a template or a guide or a small course. So your low ticket offers might be anywhere between $10 or pounds, all the way up to a hundred dollars or pounds. And like I said, this would be things like mini workshops, templates, swipe files, kind of really quick and easy wins, but at a low cost.

Then your mid ticket offer might be [00:10:00] something like a more in-depth course or a slightly more mid touch thing. So it might be a course with some group stuff or it might be a membership, and this might be priced anywhere between $197 on pounds. All the way up to a thousand or even 2000, depending on what industry you are in.

And then your high ticket programs might be things like coaching or consultancy. And this tends to be much higher touch. IE you get to work with me. So for instance, it might be anywhere between 2000 all the way up to kind of $8,000 pounds, whatever it might be. So this ascension model, what this does is it allows your customers to step in and get support.

Firstly, where they need it from a price point, but also they get to test you out on some of the lower things before they make a bigger commitment. Now, am I saying that someone will not find you and immediately pay a bigger price? No, that's not what I'm saying. But those tend to be much longer conversations [00:11:00] and one-to-one conversations.

But if you have something at a lower price, then people can be swirling in your world and move up through your ascension model. I kind of covered it off in point number three, but point number four is about those lower cost offers doesn't mean you are offering something for. That's not what that's about.

The lower cost offers is having something where they can move through and actually move into the next thing. So for instance, if you are trying to price your accelerator or a small group program, there might be something that they can test you out on before they move into that. So just bear that in mind when you're looking at your pricing.

And point number five is that your pricing should naturally help your customers move from one thing to another. And actually that can go up as well as down. Let me explain. So I might have someone who comes into my world through a paid workshop. They then move from the paid workshop up into my Grow Launch sale program.

And when [00:12:00] they're in my Grow launch sale program, they might then decide, actually I need more support from Theresa. And they might move into one-to-one coaching. Or if I run an accelerator, they might move into the accelerator. The way this can work the other way round is often I'll have someone come and work one-to-one with me and they might stay for two or even three rounds of one-to-one, and then at the end of their one-to-one, we then offer them the membership.

We offer them the, to come into my. What we call teas World, which is part of the Grow Launch Sale program. We offer them to come into that on a monthly payment, and therefore they can still have access to me, but just not at the level they were having. So, like I said, when you look at your pricing, you should really be able to see, okay.

If someone needs more support, they can move up to here. If actually they decide that, that they've had enough of that level of support, is there something that they can move into that's lower? Now, I'm not saying they always will, but having those options at least gives them an option. This video may not have [00:13:00] given you the direct answer that you are looking for.

IE is the price of my thing, right? But it's definitely gonna give you points for you to consider when pricing. Like I said, this is one of the most asked questions within my program Grow Launch Sale, and this is why I offer the coaching to people within the program so that when they come on, I can have these discussions with them and we can work out what it is that the...

How Carrie Green Got 44,000 Sign-Ups (Launch Breakdown + What Worked)

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I sit down with Carrie Green, founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association, to unpack what really goes into a successful launch in today’s online business landscape. We take an honest look at her recent launches, including what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons she’s learned by launching again and again in a fast-moving space.

We talk about the role of ads in boosting visibility and growth, why introducing paid elements earlier can strengthen a launch, and how maintaining your energy across multi-session experiences is just as important as your strategy behind the scenes. Carrie also shares how she uses urgency and scarcity without pressure, while building systems that make each launch feel more effortless over time.

We also explore why testing and adapting is essential for traction, and how Carrie leans into systems and AI to simplify content creation and delivery—especially when balancing live sessions, community engagement, and personal well-being.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Launch strategies are living, breathing things — not one-and-done blueprints

Carrie reminded me that no two launches are the same, and what worked last time might need tweaking next time. Staying curious, testing ideas, and adapting your approach is where real evolution happens.

2. Paid elements and strategic urgency matter early

When I introduce paid elements earlier in a launch — instead of waiting until the very end — it can validate demand and build momentum. Combining that with thoughtful urgency and clear deadlines helps people make decisions without feeling pressured.

3. Systems and energy management are launch superpowers

Getting clear on repeatable systems — from content planning to AI-assisted drafting — doesn’t just make launches easier, it protects your energy. And in launch land, saving your energy = staying present with your audience.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Carrie Green on Website, Instagram, Facebook

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

One of my absolute favorite things is to go behind the scenes in a real big launch and find out exactly what they did, what worked, what didn't, and what you can use in your launches and what you can learn from it. And that is exactly what we are doing today.

If we have not met, my name is Theresa Heath. W and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online business. I help them create a launch strategy that works for them, their audience, and the offer that they have, and I help them to actually sell the offer with confidence and ease.

And in today's episode, I am doing an interview with the amazing Carrie Green. Now Carrie is. The real OG of the online space. Carrie has a membership called a Female Entrepreneur Association, which she has had for years and years, and she was almost like one of the first [00:01:00] people in the UK to really be in this space.

And I massively admire Carrie. I admire her for lots and lots of reasons, but one of the reasons I really admire her is. It's like she keeps her head down and she stays focused and she's committed to creating a really good product that's really helpful. And she's not in the online space for the fame and the fortune and all the other things, the, you know, different stuff that you see online that sometimes the online experts show you.

She has. Really just found her thing that she loves to do and has just poured everything into it. And I love that about her. I love the fact that, like I said, she is quality. She's not salesy or spammy or horrible in any way in terms of like how she comes across and how she sells. She's genuinely the real deal in the online space and I love that.

So I was really grateful too. [00:02:00] Not only have we connected a numerous times over the years, but actually to hang out again. It was actually again back in June at Atomic on 2025 where both her and I were also speaking. You might notice that obviously I've done very. Few interviews since coming onto YouTube, which I plan to continue to do.

Very few, but both Laura and Carrie were kind of in the bag already and they're such good quality people. There was no way I was not gonna do these interviews, so that's why. You're not going to see many interviews if you are watching YouTube, if you are listening to the podcast. But if you've been listening for a long time, then you will know that I used to do lots of interviews, but that isn't gonna be the case going forward.

However, when I have someone amazing that I know can teach us stuff, I'm obviously going to bring them on, and Carrie is one of those people. What I loved about this episode is that Carrie and I dug deep into her latest launches. Now, if you are [00:03:00] new to me, you might not know that I love watching someone else's launch and I go through their launch and in the background, what I'm doing is I am like pulling it apart.

Not in a, like this is terrible, but pulling it apart in a Why is this so good? Why is it working? What are they doing? What. What kind of psychological things are they doing? How are they making this so successful? So that is what I love to do for fun. I know I probably need to get out more, but I love watching other people's launches and Carrie's launches have been ones that I've been watching this year, and I am so very honored that we get to go through them and I get to share with you.

What she said about what is working and what's not working. So in this episode, she's gonna take us through her latest launch and share with us some of the things that worked really well for her. We also talk about how she managed to get, and I think if I remember rightly, it was 46. Thousand people sign up for her launch, how she continues to [00:04:00] grow her audience to this day, and what she recommends to you in order for you to grow your audience so that you can have successful launches too.

Basically, this is just me and her geeking out on all things launches. But as I've already said, she's hugely successful at what she does. She has had some hugely successful launches this year and there is an awful lot that you can learn from her. So I really hope you enjoy this episode. Carrie, welcome to the podcast.

Hello. I'm so excited to be here. Me too. This has been like a long time coming. I feel like. I feel like I should have had you on. Flipping ages and ages and ages ago, but just time gets busy. I know, but we both spoke at Atomic Con, uh, so we got to catch up again there. Yeah, because I feel like I, well, so I saw you in person years and years and years ago before I think you had the children.

Uh, yeah, I think so. So [00:05:00] did you. Do you think you went out and about less once you had the children? I'm just interested. Well, no, I, well, at the beginning of starting FEAI networked like a crazy person. Like I was always networking and I was like here, there and everywhere. And then once I really started to build a lot of momentum, I hunkered down and got really focused on, um, just on like rowing the online business and.

I felt like I had so much to do in terms of like marketing and running the membership and growing the membership and creating deliverables for it that I felt like I didn't have as much time anymore to network. Um, and then, yeah, and then when I had kids, yeah. Um, my, uh, networking dropped off a cliff, um, and.

I find it, I find it a bit challenging to like, juggle it all and to be away and like, actually I'm in a mastermind [00:06:00] and they have three meetups in the states. Mm-hmm. And I haven't gone to a single meetup this year. Um, just because I felt like the year before it was just so challenging to do it. And like the, I found, I don't know, I just, I didn't like, I just didn't like leaving the kids for that long.

Yeah. And. And then it also felt a bit exhausting when you're trying to like manage your team and do all these things. Like, I dunno, I think it's the phase of business and it's also the phase of life. Yeah. That I'm in, I think. I think the life thing for sure, like I. I, I, I get exhausted. I am. Absolutely. So after we record this, I'm actually getting on a train to London to go to two book launches.

Oh wow. Tonight and tomorrow. And I know by tomorrow night I will be done in Yeah. And you and I, uh, both have a mutual friend in Joe Simpson. I can't even, like, how does she even do what she does? I have no [00:07:00] idea. But like. I, I really don't know how she does it, and I just would be so exhausted if I did what she does.

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. Like obviously everyone knows her like, yeah, but I just don't know how she manages to keep that level of. Peeing and I, I don't know about you. And I think, and if you followed Carrie's stuff, you'll know, Carrie's building her dream house and it does look like a dream house. Um, but I'm a real hermit.

I actually really love being home and in my office with my staff. I think as if you feel like that already, I think you're gonna get even worse. Yeah. When you move into the house. I know. I'm not gonna wanna leave. Never. That's, yeah. Yeah. That's what it's gonna be like. So, so it was so nice to see you again in real life at Atomic On, and we, we had a bit of a catch up then, but the reason I wanted you on, there's millions of reasons I could want you on and want to talk to you.

But one of the things I [00:08:00] really wanna talk to you about is the fact that you've been in the online space a very long time, and your take on how things have changed, but also the launches that you've been doing. Because I am a voyeur. Okay. I watch people's launches, like other people watch Netflix. I literally go, in the minute I see someone launching I'm, and I never hide my name.

I never go in as a fake name. I go in as me. Mm-hmm. And I, I think there was a paid element on one of your launches. So I bought the paid elements. Okay. Like I literally go through every single thing I'm looking at every email. 'cause I'm like behind the scenes. I'm, when I say pulling apart, it sounds like I'm.

Saying mean stuff, but I'm not. I'm basically going, oh, that's fascinating. Look what they did there. And that's interesting that they did. I'm like, literally love for this stuff. So let's start by talking about the online space. Yeah. How do you feel it's changed if it has in the last year or two? Um, I feel like obviously [00:09:00] AI has been a big thing.

Obviously created a lot of change over the past few years. Um. And I think social media well has changed not just over the past few years, but perhaps a bit longer than that. But I think that's definitely changed the, the way we have to show up online, hasn't it? I mean, like when it comes to content creation now versus say five or 10 years ago, it's a lot more intense, I think now than it was, you know, five, 10 years ago where we were creating more like static content or, mm-hmm.

Um, you know, quotes or, you know, that kind of thing as opposed to the volume that we feel like we need to be at today with like the content we're distributing across multiple different channels and it feels like it's a real volume. Yes, obviously value as well. Don't get me wrong, but we need quality. But it definitely feels like the people winning at it are the people who [00:10:00] are doing it.

Like with a bigger volume and across multiple different platforms. Like I was having a conversation with someone recently and we were talking about how you can put out one piece of content and on Instagram it might perform on TikTok, it might do dreadful on threads, it might do really, really, really well.

Or on YouTube shorts, it might do super well. So if you're only putting it out in one place. Like you've just missed the opportunity to share it on all those, in those, all those other different locations and places. But when you think about the time it takes sometimes to like that, dial that in, especially if you are starting your business and it's just you know you.

Mm-hmm. That's like a big ask and that I think that's perhaps one of the biggest things that. I think has changed over the past, well, several years really feels like it's getting more intense, not less intense when it comes to content creation. I think you're right, and I think back in the day, you maybe had a bit of a [00:11:00] choice or you could go all in on one platform, whereas now you have no choice.

Like you need to be churning out content all the time. And if someone is watching or listening to this and going, yeah, but it's just me, I. Like I get it. Like this stuff is hard. Like how do you manage your content? How are you? And and I remember back in the day, like you used to do vlog style content.

Yeah. I remember literally years and years and years ago watching one of your videos going, that's how I need my videos to look. 'cause you had this lovely B roll section to start with and then you were sat in this obviously. Properly done room to have videos done. Like it wasn't, you know, on a computer thing.

It was like, you know, you're sat in this lounge style room and stuff, but like you've done all that, how do you manage and keep up that kind of content wheel? Well, I feel like for a while I didn't, and especially around when I had kids, like I found it a real struggle to keep going with content [00:12:00] and to keep, it was like kids team and content, community deliverables and I just, I found it really difficult to like keep up and to, to do it.

And I feel like I dropped the ball a lot. I felt like I also. Kind of became really actually exhausted trying to do it all that I felt like I had nothing left in me. I felt like I had nothing left to say. And then showing up online when you feel like you don't have anything to say and you're not really sure anymore what you want to say, and you feel confused about that, like it's really difficult.

And then the longer you, you don't show up for the harder it is to show up and say something because then you overthink what you're trying to say and then you talk yourself out of saying it. And it just feels like challenging to get yourself out there. And so for me over the past few years, it has definitely been a stop start, stop start, stop, start.

And like I've had people come and go who have been like helping me. And for me now realizing the landscape of the online world and like how that is changing, I do have like an actual [00:13:00] propagation plan for 2026 where I know that in order to. Play the game where I think I need, how I need to think, how I think I need to play it.

I feel like it's gonna come down to the systems, the processes, the automations, and the ai, AI that I'm leveraging. Mm-hmm. And I think that is gonna be critical. And it's same for all of us. It's like that, um, James, uh, clear quote, he said, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

And I think that it's so true, we cannot play that big content game. Throwing spaghetti at the wall on the fly, like it doesn't work. No. None of us, we, you know, we're not superhuman. Like we have lives like as if we can deal with, like, we can't, you can do it maybe for a little bit of time, and that's what people do, isn't it?

They've got like a spurt of posting, posting, posting, and then it drops off a cliff and then a few months go by and then it's like, oh, posting, you know, that is literally, you know, has been me. But then from my perspective, I think, [00:14:00] well, do I wanna play the game or are I gonna, am I gonna keep standing on the sidelines and just watch?

Because there's, the game is, is it's in play. And I feel like over the past few years, especially when it comes to social media, I've been dabbling and a lot on the sidelines and being very amateur with it. So, which people might not really see from the front side, but from the, from the inside. And also from seeing the results, for example, for us on social media, let's say.

Mm-hmm. Our growth on social media has been dreadful and, um, and which just makes me happy that there are other very good strategies that we can all use to build, to generate revenue and make money online. Yeah. But,...

The 3 Sales Emails You Can’t Skip During a Launch

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m diving into one of the most important (and often overlooked) parts of a successful launch: the emails you send while your cart is open. If you want more sales, more engagement, and fewer crickets during your launch, these emails matter more than you think.

I break down the three essential sales emails I believe every launch needs—and exactly why they work. We talk about how to handle objections before they stop someone from buying, how to connect emotionally with your audience so they feel seen and understood, and how to clearly communicate the benefits of your offer (not just the features).

I also share why every email needs a clear call-to-action and how to make sure you’re guiding your subscribers instead of leaving them confused or overwhelmed.

This episode is practical, strategic, and designed to help you feel more confident hitting “send” during your next launch.

3 Key Takeaways:

Objections don’t disappear unless I address them

If I don’t proactively answer my audience’s concerns, doubts, and fears, they’ll default to not buying. Objection-handling emails remove friction and make decisions easier.

Emotion drives action more than logic

People don’t buy because of information alone—they buy because they feel understood. When I lead with emotion and connection, my audience is far more likely to take action.

Benefits sell, features support

Features explain what my offer includes, but benefits explain why it matters. When I focus on the transformation instead of the content, my sales emails land much more powerfully.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

When you are doing a launch, sending your emails is absolutely crucial to a successful launch. And in reviewing and looking at hundreds of different emails, I have noticed that there are certain emails that people are not sending. And if you send these three emails, they are going to make the world a difference to your sales.

If we've not met before, my name is Theresa Heath Waring, and I help course creators. Membership owners and coaches grow their online business, and I do this through my signature program, grow, launch Sell, where I take you through all the steps that you need to grow your audience to effectively launch different products and to sell those products to your audience.

One of the most important things you can do when doing your launch is sending emails. Your email list is your warmest list and is specifically your launch list. So. In previous videos, I've talked about your email list and your launch list. [00:01:00] So the launch list are the people who signed up to go through your particular experience, whether it's a masterclass, whether it's a bootcamp, whatever it might be.

Your launch list is one of the warmest things, so not maximizing that list by sending them good quality and often more than you think emails, it's a massive, massive mistake that you can make, which is why in today's episode I'm gonna talk you through three emails that help so much when it comes to selling, because often a lot of the emails that people send are just basically going.

Buy my thing, another email, buy my thing, another email, buy my thing. And those are very repetitive and very boring and not hitting certain aspects. So I'm going to give you these three emails today that are going to make a world of difference to your sales emails. Email number one is the objection handling email.

Now, often people don't want to actually talk about the objections that their customers have when buying because they think [00:02:00] if they bring it up, that their customers then gonna go, oh, I didn't think of that, and then that's going to put them off buying. So for instance, objections like. The cost objections, like how much time do I have objections?

Like, I've tried this before and it didn't work. The truth is your customers are already thinking these things. They're already experiencing those objections themselves, and by ignoring them. We're not addressing them and we're not helping them overcome the objection because there are always reasons why they have these objections, and there are things that we can say and do that can help them maybe frame them differently or see it differently.

It's not about. Convincing them or coercing them into buy and saying, your objections aren't true. It's about taking their objection and just giving them a different viewpoint and a different way to look at it. So one of the emails that we send in our sales emails period is an objection [00:03:00] handling email.

So we look at the most common objections that we get of why people might not. Join our program Grow Launch Sale, and we will actually address them in an email. So the first step is to actually work out why aren't people buying? And one of the best ways to do this is obviously the conversations that you have with people during your sales period.

So in previous launches, in previous conversations, why didn't people buy now? If you don't have that past data, you can pretty much always go no money or. Can't afford it and not enough time. They are often two of the most popular objections, so. One of the ways in which you can reframe these is you could write an email that talks about, I don't have time for this, and then tell them all the time saving ways that you have bought into whatever it is that you are doing that will help them tell them that actually they would end up wasting more time.

Trying to figure this out on their own, then they're going to waste actually working with you and you giving them the shortcut, the [00:04:00] money. You might want to talk about how this is an investment. You might want to talk about the experience that you've had with other clients where they've come on, they've paid the money and potentially made more money afterwards.

So for instance, when I'm in a launch, if I'm doing a masterclass, which I know is a bit different, but I would also share this in an email, I would often share. How much someone paid to work with me, IE, what it would cost to work with me, one-to-one, what it would cost to work with me in an accelerator, what it would cost to work with me if I consult for you.

And then I give them examples of what those customers made back during that time, showing them that they more than made their investment back and therefore it was a worthwhile investment. So you could try something like that. Of the objections that we often get is, I've tried a program before and it didn't work.

That is a great objection for me to actually. Meet, enter, send an email about so often I will talk about the fact of my program is very different to lots of others out there. I keep it [00:05:00] purposely small. I keep the numbers low because I have a high touch with everyone in my program. If you come to my calls, I am going to talk to you during the call.

I will know your name. I will know what your business is, and I will take all of that into consideration when I give you advice. This isn't just a cookie cutter thing, so that is something that I often share in emails when I'm sending sales emails. If their objection is, I've done all these courses, I've paid all this money before and it didn't work, I can basically come back to that objection and go, well, this is not like anything else that you've ever paid for.

Email number two that I make sure we send is an emotional led email. So there's that saying that people don't often remember what you said, but they remember how you made them feel. Well, that's true when it comes to marketing in terms of if we can connect with someone on an emotional point of view, then actually that is going to be way more powerful than just going, did you see how many modules are in [00:06:00] this?

It's not about the module or the course or the, you get an hour coaching with me. If we can tap into what's the emotion that is going on here, then it really kind of resonates so much stronger than if just us saying there's six modules or whatever it is. So this can come from one of two ways. You can either come from the emotions of the excitement and the hope and the motivation and the kind of thing that they want.

So basically the transformation that they're looking for. Or you could come from emotional point of view of the pain they're in currently. So for instance, you could write an email that talks about how they feel right now. And how they feel might be frustrated, might be angry, might be disappointed in themselves.

It might be that they are losing hope. It might be that they're thinking, this is never going to work for me. And if you can actually write in your email some of the things that [00:07:00] people might say in that scenario, some of those emotional LED sentences, then that is going to be so powerful. Because what we want someone to do in this scenario is we want them to read the email and go, that's me.

That is how I feel. And the other thing is, if you can connect with them on that level, then it shows you truly understand them. And if you truly understand them, you are gonna be able to help them better. And hopefully you're gonna help them with that transformation. So that's one side you can come from, from the kind of pain side.

The other side is from the transformation side. So you could talk about the emotions of imagine the day where you finally get. That six figure launch, if that was what was interesting to you, or imagine the day where finally you can take off the six weeks of summer and not be worried about where money's coming from, or imagine how it would feel to get into a Zoom room and have all these faces looking at you.

So what are the emotions attached to the transformation? [00:08:00] Again, if you can tap into that and they can actually feel that in their bodies and go, oh God, I'd love that so much, then that's really, really helping. Often telling a story or having a kind of more conversational style email will be so much better for that type of email.

But the key thing is what are the emotions they're feeling, either from a pain point of view or from a transformation point of view? And tap into those emotions. Talk about those emotions, and if you can use the lines, the sentences, the language that your customers would use when telling you about how that feels.

Email number three. You need to tell them what the course does for them, not just what it gives them. Hopefully you understand the difference between the features and the benefit. So the features are the things it actually gives you. So for instance, with my program Grow Launch Sale, I would talk about the 98 lessons that are in the course aspect.

[00:09:00] I would talk about the fact that there is a coaching call every other week, and it's for two hours. And I speak to everybody. I would talk about all the templates that you have in there, the swipe files. Those are features, those are what it's actually made up of. Like if you buy, those are kind of the tangible things that someone's going to get.

Whereas the benefits are, what does that mean to you? Okay, great. There's a coaching call every other week for two hours. What does that mean to me? Well, the benefit of that coaching call is that you can ask me anything to do with your business. You can ask me any questions and I will give you advice. You are getting coached.

By me, which means you're making decisions quicker. You can have faith in the decisions you're making because you are asking an expert that knows about this and it means hopefully you are going to have a more successful launch, which in turn, the benefit of that would mean you would make more money and you would get closer to your dream business ultimately.

And I often say like, give this analogy of like if I [00:10:00] told people that they had to walk around the streets with a sandwich board, do you not mind move by sandwich board like. The board that goes over you with the writing on it. If I told people that would get them their goal, they would do it. Okay. They might be a little bit hesitant and think, I've lost my mind, but they would do it because at the end of the day, they don't necessarily want the features.

They want what the features give them. They want the goal, they want the end result, so. The features are great, and I'm sure by this point you've already done an email that gives them the features, but don't forget to give them that all important email of what that means to them and the benefits to them.

So what are the benefits that they're getting when they join your program, your course, your membership, whatever it is. Is it that they get an expert on tap so they don't have to worry about getting questions answered? Is it that they will grow their business, they will have an improved life? Is it that they will gain clarity and confidence?

Is it that they will have a plan to follow so that they can stop [00:11:00] worrying about will this work? So what are the benefits that your features are going to give them? And make sure that you create an email that specifically says. These are the benefits. I wouldn't perhaps use that language, but this is what you are going to be able to do when you come and join me in whatever program it is.

I want to give you a very quick additional tip. You need to obviously make sure you are adding your calls to action on every single email. It needs to be one link or going to one place. You can have multiple links on your email, but it all needs to be going to one place. So don't necessarily go, go and read why I'm an expert on my about page, or I did a, you know, podcast interview or I did a blog about this Every Call to action during that sales period, whether it be on your sales emails, on your social media, on.

Anything where you speak or anything where you are showing up during that sales phase needs to be sending [00:12:00] them to the sales page. So let me remind you of those three emails that I want to make sure that you put in your next sales emails. Email number one is objection handling Email. Email number two is an emotional LED email and email.

Number three is what does this really give them? The features versus benefits Email. If this has been helpful to you, I would really appreciate it if you would give me a like, or even better give me a comment, that would be so, so awesome. I will be back next week with another episode. Until then, have an amazing week.

How to Write Emails People Actually Want to Read with Laura Belgray

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I sit down with the brilliant Laura Belgray—renowned copywriter and founder of Talking Shrimp—to talk all things email marketing. We dive into why your email list is still one of the most powerful tools you can have as a business owner and how to write emails people actually want to open and read.

Laura shares her journey into copywriting, breaks down what really works in crowded inboxes, and gives practical advice on storytelling, humor, and being unapologetically yourself in your emails. We also explore how to use AI as a writing assistant without losing your voice, plus how often to email your list without burning it—or yourself—out.

This conversation is packed with honest insights, refreshing perspectives, and actionable tips you can use right away to build stronger connections with your subscribers.

What We Cover:

Why email marketing still matters more than ever
How storytelling and personal anecdotes build trust and engagement
Using humor to stand out (even if you think you’re “not funny”)
Finding the right balance with email frequency and selling
How to use AI to tighten and improve your writing—without sounding robotic

3 Key Takeaways:

Your email list is your biggest business asset
Social media comes and goes, but email allows me to build a direct, authentic relationship with my audience—on my terms.
Stories and personality beat “perfect” copy every time
The more human, specific, and real I am in my emails, the more they resonate. People don’t want polished—they want relatable.
AI should support my voice, not replace it
Used thoughtfully, AI can help me tighten my writing and spark ideas, but my personality and perspective are what truly make my emails connect.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Laura on Website, Instagram, Facebook, X

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

Teresa: If you've been in my world a while, you will know I am a big fan and advocate of every single business owner having an email list. It's one of your greatest assets, but if you've ever sat there thinking, I'm not entirely sure what to write, or I'm sending emails and they're just not doing anything, then this is the episode for you.

If we've not met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online businesses. And every single week I put out an episode and a YouTube video where I give you strategic, practical advice on how to grow your online business. This week is gonna be a little bit different because I have the pleasure of interviewing the amazing Laura Belgray.

Now, if you are a longtime listener to the podcast, you will know that I have done hundreds and hundreds of interviews with some of the industry's top voices. But since starting YouTube, I have. Slowed that down a [00:01:00] little. And in fact, we're not taking interviews at the moment, but when an amazing interview comes up, I'm obviously going to say yes.

And so when I met Laura back in June of 2025 at Atomic Con where we were both speaking on the main stage, I couldn't help but fall in love what she had to say and knew that I wanted to bring her onto the podcast so you guys could learn from her amazing ways. Laura is one of the sharpest and funniest copywriters in the online space, and that's why she has worked with huge names in the online space to help them refine their copy.

In this episode, we are going to be covering how to become someone's favorite email in their inbox, why most people are using emails wrong, how often you really should be emailing, and how to tell those stories without feeling like it's fake or you're forcing it. And we discuss AI and how you can actually use it to make sure that it sounds like you, there are so many good value things that Laura is giving in this episode.

But [00:02:00] without further ado, here is the interview with the amazing. Laura. Laura, welcome to the podcast.

Laura: Oh, thank you so much, Theresa. I'm so happy to be here.

Teresa: Me too. So Laura and I met in person in real actual life, uh, at Atomic on this year. I keep saying it's last year, but it's not as we are recording this, it's November.

No. And it's this year, uh, she was keynoting on the main stage and then later on I was also on the main stage, which was cool. But it was great. What did you think of, had you done an event over here in the UK before?

Laura: No, I had not. And I think even if I had, it would not have been anything like at automaton.

No. It was so fabulous and it was, it was nothing like any event that I've been to, um, just full of. Freaks, and I mean that in the best possible way. The nose freaks like blue hair, pink hair, pierced, everything. Just cool. People being themselves.

Teresa: Yes. Yeah. A lot of polka

Laura: [00:03:00] dots, um, just, and people, people like just living out loud and I loved

Teresa: it.

Honestly, it's such a great event and you are entirely correct. That event is like. No other event, really in the uk. So I think that was a great one. And also that main stage, because you were a keynote, it was round. Mm. Like how I, was it like 1400 people? I think the sports, yeah, I heard

Laura: 1500, but uh, it might've been 1400.

Teresa: It was a lot. I didn't

Laura: see any empty seats. Um, yeah, it was a lot. And I walked out there and that was the biggest one that I've ever done. And I'm used to doing the, these events that are in like, you know, carpeted ballrooms with round tables mm-hmm. And people sitting there with their notebooks. And so that's kind of what I was picturing, and then I went in for soundcheck and I was like, oh my God, that is no pressure.

Teresa: No, that is not a small room. That's not what this is. No. So, [00:04:00] okay. That surprises me because you hang around with some pretty cool people in the online space and you are. Connected through doing work and helping with some pretty big people in the online space. So I'm surprised that you, that that was probably the biggest you've done and you hadn't done bigger than that.

'cause if I had to have guessed, I would've said that was probably your wheelhouse and you were very used to that.

Laura: Oh, thank you. Thank you for guessing that. Yeah. No, I haven't like. Most of the people I know do smaller events. You're right. Yeah. They're usually more intimate and I've never got, I've been very lazy about my speaking career, even though I always say I wanna speak more and then I don't, and so I don't make a.

A real go of pushing it and pitching to all different events. It's usually the event asks me and I say, sure, that sounds fun. They're paying well enough. Let's do it. Um, and [00:05:00] yeah, let's do it. I did speak at, uh, traffic and Conversion in 2019, and that might have been the same number of people. It just was not stadium seating.

Yeah. So it didn't feel as intimidating, but it wasn't, it was a more intimidating conference and crowd.

Teresa: Yeah. It's, it's, yeah. Not as friendly. No, not that the people aren't friendly, but it's much more, I got a little bit of bro marketing from it.

Laura: Absolutely. It's, they are there. Like you can see the ROI calculating behind their eyes, literally while they're walking around.

Like how much ROI, if I go into that session, what's the ROI of that session? Yeah. And uh, it's no pressure to deliver. A lot of intent. Actionable tips. Yeah.

Teresa: Yeah. They were like, what am I getting from every minute of my day here? 'cause this is costing me money. Right. Okay. [00:06:00] So we have digressed, which I love doing, and that is my favorite thing.

Me too. Let's talk about. How you got to be so good and so big at what you do because you have, like I said, you've got some great people that you've done work for that. A lot of people in the online space were like, if I could go and work for them and get a testimonial, like I looked on your site. I did a bit a bit of research, like I'm not, yeah.

You know, it's not really my thing if I'm honest. I'm a kind of. Fly by the seat of your pants girl. But you've got some pretty impressive testimonials on there. Like, how did you enter that world? Did it happen by accident? Was it strategic? How did you get to be the voice for this?

Laura: Yeah. Um, people will wanna throw things at me for saying this, but it was pretty much by accident.

And I mean, that's how the best things happen when you're not pushing.

Teresa: Yeah.

Laura: And attached. I met Marie Forlio in [00:07:00] 2003 in hip hop class at Crunch, and this is when she was hustling as a bartender and with a side business, like side hustle as a life coach. And she gathering names for her list, uh, on a yellow pad, um, with a pen.

And we just, I, I. I had no, I was not networking whatsoever. We just may have started chatting one day after I spent a few months hating her because she had such a great body and like perfect moves and

Teresa: Yeah.

Laura: Um, and we started chatting and she was really nice and we became friends and started walking home together.

And, uh, we would talk about The Apprentice as we were both fans, not knowing that it would lead to the downfall of civilization and, um. You know, in life and, and whatnot. And years later she was. Really into, she was already in the online [00:08:00] business world back then. I had no idea what she was doing. Years later, she was starting like to kind of make it, and she was doing her first live event called Rich, happy and Hot Live.

Um, it was in the Soho House Library, like 50 people, and she invited me to speak. She knew I was a copywriter and I wrote, I wrote for TV back then. Nothing to do with online business, nothing to do with direct marketing, any of that kind of copy. And, but she asked me to give a talk on copywriting and I did.

It was called Five Secrets to Nons Sucky Coffee. And there were no slides. It was just on a, like, on a piece of paper, um, on an easel. And I ended, and people started coming up to me and saying, Hey, I really love that I'm a coach. Um, can you, can I hire you to help me with my about page? Or, I'm a realtor, I don't know what to write in my emails.

And I said, sure, I can do that. And that's how I ended up segueing into this [00:09:00] world. And Marie was my. My mentor and and friend and we ended up working together and, um, she really liked how I approached copywriting and taught it. She was a great copywriter in her own right, but she liked how I brought flavor to it.

And she invited me to create a course with her called The Copy Cure. And so. That, that was really how I, I mean, that was a cheat of all cheats to just, um, up the ladder of the, of the online hierarchy. And so I had Marie in my corner and other people wanted to work with me because of that. Like her name just had so much clout.

People would say, oh my gosh, you work with Marie, you know, I, can I hire you? And so that. That was an incredible, uh, doorway for me.

Teresa: So just so I'm clear and the audience is clear, [00:10:00] your business now, how does it look? Is it predominantly online? Is it predominantly kind of consulting? What, like, if, if you had to explain how you make your money, what, what does your business look like?

Laura: Yeah. I mean, I like to say that I make my money from writing emails because that, that's how I like to think about it. Yeah. 'cause they're the most fun part of my business. But really what it boils down to is I'm a course creator.

Teresa: Mm-hmm.

Laura: So I don't offer one-on-one. Coaching or consulting or copywriting services anymore?

I used to, and that was the mainstay of my business. And then I segued into courses because I really didn't want anything on my calendar anymore. I didn't want appointments.

Teresa: Mm-hmm. During the week. Yeah. I'm with you. Like, honestly, like if I have too many one-to-one calls and it's like, oh no, it makes me feel sick.

I just can't. Yeah.

Laura: Yeah, and you're probably like me. I love the work that I do when I'm on [00:11:00] those calls.

Teresa: Yeah.

Laura: But I just, I wake up in the morning and look at my calendar when I see one o'clock, two o'clock, four o'clock.

Teresa: Yeah.

Laura: Oh no.

Teresa: Exactly. Yeah.

Laura: When you are doing it, it's, it's fine.

Teresa: But it's that just viewing my calendar and also the other thing, I have an issue with people being able to book into my calendar.

Mm-hmm. Like if someone says to me, can you send me a calendar link? I'm like, I can, but there's probably no dates on there. 'cause I just don't like the thought that someone can put themselves in my calendar. Like I hate it. So

Laura: Exactly. It used to be like, yay, I just got a, you know, just got work and the money would come in and be like, oh no, now I have to show up for an appointment,

Teresa: do the work.

Laura: And yeah. So now I have to do the work and my happy place is really writing

Teresa: Yeah.

Laura: Communicating and, and that creative space. And I love nothing more than a day with nothing on the calendar. Mm-hmm. Zero. Um, where I can just write. [00:12:00] And look up and half the day is gone and that's okay. It's not like, oh no, I'm late for something, or I have something coming up.

I love that freedom. That's really my reason for being.

Teresa: So you are fully, like the business is just the online side of the business. You've been in it for quite some time, like pretty early doors of Marie. What like okay. I have a really bad habit of asking about three questions in one. So first off, I really want to know, do you like the online business, the online world?

Because I think that's a really interesting kind of thought. The other thought is, yeah, how is that, how does that question impact the, how much it's changed and how do you feel about it today? Yeah.

Laura: Yes. Um, I've always had a love-hate relationship with it since I got into it. There have always been. What felt like a, a pyramid scheme of coaches, coaching coaches to coach coaches to coach, coach coaches, [00:13:00] uh, and.

It just felt like a snake eating its tail, and I hated the language that people were using of step into your juiciest, most empowered you and all that. Um, I hate juicy, I hate empowerment. I say

Teresa: that wood is horrible.

Laura: It's awful. It all, everything sounded like a badly written Chinese menu. Like three kinds of delicious in juicy sauce and, um,

Teresa: definitely not ordering that.

Laura: Yeah, exactly. And, and I also did, you know, I, there were two sides of it that bothered me. One was the bro marketing side. Um, and especially the beginners who would start studying marketing and then like tweet like, Hey, Wendy's, you're doing it wrong. Um, you know, they just spotting things they thought could be improved, like, you know.

Ice cream. Where's the call to action? Yeah. [00:14:00]

Teresa: Brilliant. Like, and I think that is one of the weirdest things about this industry, that someone can come into it having no experience. So one of the things I'm always very passionate about, and you are exactly the same, right? You came from a copywriting background.

Yeah. I have a degree in marketing and spent 10 years doing marketing for big companies. Like this was our bread and butter before the, we were...

7 Essential Steps to Launch Your First Online Business in 2026

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I walk you through exactly how I would start an online business from zero in 2026. Whether you’re just thinking about launching your first offer or feeling overwhelmed by all the “build it all at once” advice, this episode simplifies everything into a clear, step-by-step process that actually works. I break down the seven essential steps I focus on — from choosing the right offer and getting clarity on the transformation it provides, to making early sales before the product is fully built and leaning into real relationships and community. If you want a practical, no-nonsense roadmap to kickstart your online business, this episode is for you.

🔑 Key Takeaways

1. Focus on One Offer

Instead of trying to juggle multiple products or ideas, I start with one clear offer. Focusing my energy helps me avoid dilution and build momentum fast — one strong offer converts better than ten half-built ones.

2. Get Crystal Clear on Transformation

Real success isn’t about features — it’s about the transformation my offer gives a customer. I define exactly what outcome someone will experience after working with me, and that clarity fuels all my marketing.

3. Sell Before I Create

I don’t wait to build the whole product before I sell it. I talk to real people, pre-sell the offer, and use that revenue and feedback to shape the final product. It’s the fastest way to validate demand and avoid wasted effort.

4. Personal Outreach for Early Sales

I personally reach out to people — DMs, emails, voice notes, conversations. Early sales come from real human connection, not automation or ads. This helps me test messaging, learn objections, and get confident selling.

5. Start List Building from Day One

From the very beginning, I'm building an email list. Every person who opts in becomes someone I can nurture, educate, and sell to. The list becomes the backbone of my future launches.

6. Leverage Community-Based Visibility

I show up in communities where my audience already hangs out — groups, forums, social spaces. I add value first, build visibility second. This approach grows reach without burning money on ads.

7. Build Intentional Relationships

I’m not just networking — I’m cultivating real relationships. These are the people who will refer business, collaborate with me, champion my offers, and help me grow long term.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

If I had to start my business from scratch in 2026, I would do things very differently. And it's not because I necessarily did things wrong in the past, but the world has changed, the audience have changed and so have I. So in this video, I'm going to take you through step by step what I would do if I was starting an online business in 2026. No list, no offer, no audience, just me. I'm theres Z wearing and I am an online business expert, a speaker and a podcaster and the creator of Grow Launch Sell My signature program that helps course creators, membership owners, and coaches launch and sell that online offers with confidence and ease. In today's video, I'm gonna be sharing with you exactly what I would do if I was starting my online business all over again. Honestly, I could probably spend a long time telling you about all the mistakes I've made during the many years I've had my online business, but [00:01:00] let's just jump straight into it with the seven things that I would be doing. So if you are starting from scratch, or you are wanting to get your online business going in 2026, then this is the video for you. The very first thing I would do is pick one offer, and I really mean that. I would pick one thing to sell. I wouldn't create a whole product suite, a whole product offering. I would pick one thing, so I could have one message, one focus, target, one audience, and sell it over and over and over. It wouldn't matter what it is, whether it was a course or a membership or a coaching program, I would just basically pick one thing. Number two, I would get so crystal clear and so laser focused on the transformation. When you have one offer, you can get uber clear about what it is that that one offer's going to do, and it doesn't even have to be a big, complicated, massive transformation. [00:02:00] It could be something very clear, very simple, and very easy, but understand wholeheartedly. Where your customer is and where you are taking them to, and that your one offer is getting them there. Because one of the most important things now and for a long time in the online space is explaining to your customer. What your offer can actually do for them. The only way in which you can do this is by understanding the transformation that you are giving them. So when you know your one offer, I want you to get laser focused and so clear about what the transformation the offer is doing for them. Number three, sell it before you make it. Create a live beater version. One of the mistakes that I see lots, and probably one of the ones that I did, was deciding to create this beast of an online offer, IEA course or a membership, and creating every element before I had even tested whether people wanted it. So now I [00:03:00] would highly recommend, and especially if you're starting in 2026 to. Sell it before you make it. So actually work out if there's a market for it before you spend all that time and effort actually making the thing. And regardless of whether the thing's going to be live or evergreen, I would always run the first one live. I would always run it live because A, you are learning as you go and understanding what your customers really want from it, what they're really engaging with. You're seeing the questions that are coming up. Secondly, you don't have to create it all before you sell it. So for instance, if you are doing a course, you could run a course over six weeks and literally be creating each week as it comes along. But what you are doing is you're creating it once you've already sold it, so you are not spending loads of time and effort creating something that you don't know is going to sell. The other reason I would do a live beta is because you want those testimonials now. As a side note, I [00:04:00] wouldn't do it for free. I would charge them something, but I would probably give them a considerable discount. But I wouldn't recommend that you give things away for free because people don't take them seriously. There's no skin in the game. So I would definitely charge, but I would do a much reduced price because it's a beat aversion and because you're going to want those testimonials from them. Number four, personally outreach to make those sales. Again, this might seem a little bit strange of a thing to do when you're creating an online business, and especially if you were to look at how the, my online business looks today. But if I was starting from scratch, I would personally outreach to people to try and sell to them, and in some cases I would still do that now. It's so much easier to have a conversation with someone than it is to try and sell something online, just through emails and social media, and I know that's what we want to get to. But to get there, this is going to be the first step. This is gonna be the easiest way in which you can [00:05:00] do that. And I would do this through personal dms, through reaching out, sending voice notes, having conversations, dropping people emails directly to them. I would ha start a conversation in saying, I would love to talk to you about this thing. All we're trying to do is open up some conversations and then if the sell is right and if they think it's gonna fit for them, then brilliant. But the very first way that I want you to sell your online offer is by personally reaching out and having those conversations. And I promise you, you will sell it way faster than if you just try and sell it online. Number five. Start your list building from day one. How many business owners have I seen that? How many business owners that I've seen? If I had five pound for every business owner that wished they'd started their email list sooner, I probably wouldn't have to work ever again. Starting your email list is one of the most important things that you can do other than making money, which we've already covered. We're gonna try and sell that [00:06:00] one offer with that one transformation directly to people. Starting your email list is so important, so. Because we know the one offer, I want you to create a really good, strong, compelling lead magnet that is a great prerequisite for that one offer, and get it out there straight away. Make it a very simple and a very clear funnel. A funnel seems like too much of a word, but basically we have one lead magnet that leads to your one offer. Now, we don't have to directly sell it to your one offer, but it does need to naturally lead to it. And therefore, if you do start selling it makes sense. But promote that lead magnet from day one. Put it on your social media, send it to people you know, put it into community groups, basically get that email list started. Number six, use community-based visibility rather than just relying on social media. Now, I'm not saying that don't do social media. It's great and it can do lots of things for us. [00:07:00] However, when you first start, I would a hundred percent focus on community visibility. And what I mean by that is getting into other people's communities, joining memberships, just basically being in the room with other people. So whether it's a community for other business owners, whether it's a community for your audience, whatever it is, I want you to get in those communities. That can feel a little bit scary and a little bit out of your comfort zone, but I promise you. It's one of the quickest and easiest ways to build your audience and to build who you are and what you do. Because even if you are in a community like mine where you are working alongside other business owners who maybe aren't your customers, they know loads of people. And in my Grow Launch Sale program and within my community teas world, I have had so many. Collaborations and people come together and help each other because they're in the same world and because they get [00:08:00] on. So honestly, getting in those communities is so very important, and this is going to get you warm leads, not random followers. And number seven, build relationships. Intentionally. And number seven, build relationships intentionally. This is something I did when I started my business and it has paid me dividends. Find people in your world and make real, honest, not fast connections with them. This is a slow burn. This is, I wanna hang out with you because you're cool, or I want to be in your world because I really like you. Not what can I get from you and how can you help me build my business? When you make those connections with real honesty and real authenticity, then they will last you for years and they will pay off so much. I can't tell you many, many years ago I reached out to Amy Porterfield. I had met her a couple of times at events, so not only had I gone to events in the States and I'm [00:09:00] based in the uk, so it was a significant investment to go and get in the room with these people. I then reached out to her. I offered to take her for a coffee. This was a very long time ago. I flew five and a half thousand miles to take her to for a coffee. I built that relationship with her. Since then, she's been on my podcast. She's spoken at my summit. I've been to her house and I now get to call her a friend. Now, I never built that relationship. With all that in mind, I built that relationship genuinely because I really liked it and I wanted to build a relationship with her. I can give you this story about so many other people that I've built relationships with. It's never the intent to build a relationship to what I can get out of it. It was always the intent of building a good, quality, real relationship with these people. And then it is paid off in lots of ways, some to do with the business, some to do personally and in more ways than I can tell you. So how can you build real. Intentional relationships because yes, you might [00:10:00] be starting your online business from scratch, but we want this to last a long time. I've been in business a long time, so it's never about what can I get from them quickly. It's never about building those relationships to just see what you can get from them. Honestly, real businesses are built from relationships, not from the algorithm. So there you go. That's what I would do if I was starting my online business from scratch. Let me recap those seven things. Number one, I would have one offer only. Number two, I would be crystal clear on that transformation. Number three, I would sell it before I make it, and I would do a live beater version of it. Number four, I would do personal outreach to make those early sales. Number five, I would start list building from day one using a strong lead magnet. That is a great prerequisite for my one offer. Number six. I would do community-based visibility, getting in front of different communities, and number seven, I would build relationships intentionally. Honestly, [00:11:00] that's what I would do if I was starting my business in 2026. So you don't need big audiences, complicated funnels, or perfect offers to get started. You just need one offer and you just need to get started. If you find this video helpful, then please hit that like button. Why not give me a comment And I would love it if you could make sure that you are actually subscribed. So you get notified the next time a video goes live.

8 Proven Ways to Grow Your Audience Without Spending a penny

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I share with you eight proven, no-cost strategies to grow your audience - without spending money on ads. I believe that with consistency and creativity, you don’t need a big budget to build reach. I walk you through actionable tactics: from podcast guesting and public speaking, to creative lead magnets and AI-optimized content. If you’re looking for ways to grow your following organically, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways

1. Organic growth - without ads - is about long-term consistency, not quick wins. The strategies I share (guesting, speaking, collaborations, lead magnets, AI-optimized content) don’t deliver instant overnight growth — but they build sustainable exposure, trust, and engagement over time. Because they leverage existing audiences and evergreen content, they can continue attracting new people long after the work is done. 2. Collaboration beats isolation: tapping into other people’s platforms can grow your reach faster. By guesting on podcasts, speaking at events, joining bundles or summits, or collaborating with communities and peers, you get access to listeners/followers who already trust the host or community — which means you don’t have to start building your audience from zero. It’s a faster, more efficient way to grow an engaged audience than relying solely on your own channels. 3. Lead magnets and interactive content (quizzes, DMs, AI-optimized offers) turn passive interest into real connection - which builds deeper relationships and higher conversion potential. Instead of hoping people stumble on you, these tools invite people to take action — subscribe, engage, respond. That deepens their commitment and gives you a direct path to nurture them, rather than passively waiting.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, teresaheathwareing.com/quiz, http://teresaheathwareing.com/scoreapp

Transcript

Growing an audience is one of the most important things that you can do for your online business. And if like me, you're a little bit sick of social media and feel like you are posting into a void every single day, then you are going to want to stick around for this episode. As I explained to you the eight proven ways to grow your audience without paying any money on ads. If we've not met, my name is Theresa Heath Waring and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their audience, launch their offers, and scale their online businesses. And in today's episode of the podcast, I am going to be helping you grow your audience. Now I'm gonna take a minute just to explain why we need an audience, although I don't think I need to because it's something I talk about all the time with an online business. We need people to know that we exist. If we don't, if people don't know we exist, then they find it very difficult to buy from us. And growing an audience, no matter how much [00:01:00] time and effort you put into it, is never, ever, ever going to be a waste. And if I'm honest, sometimes it can feel like a really thankless task and sometimes it can feel very slow going. But the truth in the matter of growing an audience. Isn't about those massive, massive wins of bringing in a thousand people on your list within 10 days. It's about constantly taking action and doing activities that are going to help you build your audience over time. So whether it's by five or six or 10 every couple of days, that's one of the most powerful things you can do in terms of growing your audience organically and growing a really warm audience. And I have eight strategies that you can use today without spending a penny on ads, which is going to help you grow your audience. Strategy one, and still, one of my absolute favorites is podcast guesting. Personally, I find this super, super easy. I just turn up on a podcast. People ask me questions. I love doing it. It's [00:02:00] really fun and it can help build your audience. There's a couple of points I wanna make on this one. I have found it increasingly harder to get onto people's podcasts, and therefore we are having to do. Extra in terms of standing out, making sure that they know we're good quality and encouraging them to pick us. So this isn't as easy as you literally filling in 20 applications and getting on 20 podcasts. That's not going to happen. It is a numbers game though. So in my business, every Thursday for two hours, I do outreach and. Sometimes I feel like, do I still have to do this? The truth is, yes I do. If I want to consistently be seen on other people's podcasts, then I need to spend that time and put that effort in to do the outreach. A couple of other things to note is I don't actually care the size of the podcast. I just am more than happy to get on and have a conversation. Like I said, from a output point of view, it's really low level output for me. [00:03:00] I don't really have to prep anything. I don't have to do anything major I have to set up anyway. So for me, it normally is just a case of spending an hour with someone having really good fun chatting with them about the business, but the effort comes in reaching out. It does take work and you are gonna have to put some time into it. And it can feel like a slow burn because often if I apply for a podcast, they might not be recording for a few months, and then when I do record, it might not come out for a few months. It's one of those things that over time you are going to be doing it more. You're going to be seen more, and because of that, other people are going to start to ask you more. Lots of these things are kind of self-fulfilling. You do it, you get seen doing it. People ask you to do it more. So number one is podcast guesting. I still highly recommend you reaching out to other people's podcasts who have your audience and offering to be a guest. Oh, and of course, what I should say is you need to offer a lead magnet. So whatever you're talking about on the podcast, make sure that you have a good lead magnet if they allow it for you to offer at the end of the [00:04:00] interview so that people can get on your email list. Number two. Speaking. Now, I know this isn't for everybody, and some of you are going to be watching this thinking or listening to this and thinking, no way, Theresa speaking is not for me. However, if it is, if you want to be a thought leader, if you want to be seen as a personal brand, then speaking is one of the most powerful things that you can do because people are on stages. Are seen as thought leaders. They are seen as the experts. They are seen at the top of their industry. Even if you think it scares you a little, it still scares me. After all these years of doing it. I would highly recommend that you look at speaking a bit like with the podcast, they are a trusted audience. The people who go to the event or the people who listen to the podcast, trust. The person who's putting it on or trust the person whose podcast it is, because otherwise they wouldn't be there. So by sheer fact that you are being put in front of that audience, that you are being allowed on that stage to speak to them already builds up a huge amount of trust. The fact that you [00:05:00] are the expert on the stage builds up a massive amount of trust and exactly the same as the podcast, we want a lead magnet. Again, what I tend to do is. Every speaking gig I do, I will have some kind of opt-in within that presentation, whether it's the presentation itself, whether it's a workbook, whether it's something additional on top of it, I always make sure there is some kind of lead magnet, which I use as a QR code on my slides to encourage people to come and join my email list. Number three, quizzes now. As humans, we are so curious about ourselves and we'd like to find out about ourselves, which is why quizzes are one of the most effective lead magnets that you can use. I work with SCORE app and I have a quiz in SCORE app. So if you were to head to Theresa Heath wearing.com/quiz, or if you are watching this on YouTube, if you click the QR code, then that will take you there. You can go through my quiz and see what it's like, but the reason that quizzes are so good. [00:06:00] And I highly recommend score wrap is because we are fascinated by ourselves. And if you can help not only someone find out something about themselves, which then means that they can take a step forward or they can progress towards the goal that they're trying to get. But also we find out more about our customer. Now, when I'm talking about lead magnets, what I will often suggest is you ask for the least information possible. So name and email. That's it. So we are not collecting data about the people we are putting on our email list. And a quiz is a very natural, very effective way in which to get people A on our list, but B, to find out more about them, if you go to Theresa Heath wearing.com/score app. You can get 50% off your first month. Number four bundles. If you've not come across bundles, then let me explain what they are. A bundle is normally where one business owner say, let's say I decide I'm going to do a bundle, and I go out to [00:07:00] other business owners who have a similar niche to me who do similar things or complimenting things, but have the same audience, and I ask them to. Basically volunteer to give me something that you would normally pay for. So a low cost offer. It could be something that's up for like $19, 19 pounds, and you gather lots of business owners to do this. And then what happens is you give that bundle away. You either give it away completely for free, or you charge it for a very low cost amount, which means the person who is opting in to either buy it or get it for free is getting a ton of value. For either free or hardly any cost. But the beauty of the bundle is everyone that's contributing to the bundle then promotes the bundle. So effectively you've got all these business owners promoting the fact that you are, they're taking part in a bundle. I have taken part in other people's, I've never done my own, but I'm promoting the fact [00:08:00] of, look, I'm taking part in this bundle. You can get all this stuff for really good cost. The other beauty about this, now, there's so much, and I could probably do an entire episode just on bundles. But, well, I know I could do an entire episode just on bundles, but the, one of the key things, and one of the things that's really cool about this is each person who is contributing to. If the person buying the bundle, if the customer decides they want that particular course. So let's say they're looking at the bundle that I'm in and someone sees what I'm offering and goes, yes, I want that, they have to actually opt in to my list in order to get it. So there would be an opt-in that is on my page or on my site where they get the bun, my part of the bundle. So they only opt in to the various different business owners that they want. So it can be a really effective way of. A getting out in front of a massive audience that you couldn't have access to. The reason you have access to it is because everybody's sharing it and everyone's doing that, kind of [00:09:00] putting it out to their list on their socials and all of that sort of good stuff. But also they're only opting into you when they definitely want the thing that you are offering. So bundles can be a really effective way to get in front of other people's audiences and to get in front of much bigger audiences and get people on your list. Number five, hosting or taking part in a summit. Summits are kind of similar to bundles. They're definitely similar in the fact of how you reach the audience. The difference here is a summit is normally an online event, so this could either be prerecorded sessions or it could be live in 2024. I did my own summit and. I might be doing one again in 2026 where basically my summit was a two day live summit with tracks. So basically it was a bit like an online conference. It was quite a lot of work. However, what I was able to do is bring together a load of experts in my field and ask them very nicely if they would help me promote it. Now some summits [00:10:00] insist that you promote it. And depending on who's running the summit, the quality of the summit and the size of their audience, I will happily promote the summit. I decided to take a different route, which I might do again, different for 2026, where I said, I want to make this summit so good that you are going to want to shout it from the rooftops that you are going to want to share it with your audience. 'cause you are gonna be so proud that you're part of it. And luckily that did happen. But what I was able to do is tap into all of these other audiences by creating this online event. Now, like I said, I made that summit a big deal because I did it live. I did tracks. It was full on. You don't have to do that. You could do a summit that is prerecorded sessions that are released over a certain length of time. But the key here, very similar with the bundle, is that you get business owners who are servicing your audience or a complimentary business to you, so still have your audience and they help promote the summit alongside you and therefore you get. [00:11:00] Put in front of different audiences. Now, the beauty of your hosting the summit is that you get all those people on your list. If you are guesting on someone's summit, then you have to rely on the fact of offering a lead magnet and hoping that they liked your session and they opt in. Number six is community collaborations. What do I mean by community collaborations? Well, it's very similar to being in front of other people's audiences, but it's probably done on a. Depending on the size of someone's audience or someone's community, it could be done on a much smaller level. And as I've already said, I personally am not bothered by the size of someone's audience. Now, if I'm going to speak on a stage and there are hundreds and hundreds of people there, amazing. If I'm speaking on an online event and there's thousands, amazing. But that doesn't mean they're the only ones I'm going to do. And as a side note. Just because someone's audience is massive doesn't mean it's the most engaged. One of the fascinating things about running my own summit was I was able [00:12:00] to see the clicks that people got because we had affiliate links. I was really blown away by some of the much smaller audiences that got way more, more opting in. Because that audience was strong, because that was a really good community because that community loved their person that they followed so much that they trusted and the trust was high. So don't always get swayed by the big audiences in the big communities. And also if you are watching or listening to this and you want me to come and speak in your community, or you want me to come on your podcast and you are thinking. It's not big enough. Please come and ask me if I am free and have the time. I would love to. Okay. Let's talk a bit more about the community collaboration. This is where we are looking at people's groups and communities. So let's say someone has a membership of people who have online businesses who. I might go and offer, or they might ask me to go and do a session in that group. Now, it might be a fairly small group. It might be a fairly intensive session, so [00:13:00] I might do a workshop style session for an hour, or I might do a q and a, or I might do a tour. Probably is a bit more labor intensive than if you were just doing a podcast interview. That trust is so much higher, and normally the people coming on your list are so much warmer straight away, which is why I want you to consider this. Even if someone only has a small group, even if you only have a small group, invite people in. I highly recommend that you do this because this honestly can be a really effective way to grow your audience. Number seven, DM based lead magnets. What do I mean by DM based lead magnets? I am talking about on social media, comment, the word, whatever the word is. Using something like ManyChat can be a really, really effective way to grow your audience. Social media has certainly got harder. The many years that I've been in business. It doesn't mean that it's all lost. And one of the really effective ways that you can maximize your social media is [00:14:00] using something like ManyChat and having them mention a keyword or comment a keyword, and then you use the ManyChat automation to basically DM them and say, did you want such and such? Great. Here's the link type thing. It can really shorten that effort window for them. 'cause imagine if someone sees a post, I'm putting a post up. Imagine if you have a post on social media that talks about a lead magnet that you have, and then you say to them, either go to the link in my bio. Or head to, and you give them a URL, that's quite labor intensive for them. They're having to come out the post, go to your link, go click on the link, find it, go to the page. Whereas with the dm, ManyChat. Automation, it's so much quicker. You are taking the any effort out for them. It is very easy for them to engage. The other beauty about using something like ManyChat and doing this process is the way social media works. And I'm [00:15:00] not gonna spend very long on this 'cause I'm probably not, the experts talk about this anymore, but the way it works is on engagement. So the more engagement you get on a post, the more likely it is that it's going to show it to more people. So by getting people to comment a word, brilliant, more engagement, more people see it. So think of a really good lead magnet that your audience want and use something like ManyChat to help promote that. And number eight, AI optimized lead magnets. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, as we know, the world is changing and we are no longer necessarily going to Google to search for things. Also, with the rise of AI browsers, this is getting even stronger. AI are finding the answers for us, so we need to make sure that we are creating lead magnets. Are very AI friendly, so you need to think about the questions that people are putting into AI about...

The Truth About Failed Launches: The 5-Step Process to Recover From a Bad Launch

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m diving into a topic that every course creator, coach, and online business owner will face at some point: a launch that didn’t go to plan. After 20 years in marketing, I’ve had my fair share of launches that felt disappointing. But here’s what I know to be true—a failed launch isn’t the end. It’s data. It’s information. It’s an invitation to grow. I walk you through my five-step process for turning a “failure” into a strategic reset. From giving yourself permission to feel the frustration, to gathering and analysing the data, to tweaking your strategy and stepping back into the arena—you’ll learn how to use every launch as an experiment that moves your business forward. If you’ve ever walked away from a launch wondering, “What went wrong?” or “Is this really for me?”—this episode will help you stay grounded, focused, and resilient. Key Takeaways

You’re Allowed to Feel It

Before you jump into fixing mode, give yourself space to acknowledge the disappointment. It’s human, and it’s necessary. Pretending you’re fine only delays the clarity you need.

Data Will Tell You the Truth

Once emotions settle, it’s time to gather every piece of data you can. Emails, opt-ins, conversions, social engagement—your numbers reveal what actually happened, not what you think happened.

Analyse with Curiosity, Not Judgment

Look for patterns and gaps. Where did people fall off? What surprised you? When you view your launch like a scientist rather than a critic, insights become easier—and more accurate.

Make Adjustments That Move the Needle

With the data in hand, decide what needs tweaking. Maybe the messaging didn’t land. Maybe the offer wasn’t clear. Maybe your warm-up period was too short. Small changes can create big shifts.

Get Back in the Game—Quickly

The most successful online business owners aren’t the ones who get it perfect—they’re the ones who try again. Relaunch with your adjustments, treat it like another experiment, and keep going. Momentum is built through action, not avoidance. If you’re in a season where a launch didn’t meet your expectations, I want you to know: you’re not alone, and you’re not failing. This is part of the process. Embrace the learning, stay curious, and remember—you’re building something that’s worth staying in the game for. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, Real Numbers

Marketing in 2026: The Five Essential Shifts to Stay Ahead

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In today’s solo episode, I break down the five key shifts we all need to make to successfully market and sell our online businesses in 2026. The online space has changed dramatically, and what worked a few years ago simply isn’t enough anymore. I share what I’m doing in my own business, what I’m seeing across the industry, and the practical steps you can start implementing right away.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Relationships Over Broadcasting

I explain why connection now outperforms content volume — and how focusing on real conversations builds trust and momentum.

Community Over Courses

People want belonging, not just information. I share how I’m reshaping my offers to create deeper community experiences.

Adapting to How People Find You

Search and discovery are shifting thanks to AI. I talk about the small tweaks I’m making to show up where my audience is actually looking.

A Better Launch Experience

Launches need to feel more personal and supportive. I cover simple ways to elevate your launch without overwhelming yourself.

Showing Up as a Real Human

Authenticity matters more than ever. I share how being more open and human has transformed the way my audience connects with me.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, Ep 427

Transcript

The online space is changing, and the way we used to launch back in 2020 and 2021 has shifted massively, and some of those things are not working anymore. So if you are trying to sell a course, a membership, or a group coaching program in 2026, then you are going to want to know these five shifts that you can make in your business and your marketing, and how you show up in order to help sell your online offers. My name's Teresa Heath Wareing and I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of online business owners, helping them grow their online business with confidence and without burning out. The online world has changed back in 2020, back in 2021. The online world went through a real boom, and it was honestly as easy as being able to put something out there and people would buy it, and you could do a webinar or a quick challenge and you would have hundreds and hundreds of people come through your launch experience, regardless of the size of your [00:01:00] audience. But it's changed. And actually I am happy that it's changed because during that time, lots of people created content and created courses and memberships and programs. That were just not where they should have been. And people ended up buying them and getting their fingers burned, basically buying things that they thought they were getting that would help and they didn't help. So consumers in the world of AI and online world, and now in the world we're in currently with AI and tech and online. We are becoming much more discerning as consumers, and that is a good thing. Even though it's getting harder for people to sell online and to be as successful as maybe people want, it's actually a good thing. 'cause it means that when people do buy, they're making those decisions correctly. They're not being forced into them, and hopefully they are buying something that they know what they're going to get and they feel good about that [00:02:00] purchase and that's what we want. I have been in the online space for about nine years now, and during that time, I have had only ever one person ask for a refund in every single thing that I have sold, and that one person asked for a refund because it was COVID, and they couldn't put into practice the things that I had actually told them to do. I very politely declined. And said that I would offer them some more calls in order to help them when the world opened up again. But I think there's a really good reason why I don't get refunds. I don't get people asking for their money back, and I don't get people necessarily saying things online about me and my offers because I am much slower in the way I sell and the way I market to them. And some of the things that I'm going to talk about, some of these shifts I have already been doing, and yes. I could have probably grown my business a lot faster if I showed up differently, but I would've had way more refunds. I've had a, would've had way more people angry on the internet about me, and those things just [00:03:00] haven't happened. So I am very happy to take the slower route to grow more organically and not have to deal with that side of the online world. Anyway, that wasn't necessarily what I came on here to talk about, but it is kind of relevant because of the fact of I want you to create an online business that feels good for you, feels good for your audience, and is something that you can sustain for the long term. 'cause if you are here watching me, I know you are very passionate about the thing that you are trying to help people with, and you are not in it for get rich quick. 'cause if you were, you wouldn't be resonating with me. So I'm gonna take you through these five shifts that you need to. Think about and to make in your business and in your marketing, in order for you to succeed and grow your online business in 2026. Shift number one is relationships over broadcasting. Previously, and I still stand by this, we need an audience. If you want a successful online business, people have to know who you are. [00:04:00] It's not just about getting the size of that audience, it's about having that connection with your audience. You can be wildly successful with a smaller audience if you have a really strong and good connection with them, and one of the ways in which you are going to do this, which I have been. An advocate for, for a long time, and I teach on is becoming the go-to expert in your industry, is becoming the face that people see and is hearing you as a trusted voice in their industry. And one of the ways that you're gonna be able to do that is by putting yourself out as that trusted person, getting on podcasts, getting on stages, having people see you. On the stage, on the podcast, hearing what you've got to say and building that relationship over time. Now, interestingly enough, I had a conversation with someone who is in my world, who I work with recently, and they were really frustrated that they were getting on podcasts, and it just wasn't working quick enough for [00:05:00] them. They weren't seeing the results immediately for the podcast they'd been on. This is a slow burn. This isn't going to be a super fast thing. You're not gonna do one podcast and then suddenly your business is gonna boom. There are definitely some podcasts out there. If you can get on them, then that might happen. But on the whole, if you're not being invited on diary, the CEO, for instance, then you are going to need to do quite a few podcasts. You are going to need to do this consistently, but this is a good thing because you are building the trust organically, and when you build that organically, the time it takes to build, it means it's so hard to lose. You have to do something really stupid to lose that trust, so that isn't a bad thing. I know it's going to take time, but getting yourself out there as the expert, putting yourself on podcast, putting yourself on stages is going to be the strongest way in which you can build that relationship over just building an audience for each of these shifts, I want to give you a couple of really practical examples that I want you to go away and do. One of the most important things [00:06:00] in my world is about taking action. Gone are the days where we've done all the courses, we've been in all the programs where we just hope that being there by osmosis will make us successful. The people that I see have the most success are taking action. So this is my hope for you that for each of these things, I'm going to give you something to take action. So for the first shift, what I want you to do is I want you to pitch to go and speak on two or three podcasts. Or pitch to go and speak and train in other people's groups if someone has a group. So for instance, I deal with online business owners. So if I know someone who has a group that is aimed at online business owners, then I might offer to go and do a session about something. If you want help with your visibility, then I have a freebie that will help you if you scan the QR code on the screen or go to Theresa Heath wearing.com/visible. You. You will get [00:07:00] my free five day challenge with workbook. That will take you through the exact steps that you need to take to get on other people's podcasts or get in front of other people's audiences. So like I said, click the QR code or go to, theres heath wearing.com/visible to grab that. Shift. Number two is all about creating community, not just courses. Now, I'm not saying don't sell a course and you should have a membership. That's not the case at all. I'm talking about how can you create something more than just a course that someone does online. Again, I'm not saying that that is not working at all. There are definitely still some, uh, people out there that are selling courses that are standalone evergreen courses that are working. But if you want to be successful in 2026 and going forward, then you really need to look at how can we bring more of a community aspect into what you do, because. We are in a world that is inundated with content. [00:08:00] We are not short of content. We have AI where we can literally get it to create a course just for us about the thing that you want to learn. What that doesn't give us is the person who's been through it, the other people who are going through it with you. The community aspect of having conversations with people who understand what you are doing and the ability to ask questions, for instance. I have a puppy who is now 12 weeks old, and I bought a course on how to train the puppy, and that's great. Like I'm really happy with the course. It's really good, really useful. The thing that I'm really loving is the community. The community that goes alongside it. Because what I'm able to do is when I watch something in the course and I try it with my puppy and it doesn't work, then I can go into the community and go, why isn't this working? And they can help and give suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or how I might change it. So yes, we need the content, obviously, but how can you bring in that community aspect to what you are offering online? The [00:09:00] other thing that having a community within your content can help with is that support and the accountability. Again, we are in a world where we have done all the courses, we have bought all the things in hope that they are the answer. What really moves the needle and what I see all the time in my program Grow Launch Sale is someone will come to me, they will say they've watched a particular lesson within the program, and then I will tell them how to tweak it specifically for them, their audience, how they like to show up, how much their offer is, what they want to do to promote it. All of the things mean that I give them a more personalized, tweaked experience in terms of how to go ahead and do the thing, which should give them better results. So when you have that community aspect, whether it's you in the community or whether it is a community that you just have alongside, what you're doing is you're helping with that support and that accountability. And if someone [00:10:00] takes action on the thing that they've bought. Then they are more likely to have much more fonder thoughts about it and promote it to other people. So your action for shift too could be, can you introduce a monthly q and a that you offer to people who have bought your course? If you have a standalone course, can you find a way to create more of an experience and more of a community for the people who you already have in your world? This could be as simple as having a Facebook group or a Slack community or a WhatsApp community, or as simple as sending a weekly email with some accountability or a check-in. What can you do to bring in that community more of that community to the thing that you sell online currently? Because that's the thing they're going to stay for. That's the thing that they're going to. That's the thing that's gonna help them move the needle and get to the transformation that you are offering them. Shift number three is all about how [00:11:00] people find you. This is obviously changing massively with the world of ai. So for instance, we would've had SEO and things like Facebook ads that would've converted much easier than they do currently. But because. We have AI that now we've gotta write and create content for things like chat, GBT, and also the trust has got to be much higher. Those ads that were fairly cold to a cold audience don't convert as well. So shift number one that talked about making you the expert is one part of this. But the other part that I'm talking about here is the content that you create. I had this conversation just today when someone said to me, I told them that I'd started a YouTube channel, and they said to me, how do you know that you're not creating too much content? Because why wouldn't they just take it and go and do it themselves? And I talked about the fact of that when you create content online that is very [00:12:00] generic content, whether you want it to be or not, because. Your business, your offer might be different prices, so you might have a low cost offer that's $19 or 19 pounds, or you might have a really high cost offer that's 5,000. You might have a massive audience or a tiny audience. You might have a warm one or a cold one. You might love doing live stuff, but you hate doing prerecorded or writing. You might find that your audience. So I have one client that works for me who's a dietician that actually her email list does not work well for her, but Instagram works really well for her. So even though I can come on here and I can share content with you to show you that I know what I'm talking about and that I'm an expert in the field, it's not personalized to you. Now, there are some people that will watch your content. There are some people who will watch this and take what I say and go and fly with it and be brilliant, and that is great. No problem at all. They were never going to buy from you or me. Whereas there are some people who will watch this and go, that was [00:13:00] really helpful, but I'd really love to understand how that would work specifically for my business. And then they might consider working with you. So when you are creating the content and creating content isn't new, you should have been doing this hopefully for a long time. But you really need to think about what people are asking and what they are searching for in terms of how they're using ai. So, for instance, YouTube videos, blogs that have very clear how to titles content that is very specific on how to do a particular thing and answers very specific problems. So my action for you is I want you to go and come up with a list of 20 questions that your ideal customer might be putting into ai, and I want you to think about how you can create content to answer those questions. The key thing here is to have each piece of content answer one question [00:14:00] specifically so that AI can find it. Shift number four. That we need to think about that launch experience better than we have previously. And what I mean by this is previously it's like, okay, I want to sell a course. I want to sell my membership. What shall I do? I'll do a webinar, or I'll do a bootcamp because I like them or because they're easy and I've done one before. We really need to think about. How that particular launch experience fits in with the thing that we're selling and the level of audience that we have. I did a video recently which talked you through a strategy on how you can pick the right launch experience that fit with the offer, price and your audience based on how warm they are. So that's the first thing. Go and check out that video. We'll make sure we've put it in the captions and in the notes. The second thing is it's not just as straightforward as doing a quick webinar. We need to put [00:15:00] some more serious thought into that experience, and we really need to think about how we can make that experience even better and more involved for the people taking part. So for instance, one of the things that I did in my latest launch and my previous launch was I run a bootcamp. And in that bootcamp we had things like a music playlist. We had a podcast playlist that I'd put together. We did a community in the bootcamp to make sure that I could have that interaction with them. I included mindset sessions because I'm a certified coach, so that fit really well. I also did things like I posted something to them, and that might seem really odd that for a bootcamp, why would I spend money to post something to them? It's adding in those extra elements that are making you stand out. These launches can't just be, I need to do something, let me whip up a webinar. We really need to think about how we're engaging our community, how we're showing up, and what we are giving them, and the transformation they're going to get while working with us. So you need to [00:16:00] give your launch experience way more thought than maybe you've done previously. Your action for this one is I want you to go back and watch that video where I show you the matrix based on how warm your audience is and the offer that you are selling, and I want you to work out what would be the best kind of launch for you to do based on those two things. And shift number five, I want you to show up as a real human, not a perfect expert. Again, in this world of AI where I dunno about you, but. I don't trust hardly anything anymore. 'cause it's like, is that image real? Is that video real? Can I trust that this hasn't been made by ai? We need to counteract that by showing up as even more human than we have done before. So whereas, you know, probably five years ago, it was all about the perfect...

Create Irresistible Offers: 5 Triggers to Turn Interest into Enrolments

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I walk you through the five key conversion triggers that I use (and recommend) when launching an online course, membership or coaching offer. I explain what each trigger is, how I implement it, why it works, and what you’ll want in place for it to succeed.

Key Take-away

These triggers aren’t sneaky gimmicks—they’re built on human decision-making and trust. When used authentically, they help people decide to say “yes” to your offer because they feel seen, convinced, and ready.

Trigger 1: Reciprocity

I open by talking about giving first. Before I ask someone to invest, I give value: a webinar, a guide, a free training. When I do that, I’m showing up for them and they’re much more willing to engage later. In practice I look at:

What free or low-risk offer I can deliver now.
How that offer really helps someone move forward (not just a promo).
How to make sure they know I’m not selling yet—I’m helping.

Trigger 2: Scarcity

Next I cover how limiting availability makes an offer more compelling. When I say “only X spots” or “this opens for a short time”, I raise the perceived value—and prompt decision. But I emphasise: the scarcity must be real. If it’s not, trust is damaged. Here’s how I apply it:

I define a clear limitation (spots, seats, version, etc).
I explain why the limitation exists (for quality, for group size, etc).
I stay genuine: if there’s no real limit, I don’t pretend there is one.

Trigger 3: Urgency

Here I talk about using time-based pressure—not to scare, but to encourage action. I make clear there is a window, the clock is running, and when it closes things change. My implementation methods:

I set a deadline for enrolment.
I send reminders as that deadline approaches.
I frame what people will miss out on if they wait (and then close).
I avoid making it feel pushy—instead I help them decide while the offer is fresh.

Trigger 4: Social Proof

Claiming you can deliver results is one thing—showing that others did it is far stronger. I dig into testimonials, case studies, visible community results. When someone sees someone like them succeed, they feel: “If they can do it, maybe I can too.” How I use it:

I collect client stories (before/after, journey, outcome).
I place those stories in the launch funnel (emails, page, live call).
I show real people, real voices—not just polished marketing speak.
I make sure the proof aligns with the promise (so I’m not overselling).

Trigger 5: Price Anchoring

Finally I talk about how I frame price by first showing a higher “anchor” or reference point (what someone might normally pay, or the value they’d get elsewhere), then reveal my offer so it appears more compelling. This helps people see the gap between cost and value. Here’s my approach:

I define what the value really is (time saved, outcome gained, transformation).
I show “regular” pricing or competitor pricing (or what someone might need to spend another way).
Then I show my offer price and explain what they’re getting for that investment.
I emphasise: it’s not about discounting—it’s about showing value-overshoot.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube

Transcript

If you've ever looked at someone's launch and thought, wow, how did they get all those sales? How did they convert all those people? And you feel like you went through the same steps, but you didn't quite get the same results. And in this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you the five conversion triggers that help people make a buying decision and actually convert when you're selling your online offer. If we've not met, my name's Terese Heath Wareing and I help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online offers through effective launch strategies and knowing how to actually sell online. In this video, I am going to take you through the five psychological and marketing strategies that all the big players use in their launches to actually get people to make a buying decision. I'm not only going to walk you through each one of them, but I'm also gonna share with you how the big players might use them and also how you can use them in your next launch, [00:01:00] and most importantly, in a way that feels authentic to you and doesn't feel like you are being sleazy or salesy. Before we get started, I just wanna make a note about these strategies. When I first came into the online space, I used to think that these strategies were awful. I watched people use them and I watched them use them in a way that didn't feel good with me. And instead of just thinking, okay, how can I use these strategies in a way that works for me? I decided to completely ignore these strategies and almost tried to do like a 360 and do the complete opposite, and I'm telling you now, it didn't work. These strategies work. They are good strategies and they are strategies that have been working in marketing for years and years and years. Way before the online industry became a thing. For me, the way I look at it is what is the intent behind the strategy and is it a real strategy that you are using or are you just using it to tick a box? So if the intent is good and [00:02:00] they are real strategies that you are using, and you'll see what I mean as I go through them, then for me, I am more than happy to use these strategies in my own launches and when I support other people doing theirs. So let's get started with these strategies. Strategy number one is reciprocity. This is giving value first so people feel compelled to give something back, and this is a strategy that has been used for a really long time. Imagine back in the supermarket where they would give freebies, that's reciprocity. I'm giving you something for free, and now I feel compelled to do something back, which might be to buy the product. When I look at it in terms of big launches, what they tend to do is they tend to give away something at the beginning, so they tend to give away some kind of freebie or something, and also the content that they're giving, giving in a launch experience. Helps with that reciprocity thing. So basically they're giving something away in order for the person who's watching, [00:03:00] taking part in the experience for them to actually go, okay, great. I want to give something back. An example of things that you can do in your launch are, one of the things that I recommend highly is giving away a bonus for people attending live. So this could be something that you have that you don't normally give away. This could be some kind of lead magnet, but I want you to create something or use something. You don't always need to create something brand new. Use something that you can give away. And if I was doing it on a webinar at the beginning of the webinar, I would say to them. If you stay till the end, I have this to give away for you for free, regardless of whether you buy or not. The other thing that you can do, like I said, is give them some quick wins. Give them something really useful in the actual launch experience. Great if you're doing a challenge or a bootcamp because you have more time with them, but give them something that's actually giving them a result and then that will help them with that reciprocity. So strategy number one that you should use in your launches is reciprocity. [00:04:00] Strategy number two is scarcity. This is when you are limiting availability to increased drive. Now this works. We know it does because we know if something's on limited offer or there's only so many available, then we are going to want to buy it. And again, this isn't just a strategy that is unique to the online space. The thing to note here is it has to be real. If you are saying, I've only got 10 spaces available, you only have 10 spaces available. Don't say it's scarce. If it's not scarce, because that's where these strategies start to feel really unpleasant, and people get that and they understand it's super, super quickly. So if you have. Said something scarce and then, oh look, I found another 50 of them. People will start to get that, and what will happen is the next time you try and do that strategy, which like I said, works really well, they won't believe you. So only use scarcity when it's [00:05:00] real and you mean it. So an example of what some of the big launches do, they will have X amount available. So I've seen in recent launches, which is a great tip for you, I've actually seen people giving away physical things. Now, what I mean by that is Amy and one of her latest launches gave away a. Folder that basically covered the entire of her course. Alex Hormozi, one of his things that he gave away in his launch was a whole host of folders that had all these various things in it, and they actually, that was the course. The course wasn't even available online. And there is something to be said that in the online space where. Everything is digital. It's actually really lovely to get something physical for people to actually touch, but what they do is they limit the number of those that are available. So they might be available as a bonus, but only to the first 500,000, whatever it might be. Alex's was actually 25,000. Uh, he has a humongous audience, which makes perfect sense. So what [00:06:00] can you do that increases that scarcity and encourages people to buy? One of the things, as I've already said is you can say, I've only got X amount of places. This works brilliantly. If you're doing a small group coaching program. This doesn't work brilliantly if you are trying to get people in a membership or selling a course because it just doesn't work. And again, that's where we are making those things up and we shouldn't be so. When you genuinely only have X amount of places, then use that and talk about that. The other way that you can do it is you can do some limited bonuses. One of the things I used to offer, which I don't anymore, is I used to offer an hour with me. So if you bought within either the X amount of time or I would offer X amount of places, then basically you would get an hour with me. That isn't something I offer anymore. That's just a personal choice. It's still something that works really well, but that is a scarcity thing. I am only giving an hour call to the first five people who buy if that's what it is. [00:07:00] So use scarcity, but use it wisely and only when it's genuine and real. Number three is urgency. Kind of similar to scarcity, but it's definitely done on a time thing. So urgency uses a time pressure to encourage people to take immediate action. Again, this isn't a strategy that's new to the online space. There are sales, there are various things that big businesses use in order to help us make a decision more quickly. So what do the big launches do? Well, what they often do is they have things like limited time bonuses and bonuses only available while they are doing the launch. So for instance, let's use Alex Hormozi again. 'cause his launch was quite spectacular. He did a. Live bonus only, so you only got the bonus if you bought while you were live on that call. Again, I've seen some of the other big players do exactly the same thing. This works particularly well where you have a big audience and people are likely to buy on the call, [00:08:00] but obviously it helps them make that buying decision there and then because they are getting something additional while they're making that decision and while they're buying on the call. So a couple of things that you can do in your next launch. You can have a limited time bonus. So often throughout a launch, we have various different bonuses, and one of them can be a fast acting bonus. It can be something like, as I've already mentioned, it could be an hour with you. It could be something special that they get. It could be a different session that they get. It could be some. Something that makes it easier for them to achieve the outcome that they're trying to get. But you could do a bonus that's only available for the first 24 hours or 48 hours, depending on your car open window in a membership because memberships are so much harder. You could always do a session and that session could literally happen. A couple of days in. So therefore that is a very genuine urgency thing. So for instance, let's say you were closing the doors to your membership on the [00:09:00] Friday. You could say if you join before the Tuesday, on Wednesday, we are doing a special session that you only get if you join before Wednesday type thing. So. Again, great strategy works really well to help them make a buying decision. And just as a note on this, the reason we do smaller windows of car open is, or sale or offer is because we need people to make a buying decision. If you wait too long, if that. Offer is open all the time. There's no reason for me to hurry up and make a decision. And we all know what it's like we're busy. Life gets in the way. We won't make that decision, and therefore we'll miss the offer. And it's not always down 'cause we don't want to. It's just that we didn't get round to it. Strategy number four is social proof. It's showing others that you can basically do the thing that you are saying you can do. This is one of the most important strategies that you need to be using, especially in what is being coined as the trust [00:10:00] recession, where people are losing faith in things. AI is huge, is getting massive, and we need proof that if we are going to work with someone, that they can actually do the thing they say they can do. 'cause otherwise, why wouldn't we just go to AI and find it? So how can we prove that we are good? We add in that social proof. Now, there are loads of different ways in which you can do this. So for instance. Often with the big launches, which granted, there's not many people who can do this. Their social proof is the sheer numbers that are coming to them. So I think on Alex's launch, he has over a hundred thousand people attend live. Well, that in itself is social proof. I. That obviously for the rest of us being immortals is not going to be something that we can do, but the fact that other people are there is great. So obviously we want as many people to turn up as possible. The key thing here is one of two things that you need to be doing on your launches. You need to be proving that you know what you are talking about and your own social proof of this is what makes me credible. [00:11:00] And again, if you've got a history or proof that you have. Made money or made the changes or whatever it is that you are offering as a transformation, then share that. And secondly, the social proof of other people who have bought. So we need to make sure that we include throughout our entire launch. So what you need to be doing is including case studies throughout the entire thing. Those case studies need to show people that you know what you're talking about and the strategies that you are teaching and the support that you offer actually makes a difference. And actually gives people the results they're after. Another thing that you can do is you can invite current customers, current members, current students to attend your launch experiences. You can ask them if they'll be willing to come and hang out there. Again, I don't pitch them and say, can you say nice things? But I encourage them to come along so that there's real actual people who are part of your community or part of your world that are on your calls. The [00:12:00] last one on this, which is a very organic thing to happen on social proof, but when it happens, it's awesome is when people say on the launch experience that they have bought, that is like one of the best social proofs you can have is when someone actually goes, oh my good. I've just bought, I've just signed up. Whatever it is that brings in a whole load of other psychological things that happens with that, but that is great social proof. Again, we can't orchestrate that. I would never suggest you do. When it happens organically, it's awesome. And the final strategy that I recommend that you are using in your launches is price anchoring. This means that you often show the higher price first before you reveal a lower price. There is something really strong about price anchoring that psychologically makes us go. Wow, that is great value. Again, this is not new to the online space. You know what it's like when you go and you look at a sale or you're buying some clothes and it has the price [00:13:00] crossed out and then it gave, gives you the sale price. So that's price anchoring because you are going, that should be worth this amount of money. So in my head, I'm viewing it...

The Open House Strategy: A Smarter Way to Sell Your Membership

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I walk you through the Open House Strategy — how to use it to effectively boost your membership enrolments by giving prospects an experience of your membership rather than just a “free trial”. I explain how this differs from typical free trials, how you implement it, why it works and what you need in place for it to succeed. Then I guide you to the next step: a quiz to check if you’re ready to scale your online business.

Key Take-away

Open House ≠ Free Trial
- With the Open House you invite prospectsinto your membership community for a set periodinstead—live calls + interaction with current members—so they experience the value of community and live engagement.
Showcase Live Interaction + Community
- Getting prospects into your current member space, seeing live calls, meeting or observing members, gives them proof of what your membership actually looks like.
- This builds trust, reduces hesitation and helps them decide if “I want to belong to this”.
Use Scarcity + Time Window
- The open house is for alimited timeframe(eg. 5 days, a week) and “doors” close, which creates urgency and makes the experience feel special.
- Because they step in, feel part of the group, see members and THEN get asked: “Would you like to stay?” — that momentum helps conversion.
Prerequisites for Success
- You needexisting memberswho are already active and visible in the community. Without them, the open house experience will feel thin.
- You need awarm audience—people who know you, trust you, or have had some interaction with you. If your audience is totally cold, you’ll need to warm them up first.
- Your membership offering must be clear: what happens during the open house, what the “normal” membership looks like afterwards. Don’t mis-represent or give away unrealistic value.
Implementation Tips & Considerations
- Decide on the timeframe: eg. 5-7 days during which you will open the doors.
- Plan your live events: a coaching call, Q&A, mindset/training session, community interaction — these mirror your everyday membership.
- During that period let the prospects see real members in action, let them ask questions, let them experience the vibe.
- At the end ask: “Would you like to stay as a member?” and offer the conversion path clearly.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, Ep 427

Transcript

If you have a membership that you love, but yet you know how difficult it is to actually get people in. When they join, they love it and they barely leave, but actually getting them through the door can be difficult. And maybe you've tried webinars and free trials and challenges and other things like that and it just hasn't converted for you. Well, in today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you one of my most effective strategies. Fulfilling your membership, which feels so much easier than a normal launch and actually uses some really clever psychological and marketing tactics in order to get people to come and experience what your membership is all about. I'm Teresa Heath Wareing and I have worked in the online space for the past eight to nine years, and I've been in marketing over 20 years. I have worked with hundreds of course creators, membership owners to help them grow their online business in a way that fits with them and the life that they lead.[00:01:00] And over that time, I have used every strategy known to man in terms of launching and growing your online business. And the same goes for memberships, including my own membership. I have worked with hundreds of membership owners helping them find a much more effective way in which to grow their membership. Because we all know that when we create a membership, it sounds awesome. You are creating the same content every month. You are basically just bringing more people in, and you are getting that recurring revenue, which is why memberships are so attractive, and you know that the value that you are giving inside your membership is brilliant, but you're a little bit confused as to why more people aren't understanding that and why they're not getting it. Well, the world of online has changed massively in the last few years. That is also true for memberships and membership owners, which is why my open house strategy works so effectively. And that's what I'm gonna be sharing with you today. I'm going to be [00:02:00] sharing with you today what the open house strategy is, why it works so effectively, and some of the key considerations that you need to take into account if you are going to do the open house strategy for your membership. So let me start by sharing what an open house strategy is. And the first thing I need to say. It's not a free trial. Often when people hear open house, they think, well, I'm just giving them a free trial, and I do that anyway. This is very different from what you might normally do as a free trial. A free trial is normally something that is done often through Evergreen, and it's normally you giving them a very low cost first month or a free first month. What it's not doing is it's not creating that experience around that offer. And as you know, when I talk about launching, what I really mean is a marketing campaign. And what I mean by that is a, an experience. We are creating some kind of experience in order to get people to find out about our offer and actually buy the thing that we're [00:03:00] selling. So an open house is not a free trial. It's very different. What an open house is. You are opening up your membership for a set amount of time. Normally a week, maybe eight days, where you are inviting people to come in and join you in the membership and act as if they are in the membership for that amount of time. During that time, you are giving them access to every live call that you normally do. So for instance, I used to have a membership. My business looks a bit different now and I have a closed membership. So the only way you can be in what we call T's world is if you come through Grow Launch Sell, my program. But when I had an open membership. I basically had open cart all the time, and it was really difficult to create those kind of urgency and things, and the open house strategy worked brilliantly for that. So what would happen is I would promote that I was doing an open house, [00:04:00] and I would invite people to come and join the membership for a set amount of time. During that time, I would deliver every live call that I normally deliver over the period of a month. So for instance, if you are doing one live call a week. Let's say, so for me, in my world, I do two coaching calls a month. I do a mindset call. I do an implementation session. I used to do things like networking, and we used to have a content hour. What I would do is, instead of having that over the entire month, I would put all that in one week. Every single day we would have some kind of activity that we would do in the membership, and the idea is that they come along in the membership. With your members and they get to experience what it's really like. They join your community. Now, when I had my membership in its original form, it was in Facebook, so I would allow them into the Facebook community where they get to mingle and see who else is in there. The key thing [00:05:00] about this is they don't get access to your vault. On a free trial, what will often happen is when I say vault, I mean all of the training, all of the past calls, anything that you have got sat in your membership, they don't get access to that. That is for when they join and for paying members, the whole point is for them to come and experience the community, experience the live calls, get to know you, get to know who's in there. Actually, in a recent podcast episode I did, I talked about the fact that I spoke at Retain, which is a conference here in the uk, run by the membership geeks, and it was just all about memberships. And Mike, who is head of the membership geeks, he basically talked about how the online space is changing, but the membership world is changing and content is not what we lead with anymore from a membership point of view. Because in a world of ai, we are awash with content. The thing that we have to lead with [00:06:00] is community and the people around them. And actually this is where the open house comes into its own, because that's what we are focusing on. We're allowing people to come into the community, come into the membership and see what it's like. And the key bit about this is they get to mix with the current members. Your current members are your biggest and best advocate of your membership. This works really well. Obviously if you have an existing membership, it doesn't work very well if you don't, but basically, they are the people who love what you do because they're in your membership. So the more that you can get them to mix with your current members, the better. So let's talk about why the open house strategy works. The first thing that it does is it gives them a true understanding of what it is you actually do. They are getting to experience it firsthand. They are coming in, they are attending full, proper calls. This isn't like a challenge. This isn't like a bootcamp. This is a, if I do a [00:07:00] coaching call, come and sit on one of my coaching calls and see what I do. If I'm running a mindset session, a workshop, come and take part in that workshop. So it's an actual chance for them to come and take part. So they are getting a full experience of what it's like to be in your world. The way in which we market the open house sometimes can make it feel very exclusive. I often would talk about, it's almost like inviting them around my house. It's almost like saying to them. Come on in, come and see what it's like. These doors are normally closed. You can't normally see this. You can't normally attend a coaching call, but I'm allowing you to come and join me for this short amount of time for you to see what it's like so you can make it sound super, super exclusive. Another great thing about the open house is that it's qualified leads, and what I mean by that is when we do something like a challenge or a bootcamp. We often focus on a transformation. So someone joins your webinar or your [00:08:00] bootcamp or your challenge because you are offering them a transformation during that time that they're with you. So for instance, you might come to my bootcamp 'cause I'm teaching you the five things that you need to have in place to have a really successful launch. Now what I'm not necessarily doing is saying to them. And you are going to find out what it's like to work with me and potentially buy my stuff. Now we all know 'cause we're not stupid. That basically that is what a launch is about. However, when you are doing an open house, you are specifically marketing it as you get to come and see behind the scenes. If you've ever been curious what my membership is like then. Come and see behind the scenes and come and find out what the membership is like. So you are having much more qualified leads coming in than if you did any other type of launch experience. The other brilliant thing about an open house, as I said, when I had my membership, I had a completely open [00:09:00] cart all the time. And it made it really difficult to create that fomo, to create that scarcity, to create that deadline because there wasn't one. Because if someone wanted to join today, they could. If they wanted to join in three weeks time, they could. If they wanted to join in three months time, they could. Now, whether you have an open or closed cart, what is so good about the open house strategy is that it gives you a deadline regardless. So what happens is, as I've mentioned, you bring them into your membership and into your community for a set amount of time where they get to experience it, they get to join all the calls, and then what you do, so let's say I finished my open house on a Friday. I would give them until the Tuesday midnight, so end of Tuesday to decide whether they wanted to stay. And if they didn't come Wednesday morning, we would remove them from the group. That gave such a good deadline when I didn't have one. I didn't have a closed cart, I didn't have [00:10:00] something. And often bonuses are really tricky for memberships because as membership owners, we want to do all the things and we want to give them everything, which makes bonuses very difficult. But when you do an open house. You have that deadline of we are removing you from the community. There's also something very powerful about the psychology behind when someone has something, they don't want to give it up. So when you give someone something, they feel like it belongs to them already. When you say, I'll have it back, please, then that creates a bit of dissonance and basically means they don't want to give it up. So giving them an experience of something, which is why people do free trials. Giving them an experience, something makes them want to hold onto it even longer. And like I said, the best thing about the open house is they are mixing with your current members. You are giving your current members all those extra calls. So all they're doing is getting bonus calls that they wouldn't ordinarily get. Because as a side note, I still do those calls over the [00:11:00] rest of the month. It's not like I say to my members, all our calls are gonna be in one week and there's nothing for the rest of the month. I'm just doing extras during the open house week. The other reason it works so well is you don't have to create anything new. You basically show up and do the thing that you are doing every single month in your own membership. Yes, you're doing it in a shorter space of time, but you are not having to come up with a particular challenge. You're not having to rerecord new lessons. You are literally just showing up and doing the things that you are doing. So the open house strategy is a really powerful one. Okay, and then finally, there's a few things to note. If you are doing an open house strategy. The first thing to know is you are going to get less signups. Let's say you've done webinars in the past, and let's say you are getting a hundred people sign up to your webinar. I would fully expect that to drop to maybe 50 or 30 people just because these are super warm, super qualified, because you are not giving them a transformation first. You are [00:12:00] inviting them in to come and take part in your membership and therefore they really need to be interested in joining your membership. But even though it's less numbers, your conversion rate is going to be much higher. In a previous video, which we will, um, put in the notes in the comments below. In a previous video, I take you through the numbers that you can expect to get when you are doing some kind of launch experience or promoting your online offer. Normally it's between one and 8% of the people who opted into that launch experience. So the people who signed up for the webinar or the challenge, the open house between 1 and 8%. When I last ran my open house, I got it in at 35%, which is huge, but my numbers going into it were much smaller, but my conversion was much, much higher. A couple of other things to know you need a warmer audience. Now, it doesn't have to be solely a warm audience, but it really helps if they are a warm audience and they know that you [00:13:00] have a membership and they've inquired about it before or they've thought about it before. It really helps if you have a warmer audience. And the other thing that is crucial for an open house, you need existing members because we need those members who are raving fans of ours to welcome them into the open house, to basically be there. Now. As a quick side note, we're not instructing our members to do anything particular. We're just asking them to be who they are, but because they're in our membership, they obviously like what we do. So it's not like we're saying, right. When everyone comes in, you need to say how amazing I am. Not at all. You're just going to let them hang out with them, and because they're in your membership, by default, they like your membership. So you need those existing members and hopefully you've got some raving fans in there who think you're amazing. And as I mentioned previously, if you have an open cart all the time for your membership, this is a great strategy to use because it gives you that element of [00:14:00] deadlines, scarcity, because. You are taking it back off them because you're saying you need to make a decision. And one final note, when it comes to the selling, for me, this is one of the easiest things for me to do, the sales side of it, because basically what I'm doing...

How to Choose the Right Launch Strategy for Your Offer

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I dive into why having a well-planned launch is essential when I’m rolling out an online product or service. I explain how a launch isn’t just “putting something live,” but is, in fact, a marketing campaign in itself—one that must align the experience of the launch with what I’m selling. I introduce the Audience-Offer Launch Matrix, which helps me decide the right type of launch based on two core variables: how “warm” my audience is and how high the cost of my offer is. Then I walk through different launch methods (webinars, bootcamps, challenges, in-person events) and guide you on how to pick the right method to maximise sales.

Key Takeaways

A launch is a campaign, not just turning something on. It requires planning, buildup, and alignment with the offer.
The Audience-Offer Launch Matrix is a strategic tool:
- If my audience is warm (they know and trust me) and the offer cost is low → I might pick a lighter launch (e.g., challenge, short webinar).
- If my audience is cold and/or the offer cost is high → I’ll need a heavier launch (full webinar series, live event, extended nurture).
I must choose the launch method based on audience warmth + offer cost/value. The method matters as much as the message.
Common pitfalls: launching too soon (audience not ready), choosing a launch format that doesn’t match the offer, skipping the “warm-up” phase, neglecting follow-up.
I need to think about the experience my audience will have during the launch: from first contact → building interest → live/active event → offer → follow-through.
After the launch, I must review performance, capture learning, and refine for next time.

🛠 Practical Actions I Will Take (And You Should Too)

Map my audience: assess how well my audience knows and trusts me (warm vs cold).
Define my offer: determine the cost, the value I’m delivering, and the level of commitment required.
Use the Matrix: locate my audience-offer combination in the matrix and choose a launch format accordingly.
Design the experience: plan the phases (pre-launch content, main event, open cart, close).
Select the method: pick webinar, challenge, bootcamp, live event—whatever aligns with my quadrant.
Prepare content and communications: build hype, deliver value, make the offer compelling, follow up strongly.
Execute and review: launch the campaign, track my conversions, gather insights for next time.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, Take the Assessment Now

Transcript

If you've done a launch that you thought went brilliantly only to get to the sales bit and have no one actually buy, then I might have the answer as to why that might be. We are going to be looking at what you need to consider when you are launching to make sure that that launch is the perfect thing you need in order to actually sell the product or service you're going to sell at the end. In this episode, we are going to be looking at. Why you actually need to launch in the first place. And what do I mean by the term launch? And then I have put together a audience offer and I've put together an offer audience launch matrix, which is going to give you a really good, simple plan that you can follow as to how to know what type of launch to do for the audience that you've got and the offer that you've got. But let's get started by talking about why we actually have to launch in the first place. And what do I mean by that? Well, when I say [00:01:00] launching, lots of people think, I mean, putting an offright to the world for the first time, but in the online space, and normally in marketing, that's was what it would be, but in the online space, that's not the case. We use the term launch basically for a marketing campaign. When you have an online offer, so a course, a membership, a coaching program, something that you are delivering online, often what happens is we need some kind of activity around that thing in order to sell it. We would love to think that we create it, we put it up on our website, and it just gets sold every single day. And it's not that that never happens, it can, but that actually takes a lot of strategic marketing stuff anyway. But normally the easiest and simplest way that we can actually get people to buy the thing that we are selling is by creating a launch. And by launch we mean a marketing campaign. And when I talk about launches, I talk about launch [00:02:00] experiences. And basically this is the strategy, the campaign that you use to actually sell the thing. So the very first thing is you need to do one of these things. Okay, creating an offer, sending out a couple of emails, might have cut it back in 20 19, 20 20, but that doesn't cut it anymore. We really need to create some experience and some interest around launching the thing that we are offering. And the truth is there are many different ways that we can launch a product or service online. Lots of different ways that I talk about including webinars slash masterclasses. They're the same thing. Paid workshops. You could do things like boot camps and challenges, open house experiences. There is lots of different ways in which you can actually launch your online offer. And I, when I say launch, I don't mean for the first time, I just mean sell your online offer. One of the things I see, or one of the mistakes I see when [00:03:00] people are doing a launch for their offer, or they are using this experience to sell their online offer, is they are just seeing it as a standalone thing. They're not necessarily putting the two things together. Let me explain. Often I will say to someone, you need a launch experience to help launch your offer or to sell your offer. And they'll think, great. I'll do a webinar. And then they think, what could I do a webinar about? And they're rather than actually thinking about. How is this fitting in with the thing that they're selling? They're just going through the motions of having a webinar or a math class or a challenge. They're not necessarily thinking about, what am I trying to sell? So start with the end in mind. What is the actual thing you're trying to sell and that you are going to use this launch experience to sell it? And then how can we make the launch experience a natural? Prerequisite to the thing you are selling. [00:04:00] So when someone's in the launch experience, how can that feel like the perfect first step or natural step to your product and service? A couple of great examples are Amy Porterfield. She sells Digital Course Academy, which is a big course all about how to do online courses. And her bootcamp, her launch experience is a bootcamp called. Course confidence or course confidence. And what this does is it gets you confident with the idea of you can even do a course, it gets you in the mindset of what might that course look like? How might I sell that course? It gets you even considering that you want to do a course. So when someone's gone through the bootcamp and they've gone. Is great. I now have a concept for course, and I have confidence that I can sell a course. The next natural step is to buy Amy's Digital Course Academy, which tells them all the various steps on how to do the course. Jenna [00:05:00] Kutcher's also launching at the point, I'm recording this and she's currently doing a webinar all about the, you know, 1 0 1 of podcasting and basically why someone wants to start a podcast and then the. Product that she's going to be selling off the back of it is her podcasting course, which helps you do all the things You can see from both those examples. Their launch experience was the perfect first step or was the perfect prerequisite thing in order to take you to your actual, to the product and service that they were offering. So I really want you to give yourself more time when you're thinking about the launch experience. I really need you to give yourself more time when you are thinking about that launch experience, and rather than just seeing it as something that you do to create some interest and get people to come and sit in front of you and see what you do, it really has to be that your offer is the natural next step or.[00:06:00] The launch experience is the perfect prerequisite to the thing that you are selling that really needs to fit hand in hand, which is another great reason why when you get to the offer and when you get to sell, it doesn't feel like a bait and switch. It doesn't feel like, God, this feels horrible. It feels like, okay, this is the next natural step I've delivered on what I've said I'm going to do over here. And if you want more or you want to take the next step, come and join me in the program. Okay. Let's talk about the next reason why people possibly aren't buying, and let me introduce to you my offer Audience Launch Matrix. What happens is when we launch, there are lots of different ways that we can do it. As I've talked about, we could do a webinar that's an hour long. We could do a five day challenge, we could do a bootcamp that stretches over a couple of weeks. There are lots of different ways to launch. So how do you know? What's the best way to launch? That's going to get you the maximum [00:07:00] output IE, the most sales at the end. And honestly, that launch experience, that marketing campaign has a lot to do with the success of your sales. If you pick the wrong one, you are either. Putting way too much work in when you don't need to and will exhaust yourself, or you are creating something that will never sell your offer because the fit is all completely wrong. Now, in order to look at this matrix, we need to look at two things of your, uh, your current business. We need to understand how warm your current audience are, and we need to understand the price of your offer. So if you don't know those two things, then that might be the first place to start. But let's assume we know the price of your offer and how warm your audience are. The reason we need to know these two things is 'cause it's really going to help us understand how much effort we need to put into launch. In this matrix we are looking at, [00:08:00] on one axis, we are looking at Lowcost offers to high cost offers, and on the other side we are looking at cold audiences to warm audiences. Now I know what you're going to ask me. What makes a low cost offer and what's a high cost offer? Well, this is never, anything I do is never as straightforward as just going, this is the answer. That's been the main problem with the online space for all these years is that so many experts have come up here and gone. This is the answer to your dreams and there is no single one straight thing. Inevitably, I need to have a conversation with someone. But to give you a kind of idea, I would say a low cost offer is anything around. A hundred pounds, a hundred dollars. Middle cost might be 5, 6, 700, and then higher cost might be 2000, 3000, 5,000. So that gives you a kind of vague idea. And then a warm audience. It's not really as easy as saying, this is what a warm audience looks like. You know how warm your audience is. Do they [00:09:00] know who you are? Have you got lots of people interacting with? Do you get good engagement on your social media? Are you getting a good open rate and click rate on your emails? And again, that might look very different for different business owners. So someone who has a teeny tiny audience, they might be super warm and the open rates might be really high, and the engagement might be really high, and therefore we might say they have a warm audience. Someone might have a much lower engagement rate, but a bigger audience. But actually that might still be warm for them and their industry and the type of thing they do. Like I said, that's not as easy as an exact science. Neither of them are, but. How warm are the people that are in your world? Have you been doing this a long time? Do people know what you're talking about? As in for me, they know that I talk about launching an online businesses, so if they want help in that, they come and find me. Okay, so let's say we have a vague idea of how warm our audience is. Again, if [00:10:00] you've just started the business, it's gonna be a cold audience. If you've just started your email list, they're going to be cold. We have an idea of how warm our audience is from cold to warm, and then we have an idea of a cost of our product from low cost to high cost in this matrix. As you can see, and if you are listening to this, then you might wanna head over to YouTube and take a look. We basically have different launch experience that fit really well with these different ones. So I'm gonna talk you through it in case you're not seeing it on screen. At low cost and low and cold audiences, you can get away with doing something like a webinar. Now with a webinar or a masterclass or an evergreen funnel, the reason you can get away with a cold audience is because it's low cost. If you are trying to sell something really high cost to a cold audience, you are not going to be able to just give them a one hour webinar and that be the answer and that fix it and that sell it. That isn't going to happen [00:11:00] because as we all know, we need to build that know, like, and trust factor. And the higher the cost, the higher we need to build that trust, the higher we need People in our world that go, you definitely do know what you're talking about and I can trust that you're going to deliver. However, when it's lower cost, we don't need to build that quite as high and quite as much. So bottom corner, if you've got a low cost offer and you have a cold audience, then doing something like a webinar or an evergreen funnel could work really well for you. Then let's go to the other extreme. Let's say you are doing something that is high cost and you have a warm audience, something like a bootcamp, a challenge. Or something where like a paid workshop would work really well. So these are the things that I tend to use. I have a warmer audience now, even if they're not super, super warm. If you are known for the thing and they've only just come into your world, but they can [00:12:00] see that you have lots of experience, you've spoken in lots of places, you are known for this, then that helps warm them, warm them up quicker. But for me, when I'm doing a challenge or a boot camp. Someone needs to spend some time with me in order to go, okay, we can definitely trust her. She knows what she's talking about, and therefore we are willing to pay the investment of the higher thing. The chances of me selling my program on a webinar, even with a warm audience, might be harder. They need a bit more convincing. So like I said, in the bottom left hand corner, we've got. The webinar for low cost offers and cold audiences, and in the top corner for warm audiences and high cost. We have got things like boot camps and challenges. So now let's look at the other two boxes. So the first box is a warm audience and a low cost offer. Well, technically at this point you could [00:13:00] do a webinar that would be easy, that would work really well. But one of the things that often comes up in this box that I've shared in this box is things like mini workshops because you don't need to spend quite so long on it. Or things like an open house for a membership, when you have a membership, when you have a warm audience and it's a low cost ish offer 'cause it's a membership. Something like an open high can work really, really well because you need a warm audience to be at the point where they're just making the decision to join your membership or not. Then in the other corner, in the cold and high cost, what do we put in there? Well, what we need to do here is we have a cold audience that don't know, like and trust us, and we have a high cost product that requires a high trust in order for someone to hand over the money. So we are going to have to work a whole lot harder in this space. You could again put things like challenges and [00:14:00] boot camps into that space. There are some cold audiences that would work depending on the length of time. But one of the things I would suggest, or a couple of options you've got here is either a much longer. Bootcamp or challenge. So sometimes people do things like 30 days or 90 days because you are really building up that trust and that know, like, and trust factor at that point. Or the other thing that you could do is you could put on something like a summit. Or an in-person event. Now, I know I don't talk a lot about in-person events alongside online businesses, but they can work really well, especially when you need to build that trust factor quickly. Things like summits, again, you are bringing a cold audience, but because you are running the summit. You are running a multi-day online event like I did a couple of years back. You are building that trust factor really quickly and they're spending a big chunk of time with you during the summit. They're seeing your face a lot. They're seeing the other experts that you are [00:15:00] bringing in, and that can effectively really help fast forward that know, like, and trust factor. So let's recap that whole matrix. Now, if you have a low cost offer and a cold audience. The best thing that you can do is a webinar or a masterclass. If you have a high cost offer and...

How to Choose the Right Launch Strategy for Your Offer

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Key Takeaways

A launch is a campaign, not just turning something on. It requires planning, buildup, and alignment with the offer.
The Audience-Offer Launch Matrix is a strategic tool:
- If my audience is warm (they know and trust me) and the offer cost is low → I might pick a lighter launch (e.g., challenge, short webinar).
- If my audience is cold and/or the offer cost is high → I’ll need a heavier launch (full webinar series, live event, extended nurture).
I must choose the launch method based on audience warmth + offer cost/value. The method matters as much as the message.
Common pitfalls: launching too soon (audience not ready), choosing a launch format that doesn’t match the offer, skipping the “warm-up” phase, neglecting follow-up.
I need to think about the experience my audience will have during the launch: from first contact → building interest → live/active event → offer → follow-through.
After the launch, I must review performance, capture learning, and refine for next time.

🛠 Practical Actions I Will Take (And You Should Too)

Map my audience: assess how well my audience knows and trusts me (warm vs cold).
Define my offer: determine the cost, the value I’m delivering, and the level of commitment required.
Use the Matrix: locate my audience-offer combination in the matrix and choose a launch format accordingly.
Design the experience: plan the phases (pre-launch content, main event, open cart, close).
Select the method: pick webinar, challenge, bootcamp, live event—whatever aligns with my quadrant.
Prepare content and communications: build hype, deliver value, make the offer compelling, follow up strongly.
Execute and review: launch the campaign, track my conversions, gather insights for next time.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube, Take the Assessment Now

Transcript

If you've done a launch that you thought went brilliantly only to get to the sales bit and have no one actually buy, then I might have the answer as to why that might be. We are going to be looking at what you need to consider when you are launching to make sure that that launch is the perfect thing you need in order to actually sell the product or service you're going to sell at the end. In this episode, we are going to be looking at. Why you actually need to launch in the first place. And what do I mean by the term launch? And then I have put together a audience offer and I've put together an offer audience launch matrix, which is going to give you a really good, simple plan that you can follow as to how to know what type of launch to do for the audience that you've got and the offer that you've got. But let's get started by talking about why we actually have to launch in the first place. And what do I mean by that? Well, when I say [00:01:00] launching, lots of people think, I mean, putting an offright to the world for the first time, but in the online space, and normally in marketing, that's was what it would be, but in the online space, that's not the case. We use the term launch basically for a marketing campaign. When you have an online offer, so a course, a membership, a coaching program, something that you are delivering online, often what happens is we need some kind of activity around that thing in order to sell it. We would love to think that we create it, we put it up on our website, and it just gets sold every single day. And it's not that that never happens, it can, but that actually takes a lot of strategic marketing stuff anyway. But normally the easiest and simplest way that we can actually get people to buy the thing that we are selling is by creating a launch. And by launch we mean a marketing campaign. And when I talk about launches, I talk about launch [00:02:00] experiences. And basically this is the strategy, the campaign that you use to actually sell the thing. So the very first thing is you need to do one of these things. Okay, creating an offer, sending out a couple of emails, might have cut it back in 20 19, 20 20, but that doesn't cut it anymore. We really need to create some experience and some interest around launching the thing that we are offering. And the truth is there are many different ways that we can launch a product or service online. Lots of different ways that I talk about including webinars slash masterclasses. They're the same thing. Paid workshops. You could do things like boot camps and challenges, open house experiences. There is lots of different ways in which you can actually launch your online offer. And I, when I say launch, I don't mean for the first time, I just mean sell your online offer. One of the things I see, or one of the mistakes I see when [00:03:00] people are doing a launch for their offer, or they are using this experience to sell their online offer, is they are just seeing it as a standalone thing. They're not necessarily putting the two things together. Let me explain. Often I will say to someone, you need a launch experience to help launch your offer or to sell your offer. And they'll think, great. I'll do a webinar. And then they think, what could I do a webinar about? And they're rather than actually thinking about. How is this fitting in with the thing that they're selling? They're just going through the motions of having a webinar or a math class or a challenge. They're not necessarily thinking about, what am I trying to sell? So start with the end in mind. What is the actual thing you're trying to sell and that you are going to use this launch experience to sell it? And then how can we make the launch experience a natural? Prerequisite to the thing you are selling. [00:04:00] So when someone's in the launch experience, how can that feel like the perfect first step or natural step to your product and service? A couple of great examples are Amy Porterfield. She sells Digital Course Academy, which is a big course all about how to do online courses. And her bootcamp, her launch experience is a bootcamp called. Course confidence or course confidence. And what this does is it gets you confident with the idea of you can even do a course, it gets you in the mindset of what might that course look like? How might I sell that course? It gets you even considering that you want to do a course. So when someone's gone through the bootcamp and they've gone. Is great. I now have a concept for course, and I have confidence that I can sell a course. The next natural step is to buy Amy's Digital Course Academy, which tells them all the various steps on how to do the course. Jenna [00:05:00] Kutcher's also launching at the point, I'm recording this and she's currently doing a webinar all about the, you know, 1 0 1 of podcasting and basically why someone wants to start a podcast and then the. Product that she's going to be selling off the back of it is her podcasting course, which helps you do all the things You can see from both those examples. Their launch experience was the perfect first step or was the perfect prerequisite thing in order to take you to your actual, to the product and service that they were offering. So I really want you to give yourself more time when you're thinking about the launch experience. I really need you to give yourself more time when you are thinking about that launch experience, and rather than just seeing it as something that you do to create some interest and get people to come and sit in front of you and see what you do, it really has to be that your offer is the natural next step or.[00:06:00] The launch experience is the perfect prerequisite to the thing that you are selling that really needs to fit hand in hand, which is another great reason why when you get to the offer and when you get to sell, it doesn't feel like a bait and switch. It doesn't feel like, God, this feels horrible. It feels like, okay, this is the next natural step I've delivered on what I've said I'm going to do over here. And if you want more or you want to take the next step, come and join me in the program. Okay. Let's talk about the next reason why people possibly aren't buying, and let me introduce to you my offer Audience Launch Matrix. What happens is when we launch, there are lots of different ways that we can do it. As I've talked about, we could do a webinar that's an hour long. We could do a five day challenge, we could do a bootcamp that stretches over a couple of weeks. There are lots of different ways to launch. So how do you know? What's the best way to launch? That's going to get you the maximum [00:07:00] output IE, the most sales at the end. And honestly, that launch experience, that marketing campaign has a lot to do with the success of your sales. If you pick the wrong one, you are either. Putting way too much work in when you don't need to and will exhaust yourself, or you are creating something that will never sell your offer because the fit is all completely wrong. Now, in order to look at this matrix, we need to look at two things of your, uh, your current business. We need to understand how warm your current audience are, and we need to understand the price of your offer. So if you don't know those two things, then that might be the first place to start. But let's assume we know the price of your offer and how warm your audience are. The reason we need to know these two things is 'cause it's really going to help us understand how much effort we need to put into launch. In this matrix we are looking at, [00:08:00] on one axis, we are looking at Lowcost offers to high cost offers, and on the other side we are looking at cold audiences to warm audiences. Now I know what you're going to ask me. What makes a low cost offer and what's a high cost offer? Well, this is never, anything I do is never as straightforward as just going, this is the answer. That's been the main problem with the online space for all these years is that so many experts have come up here and gone. This is the answer to your dreams and there is no single one straight thing. Inevitably, I need to have a conversation with someone. But to give you a kind of idea, I would say a low cost offer is anything around. A hundred pounds, a hundred dollars. Middle cost might be 5, 6, 700, and then higher cost might be 2000, 3000, 5,000. So that gives you a kind of vague idea. And then a warm audience. It's not really as easy as saying, this is what a warm audience looks like. You know how warm your audience is. Do they [00:09:00] know who you are? Have you got lots of people interacting with? Do you get good engagement on your social media? Are you getting a good open rate and click rate on your emails? And again, that might look very different for different business owners. So someone who has a teeny tiny audience, they might be super warm and the open rates might be really high, and the engagement might be really high, and therefore we might say they have a warm audience. Someone might have a much lower engagement rate, but a bigger audience. But actually that might still be warm for them and their industry and the type of thing they do. Like I said, that's not as easy as an exact science. Neither of them are, but. How warm are the people that are in your world? Have you been doing this a long time? Do people know what you're talking about? As in for me, they know that I talk about launching an online businesses, so if they want help in that, they come and find me. Okay, so let's say we have a vague idea of how warm our audience is. Again, if [00:10:00] you've just started the business, it's gonna be a cold audience. If you've just started your email list, they're going to be cold. We have an idea of how warm our audience is from cold to warm, and then we have an idea of a cost of our product from low cost to high cost in this matrix. As you can see, and if you are listening to this, then you might wanna head over to YouTube and take a look. We basically have different launch experience that fit really well with these different ones. So I'm gonna talk you through it in case you're not seeing it on screen. At low cost and low and cold audiences, you can get away with doing something like a webinar. Now with a webinar or a masterclass or an evergreen funnel, the reason you can get away with a cold audience is because it's low cost. If you are trying to sell something really high cost to a cold audience, you are not going to be able to just give them a one hour webinar and that be the answer and that fix it and that sell it. That isn't going to happen [00:11:00] because as we all know, we need to build that know, like, and trust factor. And the higher the cost, the higher we need to build that trust, the higher we need People in our world that go, you definitely do know what you're talking about and I can trust that you're going to deliver. However, when it's lower cost, we don't need to build that quite as high and quite as much. So bottom corner, if you've got a low cost offer and you have a cold audience, then doing something like a webinar or an evergreen funnel could work really well for you. Then let's go to the other extreme. Let's say you are doing something that is high cost and you have a warm audience, something like a bootcamp, a challenge. Or something where like a paid workshop would work really well. So these are the things that I tend to use. I have a warmer audience now, even if they're not super, super warm. If you are known for the thing and they've only just come into your world, but they can [00:12:00] see that you have lots of experience, you've spoken in lots of places, you are known for this, then that helps warm them, warm them up quicker. But for me, when I'm doing a challenge or a boot camp. Someone needs to spend some time with me in order to go, okay, we can definitely trust her. She knows what she's talking about, and therefore we are willing to pay the investment of the higher thing. The chances of me selling my program on a webinar, even with a warm audience, might be harder. They need a bit more convincing. So like I said, in the bottom left hand corner, we've got. The webinar for low cost offers and cold audiences, and in the top corner for warm audiences and high cost. We have got things like boot camps and challenges. So now let's look at the other two boxes. So the first box is a warm audience and a low cost offer. Well, technically at this point you could [00:13:00] do a webinar that would be easy, that would work really well. But one of the things that often comes up in this box that I've shared in this box is things like mini workshops because you don't need to spend quite so long on it. Or things like an open house for a membership, when you have a membership, when you have a warm audience and it's a low cost ish offer 'cause it's a membership. Something like an open house can work really, really well because you need a warm audience to be at the point where they're just making the decision to join your membership or not. Then in the other corner, in the cold and high cost, what do we put in there? Well, what we need to do here is we have a cold audience that don't know, like and trust us, and we have a high cost product that requires a high trust in order for someone to hand over the money. So we are going to have to work a whole lot harder in this space. You could again put things like challenges and [00:14:00] boot camps into that space. There are some cold audiences that would work depending on the length of time. But one of the things I would suggest, or a couple of options you've got here is either a much longer. Bootcamp or challenge. So sometimes people do things like 30 days or 90 days because you are really building up that trust and that know, like, and trust factor at that point. Or the other thing that you could do is you could put on something like a summit. Or an in-person event. Now, I know I don't talk a lot about in-person events alongside online businesses, but they can work really well, especially when you need to build that trust factor quickly. Things like summits, again, you are bringing a cold audience, but because you are running the summit. You are running a multi-day online event like I did a couple of years back. You are building that trust factor really quickly and they're spending a big chunk of time with you during the summit. They're seeing your face a lot. They're seeing the other experts that you are [00:15:00] bringing in, and that can effectively really help fast forward that know, like, and trust factor. So let's recap that whole matrix. Now, if you have a low cost offer and a cold audience. The best thing that you can do is a webinar or a masterclass. If you have a high cost offer and a warm audience, then something like a bootcamp or a challenge would work really, really well for you. If you have a low cost offer and...

Quick Update: What’s Next for the Podcast & Me

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this very short episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on something new and exciting I’m launching my YouTube channel! I share why now felt like the right time to add YouTube into my content strategy, what’s been holding me back until now, and how I’m approaching it differently this time. You’ll also get a sneak peek at the types of videos I’ll be creating from launch strategies and list-building to mindset and behind-the-scenes business insights.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Guru Conference Higher Voltage code: TERESAFUCKINGHW Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. If this is the first episode you've ever stumbled across, I'm gonna say this probably isn't the one you want to listen to because this episode is gonna be a little bit different, only because there was never an intention to have an episode that doesn't make sense. I wasn't meant to be doing this episode. There was meant to be something else in its place, and I had to do something last minute. Also to make things, I guess different. I was gonna say worse, but maybe not worse, is that my editor isn't around, so I am having to just literally record this live and this is pretty much going up as I'm recording it. The other thing that's making this a little bit unusual or a little bit different is, I don't know whether you follow me on Instagram, but if you do, you might have seen that I now have a puppy a as I record this, she is a 10 week old golden retriever and she's currently in her pen [00:01:00] thing, playpen crate thing next to me and potentially is gonna make some noise as I am recording this and I already has made some noise, so this probably, like I said, if you are brand new to the podcast, this is probably not the best episode. I would go back and like listen to any of the others. This one probably isn't gonna be as polished. So why wasn't I planning on doing an episode this week? I have done 426. This is 426 episodes of the podcast. So why was I not having one this week? Well, I was, but it wasn't meant to be as it is. Let me explain. I have decided that I am going to be starting YouTube. If you are a long-term listener, you will know that I have said this for a little while and it's taken its sweet time to get started. But I wanted to just briefly talk about today why I am gonna start YouTube, what's been holding me back and, and what is going to be coming on the channel. And the reason there [00:02:00] wasn't meant to be this episode here today is because we were meant to have gone live this week. This is entirely my fault. There's no one else I can blame it on. I would love it to, but I just haven't quite got as ahead as I needed to be because we're going to be opening the channel or starting the channel with about four videos. I've recorded, and I'm currently having edited three videos that are actually previous episodes of the podcast, but they're some of my most popular episodes and they are episodes that I felt would work really nicely with YouTube and maybe with a little bit of visuals to go alongside it. So a few things on screen when I'm mentioning figures and that sort of stuff. So I've recorded these three episodes and I have another episode that was meant to be ready and isn't ready, which again, I need to record so that we can start getting ahead and then obviously I'm gonna get really ahead, but. There was lots of things. This is a whole new process, which [00:03:00] is funny 'cause I thought it wouldn't be that much of a bigger process and it's completely different. How you put a podcast out and how you put YouTube out are two very different things. So me and the team are having to kind of get our head around that. We're also having to get our head around. The fact of editing is completely different. The type of editing I want, the setup I've got. And actually some of the stuff that I had planned to do for the launch, we are not doing. So for instance, I have now two cameras and I wanted a two camera thing, but I'm not happy with how that looks. And basically you would've heard me talk about Louise Miller, who I work with, who keeps me accountable and keeps me focused and on plan. She kind of basically said, I think you're making excuses, but in the nicest possible way. And I agreed. 'cause I'd been putting it off for quite some time, for lots of reasons. And obviously what I hadn't quite got to grips with is that I was self-sabotaging. I was effectively going, I can't do this because of this. I need the [00:04:00] second camera. I then decided I need to change the color of my wall. I didn't, but I, I just decided all of these various things and they were holding me back. And I guess the truth is, if I really kind of. Dig down into why I was nervous to start the YouTube channel is what if no one watches? What if I create this new thing? The creating the podcast was big. Now, sorry. What I should have said straight off the bat is we're not stopping the podcast. I'll explain how it's gonna work in a minute, but we, we'd created the podcast. We've done the podcast for such a long time, and it does really good things for my business. What if we create this next beast of YouTube? And it doesn't pay off. Or more embarrassingly, what if no one watches that would be like devastating. And the whole reason we are moving to YouTube or we are doing YouTube is because it's searchable and podcasts are not searchable. So for instance, if I was to create a video that was three things to help your [00:05:00] conversions on a webinar as a podcast, that wouldn't work as a search. No one could search and find that podcast episode. However, as a YouTube video, they could. So for me, this feels like a really good move, but it doesn't mean it's not a scary move. So that's why it's taken a bit of time. That's why it hasn't quite come out as soon as I would've liked. And maybe I've been holding it back a bit. I promise this is not me holding it back another week. It is coming next week. So what, what is happening. As of next week, we are now going to be putting videos on YouTube. Now you think to yourself, isn't it just as easy as like just turning on the camera when you record a podcast? Not so much. YouTube is a different beast. I have to be a bit more structured. I have to understand where I'm taking the thing. Whereas sometimes on the podcast we literally just, no. I literally just chat. That sounds very unprofessional, but like sometimes I will let the conversation just evolve and I end up going down rabbit holes and things, whereas that's not gonna be as as well. Maybe I shouldn't do that as [00:06:00] much generally, but definitely on YouTube we're going to have less interviews. There will still be an occasional interview and that's when it's someone really cool that I wanna interview. Other than that, I won't be doing interviews because again, I really want, the whole point of this is to give really strategic, like key advice and key tips and strategy on how to do these things. That is where I'm leaning really fully into. Whereas at previous points of the podcast, we did a lot more mindset and various things. That is now not gonna be the case. It's going to be much more if you have an online business. There is gonna be some mindset stuff in there. 'cause I can not, 'cause I'm a certified coach and it does come into play sometimes, but it's really going to be okay. This is what goes on a landing page. This is how you do a workbook for a webinar. This is how you get more people to turn up live to your bootcamp. This is what these things that I did worked for [00:07:00] me. That's how it's going to be. And you're gonna see my face on YouTube, which kind of terrifies me, but let's go with that. Okay? So that's what's coming. That's the changes. Like I said, this is a very brief episode because it shouldn't have been this kind of episode. It should have been a video. You will still get to listen on the podcast. You'll turn up next Monday and there'll be another episode and it might sound a little bit different. The structure might be slightly different, but it should be hopefully what you've come to know and love. And if you like YouTube, then great. You can now find me over there. I personally watch a lot of stuff on YouTube, so that again, was another consideration. The other thing I just wanted to do really quickly while I'm on this episode and while it's a bit of a funny one, is I want to let you know about a couple of events that I'm speaking at coming up and we will make sure we link to them in the show notes. The first event is the Guru Conference, which is the world's largest virtual conference about email marketing. The fact [00:08:00] that I'm getting to speak at this is massive because it's a huge conference. The headliner is Nicole Kidman. What the actual, that is nuts. Amy Porterfield speaking. Donald Miller, Ann Handly, Sahil Bloom, like so many amazing people and me. So we will link for that in the show notes if you want to go and grab a free ticket for that. That's happening at the beginning of November. And then I've got some in-person stuff next year, and the first one of them is higher voltage, which is happening in London in January. So keep an eye out for that. Again, we'll link for that in the show notes, so you can grab your ticket for that as well. That's in person, so if you fancy, go into London. At the beginning of January and see me speak alongside some other amazing online speakers like Danny Wallace. Then the link for that will be in the show notes as well. Okay, I'm gonna leave it to it. Like I said, this is very short and sweet. The update's coming next week. It might sound slightly different if you're listening on the podcast. [00:09:00] If you're fancy, YouTube, please come over there. In fact. I'm gonna urge you just to come over and hit the subscribe and give me a like or something just in those first few days. I would appreciate it so greatly, but hopefully you're on my email list and therefore I'll be emailing it. It'll be on my socials. I will see you then. Have a great week.

How to Succeed in the Online Space in 2026: Lessons from Mike Morrison at Retain

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I share key insights from my time at the Retain conference in Newcastle, where I heard Mike Morrison’s keynote on membership and online business trends. I dive into why relying on just one revenue stream or marketing channel can put your business at risk, and I walk you through strategies for building resilience through diversified offers, income streams, and engagement methods. Along the way, I highlight Mike’s advice on transparency, tracking your metrics, and cultivating an “anti-fragile” mindset to help future-proof your business in 2026.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

Why content sales alone are fragile and limited
How to design offers that deliver fast, transformative value
Lessons from the membership industry & Mike Morrison’s perspective
Why being open and real builds connection and trust
Tactics to make your business more resilient (anti-fragile)
A roadmap for strengthening your offer ecosystem

Key Insights I Want You to Walk Away With

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.Diversification gives you freedom when one channel or model shifts.
Transformation > content.People invest when they see fast, meaningful change.
Trust wins.Being clear, honest, and engaged earns deeper loyalty.
Resilience is proactive.Prepare for change before it forces you.
Offer ecosystems matter.When your products and services support each other, you build longevity.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

membershiproadmap.com Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. We can't just have the one course that we sell over and over and over. We need some other things that we are selling, other ways that we are making money, but also other ways in which we can market ourselves and get to our audience. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Res Heath wearing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. [00:01:00] Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, and the Eagle Eye of you might be thinking. Hang on. Didn't we have a solo last week? So if you are a regular listener, you'll probably know that I do one solo, one interview, one solo, one interview, and I did, I think, mention that things might be changing a little bit. But we're not quite there yet. So basically in all transparency, I am moving over to YouTube and don't panic, I'm not stopping the podcast. The podcast is going to continue, but we are going to be putting videos on YouTube of the episodes, which I'm really excited about. There's lots of good reasons why I'm doing it, and no doubt I will record an episode at some point to tell you why I'm doing it. But one of the things I've decided to do is not do as many interviews and actually, I'm only gonna bring you really, really good people. Not that I don't have really good [00:02:00] people, but like if I get a request from someone, I'm like, I'd love to interview them, then I'm gonna interview them and we're gonna put the episode out. However, I am not a massive fan of, and this is just my personal preference, but I don't love watching like Zoom recording podcast interviews on youTube. And not that I won't put them up there, but I just don't want to do loads of them. I want to make it super practical. One of the things that I love doing is giving you really good, tangible stuff to do in your online business, and that's where the YouTube channel kicks in, in terms of it's going to be really tangible, really kind of do this, do that. This is good. This is how this works. I want that to be more of a thing, and that's why I'm stopping doing as many interviews. Now I do without saying, I have a couple of really cool interviews coming up at some point, but I stopped taking interview requests because of the fact that I was stopping it, and we were really [00:03:00] hoping YouTube would've been ready by now. But like all good things, it's not quite coming to fruition as quick as we wanted it. And we are definitely still working on it and it is coming in the next few weeks, but I thought I would record another podcast episode just to tide me through another week and hope that maybe it'll be ready the week after. Anyway, with all that being said, you've got a really good solo today because I'm actually sharing someone else's information and kind of giving you my thoughts as we go along. You may or may not know if you follow me on Instagram. If you don't, please come and find me over on Instagram. I spoke at Retain a couple of weeks back. This is a conference based up in Newcastle, which is in the north of the UK, and it's all about memberships and it was for membership owners and it's run by Mike Morrison, who is the founder of Membership Geeks. And. It was brilliant. Everything was aimed at membership owners. It was a really, really good event. Really loved it. He [00:04:00] did a great job, and I got speak, which was awesome, and I spoke about webinars, which kind of made me laugh because I put up a post on Instagram saying that I think it was like back in 2017. I did one of my first speaking gigs over in the States, and it was about webinars too. So I've been doing this some time. Anyway, I watched obviously the other sessions, and that's one of the cool things about going to events when it's a really good event that you get to sit and watch other sessions when you're a speaker and you learn things. And Mike did an amazing session at the beginning. His opening keynote was all about basically state of the nation type thing in the membership industry. I was like furiously scribbling down notes, and I wanted to share with you some of the stuff that Mike shared. Now, if you're sat there thinking, I don't have a membership, that's okay. Because actually a lot of this spans across the entirety of running an online business, whether it's a membership, a course, a coaching program, whatever it is. [00:05:00] I think there is so much you can take from this. And he had three main points, which I'm gonna take you through the three main points and then. Share with you what his thoughts were around it and what my thoughts are around it. But I think if you have an online business, you are going to get a lot from this and it's going to be really, really helpful because it's basically saying what is working now? And like I said, he was specifically talking for the membership industry, but I know a lot of this spans across it. Okay, let's jump in. Number one was, and get ready. 'cause you might panic. Stop selling content. Now this is tough because if you have a membership, if you have a course, you're effectively selling content. That's what you're doing. You are basically putting together your knowledge, your experience, your content about it all, and you are training someone on how to do something. But what he was talking about and what is super important is we are in a world like we've never been in before where content is. [00:06:00] Everywhere. And not only that, we can find out stuff anywhere and we can go to AI and we can search stuff like it's never been as available as it currently is. And that's why as an online business, we can't just lead with the content because the content can be found in all the other places. I remember years ago when I first came into this space, like we used to have to put something up that said, you know, can't I just Google this and. Now it's like they can more than just Google it. They can get AI to write them a course about how to do a thing in a way that they like. So the content focus isn't gonna cut it. So it's not about the hours of training. It doesn't matter if it's the most or best or anything out there, it's not going to cut it. They don't need more information. What your customers want, and I have talked about many, many, many, many times, which is why this was music to my ears, was they want the transformation. If I said to you, I could [00:07:00] give you a course that will be three videos, and each of those videos are 10 minutes long, and by the end of it you'll know how to do something. Or I say, I can give you a course. There's 36 videos. They're each an hour long, and at the end of it, you could do the same thing. You're not gonna pick the 36 hour video thing, are you? You want to achieve the outcome in as quick as time possible, and that's what we need to be focusing on. What's the transformation? So make sure that you are prioritizing the results. And again, if you've been listening for a while, you'll know that I wasn't great at this. I always got very nervous about actually proving that I could help people, which sounds wild, but the truth is, we need to go look, we can help you get the results, and this is how we do it. So if you can solve it faster then solve it faster, he talked about cutting through the noise, solving it faster. You don't need to pad it out, you don't need to make it look big and all the things, which again, really does. Like move away [00:08:00] from some of the stuff that we've been taught and we talk about in terms of like show them everything they're gonna get, show them that there's so much stuff in there now, it's about how can they get to the results quicker and faster. One of the things that you can do from a marketing point of view for this first point is share more case studies, share more places where your customers are achieving things when they're doing amazing stuff. The other thing that he talked about in this section was about elevating your member experience. And again, this really, like I said, isn't just applicable with memberships, but it's not just about selling someone a course or selling someone a group program. It's about how can you make that even better? How can you add in other elements that aren't just the content? He talked about routines and rituals. How can this be part of something that you are getting them to do? He actually mentioned on memberships that people are 50% less likely to leave if they've created a habit attached to your membership. So for instance, if on a Monday morning you do a check-in and they come and do the [00:09:00] check-in, or let's say every Friday you say share a win. Whatever it might be. How can you attach some kind of routine or ritual to your membership or your product so that it's not just the content? Can you add a simple habit? Like I said, sharing your Friday win. The other thing you talked about in terms of memberships is gamification. Again, you could even have this in courses. It's not just necessarily memberships when someone completes a module or once someone shares something, that you identify that and you celebrate that. The other thing he said was about fostering identity and belonging. One of the things he said was, what are your members called? Like, can you do something where you, do you remember the Blue Peter badge thing? Like if you had a Blue Peter badge, you felt very special. I never did FYI. And if you don't know any, you don't what I'm talking about. It was a UK TV program. I think it still exists, but it was definitely as kids. And basically they used to give out these Blue Peter badges, and if you did something good, they would give out a Blue Peter badge [00:10:00] and then. You could use it to get discounts some places or get in free on places like, and that really created a sense of belonging or something that people really wanted, so. Is there something you can do to help them feel more part of your world? So for instance, anybody who buys a program from me works with me one-to-one or consultancy with me, they basically get to join what we call T's world. And that is effectively the kind of membership side of my business. And they get to be part of that and they're in them, the community. And that's adding more than just necessarily buy this course and go away and see you later type thing. Number two was trust is currency. Now we all know, I don't need to tell you that with AI, with fake news, with social media, with not even with any of that kind of technical stuff, but just with people only showing their highlight reels, we are very untrusting and.[00:11:00] It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect, perfect sense. So one of his suggestions was, we need to be more human because of fake stuff, because of AI. We need to show them that we're real. And one of the ways in which we need to do that is show them our face, make connections. And he actually said, roll up your sleeves and get in there. And I totally am boarded this, gone are the days where someone is up on a pedestal and there are still people out there in the online space who are definitely up on pedestals, where they don't get involved with the everyday kind of running of their thing. Their face isn't showing up in places. I have heard horror stories, right, of, I heard this one horror story where basically there was a woman who, it wasn't even like a membership, it was a high priced mastermind thing, but there was like 60, 70 people in it. But it was like thousands and someone I know joined it and they basically went into the Facebook group and tagged in the persons whose mastermind [00:12:00] it was and said to ask a question and this person replied and basically got one of her team to a and said, can you answer this question? Like she was not accessible at all. And if we want people to buy into us, and at the end of the day, we all have online businesses because we're selling us, and I've just said we can't focus on the content anymore, so we have to focus on us. So if we are putting ourselves on this pedestal that they don't get to hang out with us, that we are not doing the coaching calls, that it's very much like, you know, there's a wall between us and them, then that is not all right. And I have never ever sold into that to the point where my own businesses changed. Or no, my, my business hasn't changed the point where I have changed what I want for my business. I used to dream of having the massive launches with thousands of people. I do not want that at all now, ever. I want to be able to know the people I'm dealing with. I want to know their names. I want to know who they are, what their businesses, how they like to launch. I want to be able to get into the weeds with [00:13:00] them, and this is what he was suggesting, that you need to be seen. You need to be in there. Whether you are doing live calls, whether you're doing Q and As, whatever it is, they need to see your face. He talked about in terms of marketing, about showing behind the scenes of your life and business by going, look, this is what I do when I'm sat at my desk. And I mean, mine's really not that exciting if I'm honest. The other thing he talked about is about becoming the trusted voice. So share more about your thoughts, your opinions, your beliefs on the thing it is that you talk about. Ditch the gimmicks, and I, again, am behind this. Now. One of the things that's super interesting is I talk a lot about marketing strategies, psychology strategies that people use when launching, and I am very keen to stress that it's not the strategy that is wrong, it's someone's intent behind the strategy. So for instance, he talked about fake scarcity or like countdown timers that aren't real. That is. That's rubbish. [00:14:00] Don't ever do that. Like I said, the strategy itself isn't bad. The strategy's good. We need scarcity sometimes to basically help us make a buying decision. However, use it for real, like not rubbish bonuses just to add up bonuses, so. Using the gimmicks when they're not real. People will see straight through that. They're not stupid. I've said this for ages. Our consumers are, customers are way more discerning and that is a good thing and I am happy about it. So don't try and get away with some of these things. If you say the cart is closing on a certain date, close the cart on a certain date and have a reason for it. If you are saying, here's some bonuses, make them good bonuses. And then he finished it off by sharing a phrase that I think it was Google he said you used to use, which was Don't be evil. And apparently they don't use it anymore. I'm not sure what that says about them, but anyway, he talks about provide good quality stuff. Now I know if you are here listening to me, you do. There are lots [00:15:00] of people out there and sometimes the online business is the wild, wild west where they're literally just trying to get rich and they are not maybe as focused on providing good outcomes and good results for their customers. But I know if you are listening to this, you are not one of them. But it is a good reminder to go provide good, good quality stuff, have ethics, don't lie, don't trick them to buying, which again. If you're listening to me, you won't be that person. And if you are that person, then you probably shouldn't be listening to me. 'cause we are not gonna get on things like, as a membership, make it easy for them to cancel and don't hide things. Don't, you know if you are, if it's a renewable payment that's an annual payment, tell them it's coming. Like I know that people are like, yeah, but...

Behind the Scenes: An Honest Look at My Most Recent Launch

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m letting you right into the backstage of my recent launch for the Grow Launch Sell program. I share what went on in the bootcamp and masterclasses I ran, and I walk you through both the wins and the challenges I faced. I also break down the numbers — from ad spend to email stats to conversion rates — so you see the full picture of how the launch performed. More than anything, I want you to see how I’m treating each launch as a learning opportunity. I talk about what I’m going to keep, what I’ll change next time, and why I believe in leaning into personal sales calls, leveraging current members, and scaling ad investment when the time’s right.

What You’ll Hear

How I designed my bootcamp + masterclass strategy
The marketing and promotional tactics I used to drive attention
The raw numbers - ad spend, opens and click rates, conversions, and more
What surprised me (for better or worse), and what I’m going to adjust next time
Why I believe sales calls and involving my existing members are powerful tools
My plan for increasing ad budgets and refining strategy in future launches

Key Insights I Want You to Walk Away With

Transparency builds trust. Sharing your struggles and lessons alongside wins makes your business more human.
Metrics are your anchor. Knowing how much you spent, what converted, what didn’t — it all matters.
Constant iteration. Every launch is an experiment. I’m always refining and improving.
Human connection still wins. I’ve seen firsthand how sales calls and having current members talk about their experience make a difference.
Strategic scaling. I’m careful about how and when to increase ad spend — but I don’t shy away from it when the data supports it.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Check Hannah Isted on Website FREE Webinar Blueprint Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Do you ever wish that you could see behind the scenes of someone else's launch, where you pull the curtains back and you find out what they did, what worked, what didn't work, what their numbers were like, what they spent on ads? That is exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you today. The launch I did back in August for the Grow Launch Sell program. I did a bootcamp and master classes, and today I'm taking you through what I did and I'm sharing with you all the details. I'm also sharing the things that went really well that I'll do again. The three things that I will do different in the next launch that I do. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. In today's episode, I thought I would give you a behind the scenes look at my latest launch. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about, and I've been watching a lot of content and I've been to some events, is the fact of. Showing up as real as possible, and I always pride myself on that. If you're new to me, if this is the first episode you're listening to, then I really do pride myself as being authentic, as being honest and giving people a very honest view of what it's like [00:02:00] to be in the online business. And I recently did two sessions. I did a session in someone else's group, and it was a session called something like Behind the Scenes of a Six Figure Business. I took 'em through everything, including like what I turn over, what expenses I have, what systems I use, what my team looks like, what I sell, what I make money with, and that was really awesome and I got really good feedback from that. And it was within someone's private group, so I was happy to do that, but it wasn't my group. Then the next day I did a session in my group to my people where I talked about the full debrief of this launch that I'm going to talk to you about. Now, they got a much more in-depth debrief and they got numbers like literally how many people bought, how many people signed up, how many people engaged, like they got all the numbers, all the percentages, all the things. Now, I'm not going to be as vulnerable as that on the podcast, but I am gonna [00:03:00] give you lots and lots of good stuff. So I'm gonna talk you through kind of what the launch was and what kind of the percentages of things were and, and then I'm gonna share with you what really worked well and I'm gonna share with you what didn't work so well and what I'm gonna change for the next one, because one of the things that I talk about and I want you to know is that. First off, let's be honest. Launching is hard work. I am not gonna pretend otherwise. It takes a lot of energy. There's a lot of moving parts, and when you do a big launch like I did for this one, it's a lot of work. I was exhausted at the end of it. But the reason we are willing to do that hard work is because then we have all the assets to rinse and repeat and do again. I will be using this launch. Pretty much in its entirety, I'll be making tweaks and you are gonna hear about the tweaks I'm gonna be making. 'cause I'm gonna tell you, but I will be using this launch again. So this isn't a [00:04:00] one and done. This isn't like, you know, I just created this campaign to launch the Grow Launch Sell program. When I say launch, I just wanna make it really, really clear, and I know I've said this a few times, but I just wanna make sure that we're on the same page. In the online space. A launch is a marketing campaign. That's all it is. We're not launching something for the first time, although obviously you do call that a launch. When I talk about launching, launching your online offers, it's just a marketing campaign. But basically I will use all the stuff I did in this last marketing campaign and I'll be using it again. So even though it's a lot of work, it's absolutely worth doing the work because I've got it and I can learn from it. And I can do the thing again. So let me start by telling you what my launch was. So I did a bootcamp, a five day bootcamp, which actually I spanned over two weeks. And the reason I span it over two weeks. So I did I think two days the first week and three days the next week. And the reason I don't do five consecutive [00:05:00] days is because I overdeliver, okay? And I joke that I'm a little bit like a fire hose and I to your face. Like I give you a whole lot of stuff and to have me show up and give you that level over five days consecutively, they would be absolutely flawed and exhausted. And so would I, I put a lot of energy into it. I put a lot of my, I when I put everything into it. So for me. The five days, having them over two weeks feels so much better. Okay, so I had the bootcamp for five days, and then immediately after the bootcamp I had two standalone master classes. I've never done that before. I've never had, I've either done master classes. Or I've done a bootcamp or a challenge or an open house. And the webinar, the masterclass is technically the last session. Now this is where it gets a bit confusing, but basically I teach how to do webinars and [00:06:00] some people will go, I don't wanna do webinars, I use challenges. But at some point you all go to go into the sale. And that is basically a webinar. So normally I would've just offered the bootcamp and the masterclass for the bootcamp would've just happened to the bootcamp people. This time I went from promoting the bootcamp to the minute we stopped talking about the bootcamp. I immediately promoted the masterclass and I had two standalone masterclasses, which were the same. And I didn't offer replays. This was the first time I didn't offer replays. So so much of this was a test. I'd never done the standalone master classes. I'd never done this particular bootcamp. I had never offered no replays. This whole thing, all I kept telling myself, and what I recommend you do if you're launching is everything's a test. Everything's a test. Let me give you the dates. So I started promoting the bootcamp on Monday, the 28th of July, and I stopped promoting the bootcamp on Wednesday, the 13th of July, sorry, not July, August. [00:07:00] The bootcamp started on Wednesday the 13th, so I literally promoted it to the date started, and it ended on Thursday the 21st. The master classes were from, one was on Thursday, the 21st, so basically the same day as the end of the bootcamp. So I technically did two master classes that day, and then the next one was on Tuesday, the 26th of August. The sale of both the bootcamp and the masterclass was my Grow Launch Sell program. The promotion for the masterclass started on the 13th of August, and bearing in mind. It was less than a week because the first master class was on Thursday the 21st. This is the shortest period I've ever promoted a master class, and that definitely reflected in my numbers. The other thing that I want you to know is I was doing this in August, and August typically is not a month I would recommend that you do a launch. [00:08:00] Why did I do mine in August? Well, I did it in August because I'm trying to catch people who are launching in September. And I wanted to basically try and get them in and help them before they did their launch in September. Like I said, it was a test. It was something for me to try out, and we are trying to take all of that into consideration when we are looking at our numbers. So let's talk about the marketing that I did. I used ads, and I mentioned this because I used very little budget for ads. I think if you are used to looking at big, massive launches, you will see them spending thousands, and I didn't at all. In fact, I only spent, I think I spent less than 200 pounds, just less than 200 pounds, which is nothing. But the ads were super effective. The one thing I should mention is the bootcamp is paid and the master classes were free. The bootcamp was 37 or 39 pounds, sorry, can't remember off the top of my head. 39 pounds for the standard level, and it was 79 [00:09:00] pounds for the VIP. What was super interesting was over 50% of people bought the VIP. That is unheard of to have that higher percentage by the VIP. One of the things, I don't know for sure, but I'm gonna use my gut, is why I had such a high percentage by the VIP and my gut would say because of the fact that they had longer to watch the replay and they had additional sessions, there was a number of people who bought who said, I can't attend live. The idea was people attend live. That's what I wanted, but I knew those two weeks of August are very popular weeks, especially in the UK to take leave. And not only that, the day before my last masterclass was a bank holiday here in the UK. All of that would've had a big effect. Okay. Anyway, I digress. But I ran ads. I ran ads to the bootcamp, so bearing in mind I'm running ads to a product that they have to pay for. The product cost was minimum [00:10:00] 37, so my cost per lead off my ads was for my cold audience, so this is an audience that don't know me. This is a brand new audience. It was 95 pounds, 93 pence. So I, on that side of my ads lost money because let's say I've got a, I don't actually know whether these people bought VIP or standard. I need to make a note to ask the lovely Kristen, who I work with to do my ads. Whether we can work that out. But let's say they only bought the standard. Even if they had bought the VIP, they, I still would've lost money on that ad. However, all is not lost. I was able to get a cost per lead on my warm ads, and most of my sales on my ads came from warm for only 10 pounds, 54, meaning that if they'd only bought the standard I was making about 20 pounds ish. Bit more than that on everyone that signed [00:11:00] up. So that was really good. So the ads really worked, even though the cold ads were very cold and and didn't perform the warm ads kind of made up for it. A couple of other numbers I wanted to share with you was, other than the fact that over half signed up for the VIP on the bootcamp, the masterclass show up rates were better than average and better than I normally get. And I think that was entirely down to the fact that there was no replay. So the show up rate for the first masterclass was 47%. The show show up rate for my second masterclass, which was the day after a bank holiday and the last week in August, which like I said, is typically a week that people are away. The show up rate for that was 32%. Now these are still very good show up rates, and that I think was because of the fact I didn't offer a replay. So in future, if I do something along these lines, I won't offer a replay because that show up rate's really good. Other [00:12:00] marketing. Let's talk emails. Now, when I read out to my T's world people, the people in my community, the emails I sent, their faces were like. Holy moly. That is a lot and it is a lot. Now, I'm not giving you this debrief because I'm saying this is how you should do your launch. I teach this stuff and I wanted to do a big launch. I'm telling you so you just have an idea what goes into it and the work. But also remember I can rinse and repeat these emails 'cause I've written them once. I just need to tweak 'em the next time I do it. To promote the bootcamp and this email went out to my entire list. There was an option for them to say, I don't wanna hear about the bootcamp. And we stopped emailing them about the bootcamp. And once you signed up for the bootcamp, you no longer got these emails, but to promote the bootcamp over that two week period, I spent spent, no, I sent 14 emails. Then in terms of getting them to show up, I actually sent them, [00:13:00] I think I sent them, I didn't write it on here. I think I sent them like four emails before we started to keep them warm. But then once we started, I sent five emails and then the VIPs had an extra three. So I had seven emails for the VIP. The invitation to the masterclass. So the minute we stopped promoting the bootcamp, I immediately moved onto emails to my masterclass and I would've sent these again to everyone on my list, and I would've given them an option to opt out. I sent nine emails to promote the masterclasses. Six emails were before the first date, so the first date was on Thursday, and the next masterclass was on the Tuesday. So I only sent an additional three emails only to promote that second masterclass. Also, one thing I did on the masterclass is the people who signed up for the first masterclass, who then didn't turn up. We emailed them saying, you've got another chance to turn up live and see it. Come [00:14:00] to the Tuesday one. Which I think resulted, I had more people sign up for the second master class than the first one. That could have been for many reasons. One, they had more time to do it. Two, like I said, I reengaged the people who missed the first one. I then sent five emails to the people who signed up for the master class that happened on the 21st, and I sent six emails to the people who signed up to the masterclass that happened on the 26th. Sales emails in total, I wrote and sent 34 sales emails. However, obviously not 34 to any one person. I sent 10 sales emails to the bootcamp people. The bootcamp people were by far the warmest people. And when I tell you about the sales, then you'll see that they were the best people. So I sent 10 sales emails to them and that was over seven days. So I actually sent, I think, two or three on the last day, two on the day before the masterclass people. I also sent 10 emails too, because again, they had the full cart [00:15:00] open for the seven days. The masterclass people on the 26th. I didn't change the cart close date, which meant they had their mass class on the Tuesday and the cart closed on the Thursday. So the selling period for those people was really small. Again, I've never done that, so that was interesting, and I sent five sales emails to them. Rest of my list. So once I stopped promoting the masterclass, I then moved on to promoting Grow Launch Sell. now, this is the most coldest people on my list because they haven't signed up to anything like the bootcamp or the masterclass. I sent five emails to the rest of that list over that open cart period. But like I said, once I'd stopped promoting the masterclass. And then I sent four downsell emails and I did the down sell emails to my to the bootcamp people and to the masterclass people. I didn't downsell to the rest of my list. In total in all the promo emails and all the sales emails and all the reminder emails [00:16:00] I wrote and sent during that period. 83 emails. I know you've probably audibly gasped at that point. It's a lot. It's a lot of emails. But one thing you have to remember is. I have these emails to rinse and repeat again. Secondly, if you are in my Grow Launch Sell program, these are all templates. So none of my Grow Launch Sell people are starting that from scratch. They are going to the emails where I have written the templates for getting people to sign up. They can go to the emails to get 'em to turn up. They can go to the sales emails. So if you are in Grow Launch Sell, you're listening to this, then Yippy, these are all templates. You're all good. I wanna give you a very realistic look at what my open rate was for my full list when I was in promo mode, because it's bad. Okay? My open rate was 18%. Now, the reason I tell you this, and I'm being so honest about these percentages and sharing these things is a few things. [00:17:00] One, my email list has been built over years and I have digressed into various different things over the years. I have had points in my business where I have served everybody. I have had points in my business where I really focused on mindset. So I probably have a chunk...

Unlock the Power of Speaking: Insights from Lauren Davis

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, host Teresa Heath‑Wareing talks with Lauren Davis, a marketing & brand consultant, about how public speaking can boost your business. Lauren shares her journey into speaking, offers a framework for deciding whether to say “yes” to unpaid gigs, compares keynotes vs. workshops, and shows how to make the most of events (think networking, pro photos/videos). A big emphasis is put on making sure speaking opportunities align with your values and business goals.

Key Takeaways

Choose Speaking Gigs That Align with Your Values & Goals

Not every opportunity is worth taking. Lauren emphasizes evaluating engagements based on how well they match your personal values, the audience, and your long‑term business vision. Saying yes to misaligned opportunities can dilute your brand and effort.

Weigh the Difference Between Keynotes, Workshops, Paid & Unpaid Gigs

Workshops and keynotes serve different purposes. Workshops might offer more interaction, learning, or depth, while keynotes often give broader visibility. Similarly, unpaid gigs aren’t always “bad”—they can offer exposure, networking, or content. But you need criteria (audience, promotion, platform) to decide whether the cost in time/energy is worth it.

Maximize What Each Event Gives You

Treat speaking engagements not just as “one‑off gigs” but as opportunities. Get professional photos/videos, leverage them for marketing, build relationships with other attendees/speakers, and ensure organizers promote you well. These extras amplify the value of the speaking moments.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Lauren on Instagram, Linkedin, Website Freebie:

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business podcast. I am, Teresa Heath-Wareing your host as always, and this week we have an interview and we're actually talking about. Something that was [00:01:00] so good. Well, every interview I have is so good. Like, I dunno why I just said that, but this, this is like a subject very close to my heart. We're talking about speaking. Now. If you are not a speaker and you don't want to be a speaker, you might be thinking, well, this episode's not gonna work for me. This, you know, this is not gonna be what I need to listen to. But the conversation that we had was so good and included so much that basically, I think people think of speaking as stood on stage. When speaking is when we talk about us and our business and we're connecting with people and we're having conversations. So I think there is so much that you can take from this episode, even if you don't wanna be a speaker. So let me tell you about who I'm chatting with. Today I'm talking with the lovely Lauren Davis. Lauren is a marketing and brand consultant that helps speakers and entrepreneurs establish a memorable personal brand resulting in Magnetic, easy for me to say engagement and lifelong clients. Lauren and I met because we were both doing sessions at Atomicon and I instantly [00:02:00] loved what she was saying and I instantly loved her take on things and. We actually talked, even though she has a lot of stuff to do with personal branding and becoming a personal brand. We use this entire conversation to talk about speaking because it's something that a Lauren helps with. Lauren helps speakers. Lauren is a speaker, and I just loved talking about it and talking about what it really is because people think that, well, there's so many misconceptions with speaking. People think a, you make a load of money from speaking. That is not always the case. And sometimes isn't the case. People think that when they speak, they want to get on the big massive stages. They don't wanna start small. I started very small and also they think they wanna be the next Mel Robbins or the next keynote, inspirational motivational speaker, and we talk about. So much good stuff in this episode about what it really is [00:03:00] like to be a speaker, what it can really do for your business. And like I said, even if you're not planning on being a speaker, I think it's definitely worth listening to this episode with Lauren. We chat about how you prep for speaking. We talk about different ways in which the way I prep, which is. Very different to the way other people prep. We talk about do you still get nervous and what that means, and if that's a good or a bad thing. And then we talk about what's the difference between a keynote talk and a workshop or a strategy style talk. And like I said, it's one better than the other. Then how you decide whether you want to speak somewhere or if someone asks you to speak whether it's worth being paid or not. She has a really good framework with some things that made me think so hard about this, and it was genius. Some of the stuff that she said about some of the questions you should be asking yourself or some of the things you should be looking at. When you decide whether to speak somewhere and [00:04:00] also if there's a budget or not a budget, because some places will not pay you. And we talk about this and how do you know whether you should speak for free or not speak for free. And she has a really great framework for this, which she's gonna take you through. So like I said, whether you wanna speak or not, Lauren is just the nicest person anyway. And like I said, I've had the pleasure of meeting her in person, having lots of conversations with her. I've been on Lauren's podcast as well. I just think this is a really cool conversation. Um, but if you do wanna speak or if you are a speaker and you wanna know more about it or you've started, then this is definitely, definitely gonna give you so much value. So, without further ado, here is the very lovely Lauren. Lauren, welcome to the podcast. Lauren: I am so happy we are finally doing this podcast. We have, we met one year ago today. No one needs to know, know when this is, but Teresa: no, we met Lauren: a year ago today, and we've been planning this podcast episode ever since. Teresa: Literally, and it was like. You had to change. I had to change. You had to change. I had to change. And it was like we finally get to the point where it's like, [00:05:00] yes, we're on the call. So we just had a really lovely catch up. So we've already been chatting for about half an hour, which I love. I know. And, and at some point we were like, no, we probably should get on with recording the interview next. So, but I am. So happy to have you on because we actually met at the at Atomic on in 2024. Where are we now? 25. Because you were doing, we both did a fringe event for Andrew and Pete to run Atomic on. Yes. And you were doing an event at the same time as me. And that was the first time we met. And then we went to the speaker dinner and we just hit it off and it was awesome. And. I'm really excited and I dunno whether I'm really excited to talk about this today's subject because I literally have just come off the back of coming back from Atomic Con 2025, which is where my voice sounds a little bit. 'cause it's a lot, right? Like you've been to the event, it's a big event. There's a a lot of people, it's a lot of fun. But boy is it exhausting. So, so I'm really excited that it's kind of strange that. That's how we met, and it's a year later, but, and the subject we're talking about. So what we're talking [00:06:00] about is being a speaker. So, yes. What I wanna start with is why should someone even consider being a speaker? If they are an online business owner, course creator, coach, membership owner, what? Why should they even consider it? Lauren: Oh, I love speaking as a visibility tool, and I know you talk all about visibility. Mm-hmm. But it is such a powerful way. To show people your personality. It's a powerful way to book your next speaking gig. It's a, it's a powerful way to bring people in at the top of your funnel. You know, if we're talking in marketing language, right? But if we're talking in non-marketing language, it's just a really great way to make a whole bunch of new friends all on the same day who are just going to be your cheerleaders and encourage you and check in with what's next and connect with you and. It is my favorite. It's absolutely my favorite way to become more known. Teresa: Did you, how did you get into speaking? That's something that people [00:07:00] ask me. I think when you get to a certain level of speaker, people wanna know the steps you took to get there. So how did you start speaking, or how did you even discover that was something you wanted to do? Lauren: I really, I will say that I really love being a, like a workshop speaker or a facilitation speaker, and so I am not like your typical speaker whose like desire is to be a keynoter, right? Mm-hmm. That's not really my, that's not my big desire, my big dream. But I do love the workshop side of it. And so when I first. Oh gosh. I realized this year I'm celebrating 15 years in business for myself, which is just Oh, wow. Absolutely bonkers. Yeah. Teresa: That is amazing. Lauren: Um, I knew it started in 2010. I never wrote down the date or anything, so I probably should just pick a date on the calendar and celebrate it. But in about 20 16, 20 17. I started going to lots of conferences and meeting a lot of speakers and getting to know [00:08:00] them, and in my hometown I had started a non-for-profit for local business owners and small business owners, and I would gather them once a month to have networking events. I would speak to them. So we'd have 40 to 50 business owners show up. I'd speak to them. I would teach them something, or I'd bring in a speaker from either slightly out of town or a speaker from our local community to talk. So I started really studying what they were doing. I started. Studying what the speakers at these conferences were doing, and I started putting together that really the essence of a speaker on stage. What they're really doing is building this community and building a network, and that is the same thing that local business owners need to do. So then I started going to these conferences, meeting speakers and saying like, will you come back to my. City. I live in Rockford, Illinois, which is the second biggest city in Illinois. And I would say come, come back to Rockford, which is not necessarily a [00:09:00] major city that people go to all the time. Come to Rockford and come speak to this conference of small business owners for 250 people. And I would host these conferences. They would rival the type of conferences that were at, like these big conferences, right? But they were all for small local business owners. So then I got really. Nerdy about how do you plan a conference? What kinds of of speakers are conference owners looking for? Like how do you book the right speaker for the right event? Because I had to make sure that these speakers, when they came in. They weren't expecting a bunch of marketers. They were going to be talking to small business owners. So I really got this really well-rounded education through life of planning and hosting my own conferences, speaking and hosting my own meetup events that were really professional and, and really, really cool and dynamic with so many different types of businesses in them. And then also speaking myself as I got to know more speakers, as I got to know more personalities. [00:10:00] Having them say, Hey, can you come speak to us about. About this organization that you run or about your personal branding and marketing business or mm-hmm. About the record store that I used to own, you know, like building a legendary local business. They started asking me to kind of talk about these things and that's really how I sell into the speaking orbit, I would say. Mm-hmm. Because it was, it was not just one thing. It wasn't just like, oh, here, let me have a chance to get on stage, or I didn't apply for one. Yeah. One speaking gig and then I got on stage. It was just, um, a whole bunch of different universes coming together to put me in the right place at the right time. Teresa: Okay. I love it. So there's a few things that you brought up that I wanna touch on. Yes. So, first thing I wanna ask, which I think lots of people are going to wander about is do you get nervous? And how do you get over that nerves thing? Because I think when you, if you are not a speaker. And even if you want to be, I mean, some people just straight up don't wanna be, and if they don't wanna be absolutely fine, [00:11:00] great. I think if you are listening to this and you don't wanna be a speaker, I don't think this is gonna be an episode that you think, oh well this is a waste of time. Because I think what you're doing as a speaker is you're making those connections. You are presenting yourself, you're doing all these things. So I think you're definitely still gonna get stuff from it. But I think the nervous thing or the, I would be too scared. So does that ever bother you? Have you ever had that to, to worry about? Lauren: Oh my goodness, yes. Every time. No, I will, I'll say that. I know that, you know, we, we've heard the statistic a lot. Like speaking is one of the number one fears. Mm-hmm. Like, aside from dying or something like, I don't know what the real statistic is, but it's, it's pretty high up there. I, I'm here to tell you that I've spoken like maybe a hundred times and I never not get nervous. That is very true. I always shake a little in the beginning. I always have that nervous moment. It does get better with practice and when you know your material front and back and you have, you have [00:12:00] practiced it, don't I procrastinators unite out there? I understand. I am A DHD. It's so easy to procrastinate till the last minute, but you have to. That will help you. Okay. It's not just mindset stuff. Rehearsing really, really helps. And then the second thing is I always take a second, go in the the bathroom or wherever if I have micd up and make sure you turn the mic off. Yeah, Teresa: yeah. Sat in the bathroom and then you, and then I go in Lauren: there and I start and I try to. Imagine and visualize how people will feel after I give the talk. Mm-hmm. So I visualize the impact that I might make if I do a good job. If I help people, what will they walk away with? What kind of action will they ha will they take after my talk? Like how will it affect them? Will they come up to me and they'll say like, oh, that was so good. Thank you so much for helping me with this. That really helped. So I start to try to imagine the impact it'll make. And I also tell myself if I can walk away from this event [00:13:00] helping, you know, at least half the room feel like they can do something that they couldn't do before, that is 100% worth it to me. Teresa: Yeah, totally. So one thing you just said, and then I'm gonna go back to another thing you said previously that I wanna touch up. Yes. You talked about practicing. So Andrew and Pete, who obviously we both know 'cause of Atomic on. Lauren: Yeah. Teresa: Andrew said to me, me a few days before the event, how's your rehearsing going? And I was like. Rehearsing Andrew, do you not know me right, because I now, it's not that I don't practice, I do, but my practicing looks different maybe to someone else's. So I remember, I dunno if you know Mike Morrison. So he's has a company called Membership Geeks. And when he talks, and we had a conversation, Mike and I, about this, and basically when he speaks, he writes a script, a full proper script. He then reads the script verbatim, records himself. Listens to it as he sleeps and he delivers it verbatim. What like, I mean, [00:14:00] your face, Lauren says it all, but like literally that I could not do. If I can practice like that slide come next, that I'll probably talk about that at this point. Then we move into this bit. So practice can look so different, can't it? 'cause I would do that whereas Mike is literally doing it verbatim. So is yours more like on my side or Mike's side? Lauren: Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah, mine is more on your side for sure. So actually, you know what? It's really interesting. I'm a little bit of both. So I generally script out most of my talk and, and then I kind of put that script inside the notes of my slides. So that way if I need a little reminder, I can kind of, as I'm rehearsing, I can look at the notes of my slides. Mm-hmm. I have another speaker that I work with a lot who prints out the slides, prints, you know, with a printer, and then writes bullet points underneath each slide for them to remember, because writing it down physically helps them [00:15:00] remember what they want to talk about on that slide and remembers the story that they wanna talk about....

Your Secret Weapon for Sales: Case Studies & Testimonials That Convert

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business, I talk about why case studies and testimonials are more than just nice extras — they’re essential for building trust and showing what my business can really do. I share my TRUST method — Tell the problem, Roadblock, Uncover what they did, Show the results, Transformation, to help you gather rich, meaningful stories from your clients, not just vague praise. These are the stories that make your work feel real and show potential clients what’s possible. I also urge you not to save case studies and testimonials for the end of a project only. I believe they should be woven into every part of your marketing: on your website, in emails, social media, sales pages—everywhere you communicate. By using them regularly, you demonstrate impact consistently, deepen trust, and turn past successes into powerful tools that help attract new business.

Key Takeaways

1. Case Studies & Testimonials Build TrustUsing authentic stories of problems → solutions → results helps prospects see what’s possible, and builds credibility more effectively than generic claims. 2. TRUST Method for Collecting Testimonials A framework you can follow to get richer, more persuasive testimonials:

Tell the problem — What issue was the client facing before?
Roadblock — What was stopping them from solving that problem?
Uncover what they did — What actions did they take? What intervention / your service / product?
Show the results — What measurable change happened?
Transformation — How did life/business change for them more broadly beyond the numbers?

3. Use Case Studies Throughout the Marketing Process

Don’t wait until after a launch or at the end of a project—incorporate stories early (in prospecting, content, emails, etc.).
Show incremental wins, before‑and‑after, behind‑the‑scenes: people connect to journey, not just destination.

4. Frequent Sharing is Key

Regularly share testimonials & case studies on social media, website, email.
Amplifies evidence of success over time—prospects see real proof, consistency, not just occasional highlights.

5. Be Proactive in Asking for Testimonials

Make it part of your process: after milestones, at the end of services, or even in the middle when there’s already visible progress.
Ask clients in a way that prompts for detail: by using the TRUST structure, you get richer content.

Practical Examples & Applications Integrate stories into email sequences and sales pages—not just “here's what people said at the end,” but early proof points. Use video or quotes with metrics (e.g. percent increase, time saved) to make results tangible. Mix big transformations and small wins—both are powerful in different contexts (someone just starting out, someone comparing options, etc.).

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Episode 420 - Behind the Scenes: Designing a Launch That Works for YOU Connect with Kristin on Website, Linkedin, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

If you are not leveraging case studies and testimonials, you are missing out on one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolkit. In this episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you how many case studies Amy shared, not only in her 90 minute master class, but also over a number of her emails. And I think it's going to surprise you. I'm also going to be sharing my trust method, which is how you can collect really good high quality case studies for your business. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your hosts heat wearing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your [00:01:00] online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Now if you have been listening for a while, thank you. First off. Second off, you will know. I love really practical episodes where I give you some really strategical stuff to do, and today's episode is not going to be any different. What I want you to do me a favor. Today's episode is so important for every single business owner that you know, and you'll see why as we get into it, that I would love you to think of a friend who has a business that you could go and forward this episode to because this is something that every [00:02:00] business owner needs to get much better at doing. And I have a really good proven system to help business owners get better at it, and therefore, I would really appreciate it if you'd share it. Anyway. That sounds very strange. Saying all that without actually telling you what it's about. Today we're gonna be talking about testimonials and case studies. I want to give you a little insight as to how important these are and how when you're doing a launch, you are probably not doing anywhere near enough. So case studies and testimonials. The reason we need case studies and testimonials is because they really help us demonstrate that we can do what we say we're doing. They really help build that trust with our audience, and also we help them see what's possible. Often when we work with people and we're trying to offer our service to them, there is lots of doubt that, you know, will it ever work for them? [00:03:00] It worked for other people. Is this gonna be a thing that works for me? So in showing and demonstrating that other people have achieved the things that they want to is really, really important. And I'm gonna talk you through my trust method where I take you through the various letters and explain to you what you need to do when you are collecting these case studies and testimonials. Because like I said, I'm telling you now for sure, you are probably not collecting enough and you are absolutely not sharing enough. In a launch, you should be sharing them throughout the entire launch. And one of the things that I see all the time is whether you are doing a webinar masterclass or whether you're doing a bootcamp or a challenge, when people get into the selling, that's the point where they share the testimonials and what they tend to do is literally at the end of the whole selling thing is this is what some nice people have to say about me. And that is just not the way it works, and that is definitely not enough to [00:04:00] help show and demonstrate and build that trust. To give you an idea, the last launch I did, which was my bootcamp. I shared, I did a bootcamp, and then I did a masterclass, two standalone master classes. I went back and looked at my masterclass presentation, and within the presentation all the way through, this wasn't just at the end, this was through the presentation. I shared 11 case studies in a 90 minute presentation. Amy, in her last launch that she did in a 90 minute presentation, she shared 18 case studies. So I'm a little bit off. I need to add some more, but this isn't just. Like I said, putting a few at the end, this is literally weaving it into the entire presentation or weaving it into the entire bootcamp. So when I did my bootcamp every single session, I shared at least one case study. Then when we got into the sales emails, I weaved them all throughout the [00:05:00] sales emails. I over 10 emails shared 11 case studies. Amy, I didn't go through all her emails, but over seven emails, she shared 22 case studies, and that doesn't include the screenshots that she shared and that I shared. So. When I say case study, I'm not just saying what they wrote about you. When I say case study, what I mean is you are giving us a bit of the story, so you're telling us maybe where they started, what they did and the results that they got, and then obviously a quote from them. But it's not just going, this is what they said about me. There's a much stronger structure to it. And then like I said, throughout her email, she also screenshot things from groups that basically said, oh my God, I've just done X, Y, Z. Now I just wanna put this in perspective. Amy has been doing this a very long time and has had thousands upon thousands of students go her through her program, and therefore is not short of case studies. I [00:06:00] know that this is something that people struggle with because within Grow Launch, Sell, within my own world, I have lots of conversations of I just don't have enough. And I agree that part of that is the amount of time that people have been doing it and the amount of people who have gone through programs. But also I suspect it's a case of not asking enough either. So what I'm going to go through with you today is the trust method, and basically this is the method that I teach in terms of getting people to actually, well, getting case studies and testimonials that actually give people proper information. So let's start with the T. The T is tell the problem. The very first thing you need to do when you're collecting this information is you need to ask them what challenges or issues they were facing or what wasn't working for them. And this is basically the pain. You are making sure that you are making it really clear. Where [00:07:00] did they start? What was the pain that they started with? And this often is where your current customers are. So by saying this is the struggle they've had, you are then able to demonstrate, okay, this is what they're able to do. I've got a really lovely one where Kristin, who has been in my world for a while, she had done some webinars before being in my world and her signups were really low and no one turned up live. And then she worked with me and her signups went up and people turned up. That is a really nice, talking about the problem of where they were because people can relate to, I just can't get people to sign up, or people are signing up and they're just not turning up. So the T uh, in the beginning of trust is tell the problem what challenge or issue they are facing, what wasn't working for them. Let's go to the R. The R is the roadblock. So what was standing in their way of fixing it? Or [00:08:00] what had they tried and struggled with before? Again, this is really important to know, not only for, and actually as a side point, this is great for obviously demonstrating to people, you know what you're talking about and you can actually help them with the thing that they. You know they need help with. But this, from an information point of view for you, is also brilliant. So imagine that you are getting on a call with someone you've worked with who's done a brilliant job, and you are asking them these questions or you are going through this, this method with them and. The information that you could get from it, which you can then use in other places like sales emails and sales pages. So if they say in R for the roadblock, actually, I've tried this, I'd done this, I'd done this, and none of it had worked. Then you could, in a sales email or on a sales page say, have you tried dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and nothing worked. Like, and using the language, the words, the. The things that they say is the most powerful. [00:09:00] So yeah, R is the roadblock. What was standing in your way? What have they tried? What were they struggling with? So these first couple of letters are just about getting them to really remember where they were so that you can paint a real good picture in your case study about where have they been? Where have they, they got to. U is uncover what they did. So this really, and hopefully is the bit where you come in, but you are not gonna talk. They're going to talk or they're gonna write this for you. And in this bit what you're trying to do is you're trying to find out what happened. And like I said, I really hope that this is the point where they go, well, I came to your world, or I did your program, or I followed your advice. So what did they do? What support strategy or method did they use with your help? So for instance, I teach and I'm probably one of the only. I don't know anybody else who does this actually. But rather than picking one launch method, which [00:10:00] lots of other people do, and they teach on that specific method, 'cause that's what they're well known for. I teach on all of them. And the reason I teach on all of them is because I am very obsessed with the fact that. We're all different. Our businesses are different. Our price points are different, and it's definitely not a one size fits all. If you listened to episode 4 2 0, you will hear me doing an actual real life case study, as it were about Louise who had a particular membership, and we had to use a mix of various launch methods in order to put together a launch that fit with her, her audience, her price point, and her energy and her offer. So. Where this, sorry, where this uncover what they did comes in is it's really helpful if you do have different strategies. So for instance, I might have someone who did the open house method, or I might have someone who did the webinar method, or I might have someone who finally understood how to sell because I [00:11:00] taught 'em how to sell. Or it might be that they finally created the sales page or the sales emails or had the confidence. So even though. When someone works with you, you have a theme of what you do. Let's get into the nitty gritty in this bit. Like was there something particular? Was it the fact of they learned how to do the sales page in my case? Or I encourage and send more emails and I help them tell them what to write. Like what was it that they actually did? And the more detail you can get on this, the better. Now, just to bear in mind, you don't have to share everything that you are getting an answer for here, but the more you can get these answers, great. Okay. The S. The S is show the results. Show the results. What happened next. So for instance, let me go back to my KristIn conversation that I said at the beginning. So her problem was that she was doing webinars, she was getting people to sign up, but not many. I have actually got the [00:12:00] actual numbers. She gave me the actual numbers, which I share in case studies when I do webinars and things. And it was something like she was getting 30 people to sign up and no one was showing up. So that was telling the problem. Her roadblock was that. It just wasn't working, that she had followed the advice that she thought she had to do and it wasn't working. She had tried to piece together herself. She tried to go alone. She tried to research stuff and it just wasn't working. Her uncover what they did was she came and worked with me and we put together the proper strategy, and I guess in this case, we could really focus on getting them to turn up live. So I could say, well, I gave her the emails that you need. To get them to show up live, obviously I wouldn't say that 'cause I'd be interviewing her and she'd be saying this, and then when it said, show the results, what happened next? What changes or results? Did they see this for me, tends to come down to the actual results, the numbers, the the real changes. So for her, and [00:13:00] in this case study, it would be, well, the next webinar that she did, I think she got 90 something to sign up and she got 27 or something to actually turn up. So she actually did her first ever webinar. With people on it, which I can't tell you how exciting that is if you've done webinars with no one on it. So show the results. The S is about demonstrating what those results are and making sure you get as many details of them as possible. Now, ideally in launches. So it is very easy for me to get number results and work out percentages and work out. How many of their lists signed up to their launch list and how many of their launch list actually bought, or how many engaged? If it's not as easy as that, then you might have to think slightly more outta the box. In terms of what else were the results in terms of maybe they got a new job, maybe they got a promotion, maybe they, you know. Did something different. And then the final [00:14:00] T is transformation. So, you know how well I say, you know, um, if you've been in my world a while, you might know. When I talk about understanding the transformation, it's one of the most important things you can do in your business. Like, I don't care what business you've got, you have to understand the transformation. The example I give for this is a, um, airline. Airlines do not promote horrible economy squeezed in seats with crappy food. They don't because no one wants that, right? No one necessarily. I mean, you might love sitting in an economy and eating the food and hey, awesome, right? But most people don't necessarily want the...

From Bankruptcy to Seven Figures: Real Stories & Strategies

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, Darnyelle and I get real about what it takes to build a business that feels good inside, not just looks good on the outside. We talk about everything from scraping by (yes, including bankruptcy) to shifting money beliefs, setting up systems that don’t burn you out, and what success really means when you're living it your way. If you’re creating a course, running a membership, or coaching clients—and you want both growth and heart—this one’s for you.

Key Takeaways

Alignment of Values + Goals is Essential

Don’t build a business purely for revenue—clarity on what you really want (freedom, purpose, legacy) will drive more consistent, fulfilling decisions.

Mindset around Money is One of the Biggest Leverage Points

Many blocks live in our beliefs about worthiness, safety, and identity. Shifting these unlocks more possibilities than just increasing efforts or marketing.

You Can Raise Your “Money Set Point”

What you believe is possible financially becomes a ceiling unless intentionally expanded. Recognizing and shifting money beliefs (especially those rooted in childhood or culture) is powerful.

Sustainability Needs Both Internal Work & External Systems

Working on mindset alone isn’t enough; you also need business systems—processes, finances, team, operations—that support growth without burnout.

Redefining Success Might Mean Different Metrics for You

Success doesn’t always mean “seven figures.” It might mean freedom, alignment, making an impact, or living on your terms. It’s okay (and powerful) to define it for yourself.

Systemic & Generational Context Matters

Women, people from marginalized backgrounds, or those with less financial inheritance often have additional layers of challenge. Recognizing this helps in compassionately dismantling barriers. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Darnyelle Jervey Harmon on Website, Facebook, X, Linkedin, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Darnyelle: No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. And so in the first iteration, it took me nine months to make any money, and by the end of nine months I was out of all of my cash. I had emptied my 401k and I was living client to client. I was trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was not working. So I did the unthinkable. I filed bankruptcy and I went back to work. Teresa: Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host res Heath wearing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the of life that. So I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and [00:01:00] strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. It's funny as I was prepping to do the intro for today's episode, it kind of really reminded me why it's called the Your Dream Business Podcast, and if you're new around here or you haven't been listening long, or you've just never heard me talk about it, the reason it's called your dream business is because I am very much an advocate of creating your dream business. What does it look like to you? I have many kind of things I say about this, but one of the things I talk about is measuring your success by someone else's ruler. When I first came into the online space, one of the things that came up a lot for me was other people telling me what a successful business look like. You should charge more. You [00:02:00] should do this, you should do that. You're not successful unless you're having a six figure launch. You're not, you know, you need a massive audience. You need to do your business this way, that way, whatever it was, you need to use this strategy, that strategy. And i, after many years of being in this hole and thinking and FYI, trying all these things and them not working for me or creating a business that I didn't love, and then finally went, hang on a minute, like I'm listening to people who are not like me, who are not in my world, who do not share the same season of life that I I'm currently in. Why am I paying attention to them and what they deem as successful? So I bought in the whole concept of your dream business. Obviously it's not my concept, it's just a concept and very much talked about. What does this look like for you? So some people's dream business is seven, eight figures. Some people's dream business is not bothering so much about how much they earn, as long as it can keep their lifestyle that they want, but making a difference. Some people wanna work part-time and earn good money [00:03:00] for it. Some people want to take six months of the year off. Some people wanna be the face of their business. Some people wanna hide behind something and have someone else do it. Like it's whatever matters to you. And also that changes, like when I started my business, I was a single parent of a 4-year-old. I'm now a married mom of a 15-year-old, like with stepchildren and dogs and you know, so what our priorities are, change massively. And as I was re-listening to today's episode, I, it kind of really reoccurred to me that, you know, this is why I'm so passionate about this because in today's episode I interview Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon, and she, it, it's not very often I get people to tell their story, but I get her to tell her story. She tells the very honest story of building a business, it not being right, starting again, building another business. Earning loads of money. I think she hits seven figures and basically [00:04:00] goes, Nope, this isn't right. And it just, like I said, really reminded me of the fact of sometimes when we think, because everyone tells us that that's what a perfect business looks like, it actually isn't. And it, when we get it, sometimes we need to get it to go, oh, this isn't what I wanted. But it's a really, really cool story. I think you're gonna get lots from it. She's got lots of good advice. Without further ado, here is the very lovely Darnyelle. Welcome to the podcast, Darnyelle, how are you doing? Darnyelle: I am so excited to be here, Teresa. I'm doing great today. Teresa: Awesome. Well, you look great. Darnyelle: Thank you. Teresa: If anybody wants to see how you look, then head over to my Instagram 'cause you look wonderful. Just brilliant. I wanna start off because I have been down a rabbit hole of looking at you and looking at what you've done, and although I don't necessarily anymore. Do the whole tell us how you got to do the thing you did, which I used to do for many, many episodes. We've done over 400 episodes now, so. Darnyelle: Wow. Teresa: Yeah. Like, although you've done a lot as well. I was looking. Darnyelle: Yeah. But not 400. Yeah. I think we're at [00:05:00] like 3 35 ish. Teresa: That's still a huge amount. Darnyelle: Yeah. Teresa: So, but I think because I've just been down a rabbit hole of looking at who you are, I'd actually really love you to just start by introducing yourself and tell everybody what you do. Darnyelle: Absolutely. I am Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon. I am the award winning CEO of Incredible One Enterprises. We are a business transformation company and we help six figures, service-based entrepreneurs connect their soul and strategy so that they can scale to and sustain a business that generates seven or eight figures a year creating financial legacy. Teresa: I mean, that was the most polished introduction I have ever heard. That's amazing. Darnyelle: Thank you. Teresa: How did you get to do this? Like what? Just give me a brief history of like. Because you don't wake up one day. Well, maybe you did and if you did you entire secrets. Darnyelle: No, I didn't. I did not wake up like this. This is definitely lots of trial and error. So professionally, my career [00:06:00] started probably just like many of your listeners in corporate America. Mm-hmm. Or corporate, wherever they might be listening in from around the world. 'cause I know you have a global audience. Teresa: I do. Darnyelle: And I was 12 years in a Fortune 500 financial services company, and I literally woke up one day and said. There's gotta be more to life than this. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna go in pursuit of it. So I was in my late twenties. And I just made a decision. I did the unthinkable. I walked into my boss's office one day in 2004, and I quit my good job without a plan, without a safety net, without a clue about what I was going to do, but I was willing to bet on myself, and I figured that if worse came to worse, I'd be able to get another job. Because I had an MBA at that point, I was marketable, but I would never knew because I wasn't married, I didn't have children. I would never knew if I know if I had what it took to be an entrepreneur unless I tried at this particular moment in [00:07:00] my life history. And so I did. I quit my job, and while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up, I sold Mary Kay Cosmetics. Full-time. So I had been a part-time beauty consultant. Yeah. I decided to become a full-time sales director in Mary Kay. And within five months I was picking up my first pink Cadillac. I ended up doing Mary Kay full-time for two and a half years. And then I had a similar experience, so I called my first moment and some of the people around the world may be familiar with this artist, Keith Sweat. He's an r and b artist who has this song called Something Just Ain't Right. Teresa: Okay, fantastic. Darnyelle: So I called my first moment the Keith Sweat moment. Yeah. And then I called my second moment when I realized that I still was technically sitting behind someone else's desk. I called that my Britney Spears moment. My, oops. I did it again. Right. And so I, I literally was like, Darnyelle, you've merely traded one desk for another. You are not [00:08:00] operating in your God-given gifts and talents and really impacting the world the way that you were uniquely born to impact the world. So I ended up sending my pink Cadillac back to Mary Kay Cosmetics and I made the decision to start the first iteration of what is today incredible one Enterprises. First iteration because listen, again, I did not wake up like this. No one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. And so in the first iteration, it took me nine months to make any money, and by the end of nine months, I was out of all of my cash. I had emptied my 401k and I was living client to client. I was trying to figure out how to make this thing work. It was not working, so I did the unthinkable. I filed bankruptcy and I went back to work. Teresa: Wow. And that, yeah, I was not expecting that by the way. I was expecting month nine, something clicked and suddenly all the money came right in it. Darnyelle: No, no. Now 'cause, and here's the thing, Teresa, like how are we going to [00:09:00] change anyone's life if we only tell the upside of the story? Teresa: A hundred percent. I am with you completely. Darnyelle: Right? Teresa: We need to know that. It's not as easy as it looks on paper. Darnyelle: It's not as easy as it looks. And I went back to work for two years. I figured it out in this business on nights and weekends, and I tell anybody, listen a job if you have to work for someone else, use it as your primary fundraising opportunity. I had to do what I had to do 'cause I didn't wanna live in my car and I wanted to make sure that my basic needs could be met. So I took my butt back to work because the business wasn't working. But while I was in the job for two years, 'cause I signed a two year contract. I was fully committed to learning what I couldn't figure out on my own initially, because at the end of the two years, I declared myself unemployable and I was never gonna work for anyone else again. So on January 1st, 2011, I came back into my business full-time and we have not looked by 2014. I had a seven figure [00:10:00] business before you get too excited and, and celebrate me. It was short-lived by 2016. Or early, late 2016, early 2017, I was back into a mid six figure business. You might be wondering why. Teresa: Yeah. Darnyelle: Because I hated my seven figure business. Teresa: Okay. Darnyelle: It was a monster, a circus. It was not sustainable. I hustled my way to seven figures. Teresa: Right? Darnyelle: And I could not keep all the balls in the air, and I burnt out. I got sick and I said, you know what? You can have this business. I'll go back happily to a mid six figure business if it allows me to keep my sanity and have some semblance of a life. And so I went back and I was totally fine with it. I didn't feel embarrassed or anything, but I started to get this little gnawing I used to, it started as like a, a really faint, distant whisper. Teresa: Mm-hmm. Darnyelle: And then it [00:11:00] started to get a little bit louder and a little bit louder, and then eventually it was a shout. Not only was I supposed to be operating a company that did seven figures a year, but I was supposed to be teaching other people how to do the same thing. And so I had to figure out how was I gonna go back into a seven figure business? 'cause I didn't want it to be like it was the last one. Mm-hmm. And that is where the Move to Millions Method came from. I figured out how to build a business sustainably with Grace and E instead of hustle and grind, putting the right systems and infrastructure in place. We got back to seven figures in late 2018. We worked, well. 2018, we were at like 9 63, 963,000. And honestly, if I really pushed, I could have done the other 47,000, but I was like, you know what, this was great. By 2019 we had done $2 million in the business, so, and we had done it in this foreman. So right around that time, I [00:12:00] had started really praying to God and asking God, okay, I think I got myself together. What is it that you would have me do? Mm-hmm. And that is when he gave me move to millions as my movement. So we started going through a rebrand, and as a result of the rebrand, I started working with clients directly on the auspices of helping them to get to seven figures. And since late 2021, we have helped 77 entrepreneurs cross their first or next seven figures, and the majority of them have sustained it over time. Teresa: Right. So there's so much, so much in there that I want to cover. Okay. The first thing I wanna touch on is how awesome it is that you talked about hitting seven figures, which for so many business owners, whether it's seven figures, six figures, eight figures, whatever the number is, there's like a number in our head. Yep. That goes, if I hit that, life will be amazing. Yeah. And you hit it and you [00:13:00] did not like it, right? Darnyelle: No. And I thought if I hit, I thought many things. I thought if I hit it all of a sudden I would be worthy, I would be deserving. And, and you know, that's an issue that's unrelated to the money, but it absolutely impacts the money. Yeah. I thought if I hit it, all of a sudden the heavens would open, the seeds would part, and they'd ride in on a donkey and my life would be forever changed. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, having all the money and having no one to share it with. I was single. I was. Living out of a suitcase. I was always on a plane going somewhere to talk to somebody about something. I did not have any love in my life. The only person I had to call when something amazing happened was my mama. Yeah. I needed more to life than that. Right? Yeah. And so I think that money by itself, it's, it's a tool. It's not a measuring stick. It's not an identity marker. For me at that point, it was an identity marker. Yeah. I thought it made me who I [00:14:00] was, and so I really had to dismantle the blocks and the beliefs so that I could build myself back up into a woman who knew, just like she knows her name, that she is worthy and deserving of making money at that level. Yeah, and that took a lot of inner...

Behind the Scenes: Designing a Launch That Works for YOU

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I walk you through four powerful launch strategies - webinars, bootcamps, open houses, and paid workshops and explore the importance of aligning a launch with your business’s unique needs. The centerpiece is the case study of Louise Miller’s Make It Happen Club, where she and I designed the bespoke "Quiet Action, Big Impact" launch. It blends a challenge-style format with an open house approach to authentically reflect Louise’s sense of calm and her audience’s needs. Here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all launch. If you want it to really stick and last you’ve got to pick a launch style that feels like you, speaks to what your people actually want, and suits what you're offering.

Key Takeaways

Don’t Force It - Launch with Intention

Your launch should feel authentic, not contrived. Launch formats like webinars or bootcamps only succeed when they naturally fit your style and audience dynamics.

Four Core Launch Strategies

Webinars — Educational, interactive, and great for feeding high-intent prospects
Bootcamps — Intensive, immersive, and perfect for engagement and transformation
Open House — Low-pressure peek behind the curtain; ideal for showcasing offerings
Paid Workshops — Commitment-filtered sessions that lead to higher conversion rates

The Case of Louise Miller’s Make It Happen Club

Louise’s business thrives on calm, thoughtful planning. A typical webinar or bootcamp wouldn’t reflect that. Instead, we partnered to create a hybrid launch called Quiet Action, Big Impact—a soft, intentional experience infused with mindful structure.

Customize to Connect

Matching your launch approach with your personal rhythm and your audience’s needs doesn’t just boost conversions—it sets the stage for an experience that feels meaningful and memorable.

Craft with Clarity

A strategic launch starts with clarity:

Understand your strengths and style
Know your audience’s preferences
Design with intention, not pressure
Launch should reflect your values, not someone else’s playbook

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Ep 339 - Re-defining Productivity and Reducing Overwhelm: Strategies for Success with Louise Miller Connect with Louise Miller on Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

You'll often hear me talk about four different ways of launching, and these are the main ways I teach webinars, masterclasses, same thing, bootcamps and challenges. Very similar, open house strategy for memberships and paid workshops, but what if your business doesn't fit neatly into one of those launch experiences? Because it's incredibly important to create a launch experience that fits you, fits your audience, fits your product, and fits your energy, and that is exactly what I'm talking about in today's episode. I'm taking you behind the scenes of a launch that was done by the amazing Louise Miller for her Make It Happen Club. Where we created a unique launch experience so that it fit perfectly with her and her customers, and her product. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are having a good week. Before we get started with today's episode of the podcast, I would love just to ask you a very quick favor if I can. If you are listening to this and you have not yet subscribed, and sometimes people don't realize they've not subscribed, so please go and check if you have actually [00:02:00] signed up to the podcast. If you haven't, I would really appreciate it if you could hit that subscribe button. And also, if I may ask two favors. I know, I know. If you haven't given me a review, I would be so very grateful. You see, podcasts aren't searchable in the way that, like if you're searching for a particular subject, you're unlikely to have a podcast come up as a suggestion. So the only way that podcasts are found and seen is by you sharing it. So I would be so, so very grateful if you could do that. Today we're gonna be talking about how do you know what launch method to use and what if none of them fit? And the way in which I wanna explain this to you is a really cool case study of someone who is amazing and it brings me much joy to do a whole podcast talking about her. I'm talking about the amazing Louise. Now, Louise Miller has been in my world for some time. She, I actually worked with Louise to help me be productive and a little while back, Louise [00:03:00] and I had a strategy day where I went through her stuff with her and helped her with her launch. And Louise has a very distinct type of membership. So when we initially started looking at it, we realized that maybe the normal things I teach on wouldn't necessarily be a good fit for Louise. Let me go back a bit and let me first tell you about the four methods that I currently teach on. Method number one is webinars slash masterclasses. Basically, it's the same thing, just two different names. If you're going to do one of them or if you're going to do a webinar or a masterclass, they're the same thing. Choose the word masterclass because you get a higher engagement rate on that. The second one I teach on is bootcamps slash challenges. The reason I tend to lump these together is they're very similar. There's only a couple of slight differences between a bootcamp and a challenge, but they are pretty much the same thing, which is a launch event over a number of days. So four [00:04:00] days, five days, 10 days, whatever it might be, where you are showing up for those number of days and you're teaching or you are supporting them. Then I teach on the open house method, which is one that not many people teach on, and the open house method is really, really cool. If you have a membership. It has some very clever psychological and marketing strategies involved, which really help you sell your membership in a much nicer. Not sleazy, not salesy way, but in a really authentic way. And it helps you use your current members to really promote that. And then the final one is paid workshops where you show up over a number of days. You teach them something start to finish, and that is just one part of the bigger thing that you sell, and then you sell them into the bigger thing. So I teach on these four different methods, which cover pretty much all the main methods of launching, and Louise and I sat down and we realized very quickly, Louise's membership is not like your [00:05:00] average memberships, and therefore it wasn't quite gonna fit neatly into one of those boxes. Let me start by explaining to you what Louise's membership actually is. Louise's membership is called the Make It Happen Club, and basically it is a space for you to get work done. Let me explain some of the sessions. She has big idea to inspired action quarterly planning sessions. So every single quarter, and I think she launches it every quarter, every single quarter, she does a full planning session to put you back in the driving seat so you can make sure the actions that you are taking are moving you in the right direction. So basically you are working with her in a group setting online and she's walking you through the different kind of activities that you need to do in order to plan your quarter. She then has monthly momentum planning sessions where basically she kind of steps you out of your business for that session and she checks what's happening with the bigger picture. She makes sure that they create a plan that they [00:06:00] can actually follow and they leave with a plan in their hands so they can roll up their sleeves and start taking action straight away. And then she has quarterly make it happen implementation sessions where basically you work on your own big projects that you are in. It's like a coworking, but she does, she actually does. It's almost for the whole day, but you can choose the morning or the afternoon, or if you wanna go to both, you can go to both. And I have been to these, they're like three hour sessions and she checks in with everybody at the beginning and she checks in with everybody at the end. And if you get stuck, you can go into a breakout room with her and she can help you refocus. So as you can see, her membership isn't about teaching. It isn't about training. It isn't about kind of, I was gonna say motivation. That's, it is about motivation, but in a very actionable taking way. Now I work with Louise one-to-one. She helps me one-to-one, which is awesome. But I also have access to the Make It Happen Club, and I do attend the, I really enjoy the implementation session. So when it came to coming up [00:07:00] with her plan and how was she going to do this and how is she going to have a launch that would help people with getting them really in the right mind to understand what she did. We realized that some of the other things weren't gonna work, so we looked at master classes and webinars. She's done them before, but her stuff isn't necessarily about teaching. Now, there are concepts that she teaches and there are things that you have access to, but it's more about the action that someone is taking and giving you the head space and the clarity and the direction. So doing a master class or a webinar wasn't necessarily going to be the best fit because she doesn't teach something, and normally you would have a master class or webinar to teach them. The overarching thing, and then to move them into the the bigger thing or the big course or the big program that fully teaches them the thing. The next thing that we looked at was challenges or bootcamps. When you think of a [00:08:00] challenge or a bootcamp, they are normally all centered around some kind of community where you are giving them daily tasks or you are teaching them something daily. I have just finished a bootcamp. Every session of the bootcamp, I'm showing up, I'm teaching them something. There was additional q and a sessions, there was some mini mindset sessions, but basically they are learning things and doing a bit of action. But the community is a very heavy part of the challenge or the bootcamp because the whole point is that you are pulling everybody together to go, let's do this together, and everyone's motivating each other. Again. One of the things that Louise's membership is very keen on is it's not about the community because it's about taking action. And yes, although it's lovely to get on a call and hear about the other people and what they're doing, it's not about, it's not networking. It's not collaborating with people, it's very much about, in fact, it's almost like her [00:09:00] stuff is like the piece on the internet. It's almost like the space and the quiet for you to get your head straight. So again, communities weren't really going to work because. That wasn't a big thing to her. Again, a paid workshop wasn't going to work because she's not necessarily teaching something and she's definitely not teaching one part of a much bigger thing. So that left us with the open house strategy. The open house strategy seemed to be the best fit. However, it definitely needed some tweaks. With the open house strategy, it's very clever. And although initially it sounds like, well that makes, you know, super, sounds super easy, and it sounds super simple in terms of what an open house strategy is, but there are some very distinct, interesting things that you do. So with the open house strategy, you basically take your membership and you open the doors of your membership for a set amount of time. This is normally five days or a week. And the idea is you let [00:10:00] them into the community of your membership. You say to them, I am opening the doors to my membership. You are getting to see behind the scenes of the membership and you bring them into the community. The bit you don't give them on an open house is you don't tend to give them the vault. The thing where you have all the lessons and the courses and the replays, you don't give 'em access to that. You just give them access to the community where they get to hang out with your other members. And then what you do over the five days or the time period of the open house is you show them every single activity that you do. So for me, when I used to have the membership and I used to sell it as a membership, I would show them what a coaching call looked like. ie would do a coaching call with them. I would do a mindset session with them. I would do some training with them because that's what we did. We might do a bit of networking, like all the different activities you do over the period of a month in your membership. You then do that within a week, real, proper live [00:11:00] activities. So you're not just giving them a taster, you are actually saying, this is a coaching call. Come along. Now one of the many beauties of this, and, and like I said, the open house strategy goes way, way deeper, and there's so much more to it. But one of the beauties of it is they are in there with your members, so they're hanging out with your members. They're on coaching calls with your members, and they're in the community. One of the other really cool things is people don't like giving something up once they have it. So you have them into the community, you have them part of your membership, and then you basically say to them, here's the experience. This is what it's like, what did you think? And then at the end of that week you say to them, would you like to stay? And if they don't want to stay, then on a certain day you throw them out the community. This works so beautifully when you have a completely open membership. So when we looked at the different ways of launching this, definitely fit one of the best ways, however. Community is not a big thing. So how do we show her potential audience what she does? But it [00:12:00] isn't about the community and they don't get access to a vault. But she has got some courses that she offers or some, some training in terms of getting their head straight on things, but it's not really like a big vault of courses. But also, how does she demonstrate what it's like to work with her and work with her community without doing the actual things that she does, because. If she did the quarterly planning, the monthly plan, well one that wouldn't make sense 'cause they would do them too close together. And the implementation, she's basically given them an entire month, well, almost an entire quarter of what she does. And therefore why would they buy from her? So with all that being said, we decided to. Look at how we could tweak the open house, and she liked the idea of it almost being a challenge, but it not being a challenge, and how can we create something? So this is what Louise created. Louise created a four day challenge. That's not a challenge. She even had that on her signup page called [00:13:00] Quiet Action, big Impact. That name for me just sums up everything about Louise and what she does that. It's like getting your head down, being quiet, finding some space, but that making you have a massive impact. She talked about the fact of, you know, how was your first half of the year been? Have you not met necessarily, got where you wanted to be? And she basically put together quiet action, big impact to kickstart their month. So she did it at the beginning of the second half of the year and she wanted to create this four day challenge, not challenge in order to help them get sorted. So she was, felt like she was delivering something. There was a good use of them being there. 'cause that's the other thing about a challenge. You need to have a purpose. They need to have a reason. They need to have, like why would they sign up for it? So she created a really awesome four Day challenge, not challenge, which was also very similar to an open house. What she did is on day one, she did some big picture stuff where she got them to tune into [00:14:00] their vision, get crystal clear about what was most exciting about their goals, and basically made sure that they had a direction and a focus. Day two, she did the whole, let's get ready for action. So she helped them with some NLP and productivity magic. So this was a bit more. Where she was teaching them a little bit about what she did or may helping them a bit more in terms of her delivering also just as an FYI. These were 30 minute sessions because again, like she's not necessarily teaching them something that you need to spend an hour or whatever doing. She was just giving them space and she wanted to make it quick so that they were coming in, doing the thing and going. The whole point of what Louise does is not to add work to someone's plate, it's to help take work off their plate. So if she had said, these are like three hour sessions for four times, like. People would've been like, well, no, that's not really helping. I'm very busy. So again, she understood these are busy people, so she kept it short. Day three was about taking action. [00:15:00] So day three was longer. It was an hour and a half, and it was roll your sleeves up and crack on. It's amazing how much you can get done when you avoid distractions and you have a accountability of your peers. So this was her co-working. So she actually showed them what it was like to sit in that coworking space. And then on day four, she did a 30 minute session on setting it up for success...

Transitioning in the Spotlight: Navigating Hate and Living Authentically with Jaxon Feeley

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 01:00:00 +0100

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS

This isn’t just a story -it's a guidebook for anyone feeling misunderstood, overwhelmed, or afraid to be themselves. Whether you're leading a brand, building community—or just trying to wake up as the truest version of yourself—Jax’s journey is a beacon of strength, clarity, and purpose. In this episode, I chat with Jaxon Feeley a TV personality, speaker, podcast host, and model who shares his powerful, unapologetically authentic path from female to male, all while working as a prison officer. It’s raw. It’s real. And it's packed with strategies to stay grounded, resilient, and true to yourself—especially when the world pushes back.

Key Takeaways

Harness Hate as a Catalyst, Not a Crutch

Haters gonna hate—but Jaxon shows how resilience, self-worth, and an unshakeable purpose can turn negativity into unstoppable momentum.

Authenticity Is the Ultimate Power Move

Living your truth isn’t just brave—it’s magnetic. When you’re rooted in who you are, you draw in the right people and opportunities.

Inner Work Builds Outer Strength

Exploring identity and doing emotional work isn’t optional—it’s foundational. Self-acceptance and confidence stem from deep inner alignment.

Tough Conversations Can Be Transformative

The hardest talks—like coming out to family—can lead to love, understanding, and transformation. Vulnerability invites connection.

Representation Ripples Outward

Visibility matters. Jax's story doesn’t just empower—it educates and inspires, especially for trans voices craving role models. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Jaxon Feeley on Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, Linkedin, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

As a business owner, I think one of our biggest worries is putting ourself out there on social media, on stages in front of other people for fear of what they might say about us. Which is why I really wanted to bring you today's guest, Jaxon Feeley, who has had the most horrific and heinous things said about him and said to him online, and I really wanted to chat with him about how you manage that and how you keep going for a cause. Regardless, even though this is happening to you. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Heat wearing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker certified coat, and the host of this number one righted podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life. That episode. [00:01:00] I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. And this is a podcast for course creators, membership owners, coaches who are looking to grow their business. But today I have a slightly different type of episode. Normally the episodes I bring you, if you're new. If you're new, welcome. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. Normally with these, with my episodes, we have solos where I give you very strategic, tactical, like do this, do that type episodes. And then I have interviews where I interview the best of the best in the [00:02:00] online space. And I've had the likes of Amy Porterfield and Michael Hyatt and Mike Stelzner, and Denise Duffield Thomas and Stu McLaren, and Dean Graziosi and Ryan Deiss, just to name a few. But today's interview is a little bit different. I am interviewing the very lovely Jaxon Feeley. I met Jaxon a number of different times in various different places, mainly through the very lovely Jo Simpson, and immediately got on with him, thought he was super lovely, and over the various different times of seeing him, he spoke at the Big Fest food. I started to hear more and more and more about Jaxon's story and. If I'm honest, I was hesitant to have him on the podcast, not because I didn't think he was amazing, and I didn't think he's awesome, which I do, but the conversation we're having is a little bit different to the one I normally have. However, after having the conversation with him, I am so, so glad I did. Jaxon is a TV personality, a podcast host, presenter, a speaker, a [00:03:00] model, and a lot, lot more transitioning whilst still serving as a prison officer in 2021. Jaxon uses his wealth of experience to inspire, motivate, and encourage people from all walks of life to find and most importantly live their truth. Jaxon's story is a really, really great story. Initially, I decided I wanted him to come on to talk about how he was treated on social media. Jaxon is very open and has an account where he talks about what it's like to a transition to go from being a girl to a guy, and because he's so open about it, he gets a lot of hate. Like he gets some pretty heinous stuff. And I thought initially it'd be great to have him on through the lens of how does he deal with this hate? How does he deal with people saying the most heinous things to him? Because I know as business owners, one of the things that worry us and I know worries me is I like to be liked. And the thought that I would have to deal with anything, [00:04:00] like even a percentage of what he deals with, I just can't imagine. But I couldn't have him on without him telling his story. And. As a parent, that was really, it was really hard to listen to and really kind of inspiring to listen to. And I guess ultimately I wanted to bring his story. I thought it was a really interesting story. I think he's very charming and charismatic and is a great advocate for trans people. Jaxon was the first trans person I think I'd really spent time with and spoken to. And that was why I decided to bring him on because I just think he gave me different ways of thinking and looking and seeing things and, and it was just, I think for me personally, it was really good to hear a part of a world that I didn't know very much about. So anyway, I feel like I could explain and talk and say all things. For ages when the best thing I can do is just let you listen to the conversation and I would love to know [00:05:00] what you thought. Without further ado, here is Jaxon Feeley. Welcome to the podcast, Jax. How you doing? Jax: I'm alright thank you. Lovely. How are you? Teresa: I am good. I've never said this to you before, but I do love your accent. It's a really, like, it's a really nice and warm and friendly and I, yeah, it's just really nice. I like it. It's all. But, but the Northern accent's so friendly. So if you are, 'cause we have an American, well we have people listening all over the world, but we have a fairly big American audience, so like Yeah. I think it must be fascinating for them when we bring different people on from the UK know and like these different accents, so. Yeah. Yeah. Jax: I know, right. Did, I did a podcast not long ago with, with someone in America and Oh, way up. The dogs are here. Teresa: It's fine. It's fine. Jax: And I was so conscious of like how I was speaking. 'cause I tried to like, obviously when I do talks and stuff, I tried to speak maybe a little bit less that, but I was really conscious of. Because they're not gonna know what the, what I'm talking [00:06:00] about. Teresa: Well, I mean I think you are just about safe. I think when we get into Scotland and I was at an event with someone from North Wales, and even that is like for someone who is British, you're like, What do they say? 'cause like that is really strong. So anyway, but we, I didn't bring you on to talk accents, although, you know, just lovely. You know, and they said it could go anywhere. I bought you on. To talk about lots of things, and this conversation is gonna go into lots of different places, I know it's. But where I want us to start is one of the biggest fears that I would say my audience, me, most people that I speak to have, is that when they put themselves out on social media that someone is going to say something. And in most cases they don't. Right? In most ordinary cases, people don't jump on and start saying mean things about people. But you have dealt with the worst of the worst. So can we start by just you [00:07:00] sharing some of the things that people have said to you online? So, sorry we jumped straight in with a deep one there, so. Jax: No, no, no. It's okay. It's okay. Uh, so yeah, I just wanted to give a little bit of context. So obviously I began transitioning from female to male. Did that while serving in a prison environment and started to share my own story on, on social media over the last sort of three years. And so that is more than anything the reason why I get quite a lot of, of negativity online. I do get a lot of positive as well, but obviously, you know, the negative can really, really outweigh that when, especially when it's a protected characteristic that a lot of people don't understand, don't agree with. And so I have had comments from, you know, ones that make me really laugh, but also ones that that go to, you know, you should have killed yourself. You need electrocuting, you need shooting, you know what's wrong with the world, freak, you know, all, all of those things. And. Teresa: Which. [00:08:00] I just can't imagine what that must feel like, like or how that, like the first time you got something like that, what, what went through your head? Jax: I think the first time it started to happen, I had the need to like want to retaliate or want to like say my piece, but all that ever does is consume you. Like, I, I don't need to argue with these people. You know, I think I've been lucky in the sense that because I came from a prison environment, I was very used to having abuse and threats and physical, you know, threats or physical violence, even. Straight, you know, five millimeters from my face. So something that is through a keyboard and through a computer has never really had a massive impact on me like that. Um, but I think you've probably heard me talk about this before. I think the biggest thing when it comes to dealing with online hate and, and comments and stuff like that is doing the, the inner [00:09:00] work on you and Yeah, really understanding, understanding you because. If I let all of the, the, the good comments in, I have to let all the bad comments in as well. Mm-hmm. And without any of those comments, I have to know who I am. I have to know my soul. I have to know that my self-worth doesn't depend on anyone else's opinion, whether they're giving me all the love in the world or all the hate in the world. Mm-hmm. Um, because you can't only let one in. You have to let both in. And so you have to be very careful of. Of putting your self-worth on what other people believe and think. And I think that's what gets lost a lot of the time when people don't do that sort of inner self-work that is terrifying and difficult because you have to know your self-worth and it has to be based on you and your opinion of you, um, to be able to navigate that thing. Teresa: So did you do that work prior to having a profile online and people knowing who you were, so had you [00:10:00] fully kind of got that straight in your head or was that kind of a process as this was happening? Jax: Yeah, it's just, it's almost like learning on the job. Right? Obviously transitioning in general takes a lot of, of self-reflection and, and a lot of. I've always been sort of really passionate about, especially since transitioning and, you know, understanding every corner of my soul. Yeah. And, and what makes me tick, what makes me anxious, what makes me feel triggered, what makes me feel certain ways, you know, why am I feeling like that? Why am I thinking that? What does that mean? And just constantly trying to understand. What's going on in my mind and in my body, and, and if I am feeling anxious or I am feeling a certain way, why is that? And how do I navigate that? And how do I build better relationships and how do I communicate better? And, uh, you know, what, what, what builds me up and what knocks my confidence and what should I be around and what shouldn't I be around? And I think I've just sort of done that. You know, and I, I'm still doing it now and, and don't get me wrong, [00:11:00] it's not easy seeing the comments in any way, shape, or form. The, the thing that I do is, is the thing that I try and remember is. I'm in a situation where I can let these things go over my head, but there's a lot of people out there, especially, you know, young trans people who won't and who will listen to these people and who may take their own life, who may do something stupid, who may have the confidence not because they're listening to all these trolls online saying, yo, what's wrong with the world? Or, you know, you shouldn't, you don't deserve to be alive. And if my thoughts have always been, if someone can see me. He's still happy, he's still living his life. He's still got great friends, he's still doing all these things. He's not stopping posting. Mm-hmm. So I don't have to listen to you. I can listen to Jax instead and just try and provide that little bit of, that little bit of positive representation for, for just being authentic and, and basically saying, you know, fuck you to anyone who doesn't like that. Sorry, can I spell this? [00:12:00] Teresa: It's fine, it's fine. You're fine. There was one thing that, there was one thing that you said that I thought, oh, that's sad. Like, and you are right, and I get it. If you're gonna let the nice comments in, you are, you are letting all comments in. So by going, you know what, and I guess it's not so much, you're not appreciating the nice comments, it's the fact of no, you are not having them create who you are as a person. Which just to kind of like add it to kind of a business thing as well. It's like, it's like when we only feel good about ourselves and people are buying our stuff, right? And it's like, no, no, no, we are that good all the time. Like just because someone's buying or someone isn't buying doesn't mean we're not that good, but we take an external validation. To tell us what, how we are and who we should be and that sort of thing, so. Jax: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Teresa: I had never had I had conversations with someone who had transitioned. I don't think so. I think I, I probably knew of some people who had transitioned. I don't think I'd ever [00:13:00] had a conversation until I met you. And one thing that really struck me, and not that I, I almost wanna go, you're not here to educate us, but I know that is part of what you do as well. Like you are trying to be the voice and, and helping people understand. But the one thing that really struck me, and I want you to go into your story a little bit more because you touched on it, the fact that you were, uh, working in a prison and I thought to myself like, could I imagine a worse place to be working and do that thing. Like, you know how some people make out, like, and, and you know, I don't know. I, I don't even know what you know. Who I've heard say this, but some people make out like, oh, you know, it's just a thing. And it's just, especially with children or younger people, it's just a phase. It's just a thing. And it's like if someone is willing to go through what you went through, this is not just you going, I think I'm, I am this, like, this is it. Like I said, yeah. [00:14:00] It's like how hard could you have made it for yourself? That freaking hard, like literally you could have found an easier like, you know. Get a different job for God's sake. Like, so talk to me about like, what that was like. So if you don't mind, like go back a bit about when was the decision that you were like, actually I'm not, I'm not who I'm meant to be, and how long did that take and, and how did that all fit in with work? Jax: So I'd always sort of like struggled with my mental health and, and feeling comfortable and, and, and feeling that sense of belonging sort of within myself from a really young age. I was a tomboy, you know, I didn't really wanna be very girly and I, and I always struggled with that sort of identity of being, being feminine, but I definitely didn't know that I wanted to be a boy or should be a boy because at, you know, 20 years ago, I didn't have the vocabulary to verbalize how I was feeling. Right. And I only [00:15:00] really started to understand and, and realize and learn about all that when I was sort of 26 years old. But when I look back now and I,

3 Proven Ways to Grow Your Audience Fast

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I explore why audience growth is the lifeblood of scalable success. I illustrate this with the remarkable example of Alex Hormozi—whose “$100 M Money Models” launch drew over 1 million registrants and delivered tens of millions in revenue. From there, I introduce three powerful strategies—collaborations, summits, and bundles—and share actionable insights and real‑world examples to help you expand your impact quickly. Throughout the episode, my message is clear: you must be intentional and proactive in building your audience. By embracing strategic collaborations, leveraging the concentrated exposure of summits, and crafting high-value bundles, you’ll put yourself in a strong position to grow purposefully and sustainably.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

Why Audience Growth Matters

A substantial and engaged audience is the foundation for launching high-impact projects and scaling business revenue (e.g., Alex Hermozi's $100M launch).

Strategy 1: Collaborations & Partnerships

Join forces with complementary creators or businesses to tap into new audiences.

Cross-promotion grows reach while lending authority.

Partnering allows shared resources, content co-creation, and collaborative momentum. Strategy 2: Hosting & Joining Summits

Summits provide concentrated exposure to highly engaged communities.
Being a presenter or participant increases credibility and positions you as a thought leader.
Offers opportunities for deeper engagement, follow-up funnels, and content repurposing.

Strategy 3: Bundles

Bundling courses, products, or services creates compelling offers that attract broader audiences.
Strategic bundling enhances perceived value and promotes cross-selling.
Bundles can also be promotional partnerships—pairing your offer with others for mutual growth.

Overarching Principles

Be strategic: Choose collaborations, summits, and bundles that align with your brand and audience.
Be proactive: Don’t wait for ideal partners—reach out, propose, and create opportunities.
Be intentional: Plan each growth strategy with clear goals and execution pathways.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

How to run a successful online summit with Krista Miller Krista Miller Lizzy Goddard Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Alex Hormozi's last launch pulled in over a hundred million, and yes, his content and his strategy were brilliant. However, none of it would've worked without his audience. You can't scale a business without having people to sell to. And the truth is your audience growth can't be passive. It has to be strategic, and it has to be something that you actively do. And unfortunately, just putting a post up every few weeks about a lead magnet is not gonna cut it. So in today's episode, I'm sharing three proven ways in which you can grow your list faster. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? At the point I'm recording this, I spent the weekend and I'm laughing 'cause this is embarrassing. I spent the weekend watching Alex Hormozi's launch and basically like writing pages of notes, pulling it all apart, doing my own debrief, working out what worked and like what the strategies he was that he used and, and I'm going to probably do an episode where I talk about what he did 'cause it was fascinating. And it was interesting actually, and I didn't, I wasn't gonna go down this side quest, [00:02:00] but lots of people were talking about it online and I felt a little bit like, oh, do people think I'm jumping on this bandwagon? The truth is, I watch people's launches all at the time. And just because his was so massive was probably the reason why people were more interested that I was watching it and also lots of other people were watching it. But at the point of watching his, I was also watching someone else's launch. And when I say watching, I literally, look at how many emails they're saying sending, what are they saying in their emails? What do their landing pages look like? What are their bonuses? What is, you know, if I can watch the live webinar or if I can watch the replay, I go and watch the replay. I look at what slides they use. Like I do this a lot because this is the stuff I teach and I am. Well, one, totally fascinated by it and love this stuff, and I'm a geek and I totally geek out on it. But two, this is how I'm so good at what I do because it's not just a case of like, I did a course on how to do this and now I [00:03:00] know how to do it. That's not the case. I am a marketer by trade and by history. I understand the psychology and the marketing that goes into this stuff, and I constantly watch what other people are doing, so I'm constantly testing things myself. I am. Doing it in practice. And I am really going down side route here now because this makes me think of something else. I was thinking the other week about AI and how AI will take over lots of people's businesses or you know, roles. And I was thinking why would someone or what can I offer that AI can't in terms of what I do? And AI doesn't know what it's like to sit and wait to do a webinar and worry that no one will turn up. AI doesn't have the experience that. Me and maybe you if this might apply to you, has, you know, we know what it's like to do the thing that we are doing. This isn't just theory. We can get our [00:04:00] own results because we're actually doing it. AI can't. So, like I said, for me. Watching other people's launches is not something I just did because it was fashionable, because it was Alex Hormozi and lots of people were talking about it. I was watching it because I watch all launches and I literally have folders on my computer of various massive people's launches. And the breakdown of it and what worked and what didn't and all that. So anyway, but the reason I share all of this is Alex, in his launch, made over a hundred million dollars. I can't even, like, I wouldn't even know how to write that down. I dunno how that looks. That is an insane amount of money. Now. Would I like to make a hundred million dollars? No. I could honestly hand on heart and say, no, I don't wanna make a hundred million dollars. I would happily earn more than I'm earning now. And, and that's in my plan. So I want you to know I'm not saying this because I'm going right everyone, let's make a hundred [00:05:00] million dollars. I mean, if you want to. Awesome. Like, great, let's go for it. But I'm not saying it because it's the amount of money. I'm not interested in having a business that big because that is a beast, right? Well, it's more than a beast. The reason I'm saying and bringing this up and how much he made was because that was only possible. Because of one main thing. Now, don't get me wrong, he used very cool strategies. He did lots of other stuff, which like I said, I, I'm probably gonna do an episode about and break down the 10 psychological and marketing strategies he used. However, the one thing that if he hadn't have had this, it would never have succeeded, is an audience. He has a massive audience. He was saying, and I have notes on all this, and obviously I will. Go into it properly if I do an episode on this, but he has something like 1.4 million on his email list, right? [00:06:00] He had 21,000 affiliates, not individual people, people who were being an affiliate. So imagine if each of those 21,000 just had two people in their audience. You've doubled it to 42,000, but the chances are they have much bigger audience isn't that. So he basically had a massive, massive, probably one of the biggest in the online space audiences out there. And the reason I'm sharing this is because no matter what level of business you want, no matter what size or how much money you want to earn, it is directly going to correlate with the size of your audience. If you do not have a big audience, or no, I'm not even gonna say big. I'm gonna take that back. If you do not have an audience, you are not gonna be able to make money because no one knows you exist and no one knows what you sell, and no one will there be able to buy from you. So your audience is one of the biggest keys to what you do and [00:07:00] actually getting customers. So in today's episode, I want to take you through three ways are really effective at growing your audience fast. So let's go through these three ways and they're going to have a common theme of other people's audiences. And if you've heard me talk about this before, which you should have done, if you've been in my world a while, if you're new, then welcome. I am so very grateful to have you here. And by the way, while I'm saying that, if there's any chance that you would do me a massive favor, any of you, and go and give me a review. On wherever you're listening to this, a lovely five star review. And if you'd share that you are listening on your social media, I would appreciate that so greatly. I dunno whether you know this, but podcasts are not searchable and the only way that people can find my podcast, we don't advertise it. I.e. we don't put money behind it other than on my own organic social media is by other people sharing it. So I would appreciate it so very much if you would share it. Anyway, let's get on with these three things. So I've picked three [00:08:00] things that, like I said. I'm going to give you more people to your audience faster, but because of it, it takes a bit more work. Obviously. The first one is collaborations and partnerships. This, I think, when I think about some of the biggest people in my industry in the online space. Some of these people had very good collaborations with very big audiences very early on, and that would've made a massive difference to how quickly they were able to grow their business. And sometimes it's frustrating. Okay. Like sometimes if I can have a pity party for myself, which I try not to do very often, but sometimes it's like, gosh, if I could just get someone I know, some big name that I know or some friends share my stuff. Wow. Like the difference that could make. But that isn't the case and I can't motivate that. Like, and, and most people don't get that. Most people don't get someone sharing their stuff. [00:09:00] That's massive. But like I said, some people have had that and that has made a massive difference. So what I want you to do is I want you to look at who you can collaborate and partner with. The key thing here is you really need to make sure that they have a same or similar audience to you, because if you are gonna go to the effort and the time of collaborating with them and. It is a collaboration and partnership. There is a two way thing here, which we're gonna talk about, but if you are gonna go to the time and effort of doing that, then you need to make sure they've got the right people, because otherwise you are putting someone in front of your audience that they're not interested in, and therefore they'll start to think this is weird and maybe disengaged a little bit, and you are being put in front of someone else's audience, which isn't gonna do a whole lot for you, and you're gonna be disappointed in your results. So same or similar audiences? Let me give you a couple of real life examples of people within Grow Launch Sell. I have a pediatric dietician in the In Grow Launch Sell [00:10:00] in, she's actually in my accelerator group. She has teamed up with a sleep consultant, so she's a pediatric dietician. She helps parents with children with fussy eating and some other things that I know very little about other than what I've learned from her. And she teamed up with a sleep consultant who helps parents with children who don't sleep. Perfect. They offer two very different things. They're not in competition to each other, and they have exactly the same audiences. So the chances are that. There are going to be an overlap in that group. There are going to be some people who have children who don't sleep and who don't eat particularly well. That's a great collaboration and partnership. Another really good example is a lovely lady called Victoria Phillips, who is in the Grow Launch Sell program, and she started a podcast called. Mum means business. She wants to interview mums who are entrepreneurs, who own businesses and talk about the [00:11:00] Messy Middle. It's a great podcast. Please go and check it out. She's, I've taken a listen and she's awesome. And I have someone else in my community called Megan Tobler who has a community for mums in business, and she also has a podcast where she interviews other business owners and talks about their business journey. Her community is predominantly for mums, and she went on Victoria's podcast. This is a great collaboration because you've got two people who both serve a similar audience, but with different things. So you've got Victoria starting her podcast, and you've got Meghan who has a community. So both of them can benefit from collaborating and doing something together because. Megan can go, I've been on this podcast over here, and if obviously you're a mum, which her audience are, then you might wanna go and listen to it and Victoria can go. I interviewed this this lady who has a community for mums. If you're interested in joining community, go and check it out. [00:12:00] These are great collaborations. So a couple of things to note on this. Like I said, it needs to be a win-win for you and them. It has to be something that benefits both of you. So don't go into it with the mindset of, right, I just wanna get on in front of other people's audiences. It very much has to be a, we can serve each other. You can do things like go live on each other's social media. You could do things like email swaps. You could do things like a joint masterclass or go on each other's podcasts or blogs or videos or whatever it might be. But what can you both do for each other? And you don't necessarily have to do this the same thing. So for instance, you don't necessarily have to both do an email swap where someone can send an email and someone could do a session in someone's group. How can you help and serve each other? So collaborations and partnerships are a really great way to start to build your audience. Also, remember, and I'm gonna keep saying it on all of these examples, you need to be offering some kind of lead magnet or a reason for them to get on your email list. 'cause [00:13:00] yes, we want them to know about us and great follow us on social. But what I really want more than anything. You to be on my email list. Okay. Number two, summits. Now, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, these aren't quick, easy solutions. This isn't like do one thing and you're gonna get loads of people on your email list. These do take work, but they pay in dividends with the numbers you can get on. Summits are great. You can do your own or you can be a guest on someone else's summit. The one thing I would say on guesting on someone else's summit is unless you know them and you know the summit, you don't know how good it's gonna be and therefore how good your results are going to be. My rule of thumb with this would be basically I say yes unless. It's really not my audience. Or the other thing I have to say, I have real issue with, and this was definitely something that I made sure was good in my own summit, was I don't like it when they're like, you need to do [00:14:00] this, this, this, this, this. You need to basically do all the promotion 'cause this is how it works. And they do nothing. Or they have no audience themselves. It's like, no, I wanna see you putting in as much, if not more effort than I'm gonna put in. So the way the summit works is they bring together a group of experts with a common goal. So that's the best way that you can do it. It needs to be as kind of specific and as niche as possible. So you could do a summit around growing your podcast, and it's aimed at podcasters who have started a podcast and want to grow to the next level. So keep it as niche and specific as possible and make sure that all the speakers have the right audience. Like I said, that's roughly how a summit works. And then they tend to basically record. Sometimes it's live, sometimes it's prerecorded, sometimes it's all given out at the same time. Sometimes it's filtered out. I mean, there are various different ways to do summits. If you want to know more about summits, then I've done an episode with Krista Miller and she's amazing is the Summit Queen. Go check her out. But the way that the [00:15:00] summit works and the reason that it's good is everybody who's part of the summit shares it to their audience and therefore. They're reaching way more people than if you were just doing a webinar or a masterclass on your own. You are reaching all these other audiences, and obviously if you are the summit host, you are getting all of the opt-ins. So even though running a summit

Evergreen Success: Jessica Crane’s Advice on Funnels, Ads, and a Sustainable Online business

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I sit down with serial entrepreneur and internationally recognized wealth & business coach Jessica Crane to uncover the secrets behind building a thriving evergreen online business. Jessica walks us through how she launched her successful venture from day one—capitalizing on ads and a strategic funnel design. They dive deep into why investing in yourself matters, how to measure and iterate based on market feedback, and how personal adversity and work–family balance shaped Jessica’s approach. Plus, we explore a critical long-term vision: building generational wealth. If you're creating a course, membership, or online coaching business—or simply want to make your offering more sustainable and resilient—this episode is packed with actionable frameworks and uplifting wisdom.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

Evergreen Funnels Create Sustainable Growth By designing a funnel that consistently attracts and converts, Jessica built a business that doesn’t rely on periodic launches—helping her scale predictably and focus on long-term results.
Ads Accelerate Traction and Visibility Strategically placed Facebook ads played a pivotal role in generating awareness and early wins—underlining how paid efforts, when aligned with a funnel, can drive sustainable growth.
Measure, Test, Iterate Jessica emphasizes that the market’s response is your best teacher. By monitoring performance and adjusting based on real-world data, you optimize your funnel and campaigns for continuous improvement.
Resilience Turns Setbacks into Strategy Drawing on personal adversity and work–life complexity, Jessica champions resilience—and how a grounded mindset becomes a strategic asset when building a business that lasts.
Think Beyond You—Build Generational Wealth This episode goes beyond tactics: Jessica underscores the importance of creating systems and outcomes that empower not just yourself, but future generations.
Balance: The Long Game Even amid business momentum, Jessica stresses the importance of family and personal well‑being—reminding us that balance isn't optional; it's scalable.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Jessice on she_eo_collective Instagram, jessicacranesiss Instagram, Linkedin, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Can you create an online business and take it evergreen from day one and make money? Well, this wasn't something that I thought was possible until I met today's guest, Jessica Crane. In today's episode, Jessica is talking me through how she took her online business Evergreen from day one and started making money. I dig into all of the various bits of the funnel and how it works for her and how it's still working to this day. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. This week we are talking evergreen. Now, this isn't something you hear me talking about a lot because obviously a lot of what I talk about is using launching, and most of those launches are live, and I am actually a massive fan of someone learning to live launch first, understanding what's working for their customers, understanding how they show up, what is great, what isn't great, and then once you've learned, then we can take it into evergreen. However, today's guest literally took a business online and immediately went evergreen and made it a success. Today I'm talking to the [00:02:00] very lovely Jessica Crane. Jessica is a serial entrepreneur, internationally recognized wealth and business coach, and is the founder of the SheEO Collective, a community built to empower SheEO's to build, lead, and conquer. She has a seven figure business and she helps SheEOs create generational wealth by embracing the power of choice and voice. After overcoming personal adversity, she built her empire by combining the grit to overcome challenges and the glam to celebrate success. We have such a lovely conversation. Basically, Jessica's life turned a bit of a corner and through personal circumstance meant her business had to change, and she basically started evergreen from day one,. And you know me, you know, I like to ask all the questions and I like to get really deep and in on, okay, what is it that we're doing here? How do we do it? And we talk about how she uses ads and, and basically. [00:03:00] Through ad spend is then converting people into her funnel, which is then converting them to customers. So we talk through what that is. Then we have a general conversation about investing in yourself and investing in your business and what that looks like and why people might be a little bit intimidated to do that. But it's a really good conversation. There's lots for you to take away from it. And like I said, evergreen isn't something that I always talk about, so this was as interesting for me as I think it will be for you guys. Without further ado, here is the lovely Jessica. Jessica, welcome to the podcast. Jessica: Amazing. Thanks', Teresa. Thank you for having me. Really excited for this conversation today. Teresa: Me too. We met for the first time. In fact, I need to share how we met. 'cause it kind of was funny. So I was talking about the fact and I had to talk generally about the fact that I'm terrible at networking. I really don't like it. And I had gone to an event to the big fest, Doon, and I had got this dress that I'd asked to be fixed 'cause the zip had broke on it. And they said [00:04:00] they'd fixed it. It was my lovely mother-in-law and she said she'd fixed it. And I thought she was gonna sew the zip up so I could just like pull it on over my head. Anyway, this is meaning something people, in case you're like, what are you talking about? Anyway, I put the dress on in the morning and the flipping zip broke, so I managed to get it fixed, except I couldn't zip the dress up. So I then had to leave my room with my dress unzip 'cause it was a zip at the back. And I just found this very lovely woman who happened to be sat down and I just said, is there any chance, weirdly you could sit my dress up? And that's how we met. So Jessica: I was helping girls, right? Like. Teresa: Exactly. Jessica: And I'd been there. So I went to an event where I was getting this award had this tight Balmain dress on and I had to do exactly the same. I had to go find somebody to zip my dress up. Teresa: Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. Like, you know, you're gonna get on from that point. And when someone goes, of course as if you dress, dress up, don't look at you like you are actually insane. But it was awesome. So we got to meet and we got to chat and hang out and we [00:05:00] knew some people, which is brilliant, but. The reason I wanted, or there's lots of reasons I want you on the podcast, but one of the ones is because we're gonna talk about Evergreen and I want people to understand, I don't normally do the whole tell us how you got started and things, but you started with Evergreen, which most people can't do. So just take me back to the beginning as to how you came into the online space and then why you decided that option, which might have seemed like an easy option, but it kind of isn't. Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. So I had a face-to-face consulting business for about three years. So I was consulting with businesses mainly in hair, salon, spa, beauty, that kind of industry, even like hotel spas, like all of those kind of different variations and. So I had a face-to-face business model and I lived in Leicester. I was based in the Midlands. So as you can imagine, a lot of my clients were all very close [00:06:00] proximity to me in where they lived. I had a big network of those people, 'cause I've been in that industry for a very long time. I went on maternity leave with my daughter and that's when I started building this business. So I'd done a consulting degree. And I had a, this huge network and they were like, come and help me, Jess, with my business. So it was very much face-to-face business consulting method for about three years. And it was working great around, you know, young children and all of this stuff. But there was two things that I noticed. One, I started to hit capacity. 'cause if you're doing something face-to-face and it's time for money, you're gonna hit a capacity. Yeah. So that's already in the back of my mind. And the second thing that happened was my husband played sport and he literally came home one day, and this was just after I'd had my second child, Hunter. So I had a newborn and a toddler, and he came home and he was like, we are moving. He was like, I'm being sold. And we're moving. And I [00:07:00] was like, what? I was like, when, where, what, how, why? And he was like, yeah, like literally, like right now we are moving to Bristol. And I was like, great. Like I'd never been to Bristol, so I was now selling my house, lost my face-to-face business, moved to a city that I'd never been to, and. Literally lost everything overnight. And I was like, this is shit. I was like, so I didn't have one family member, I didn't have one friend, I didn't have anybody. And you know, under the circumstances that he went to that team was quite pressured as well because they were like, we've brought you in to take us from a championship to a Premiership team. So he had a lot going on. Yeah. That like high pressure environment and I'd lost my business. I was doing everything with the kids, not one friend, not one family member. So I had nobody to help me childcare or anything, and I was like, this is shit. But I was like, when you are in a shit situation, you have to [00:08:00] decide. Am I gonna stay in this shit situation or am I gonna do something about it? And a lot of my clients were still messaging me. They're like, I know you've gone, but I need you to help me. Yeah. Like, can you still help me? They were like, can you come back every now and again? Like, what? What can you do? And I was like, right. Okay. I was like, we need to find a way to make this work and. I was like, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to find a mentor. I'm going to take my business online so that if this ever happens again, yeah. It doesn't matter where we move, where we live. Like in sports, some of our friends can move every season. Mm-hmm. So I was like, this potentially could happen again and I need to future proof my business. So I was like, I'm gonna take it online. But then as I started looking in this crazy on online space. Teresa: So what year was this? Sorry. Jessica: This was 2016. Teresa: Okay, so fairly early [00:09:00] doors. Jessica: Yeah. So I was like, this is a crazy world. Yeah. A lot of people were launching, so I was looking around and a lot of people were launching and I was like, this is just not gonna work for me. Like one my husband does not have a nine to five job. Like he can be gone at 6:00 AM back at seven. He could be gone all weekend if they've got a game away like, and sometimes they're like, they don't have a schedule. Sometimes they're just like, oh, we're gonna train till X. Yeah, X time today we're gonna have a meeting. Like it's very light spur of the moment. Like sometimes they'll have a week off and they're like, you've got a week off from today, and you're like. Great. Okay, great. Yeah, there's no planning. There's no notice. So I have to do all of that as though I'm doing it almost as a single parent. Yeah. So I was like, I, I was terrified of launching as well. Because you remember on the TV where the politician was talking on Zoom and then the child on the stroller comes in in the back? Teresa: Yeah, yeah. Literally. [00:10:00] That's your life. Jessica: I was like, that's gonna be me. I was like, I have to learn new, but like I was like, there's things in my environment that a live launch will be in life, I just don't think. Teresa: Would be a nightmare. Jessica: Take that risk. So I was like, I need to find somebody who does this in an automated way in an evergreen way. And that's exactly what I did. So I took the business online and all of our sales and marketing processes were evergreen from day one. And I think that the reason it worked is because I also think, one, I didn't have any time, and that can be a gift because when you don't have time, you have to be so strategic of how you use that time. Like, I literally, the, the little time that I did have, like my mentor was in America, my coaching calls were in the middle of the night. Mm-hmm. Like, and my son loves, loved to wake up about four times a [00:11:00] night. Brilliant. So, yeah, it was awesome. So I was like, I'm with them all day because mm-hmm. I'm the only person who can take care of them here. With nobody, and I was on these coaching calls all night. He was waking up all night. Like honestly, it was hell on Earth for about six months, but I was like, it has to work or it has to work, because there was just no other option. I was like, there is no other option. Yeah, I was like this shit, and it has to work because I also, I'm not one of them moms. I love my kids, but I'm not, I'm not a stay at home mom. I'm not a, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like I love my kids. Teresa: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'm the same. Jessica: Your kids. Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. When someone says to me, my dream is to do the school run, I'm like, wow. Well, like, 'cause that is not my dream. Like, good on you if that's what you want. But for me, hell on earth. No. Jessica: I'm the mom. That wheel spins up. Get out. See you late. Teresa: Yeah, [00:12:00] you and I would've been friends if we had kids at the same age. Jessica: Much so. So for me, and I think sometimes as a business owner, I think you do need to put yourself under that pressure of target. Teresa: Totally. Yeah. I think that is the point that I wanted to kind of bring back up was the fact of, you said. It had to work. Or it had to work. Right. And I love that because, and it's funny, when I started my business, I was a single mom. I had a house to run. I had no choice. Right? And when people go, well, how did you do it? I kind of can't tell them because I just did it. Like I didn't have a choice. It was either lose my house or move back in with my parents, which had been hell on earth like. Or take my child outta nursery, which again was not a thing, like I had to make it work. So I think sometimes when you are pressed for time, you suddenly become the most efficient you've ever been in your life. Yeah. And when you have no choice, you make it work. So talk to me then, because this for [00:13:00] me, right. As a person who. All day, every day talks about launching and talks about online business and talks about selling things online like you did what other people want to do. And the I tell them is very difficult to do, which is to go straight into evergreen. 'cause one of the things that I would teach is let's launch live launch first. Let's work out. What everything is, how people like what they want, how this works. And then when we know what we're doing, we evergreen it or we can evergreen it. Yeah. How did you know what to do or what did you do in those first days in terms of putting this on evergreen? Jessica: Yeah, so I had a mentor who had a proven funnel and a proven system and a proven process. So I think number one. You've gotta go find a mentor who's doing the thing that you want to do. And I know that we've spoke about this before, Teresa, like I truly believe every strategy works. You just have to work the strategy. Yeah. So does launching work? Yes. Does evergreen work? Yes. Does Facebook [00:14:00] group work? Work groups work? Yes. Does email work? Yes. All of these things work, but you, you've gotta go and find the person with that strategy and then you've gotta work hard to dial it in. So he had a strategy. And he taught me this strategy. So we have like a VSL funnel. That's one of our main evergreen funnels. Right? Teresa: What do you mean VSL? Jessica: So we run an ad through an opt-in page where they watch a prerecorded video. Mm-hmm. Which can be anywhere like seven to 30 minutes. So it's almost like a mini webinar, which then takes to a phone call and then our sales team onboards them into the program that's suitable for them. So that's okay. That is our evergreen. And then obviously we have our emails, our automation and everything else running under that as well. So all we really have to do, and that funnel has been running every day from 2016 to today. Teresa: Wow. That is crazy. Jessica: We have periods where [00:15:00] we put more traffic through it, periods where we put less traffic through it, but ultimately that same one funnel and it's done over...

How I Used Low-Cost Paid Workshops to Launch and Convert at 25%

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I reveal a powerful and refreshingly different approach to launching: paid workshops that deliver massive value and real results. I shared how this strategy helped me to achieve a 25% conversion rate, outperforming many traditional launch methods. Rather than running standard webinars or free masterclasses, I focused on creating a high-impact, paid experience that dives deep into a specific piece of a larger offer. This not only attracts more committed attendees but also lays the groundwork for better engagement and sales. If you're a course creator, membership site owner, or coach, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you create a more authentic, profitable, and connection-driven launch strategy.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Paid Workshops Attract More Committed Leads

Charging for your workshop (even a small amount) helps filter for serious, engaged participants—resulting in higher-quality leads and better conversion rates than free webinars or masterclasses.

Depth Creates Trust and Sales

By focusing your workshop on one specific, valuable topic, you can go deep and deliver real results. This builds trust and positions your offer as the natural next step, making selling feel seamless and aligned.

A Launch is an Experience, Not Just an Event

Theresa emphasizes that a successful launch should feel like a guided journey for your audience. Strong community support, intentional content, and a structured experience all work together to increase connection—and conversions. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Today I'm gonna share with you an amazing strategy that I have used to launch my big grow launch sale program. That has converted at 25%. And this strategy is something that I love doing. It feels super easy and it doesn't feel sleazy or salesy, and I think it's something that you can use in your business too. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Heath wearing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And are gonna stop you from getting in [00:01:00] your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. In today's episode, I'm gonna talk you through one of the launch methods that I've been using this year. Now, this is a little bit different to what I normally do, but it's working really, really well. And actually the last time I used it, and I've used it three times this year. It converted at 25%. Now, if you followed me for a while, if you know me, if you've seen my content, you know that on average a conversion from your launch list. So let's just go back. I feel like I'm rushing into things. So if you don't know, you have your email list. And then when you promote a launch, you have a launch list. So the people who. Are on your emails that sign up to take part in the launch. And normally from your launch list, you can expect between one and [00:02:00] 8% and that's on average what you will get to buy one to 8%. And this launch method that I used converted for me at 25%, which is awesome. And not only is it awesome, but it actually feels really good. It feels really nice. It feels like a very easy way to connect with my audience, to connect with my customers, and then to give them an offer in a really lovely, non-salesy, non sleazy way that they then make a decision whether they want or not. So let me kind of take you back and talk about what we are doing in terms of this launch method. When I talk about launching, we talk about launch experiences, and it's really important as a online business owner, so someone who has a course, a membership, or a group program that you create some kind of experience around the launch that you're doing. So ordinarily these are webinars or masterclasses, same thing, just [00:03:00] different names. These are things like boot camps and challenges. And also I teach on a method called the Open House, which you have a membership is a really, really cool method. In fact, I think I've probably done an episode about it. So if I had, I'll link it in the show. So we have these different ways of launching, and I've done a new way, and it's not new to me. Lots of people have done it before. It just seems to be working really well for me. So this way is about doing workshops. So your first question might be, well, what's the difference between a workshop and a webinar slash masterclass? Normally with a webinar or masterclass, you are teaching them something for an hour. You, there's the whole thing around. You teach them the what and the why and not the how. The how is the thing that you are selling. So let me explain that a little bit deeper. So you're teaching them, let's say I'm going to be teaching you how to do an open house. So I am in, if I was doing a webinar about how to do an open house train, this all sounds a little bit better. [00:04:00] 'cause obviously I teach launching. If I was doing a webinar about how to do an open house, I would teach you what an open house is. I would then teach you why you need an open house. But I wouldn't necessarily go heavily into the how to do an open house. Okay. That's what you tend to do in a webinar and a master class. You give them the what and the why and a little bit of the how, like a tiny, tiny bit, and then your main program is the how. With a workshop, it's different. And with a workshop, what you are doing is you are going deep, but you are going deep on one aspect of the whole thing that you teach. So obviously, I'm gonna give you examples of my stuff because this is what I've done. I have Grow Launch Sale, which is a big program, and in this program we go through how to grow your audience, and I go into what makes a good lead magnet, how to make a lead magnet, how to get in front of other people's audiences. And lots of other things in that growth section, in the launch section, I [00:05:00] take you through every way that you can launch. So I talk you through how to do webinars. I tell you how to do challenges and boot camps. I tell you how to do open houses. I tell you how to get people to turn up to your launches. I talk about launch numbers, I talk about launch debriefs, and then in the sale part on the sell bit, I do the, the kind of, you know, how you do a sales page and what you put in sales emails and how to sell. Now that is a big program and it comes as support and it's, it's a big program. So instead of trying to do, and, and again, a webinar would kind of be over the top, right? It wouldn't deep dive into any one of those things. It would be generally about how to launch or generally about online businesses. Whereas when I do a workshop, I take one aspect and I go deep on that aspect. So the ones that I've done so far, I did list building, but unfortunately for me, it wasn't specific enough to my audience. So I ended up having people on who wouldn't be right for my program. So that was a really interesting test for [00:06:00] me. The next one I did, and I've done a couple of times now, is on how to actually do a webinar, IE when you get on the webinar, when you are literally on screen. What do you do? What do you say? What order did you put it in? And then the, the third one I've done is on how to do an open house. So let me talk to you about the webinar one. And, and like I said, this, this feels hard for me to keep up, let alone if you're watching this or listening to this. So for me. When I'm doing a, a webinar one, like I said, my workshop is I am teaching you exactly what to do on the webinar. And the thing that I love about this method so much is that I get to give, now one of my biggest problems with anything that I do is I'm an over giver. Like I can't help but want to share all the things and sometimes. As business owners, we have to be careful about that because actually that can be, that can stop people buying because you give them so much and then they go, well, I don't need to [00:07:00] buy. So that bit is is really difficult for me. What I'm able to do with the workshop is one, sorry, I should have said this. It's a paid workshop. It's a low cost paid thing, so normally my workshops are around 49 pounds or dollars, and that's kind of where they would stay. They get to work with me for a set amount of time. So I've tested various things and the thing that's working really well for me is to do. Four sessions. And again, it depends on how much you're teaching, what the transformation is, what the outcome is. But I tend to do four sessions and I tend to do them over two weeks because the thing with the workshop that I'm doing is I'm giving them homework. I'm giving them something that they need to do in order to actually, you know, have the transformation. So normally week one it would be on the Wednesday and Thursday, and then week two it'd be on the Tuesday and Wednesday. They have four sessions. I also throw in a bit of mindset. I'm a certified coach. It's in with what I do, so that makes sense to [00:08:00] me. If you are not a certified coach, if that's not what you do, don't throw it in. But I'll throw in like two mindset sessions as well. So they get ultimately six sessions with me, too many mindset and the the other four are one hour sessions. And what I do in those sessions is I teach them everything. So I literally go deep, right? I don't hold anything back. I walk them through, slide by slide. I give them the slide template. I give them swipe files on how to get people to show up live or turn up live. I can't remember what I give them now. I give them those things. I don't hold back. I give them an amazing service. I give them such a good product, and I 100% deliver on the transformation of I will teach you how to do a webinar while you're on the webinar. The the beauty of this is I'm showing up, delivering and it feels so good. I love that stuff, like get me on training, get me on [00:09:00] coaching calls. I could just do that all day every day, so it really fits in with me and what I love doing. The next thing is it gives them a really good idea of what it's like to work with me and what I'm like, so when they see the level of detail in which I deliver this one particular subject, they get an impression of, oh, okay, this is what she's like, what I'm like to answer questions, what I'm like when I'm doing coaching, like they really get an understanding of who I am, what my program's like. The other thing that's really key about this is the reason it's chargeable is because I want them to show up. I want them to be invested, and if it's not chargeable, they're not gonna do that, or not as much. So the chargeable bit is important. So I'm only getting people who really want to know and understand how to do, let's use the webinar example, how to do webinars, which is perfect 'cause they are my customers. I am getting them to spend some [00:10:00] money. So they're invested, so they're showing up. The fact that they're showing up means that they're doing the work, and it means that they're going to get the transformation, which means they're going to have a much better experience. And it also means that they get to ask me questions about their business and a much more tailored approach. And then at the end of the workshop, they come away with the transformation. So it's not, nothing's held back, nothing is not given to them, but it's on one specific part going deep, on one part of a much, much bigger program. So what happens is. I feel like I have almost been selling the entire workshop. Now, I'm not selling the entire workshop. I'm not actively selling, but by me showing up and teaching and helping and supporting, I am kind of selling because they're getting to see how I am and what I'm like. So that's the one kind of cool bit when I actually then get to the sales bit. Now, what's super fascinating with me and what I do is it's all very meta, right? [00:11:00] And I am so honest about this. I will say to them. The last session that I teach in this math, in this workshop is how to sell on the webinar. And I say to them, okay, you are literally going to see me do this now as I move into selling Grow, launch, sell to you. And again, I say it right from the beginning, I say from Workshop one. Like, you are going to have a great experience. You are gonna get everything you want, but I am gonna make an offer. And because of that, I want you to look at how I'm showing up through the workshop, what I'm saying, how I'm. Like subtly telling you about Grow Launch Sell. So for me it's really interesting because like, like I said, I teach this stuff, so that's tricky that, so I have to be so open and honest about it and I would only ever be so open and honest. But when we get to the last session now, inevitably the last session is the best session. That is the case with everything. If you're doing a challenge or a bootcamp, the last session where you sell actively, like I said, you've been kind of selling. I can't think of the word. It's not actively, but you've kind of [00:12:00] been hinting at the selling going through. But in the last one is literally when you ask people to buy, that's the session that I make sure is the best. Now, normally it's where you tie everything together, or for me, because of how I broke down, I think it's where I tell people how to sell on a webinar. So it's a really good session. So. On that session, I then move in to a sales pitch, if you like. It's kind of the same kind of pitch as I would use if I was doing a webinar, but it feels so easy and it feels so simple because I basically say to them, you've been hanging out with me for the past few days. This is what the program covers. This is what it costs. This is what I'm like, if you want this, if this is going to be helpful to you. Then Perfect. And the other good thing about going deep on one aspect is it's like, okay, you know what? It's taken to understand how to do this one bit. There is so much more to it. Like showing up and doing the [00:13:00] actual webinar is one thing. Getting people to turn up, getting people to join, getting people to sign up, getting people to buy what the sales page looks like. What are the emails that you're sending? Is your list even big enough? There is so much more to it than just that bit, and they're able to see that. They're able to see, okay, we've done a lot of work. I've shown you this thing, but there's so much more, and if you want help with the rest of it. Then great. Now, if they don't, and if all they wanted was how to do the webinar, when they turn up live, perfect, brilliant. They've got it. They walk away happy. They don't feel like they've been mis-sold, they don't feel like it was a, you know, bait and switch type situation. I have fully delivered on the thing. However, I have made an offer at the end. Now, a couple of kind of key points in this, and I'm, I, I'm gonna write this up as a proper strategy. Two, put into Grow, Launch, Sell, funnily enough, but couple of key points. One, like I said, I charged for it. I think that's really important. Two, I have a community with it.[00:14:00] I trialed it without a community, didn't work, was so, was not as successful. I didn't feel that I was giving as much now. I just used Telegram as a community. Because I am not big on Facebook, I really don't like it. Personal preference, so wherever you want your community. But I would definitely have a community and I would definitely be interacting, answering questions, getting them to post their homework in that community. That worked really well. Then the next thing that worked really well is I gave them a deadline in which to watch the replays. So because this is so cheap. I couldn't, and I did the first time and I've since changed my mind. 'cause again, what's so good about when we rinse and repeat things, we work out what works. We work out what's good, what's not good. So the second time, I didn't give them the, I didn't give them the replays forever. So basically they had a number of days in which to watch the replays. Again, the reason that works is because those people are like, oh, I'll get round to it. They have no choice. They have to make time for it. [00:15:00] So I took the replays down before they finished. The other couple of things that worked really well for me is I actually did a order bump on it and I had like 47% of the people buy the order bump, and it was actually a swipe file of emails. I can't remember which ones they were, but it was. Some really good emails that would support this whole thing really well. So that was a really good intake of that, or a good conversion number. And then, like I said, when I came to the selling bit, it didn't feel horrible. What I could do as well is I kept the window short, so I think it was like a five day window to buy. I posted in the community and then when the doors closed, I closed the community. Like I said, for me this was such an awesome way to sell because. When I was showing up doing something I love, I was delivering and giving someone exactly the transformation that they were asking for, but it was on one particular aspect of my entire program, and I could really easily [00:16:00] show them this is the level of detail and the level of care that you get when...

Unlocking Business Success using Human Design with Mel McSherry

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this insightful episode, I was joined by business and life guide Mel McSherry to explore the transformative potential of Human Design in the world of entrepreneurship. Together, we unpack how aligning with your unique energetic blueprint can dramatically shift how you work, make decisions, and grow your business. I also shared my personal journey as a Projector with Splenic Authority, revealing how Human Design has helped me create a business that honors my energy and intuition. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode offers practical tools and fresh perspectives to help you run your business your way.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Aligning Your Business with Your Energy Increases Flow and Success

Understanding your Human Design type helps you create a business model that supports your natural energy patterns—whether that means working in short bursts, waiting for invitations, or following your gut instincts. When you align with your design, work becomes less of a grind and more of a flow.

Decision-Making Improves When You Honor Your Authority

My experience with splenic authority highlights how powerful it is to trust your body’s intuition. Whether your authority is emotional, sacral, or splenic, honoring it leads to more confident and aligned decisions in both business and life.

Rest and Customization Are Not Optional—They’re Strategic

Traditional business hustle doesn’t work for everyone. For types like Projectors, rest is not laziness—it's essential. Customizing your business strategy based on your Human Design can lead to greater sustainability, creativity, and long-term impact. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Mel on LinkedIn or Instagram, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever wondered why certain business strategies feel amazing for some people, but make you want to run and hide or you thrive in some situations that other people would hate? Well, today on the podcast, we are diving into human design, and if you've not come across human design before, it's not just another personality test. It can actually help you understand how you like to show up and work in your business, what energizes you and how you can work so you don't burn out. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host with Heath Wearing. Today we have an interview and I'm going to give you a slight woo warning, okay? And what I mean by that is the interview today we are talking about human design. Now, some of you might know what that is and think, awesome. Can't wait to listen to this episode. Some of you might know what it is and go, that is not my bag. And some of you might not know what it is and go, we'll see. It is more on the woo side. Now. Can I just say I, well one, I don't like the word woo, but anyway, we'll get over that. [00:02:00] Can I say that I had, I used to have, when I was doing a lot more mindset stuff in, in the business, I used to have a lot more of this kind of stuff on the podcast, and I recorded some episodes of people who were more spiritual and talked about spiritual stuff, and I actually didn't put the episodes out. Now, the reason I didn't put those episodes out were because when I came to do the hook, I couldn't find a good reason for you to listen to the episode, and that is really important for me. I know you are very busy. You have a million podcast that you can listen to and you've chose to listen to mine, and I am eternally grateful for that. And I never want to waste your time. I never want to put an episode out, even though we do an episode every single week, I never want to put an episode out that I'm like, nah, about just, that's noise. Kind of sums up that feeling. I never want to do that. [00:03:00] So I'm really careful. And like I said, I had recorded some episodes that spiritually were very spiritual. I really enjoyed the episode and recording it, and I found it really interesting. But when I went back to, listen, I didn't. I didn't get anything. There was nothing that I could pull out of that episode to go listen to this 'cause this is brilliant. So I kind of steered away from it. Anyway, when I got approached by, and I can't remember whether Mel, the woman that's coming on today approached me directly or whether it was like through an agency or whatever. But when I got approached for Mel's and I listened, 'cause I, when people apply to come on my podcast, I go and listen to podcasts that they've been on to see what I think. I just really fell in love with her, like, she's so cool. I really loved hearing her and even though it is a subject that's more on the woo side, she's so cool and down to earth and like. Really just the way she talks about this stuff is really, really cool. And I just knew I had to have her on and she didn't disappoint, and I love the episode [00:04:00] and she is really cool. Like, I really, really like this woman. So there's your woo warning. Okay, it is a little bit woo at times. Now your second kind of piece of information that you might need to know is as a podcast host. I sometimes, well, it's because it's my podcast that I get to speak to people. I get to pick their brain about stuff specific to me. Now, I try really hard to make sure, again, that I want good episodes. I want you to get a lot from it. I almost couldn't help myself of like, right here is my chart, here is my human design. What does this mean about me and my business? So I'm gonna apologize now in advance that basically I did pick a brain about my human design. However, I am hoping that this translates as a really good example of. This is how human design works with you running a business and what it means for you running a business. So rather than just talking theory of if you were this human design, [00:05:00] then you might wanna show up like this, or you might wanna run your business like this. I am as always an open book, very vulnerable, very honest about me and my business, and. She explains to me how my human design and my business kind of fit and where they don't fit and that sort of stuff. So I love this episode. I think it's really cool. I think Mel is ace. I love her to bits. Really enjoyed having this conversation. Also, just so you know, I, she goes through my chart, we explain how to get your chart and all that sort of stuff. So, and I, I almost don't wanna tell you too much here 'cause I'm not the expert and I will no doubt mess it up, but I actually put a copy of my chart in the show notes. So if you are so inclined and interested to see what it looks like or you know, human design and you are interested in what mine says, my chart is actually the show notes. So if you head over to teresaheathwareing.com/415. Slash the numbers 4 1 5 as in adding in the words the numbers just forward slash 4 1 5. I'm sure I didn't need to explain that, but just in case then [00:06:00] you can see my chart. There's a copy of my chart in the show notes just in case that's of interest to you. Mel is an international business and life guide and helps, inspired yet overwhelmed entrepreneurs honor their lives and become the architects of their own success. Mel has been an entrepreneur since 2010, has launched two successful businesses, become a two times published author, and has spoken over 200 plus times all over the USA and overseas and has created a true life by design. I know you're gonna love Mel and this episode. Can't wait to hear what you think. Without further ado, here's Mel. Mel, welcome to the podcast. Mel: Thank you so much, Teresa. I'm so excited to be here. Teresa: Well, we've already been chatting, so I am very excited because I am confident we are gonna have such an interesting conversation. It also might be a conversation that someone might not ever have heard of. Mm-hmm. And I think what I. The reason I [00:07:00] bring things to the podcast is one for my own keen interest and to pick the brains of someone who's an expert on something that maybe I wouldn't get access to. And secondly, just to bring things for people to go. Okay. That's interesting. Mm-hmm. And like maybe they get something for it, maybe they don't, but like, just to present something to you so. We are talking about human design. Mel: Yeah. Teresa: And someone will either be sat there going, oh great, I know what that is. Or someone is like, what on earth are you talking about? So let's just start off with the basic, what is human design? Mel: So human design is a system that has been brought together by utilizing five different modalities. So we have astrology. I Ching, Chakras, Kabbalah, and quantum physics. And what it does is it shows you your energetic blueprint. It's also coined to the science of differentiation. And I love that because it shows you how profitable, and when I say profitable, it's always threefold mentally, emotionally, and financially. Okay. But it shows you how [00:08:00] profitable you are as yourself, and it is such a beautiful tool for you to have, because it's your operations manual. It shows you how much energy you have, where your energy comes from, how to make your best, most profitable decisions, how to create your most, you know, fluid and easeful processes to create what you want. It gives you the why behind your how. And really clears out a lot of the noise of the shoulds of the I, you know, the, I need to, all of the things that can tend to disrupt us from creating the business, the money, and the life that we want. Teresa: So I went to write down where it came from and I couldn't even spell half the things. So we won't even worry about that. I'll just go tick. Great. There you go. So when we, so actually firstly, why did you get into it? Because it's quite, I've only heard of it a couple of times and the people I've heard it from are very, I don't even know how to describe it. [00:09:00] Spiritual. Mm-hmm. Woo. Like whatever it is. Mm-hmm. I don't know what the, the all encompassing word for it, but what made you even come into it in the first place? Mel: It actually found me and it found me twice, which is really interesting. Teresa: Oh, when it did that. Mel: I know because it found me. Hello. The person it found me. Well, and we were, we were kind of discussing this in the dream a little bit about how you hear something and you go, oh yeah, that's great. And then you kind of move on. Mm-hmm. So it first found me, actually in 2017, I was starting a meditation mastermind with a spiritual coach that I worked with for, for years. And it just came up in conversation and I was, you know, just kind of dipping my toe into the quote unquote spiritual world coming from a very religious background and from kind of deconditioning from that. Yeah. Which is a whole story we don't need to get into. Teresa: Oh, I could have, yeah. Mel: That's a whole nother episode. Teresa (2): Yeah. Mel: And I wanted to find something that was my own, and so it came up in conversation. I got my chart. And all I read was [00:10:00] my type. Now there's a lot of pieces of information inside of human design. I call it the ultimate onion of personal development because there's so many layers to it. And the first layer I saw was my type, which is just your overarching description of your energetic blueprint. And I went, oh yeah, no, that's me. Cool. And moved on. As I moved on, my business really took off. On paper. On paper, I was making great money. I was traveling all over the country speaking. I was being flown overseas. Teresa: Sidetruck. Was your business in this or doing something in this? Mel: No. No. Teresa: Was it completely d different? Okay. Mel: I it. I was in more of the traditional formulaic business coaching world. Okay. Of, okay. You know, pick your framework, stick to your framework. Don't get too personal, you know, very masculine, quote unquote. Processes. And I subscribed to that because I thought that's what was going to provide me the success that I was looking for. Teresa (2): Mm-hmm. Mel: And as I mentioned on paper, it did. [00:11:00] It I looked fantastic. Teresa (2): Yeah. Mel: And internally I had never felt more honestly inauthentic and disconnected to myself and my business in my entire life. I was, I would be looking at my bank account. This is it. This is, this is how success, I don't, I don't like this, but Teresa (2): yeah. Mel: I don't know what that is. Right. I didn't have the vernacular to advocate for myself. I just had the financial proof that technically what I was doing was working. Teresa: Yeah. Mel: And so fast forward to 2020 and I, the same spiritual coach that I worked with invited me to a retreat in Sedona, Arizona. And. Human design came back up again, but this time it was from a fellow attendee who was talking about it, and she read my chart with me and I stopped. It was the most validating and confirming piece of information [00:12:00] I had ever received because personal development, we find hooks, right? We find pieces of somebody else's story that makes us feel seen and heard, which is beautiful, and we all need that. However, what it doesn't do is it doesn't give you the steps of what to do with that. Teresa: No. Mel: It just is like, yay, sweet. I feel seen. Yeah. And Teresa: now what? What do I do? Mel: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and when I had my human design read to me. As I mentioned, it gave me that validation and confirmation of what I already knew about myself, but didn't trust because it wasn't proven to me. It wasn't shown to me. I didn't see it on anything. It was just a feeling. It was just an inclination, and when I saw that report, it not only gave me that validation, it gave me the vernacular to start advocating and shifting how I was showing up inside of my life and inside of my business. And interestingly enough, this came two weeks before lockdown. I'm located in Chicago, Illinois. We were in [00:13:00] lockdown for a long, long time. Teresa: Yeah. Mel: And it definitely presented itself at a time when I would have the capacity and the need to really reevaluate my business, reevaluate who I am, and truly for the first time, honestly. Understand who I am and relish in who I am and make decisions from a place that is grounded in my knowledge and in my understanding, as well as the strategies that are customized to always keep me in that profitable space. Teresa: So I'm just trying to like liken it to when someone is so confident about something or so. Sure. And the way that feels. Mm-hmm. The way you show up the way. Yeah. So. We have, I coached someone a while back and I'm, I don't normally swear on the podcast, so I'm gonna have to like abbreviate this, but basically she was doing all the things. So she was showing up, she was doing the reels, she was doing the story, she was doing the emails, she was putting the offer [00:14:00] out and no one was buying, nothing. And we joked that she had. F off energy. Right. That basically that even though she was going through all the steps and all the process. Yeah. Yes. Something somewhere was going, don't buy from me, don't buy from me, don't buy from me. And she, we worked together for a, for a while, but we worked together to begin with about like what is going on here? Like, yeah. And that isn't necessarily where I dig into, but she was very spiritual anyway. And I was like, why isn't this fitting? Why are you not confident? Are you not happy? And we worked on the confidence and what she was putting out there and how she felt about it. And it was like. A switch went. Mm-hmm. She was on paper, do nothing different, right? Mm-hmm. She wasn't, she was showing up in the same way. She was still doing the emails, she was still putting the offers out there, but something, because she'd got so aligned with what she was, who she was, what she was offering, and so confident in it. Mm-hmm. She started making money and people started buying from her and opportunities kept coming to her [00:15:00] and it literally was like. It was a bit like magic because she was doing everything on, on paper. I was like, yeah, tick done, tick done. Yeah. And yet it just wasn't happening. And when we dug into like she wasn't, she didn't feel aligned and it wasn't showing up. Right. And, and when she put all that better in place, it kind of all worked. So having that feeling and the confidence we show up with and the. The joy in which we take in our work is so nice. And if this is what that gives us, then Mel: mm-hmm Teresa: Bring it on. Like let's do it. Mel: Absolutely. 'cause it's that customization that she found for herself, and that's what we're not taught to do, especially in the entrepreneur solopreneur space. We are taught to seek the expert. Find that one funnel, that one, you know, 60 K and 62nd magical pill that you just need to throw back up onto your audience and tatar you're...

Behind the Scenes How I Achieved My Highest-Ever Revenue

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m sharing how I hit my biggest revenue month ever in May! I talk about the strategies that made it happen—like using a high-conversion launch, really narrowing down my niche, and focusing all my efforts on one top-tier product. I also dive into the value of low-cost workshops, changing up how often I launch, and seeing every move as a test to get better results. This behind-the-scenes peek gives you practical tips and mindset shifts to boost your own business game. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Focus on One High-Quality Product: Narrowing your efforts down to one standout product can help you align all your strategies and make a bigger impact. Less is more when it comes to high-conversion results.

Every Action Is a Test: Treating every launch, campaign, or strategy as an experiment can help you continuously improve and fine-tune your approach. It’s all about learning and adapting!

Shift Your Launch Frequency: Changing up how often you launch, and experimenting with low-cost workshops or other creative strategies, can bring fresh energy and new opportunities to your business.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: In May of this year, I have had my best ever revenue in my business, and in this episode today, I want to share with you the behind the scenes look at what I have been doing differently, how I have been showing up, and what has made that difference in my business. I'll be taking you through the launch strategy that is currently bringing me between 20 and 25% conversion, and that feels so much easier, as well as the three main things that I think have led to having one of the best revenues I've ever had in my business. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are [00:01:00] in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place.Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast with me, your host, Theresa Heath Waring. Before we get started, I just wanna say thank you for taking the time to hang out with me today to listen to this episode, and as always, and I ask this. I feel like I ask it a lot, but I probably don't. I would massively, massively appreciate it. If you would consider sharing this episode with someone who you think it would be useful to, if you would cons, consider sharing it on social media and tagging me in, or if you are feeling super generous heading over to wherever you are listening to this and write me a lovely five star review. I would [00:02:00] massively, massively appreciate that. Today I am going to be doing a behind the scenes style episode. Because a few weeks back I shared a post saying that may had been my most profitable month ever in business. For those of you who are new to the podcast, let me just briefly tell you, and in case you don't know, I have now been in business for 11 years and I started off having an agent. Well, I started off being a consultant for marketing because my whole background's in marketing, my degrees in marketing. Then I started to build an agency, and I say agency in the loosest sense of the terms, like I had team members and we did done for you stuff, but I certainly wasn't. What I deemed as an agency, and then I discovered the online world. This was all fairly quickly within the first year or two of having a business, and I transitioned my business from an agency to an online business and probably for the past. Eight, nine years I've been doing that solely. [00:03:00] So I got rid of the agency, got rid of any done for you work, and I love it. I absolutely love it. And in May, as I said, I actually made the most money in one month that I've ever made before. And what was super interesting was, well, one, I learned some lessons and I wanna talk about those lessons and give you some real practical insight as to what helped. But what was interesting is I didn't actually see it coming, so it wasn't like. I was trying to do it or was trying to, was having a particularly strong sales month in May. In fact, I don't think it really was a strong sales month. It just so happened that it was a really good month from a revenue point of view and money coming in. The other reason it's interesting is 'cause I tend to do these kind of KPI stuff after the month. So it wasn't until after the month that I then went, oh wow, that was pretty amazing. So, what I wanna share with you today is some of the things, some of the steps I took and some of the things have made the [00:04:00] biggest difference to me. Now, in the social media post, I shared the three reasons I thought I'd had my most successful month, and. They kind of fit into today's kind of conversation, but I'm just gonna briefly say what those three things were. The first one was niching, the second one was taking action, and the third one was viewing everything as a test. And what I want to do in this episode is take you behind what I mean of each of those things and what that actually looks like. So, one of the very first things I did was, I say one of the very first things I did, actually, this happened ages ago. This happened last year, where I really started to niche down and focus in on what I was doing basically, again. The years I've been in business, I went through a whole transition as to how I ended up getting here. If I'd stuck with the thing that I started doing, IE online business stuff, I would be way further on. But I am not disappointed. There's a part of me that's like, that's a [00:05:00] bummer. Like I'd really like it if I would be further on by now and feel sometimes like I should be being how long I've been doing this. But the truth was back eight ish years ago, I was focused on helping people with online businesses. In fact, I spoke an event for Lead Pages. I think it was probably like six, eight years ago. I can't remember the exact date. And I talked about how to do a webinar and how to do lead magnets and all of this really cool stuff. Now, if I just stuck with that and stuck with that niche, I would've been in a very different position. But I didn't, and I'm not annoyed or angry about that. It just isn't what happened. I went through and I've gone through a whole heath of things, of people pleasing. I wanted to offer services to everybody 'cause I knew I could help everybody because I have a degree in marketing. I've worked in marketing for now 20 something years, so I knew I could help lots of small businesses. I liked having lots of different people in my business, in my world, but it effectively meant that I had no niche whatsoever. Then I went down the route of mindset, [00:06:00] and again, I don't wanna go over this too much 'cause if you've been a. Listening to my episodes for a long time, you'll know that I got sober in 2023. And prior to that, that was when I went into the mindset world and I started to bring that in heavily into what I did as a business thinking I'm going to be a mindset coach. What I didn't realize at the time was I needed the mindset stuff to help me and where I was and how I was feeling about myself. And once I got sober and came out the worst of it, then. I suddenly was like, oh no, that's not what I'm meant to do as a business. And I finally moved back into what I will call my zone of genius. I can't remember what book that's from. Someone's gonna be shouting at me now. Is it. The Big Leap or the one thing, it's one of those two big books I think. But basically they talk about your zone of genius. And for me it really is online business. Like I research this stuff, I watch this stuff, I consult for big people. Like I, someone said to me that I should be marketing [00:07:00] myself as the secret behind the big launches, and I dunno how comfortable I am saying that, but I appreciate them saying it. So I niched further into the thing that I'm good at. So for me, it was launching, it was online business owners. So I had to go through a whole process of saying to people who are already in my world, and I still have some of these people in, and I love them and I don't want them to leave, but they're not online businesses, they're not course creators, they're not membership owners. So I still have a few people that are in my world who aren't those things. However, from now on, those are the people I'm attracting, the course creators, the membership owners, the coaches who do group programs. So first step I took was I niche down further, but that was a while back. That was like last year. So this stuff takes time. The second step I took. I was creating Grow Launch sell My signature program. Again, up until this point, I had had my membership, which I loved and I'd still love, but it [00:08:00] become a beast. Like we did everything in there. There was every type of lesson of every, basically anything that you might need help with as a business owner in a small business. I had it in that group, which again, made it really hard to market. It made it really hard to talk about the transformation and I joke that I built my business on people liking me, which I am very proud of as a way to build your business, that people liked me and wanted to work with me. But often when it came down to it, some of these people didn't actually know what they were coming to me for when they were with me, they realized or. I basically, you know, helped them with the need that they had at the time, but they didn't go, okay, I need help with this, or I want this transformation, and Teresa's the person to help me. I didn't have that. Whereas Grow Launch Sell, where I created that product and actually that product came out of. The whole point of that product was, what have I got in the membership that's gonna [00:09:00] help online businesses? Let me pull those bits out and create a standalone product. As it was, I ended up creating a completely brand new product. Now, I had a lot of stuff that I could take from, but I ended up re-recording all of it and creating it from scratch. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that you do that. I just did. So step number one was I'd niche down. Step number two was I created a product that I love, like literally I'm so fricking proud of and I am so confident I know what I've created is brilliant and is a game changer. It is saving people so much time. It's making their launches more successful. It's giving them best results that they've ever had and it is doing it in a way that makes them feel good about their business. Not that they're slogging their guts off. And I know that's what Grow, launch Sell is doing. So for me, I created something that I'm so, so passionate about. That was a big step. The third step was [00:10:00] all roads lead to Grow Launch Sell all roads. This was a big shift in my head. Imagine over the years, obviously I have marketed to everybody. I've had a membership, I've had courses, I've had master classes, I've done in-person events, I've done retreats. I have done so many different things, and again, I'm not going to be annoyed or frustrated in myself. I'm glad I did all those things. I learned so much, but this year was everything leads to Grow Launch Sell, all roads lead to Grow launch sell do a lead mag magnet. How does that lead to grow launch sell? Do a workshop, how does that lead to grow launch sell, do a speaking event? How does that lead to grow launch sell? So it completely narrowed my focus, but in a brilliant way. So whereas previously I'd gone on stage and I'd talked about some mindset thing, or I'd talked about list building or I talked about, but it never had this direct lead into the thing that I was selling and not that I'm talking about selling from [00:11:00] stage. What I'm talking about is what I'm speaking about fits perfectly with grow launch sell. The lead magnets I'm doing fits with grow launch sell. So everything is so much more in aligned, which if it's more in alignment for me, man, it's more in alignment for a customer. Because if I'm at all confused and if you are at all confused about the process, the path, or how something leads to something else, then. Your customer hasn't got a hope and how's chance of understanding that? So we need to make it so flipping clear, not just for ourselves, but also for our customers. So that was the other thing that in terms of the product, in terms of the sort of. Focus was in my head. All roads lead to grow launch sell. Now I'm gonna be really honest and tell you that just recently, and I haven't necessarily discounted this recently, I had quite a few people ask me, am I gonna do another in-person event? And my in-person events tend to be me in a room with. You [00:12:00] and we work on your business. When I say you, I mean you in a group and we work on your business. So they're not speaking things. I don't bring in speakers. It's not like a conference or a Yeah, it's just me. And we are working through your business, which is great 'cause you get to do stuff on the day as well as all the other nice things like network and have fun or whatever. Lots of people have been asking me, when am I gonna do one next? 'cause I haven't done one for a little while. And then I put a story out on my Instagram saying, would you come to one? Or, who would be interested if I did one? And then I got sort of, you know, distracted searching places and wanting them to be beautiful and getting quotes on really fancy stuff. And, and then just literally the end of last week, beginning of this week, I'm like, is this. Am I keeping my focus? Like am I going to lose my focus if I now start spending lots of time creating an on an in-person event? Now I really do want an in-person event and actually it can be a great lead into Grow launch sell and an additional bonus for people [00:13:00] already in Grow Launch Sale that we all get to hang out in person. So it's not saying I won't do it, but that's the kind of thinking that I'm now doing. I am looking at the thing and going. Is this leading to grow launch sale? Is this helping get more people into that program because that program is a game changer? Okay. So that was the first kind of main section of the thing I did differently. So that was kind of the niching down. So now let's talk about the taking action. And that kind of fits really nicely in with the everything's as a test. So they kind of go hand in hand. For me, when I have launched in the past, I have found it. I find it tricky. I think lots of us, when I say tricky, I don't find launching tricky. I find selling hard. Not necessarily the process of selling, but I don't want to be salesy. I don't want to just, I don't want people to think, oh God, here she goes against selling something. I find that really, really difficult and that has held me back in the past because I would probably launch twice a [00:14:00] year if that. Now, imagine as an online business owner with no evergreen, that's it. If I'm not pulling money in from those launches, how else am I making money? And I think. This last year, the last 12 months, I'm like, this has gotta stop. I have got to find a way to be more comfortable with selling and feel like I can do it more often. And even my, even though I've just said all roads lead to grow launch sell and they definitely are at the moment, like my head is going like, how else can I do something? So that then leads to go sale. What lower cost offers can I do? So the, the launching thing was tricky. So this year, and, and, sorry, the other thing that kind of came up was I was watching some other emails come in of other online people and like, they were always selling. And I remember looking at it going, well, maybe this is why they earn more revenue than I do. And am I massively upset by what they're selling or am I massively put off by the fact that they are [00:15:00] selling? And I was like, no, not massively. And I also feel like I still can have a balance, that it's not just constant selling. So I introduced more launches, but how I've done it this year feels so good and so in line with me and just not like I am hard selling all the time. Okay? So like I said, previous years I would do probably one, two launches a year, maybe three if I really tried hard. As you know, moving into a launch isn't just like a one week process and then selling in order to maximize the sales that you get, the window of launch space has to be quite big. So, you know, pre-launch content, and I would've talked about these in other episodes, so go back and kind of check out some of the last few episodes. But pre-launch content would've been around the three, four weeks. Then you move into launch content two weeks, then you move into sales content maybe a week. And then if there's a [00:16:00] down sale, maybe a week after that. So you're talking like a month and a half, two months, every time you wanna launch. And obviously it takes time in between there for people to actually get everything ready and make the plan and whatever. So I changed my mind in terms of, well, one, I have all the assets and this is what I do for a living. So for me, creating each launch is never a big deal because I literally have created all the templates. I have all the swipe files. That's what Grow Launch Sell, hasn't it? But I've done it so many times, so I know that when I do it once, I'm doing it for not just one...

Why Sales Calls Are Essential for High-Ticket Sales (And How to Nail Them) with Charlie Day

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m tackling the often-feared topic of sales calls with Charlie Day, a pro in the sales world and award-winning entrepreneur. We chat about how the online business landscape is changing and why sales calls are becoming more important—especially for high-ticket items. I also share my own struggles and misconceptions around sales, while Charlie drops some super helpful tips on handling objections, building real relationships, and selling with integrity. Packed with real-life examples and thought-provoking insights, this episode is perfect for coaches, course creators, and membership site owners who want to step up their sales game in today’s fast-changing market.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Sales Calls Are Crucial for High-Ticket Sales: As the online business world evolves, sales calls have become a must for selling higher-ticket items, helping you build trust and close bigger deals.
Handle Objections with Confidence: Learning how to respond to objections and seeing them as an opportunity to connect with potential clients is key to mastering sales calls.
Build Real Relationships: Selling isn’t just about pushing a product—it’s about building genuine relationships. Approach your sales calls with integrity, focus on solving problems, and focus on long-term connections, not just a quick sale.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Charlie on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Today's podcast guest called me out on something that I don't do and really made me think about why I don't do it and why maybe I should. We are talking about sales and sales calls. If you have ever thought, I don't need to do a sales call, I have an online business, well, the world is changing, and depending on the price of your product that you're selling online, some people are going to want to get on a sales call with you, and in some instances we will need to do that. So how do you do a sales call if you don't love selling? And also how do you do it with integrity, non sleazy in a way that feels good for you and the person who's on the call with you? This is exactly what we're talking about in today's podcast episode. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to [00:01:00] guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa wearing as always. Okay. This week we have an interview and it's a subject that I don't really love, but I have to learn to love it. I don't have to learn to love it, but I definitely need to learn to do it because the world of online business is changing. And today I am talking to the very lovely Charlie Day Sales about sales. Her name isn't Charlie Day Sales. Her business is called Charlie Day Sales. Her name's Charlie [00:02:00] Day. Anyway, so we are talking all about sales and how you sell to people, now. I think most of us in business really don't love that. And I think there's this thing where, and I think it's for me, that if you are trying to sell, you don't care. Like, and I know that sounds ludicrous and this episode is definitely gonna prove that is not the case, but. In my head, it's like if you are going into a sales call and you're trying to convert someone, and you know it's a numbers game, so you know you need to do X amount of sales calls. If you want X amount of customers that that doesn't feel like you are caring or that you are like invested. You are just invested in the sale and that really isn't the case. And I think that's probably a block I've had in my own head that I have to shift that actually. Selling isn't what we think it is. Selling is just about having a conversation, and that's exactly what Charlie shares today. We also talk about how not [00:03:00] selling is also part of selling, and I know this really well. One thing I'm very good at is not having someone buy from me if I don't think it's appropriate. I have been on a few different calls where I have said, I don't think you should. Because either I don't think they're ready. I don't think they'll do the work. I don't think it's the most effective use of their finances at that point. And what's kind of a bit sad in some cases is I've then found out later on they've gone and bought from someone else. And I say this on the episode, and that's frustrating because I was doing. In my head, I had the kindness to them and not just taking their money. And I'll still stand by that and I think that's still important. But anyway, I digress. Charlie talks us through what selling is and basically, as I said, it's asking questions, it's being open to the conversation, and then also it's challenging some of those answers and I get Charlie to go through and say like, treat me as if I'm someone she's selling to. What would she say to this? Because for me, that's the most [00:04:00] helpful hearing someone who. Almost go through a role play. Of like, okay, so if someone said this, what would you say back to them? And I think you're gonna find this episode so very helpful. And the reason I think you're gonna find it hope helpful, even though we're online businesses and lots of people will think, well, we don't do sales calls, we do webinars where we sell and people click to buy. The world has changed. We know that. I've talked about that a lot. And one of the things that's changed from a buying online point of view is people are not so keen and understandably so to just click a button and pay 2000 pounds or $2,000. And actually Charlie mentions in the episode that anything over 2000, we really should be 2000 and above. We should be looking at sales calls. But it's understandable. That's a lot of money, right? And if someone is going to invest that amount of money with you, you could get on a 20 minute call and have a conversation with them and say, okay, this is what it is. This is who I am, this is what it looks like. It doesn't have to feel like I'm [00:05:00] gonna get 'em on a call and I'm gonna close them down. That isn't what sales has to be. And Charlie is a really good salesperson and I joke that I won't get on her list 'cause otherwise she'll sell to me and then I'll buy. But actually everything she said didn't make me think, oh, you're just really good at selling. It was a real strategy and a real kind of, it came from a really lovely place. So I do think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Okay. Charlie Day is a multi-award winning entrepreneur, and she has built three multi-six figure businesses from the ground up. She's passionate about helping business owners create more sales in their business and proclaims that selling is easy if you just know how. She believes that selling the right way with integrity and with the customer's best interest at heart. Amen. Yes. No slee sales tactics or pushy closes with Charlie. She wants to change the face of sales and help people create a sales strategy that works time and time again. Charlie's also the founder of Sales Made Easy an agency. No, not Sales Made Easy. She's also the founder of [00:06:00] Sales Made the Agency where she sells on behalf of other business owners. She, like I said, this is her world. She loves this stuff and she's very good at it and. Where she comes from, from a selling point of view feels really good. So I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode, and whether you think you'll ever have to get on a sales call or not, I know you're gonna get something from it. Without further ado, here's the lovely Charlie. Charlie, welcome to the podcast. Charlie: Hi, I am so excited to be here. Teresa: I am very excited for this conversation because. You came to an event I was at and spoke and whether you knowingly know you did it or not, but you really called me out and made me go, oh God, I like have a bit of a hard looking the mirror at myself about sales. I wanna kick straight off with do you think anybody can sell? Charlie: Yes. Teresa: Great, thanks. Goodbye. No joking. Okay, Charlie: then anyone can sell. And I think, [00:07:00] you know, here's the thing. People look at me and they go, you are confident. You are out there, you are enthusiastic. Of course you are. You are great at selling. But I'm not. I'm awkward. Do you know what I mean? Just I get myself into the zone of setting. I absolutely hate walking into a networking event where I know nobody, that to me is hell. Put me on a sales call with a complete random stranger, and I'm in my element because I have chosen to become a salesperson, and I've stepped into that and I have become that person. And I honestly believe that anyone can do it. And if anybody's listening to this and they're thinking, I'm introverted, I'm shy, whatever you want to call it. Brilliant. Great, because do you know what, sometimes extrovert comes across pushy. Sometimes extrovert is too much. I know I'm too much for some people. And actually to be excellent at sales, you need to be a great listener. A great really uncovering problems and often introverts [00:08:00] are really, really great at that. So can an introvert be as good selling as an extrovert? Absolutely. Anybody can sell. And the main thing that I think you need is just a want, a want to sell. Teresa: And I think if you ask most business owners, they don't want to sell. Like if the sales could just come in without me actually doing anything, that would be awesome. Do you feel like they have any choice? Because I'm not sure they do. Charlie: No, not in 2025. I'm afraid they don't. And people who've been on a journey and, you know, I came into this space in 2020, so I had it okay for a couple of years, but people who came in prior to 2020 and had it good for like years and years and years. Then making that shift to now. Now we're actively selling. We are not just putting, you know, the sales page out there and everyone's clicking on it. We are actively selling. That's a real shift for some people. Teresa: I guess what I should have made [00:09:00] clear, and maybe I will do in the intro, is that when we are talking, selling, 'cause we've talked about sales page selling, I'm sure I've done email selling, like we are talking about actually speaking to someone selling. And I think if we talk if, and you must have this all the time, whenever you bring that up, people must just go like, horrible car salesman. Horrible. Like, you know, UPVC window salespeople like. That's what we imagine, but it doesn't have to be that way, surely. Charlie: Absolutely not. And I think you are absolutely right. That is car sales guy. Worst thing ever. That is what comes to mind. That is what people don't want to be. But I actually think if you look at the fundamentals of sales, really listening, really understanding, asking questions, building relationships, it's the complete opposite of that classic car sales guy. And whilst I totally appreciate what you're saying, like don't most business owners not want to sell? Yes and [00:10:00] no. I think, you know, some people do have that sort of gut reaction that you have to sales and, and sales has got a bad name for itself. And I'm here to turn this around, but if I was to ask you, you know. Do you want more money? Do you want to impact more people's lives? Do you want to impact more business owners? Do you want to change the world? Do you wanna get your message out there? The answer to all of those things is probably yes, and the way that we do that is by making more sales. So it depends what we attach ourselves to. Teresa: Totally, and I think. Also, and I'd love to get your opinion and thoughts on this, like when we think of sales, I think we think of literally twisting someone's arm or making them do something they don't wanna do. Whereas when I think of, especially when I'm talking about, I was just recording some episodes on webinar stuff and, and selling on webinars, and I was talking about the fact of no, we are giving them all the information so that they can make an informed decision as to whether something is for them or not. Whereas do you [00:11:00] remember back in the day like, I can't even remember. TV pregnant was, but there was like, there used to be companies that go into people's houses and be like, you can only get this deal now, but you've gotta sign now. And they literally wouldn't leave the house until someone bought, like, that isn't making someone informed and helping them make a decision. So is, am I two ends of the spectrum? Is it a spectrum or is it that we are trying to just give them all the details? Charlie: Yeah, look, I think in an ideal scenario, right, we have got somebody here with a problem. They have got a problem. Maybe it's keeping them awake at night, it's that big a problem. Or you know, it's causing them a bit of grief, you know, they need to solve this problem. And then we've got the other person over here who's got a product or service that solves this problem. This person's got a problem, this person's got a product or solution that solves the problem, and it's about marrying those two things together. So it makes absolute no brainer to buy from you. And actually, when sales has done well, we also can say, do you know what to read there? You don't need my [00:12:00] product or service right now. What you need is this instead. Why didn't you go off? And I often say. You need to work with a mindset coach before you come and work with me, because I am not gonna sort out your mindset, sort out your sales, but you gotta do what I tell you to do. So if there's some mindset issues, go and work on those first and then come to me afterwards. And you know what? When I tell people to do that. They do come back to me six months later. 'Cause I've built that trust. Or they might not come back to me, but they'll recommend me and they'll say, oh my gosh, I had such a good conversation with her. You should definitely work with her. She's so honest. She leads in integrity and all of that stuff that I want to be known for. Teresa: How Important is, or ask some of the words that you use. So one of the things you just said, then first off, I love that you said this isn't ready for you, or this isn't right for you. Go and do such and such, then come back. I get people saying to me, I'm not ready, and I say back to them, no worries. I'm here when you are. Right. And I wonder how is that [00:13:00] wording like, because we all know about creating fomo, having deadlines, creating that urgency, where is, in me going, whenever you're ready. Like that's not doing any of that. Like, so is it even on that type is the, is what we're saying really important? Charlie: Oh my God, I just love this conversation so much. Right. So the biggest thing that you need to implement in any sales situation is questions. You need to ask as many questions as you possibly can to, well, first of all, to create like a calm environment where we can have a conversation like before we came on this podcast, you asked me a few questions. It's a natural thing to do. So you don't think you're good at selling, but already you are doing some things that are natural instinct. Okay, you're not trying to sell to me, but you were trying to create a great conversation for us to be able to have. So having those. Those [00:14:00] questions creates that safe space, which we absolutely, if we are gonna be asking questions where we want people to open up about their problems, we need to create a safe space. But also the more we ask, the more we uncover. So if I said to you right now, what is the number one thing that's going wrong in your business right now? You might be like, I'm not telling you that that's private. If that makes sense. But if that's what I want to know, I've got to ask the right questions in order to get the answer that I want. Which is what is the biggest problem for you and your business at the moment? So if somebody says, I'm not ready right now, it sounds great, but I'm just not ready right now. I'm throwing it back at them. What makes you think that you're not ready right now? Because I wanna be the judge of if they're ready or not. Not them. Because they're gonna say that they're not ready because basically if they say I'm not ready, it means I haven't done a good enough job of selling to them to make them think that they are ready. I [00:15:00] get to choose if...

Why Some Launches Fail and How to Fix It

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I dive into why some business launches don’t go as planned. I talk about what it means to go all-in during a launch, stressing how important it is to fully commit to every part of the process. I share my own experiences, talking about the importance of taking action, being bold, and learning from each launch. This episode is packed with motivation and practical tips for course creators, membership site owners, and coaches who want to level up their launch game. With a mix of personal stories and useful advice, I encourage listeners to rethink their launch strategies and push past their comfort zones for better results.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Commitment is Key: Fully committing to every step of your launch process, from planning to execution, is essential for success. Going “all out” means giving it your best shot, even when it feels challenging.

Embrace Action & Learn from Every Launch: Taking action, even if things don’t go perfectly, is crucial. Every launch provides valuable lessons that help you improve and grow for the next one.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone: To see bigger results, you’ve got to push past your usual limits. Reflect on your strategies, be brave, and take risks—this is where real growth happens.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

What is the real reason your last launch didn't give you the results you were hoping for, and could that reason be something to do with you today? I am challenging a. Reason why people don't play all out in their launches and how it's stopping them from the success that they're really looking for. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly. Lines with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a [00:01:00] course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. To another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Waring. So every episode I vaguely plan out and I say vaguely 'cause I do a lot of these. Like I plan the rough things I'm gonna say, and then I go into the episode and I talk. I don't ever script it. God, it would be awful if I scripted it. However, I'm really struggling with the theme that I wanna get across today and the conversation I wanna get across today. And I know my starting point and I'm not sure where this is gonna go, so please bear with me if this is your first episode. I apologize. I mean, it could be brilliant for all I know, but this is the problem. I don't know how this is going to go. What I want to cover today is basically a theme that I see all the time with launches, and it's something that I have done myself a number of times, which is why I think it's so important that we talk about it.[00:02:00] It's this thing of playing all. One of the things that I teach and how I work is, and I joke all the time, do as I do, no, do as I say, not as I do, because I am teaching people and helping people to do the best possible launch they can do. I am giving you all the moving parts. I'm showing you all the things that work. I'm guiding you in the way to create your launch that is going to give you a really great successful launch. And there are many moving parts. Let's not pretend this is a simple, easy, hardly any work process. 'cause this is not the case. And if you listen back to my episode a few weeks back, that was about, I can't even remember what the title was now, but basically it was about the, successful, big, massive launches and how they are so big and the secrets behind them. So that was like two or three episodes back. We'll link it in the show notes. When I teach launching, obviously that's, you know, when you want a big launch that those are the things you've gotta do. You've [00:03:00] gotta play all out, you've gotta show up, you've gotta do the bitch, you've gotta. Do all the crazy things that we do in a launch, and what I see so often is people who say they know launching. There's two things here really that I wanna cover. People who say they know launching, and yet when I look at their launch, they're not doing half the things they should be doing. So either we have an idea of what we think we know about launching and you don't. And obviously this is my zone of genius. This is what I geek out on. This is what I look at research, teach, coach, consult on. This is what I do all day every day. So when I say I know launching, I really do know launching. And of course when people say to me, "oh no, I don't need any help 'cause I've got it, I know what I'm doing." And then I go and look at their sales page and I'm like, well, that is not a good performance sales page. Or I say to them, how many emails are you sending? And that is not like [00:04:00] they're not sending the right amount of emails or they haven't got a downsell ready, prepped in, or they haven't, the launch they're doing is a webinar that they haven't hardly prepped and the title's terrible. Like there could be millions of reasons. And I want you to understand there is no judgment. I'm not coming at this from a judgment point of view. I'm just trying to have a super honest conversation for you to look at you and see if any of this resonates. So this is fascinating to me. So they say to me, I know launching, I know what I'm doing. I don't need your help. Which is fine. You don't have to have my help. But yet they're not doing it. They're not doing the things. And I can see when I look through someone's launch. Holes that are literally pouring potential customers out the bottom of it. And when they say to me, this was the result in my head, I'm like, well, that makes sense because you didn't do this, or you could have tweaked that, or this could have been better. That's the one side of it. But the other side, and the thing I really want to bring up with this in terms of going all out from a launching point of view is. Often, and this is what I [00:05:00] have done often. We say we're going to go all out. We say we're going to do all the things and we don't. And one of the reasons we don't is because if we play all out and it doesn't work. Where do we go then? Like whose fault is it then? Because what happens is when you don't play all out, when you don't do all the things I recommend when you don't send the amount of emails I say, or have the follow up or have the sexy title or sell on the webinar in the way I suggest selling. When you don't do those things. When it doesn't go how you want it to, which is inevitable, you can then say, and like I said, no judgment. I'm sitting here from a place of, I have done this. You can then blame it on the fact that you didn't go all out. And that is so useful because what we don't want to do is actually admit that people didn't [00:06:00] buy because either. We weren't very good at the thing we did or they didn't like it, or, well, whatever the reason, the point is there would have to be another reason. And that reason is inevitably to do with us. Whereas if we say, if we get to the end of the launch and it isn't successful, you could turn around to me and say, oh, but I didn't send those extra emails. Oh, but I didn't do that thing. Oh, but I didn't, I, the sales page needs improving. This makes sense why it didn't work, and that. Is helping no one as certainly not you. And like I said, I'm not entirely sure where I want this episode to go, but I'm talking to people who have launched before, have tried, have done some things, and they are purposely staying small because that gives them every excuse under the sun as to why. Something isn't successful because if they go all out, if they try their hardest and it still doesn't give them the results they want, [00:07:00] you've gotta look at something else. And that might be something we don't wanna look at. Now most people that I work with have, what I love when I work with someone is that they have a proven concept. So they have a product that someone has bought and they are enjoying and they have a good testimonial. Now, it doesn't have to be lo loads, it can be a small handful of people. Once we have a proven concept, the rest is just the mechanics. The rest is just the tweaking, the process, the let's try this. Let's see what works. Like I said, that's the bit that's letting them down, which is so disappointing because it's like you are selling the thing, people are liking the thing, play all out. What have you got to lose? I've done a post already by the time this goes out. I haven't actually done the post, but by the time this episode goes out, I've done a post saying that basically about a month ago, I had my best ever month in business, ever. I've earned the most in one month than I've ever earned. I'm currently working with Hannah ISTed on my social media, so she's helping me. [00:08:00] Basically, she has this thing called your social media or your content, but better. So I have to do the content, which I want to do. I don't wanna do it if I'm honest, but like, you know, I, I want to be the one with my hands on the content, but when I go to her, I'll go, I've got this idea, what do you think? And she really helps me plan it out and work it out, and she's awesome. Anyway, I went to Hannah. I said to her, I've had my best ever month ever in business. Do you think this would make a good post? And Hannah said, yes. Can you share why and what you've learned from that? And I immediately was like, a hundred percent, I know exactly what's happened, exactly what I've done, and it's probably not gonna be what people think. And they're probably gonna be a bit like, is that it? For me, and the reason this goes in hand with this whole conversation we're having about playing full out is because that's how I've been trying to show up. Now, I'm not gonna say I'm perfect at it. I am planning a really big launch for August, and even saying that to you on the [00:09:00] podcast is making me very nervous because people might well. People will they watch my launch stuff because this is the stuff I teach. So it makes perfect sense and I don't have a ginormous audience. I have a good audience and I'm not gonna like play it down because you know, it's a lot of people, but it's certainly not in the realms of the people who are making millions on a launch. And if you've listened to me a million times, you'll know that that is one of the reasons they are making millions of pounds on a launch. 'cause they have a big audience. Anyway, I digress. But I'm gonna do, I'm gonna play all out and I'm gonna do this big launch in August and it makes me nervous and I'm scared and I am telling myself already, don't you dare, don't you dare like go, oh, I just won't do this bit, or I'll just leave this bit out. 'cause that would be exactly what I've just said to you. That would be exactly me going, well, if I don't do this, then I'm not playing all out. And then if I don't get the results I want, I basically can blame it on that and I can't blame it on me. And what if people don't want my stuff or like me, or [00:10:00] whatever other dark reasons I get to. But playing all out for me, what this looks like is, and one of the reasons I think that my income has increased is because, well, few things. First thing is I have niched down, which I never wanted to do. I have a really good reason for why I earn what I earn in my business, and it's not an excuse. It's very much a understanding of the process I've been on. So I started in the online, well, I started in marketing. I worked in marketing, and then when I started my business, I very quickly got into the online space and I started teaching webinars and landing pages and lead magnets and all this cool stuff, and I loved it. And then I decided, well, there are all these other people I want to help. The people pleaser in me decided to then go and, open up a membership to any business owner. 'cause I didn't wanna put people off and I didn't wanna turn them away. And there is still a big part of me that doesn't wanna do that. So I basically had a niche which I then opened up, [00:11:00] which was a terrible mistake. Not, I mean, I loved working with those people, but it just was terrible from a business plan idea. And then of course, for those of you who have been around a while, you'll know that in 2023 I got sober and understandably, prior to getting sober, I was not in a great place, so 2021, 2020, 2022 I was in a bad place mentally and emotionally, and I was struggling. Not that hopefully you would've seen or been able to tell, but I really was, and I needed a lot of mindset stuff. So I then bought a lot of mindset stuff into my world and I started teaching mindset stuff and I certified as a coach. And don't get me wrong, like I am really glad I did that because I now have a toolbox of stuff where I can actually coach and I know what coaching is and how to do it properly, whereas I think some business coaches don't have that. Sometimes it's dangerous. Sometimes it's, you know, you've gotta be careful with people. Anyway, so of course I did all that and then I got [00:12:00] sober, and then when I came out of the fog, which. It's the only way to describe. It took me about a year to get outta the fog of getting sober. I then finally settled back into myself. Obviously I had changed beyond recognition and went, this is it. Like what have I been doing? My online stuff is where I love it. It's where I excel. It's the stuff I geek out on. It's what I know. Like I can do this stuff in my sleep. So I think. The first reason why the income has been so good this these last few months is because I've niched down and I've been brave to do that. And it might sound stupid. You might think, well, it's not very brave, but for me it really felt like it was a brave move because I don't like putting people off and I don't like upsetting people, and I don't like saying, I don't want you in my world, and that's never the case. I still genuinely to this day, have some people in my world who are not. My typical online business owner and they know I will serve them and love them and pray. They never wanna [00:13:00] leave 'cause I adore them. But it is really hard to go to people. No, I'm not for you. And even to the point where I'm niching even more, not probably kind of just quietly niching even more to people who have launched and people who have the businesses and who want to grow and get bigger. So that was the first thing I niched. But like I said, it kind of happened naturally and maybe once I'd gone through everything I'd gone through, I felt brave enough to go, I don't mind saying this is who I wanna work with. The second thing, which is like the most important thing is I took action and I started showing up and playing all out. Now have I played fully all I, no, I haven't, and I'm still working on it. I am taking action all the time. We have launched, like we're in July as I do this, and I think we've launched three times already this year and we're moving into our fourth launch, which feels a lot like I would've just done two in previous years and I have another three to go, but I'm doing [00:14:00] it and in fact, I'm gonna do behind the scenes of how I am actually launching and what's working really well in terms of like a more strategic stuff. This is kind of more mindsetting, but for me, taking the action and going, let's do this. Like what is the worst that can happen? My word for the year, or my word that I keep using is experimenting, and everything's a test, and that's the way we're looking at it. Everything's the test. We basically do something. What was the results? Do something else. What was the results? If we get good results, brilliant. But that actually weirdly isn't the aim. The aim is to test things so we know what is going to work, what isn't gonna work, what I like, what I don't like, and it's that taking action. It's the doing, like enough of the learning. I did a story on my Instagram the other day that I'd watched a video from Ali Abdul and he had talked about we should be creating more than we are consuming. And I think as business owners, we are at risk of over consuming because the next course that comes out, the thing that you know, needs to be [00:15:00] done or let's just watch that video or this was a fascinating podcast and I do it too, but I'm no longer doing it at the detriment of not taking action. And this is. Not just me personally, but also me and my people that are in Grow Launch Cell. The people who are in my accelerator, the people who I work one-to-one with. Everything's about action. What are we doing? Let's see. Do something, show me the results and let's see how we can improve it. Okay. I think the final point really was that I'm being brave, that I'm being much braver now than I ever have been, and I think we have to show up and be brave. That is my message for today. Like I said, I wasn't entirely sure where this episode was going. I really hope you found it useful. I just wanted to kind of get that thought process out of my head because I think it's really important to understand that if you were to go and say, right this time I'm going to go all out, and that can look so many different ways, I'm going to work with that person because [00:16:00] that's what going on out looks like to me. I'm going to put that money behind those ads. I'm going to do an amazing launch. I'm...

Email Marketing That Actually Works with Jay Schwedelson

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, Teresa Heath-Wareing sits down with email marketing expert Jay Schwedelson for a deep dive into the tactics and tools that can supercharge your email marketing strategy. From writing irresistible subject lines to knowing the best times to hit send, Jay shares actionable tips that can immediately boost your open and click-through rates. They also explore how AI is transforming email campaigns—from smarter automations to more effective personalization. Plus, you’ll learn why weekends might just be your secret email weapon. Jay also gives an inside look at his innovative Guru Conference and how he’s revolutionizing the way we experience virtual summits—with humor, star power, and unforgettable value. Whether you’re new to email marketing or looking to level up, this conversation is packed with expert insights you won’t want to miss.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Subject lines are everything. Jay explains how great subject lines are the #1 way to increase open rates—and shares real-world examples that work.

AI can make your emails smarter. From optimizing send times to refining content, AI tools are changing the way we approach email strategy.

Don’t underestimate weekend sends. Contrary to common myths, emails sent on Saturdays and Sundays often perform better—especially with the right audience.

Automation isn’t optional—it’s essential. Jay breaks down how automated email flows save time, re-engage cold leads, and drive long-term results.

Your CTA buttons matter more than you think. Personalized and benefit-driven call-to-actions get more clicks. Jay shares what to say (and what to avoid).

Email is still king—when done right. Relevancy, frequency, and personality are key to building lasting connections through your list.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. Connect with Jay Schwedelson on Website, Linkedin, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: We all know that we should be sending emails, but how do you maximize the emails that you're actually sending? Should you be putting emojis in the subject line? What day is really good for getting people to open and read your emails? And how can you use AI to write your emails today I am interviewing. The amazingly smart and super funny, Jay Shri, and he's sharing all this one is not to be missed. Welcome to the Your Dream Business podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath, wearing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not. Perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you [00:01:00] focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. To another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host who, Heath Waring. And this week I have a great, great guest for you. I am smiling even just doing this intro because I've just been watching the video 'cause you'll know if you've listened to this podcast a while. If you're new, welcome. I'm super, super glad you are here. I. Record, obviously I batch record the interviews and when I go to do the intros, I sometimes have to just go back and flick through the video and go yeah, remind myself again about some of the things we said and just check my notes and genuinely just even see the beginning of this interview making me smile and laugh. 'cause I. Fricking love this guy. Today I'm [00:02:00] interviewing the Amazing Jayton. Now I don't even think I've said it right this time. You will hear how I try and say it to him on the actual interview. He is well just fricking awesome for one, but two. An amazing marketer, right? Like, you know, that I geek out on, well, if you, if you're new, I'm just sharing, I geek out on all marketing, all funnels, all online stuff like numbers, stats, facts. Like, I love it. Like my brain goes into overdrive when it's like, oh, that's clever. Oh, that's really cool marketing. I like what they did there. And Jay is like the best person to know about this stuff because he. Has got so much knowledge. He's so smart. He's very self-deprecating by the way, and you'll see this, like he often will, you know, say things that makes it like he knows nothing. He knows. So much stuff. So Jay is actually the founder of a few different things. [00:03:00] So he has an agency that helps people with marketing, a big agency. He's also the founder of subject line.com, which basically if you need help coming up with a subject line, or sorry, I. Let me rephrase that. If you want to check your subject line, then basically you can put it in subject line.com and it'll tell you whether it's a good subject line or not. And he is the founder of Guru Media, which basically is an events company and he does online events. So he does the guru conference, he did event testing, and he gets like. 30,000 people to these events. It's insane, literally insane. And the online events are like no online event I have ever, ever been to or witnessed. It's wild. The stuff they did, like they had live Sky day divers answering questions at event testing, like it was crazy. He's also very funny. And I just loved talking to him. I was actually on his podcast Do this, not that a few weeks back. So if you haven't listened to that, [00:04:00] please go and take a listen to his. It's a real short podcast. Gives you really kind of practical, strategic, tactical stuff like mine does. But he manages to say it a lot quicker than I do. Uh, so his is short of the mine, but you are gonna come away with so many hints and tips and tactics that you can use like. Should you be putting an emoji in your subject line? What days are best to send emails? This is so practical and things that you can take away today and do in your business today with no cost, and it's fun. We have so much fun. Honestly, I love this guy. He's awesome and you are gonna love him too. So without further ado, here's the awesome Jay. Welcome to the podcast, Jay Delson. Have I said it right? Did I? You rushed it. Are you, are you sure? I, not even kidding. I have been practicing. Okay. Like this afternoon I got everything off my to-do list and went, this is all I can do. So I went and Googled God and I went God to LinkedIn, God. And I thought you would at least have the voice thing on your [00:05:00] LinkedIn. Jay: Oh, I should do that. I should do that. You should. I should do that. Teresa: Because it's not an easy name. Jay: Listen, my name Teresa: I, and that's coming from someone has a big name as well. Jay: I just learned how to spell my last name like a week ago, so you know, it's not easy. Teresa: That does not surprise me. Like it's hard. Anyway, Jay, welcome to the podcast. Jay: Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. Teresa: I am excited because I was saying to you before we got on that I am, and they'll know this, the listeners who listen regularly, I'm an all like geek, right? Numbers, facts, stats, like I love it all and. Do you know what? I just worked out that I wasn't on your personal email list. I've been on the guru email list. Right. Okay. And I recommend it to everyone because it's one of the only emails. Now I, I've just signed up for your personal one by the way. Thanks. But it's one of the only ones that I literally open and read every time because there's always something gold in there. There is always some like fact stat tip, and I love that. Jay: I love hearing that. Yeah, [00:06:00] we try, you know, I'm a big believer in like the 10 foot level of stuff. Like what can you do and try right now that doesn't cost any money, that you don't need some special software tool or whatever, because those little things make a big difference and everyone's always talking about these big ideas. It's like we need the little ideas. Teresa: Yeah, totally. And there's something that you can tell me today and literally my next email, I can try it like, and I love that. Yeah. Okay. So you are renowned as like one of the world's best generally marketers, but email marketing is definitely your jam. Yeah. Is that like, are you just a geek for email marketing or did you accidentally get that and go on? I better lean into this. Jay: You know. Oh, it's fun. It's a, it's a funny thing. I don't consider myself any of those things. It's very kind of you to say that, and I'll tell you honestly how that happened. So I've had a, an agency forever, and when I've had this marketing agency forever, I was really struggling to get business early on. And I would go into these pitches and I would say, I do 75 different things for a living. [00:07:00] Nobody would care. And then I was like, you know what? I, I'm not known for anything. I couldn't get any business. I said, I gotta double down in one area. So I said, you know, I doubled down an email 'cause maybe I get known for email. I can get the business from my agency in all these other areas. And I said, how am I gonna do that? So I said, I need a website that people can use that would think that I know something about email. So this was years ago and I went, I bought the domain subject line.com for 500 bucks and I stuck up this ridiculous website where you can go and mess around with the subject lines and stuff. And that did okay. And then what happened was like, oh. You are the dude who, who knows about subject lines. 'cause you have that website. Meanwhile, I didn't know anything at the time. I'm like, I'm an idiot. I didn't know anything. But then everyone kept saying, you're the subject line guy. I'm like, I, I better get better at this stuff. And so over time, yeah, we started to really figure out and, and, and double down and all these different things and test a million things. So I appreciate you saying that. But it was almost like I was forced into trying to figure out how to do this stuff because I didn't, I liked eating [00:08:00] food and I didn't wanna go outta business. Teresa: I love that. I love that. That's your main thing, like, yeah, I really like being able to eat food. Yes. So I probably need to figure this stuff out. Like, do you geek out on it now? Do you like, does it, yeah. Do you lie awake, like, Ooh, look at this. Like, is that, is that your job? Jay: You know, it's almost like anything, whenever anybody, whatever sector anybody's in, you can't unsee it. Like when I open up my inbox now and I'm looking at subject lines like, that's a good idea. That's horrendous. This won't work. This is gonna crush it, you know, and I'm always making a folder of like stuff I wanna try, but whatever industry or sector somebody's in, when you're on your social feed or whatever, you're like, oh, this is horrendous. Nobody's gonna engage with that. I love this idea. I'm stealing this. You can't like turn your brain off from that content. So. To, it does get me excited. I show my wife, I'm like, look at this subject line. She goes, you are the biggest loser of all time. This is noting interesting. Did I marry you? Yeah. Right, right. And then, but she's the dermatologist and then she'll show me on her phone, look how [00:09:00] disgusting this thing is, this cyst. I'm like, that's disgusting. Don't show me that. So it's like, you know, we show each other stuff, but neither one of us gonna see it. Teresa: Evens. I, that's fine. That's good. Same with my husband. He's a aircraft engineer and the minute he starts speaking, it's like I just go into this nod and grin. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have no idea what he's talking about. Yeah. Literally none. And I think that's why relationships work so well. Right. A hundred percent. Like two different worlds. Two different lives. I love it. Yes. Okay. So I said to you when we got on that, one thing I'm really good at is saying to everyone all the time, you need an email list. All the time. You need an email list. It's like one of the most important, powerful things that you can have in your business. I don't need to repeat that again, but one of the things I'm not great at is talking about how we manage and love those people on our email list, because it's one thing getting lots of good people on your email list. So that's the first thing, not just getting any randoms. But what are we doing with them and how are we looking after [00:10:00] them? Like what, in your mind, what is the very basics that people should be doing? Like is there a number of emails they should be sending? And I mean like basic stuff Or is there how many times they should be doing it? There are certain types of emails they should be doing. What? What kind of things do you see that Jay: are working? So there's a few things I would think about. First off, I would think about the very, very first email that somebody gets from you. It's a very, it's the most important email and people have it backwards. When I say the first email, someone signs up for your newsletter, someone buys your product, they give you their email address, and now you, that email goes to that person. It's not that you're establishing your brand or your tone, or your voice or any of that garbage when you are sending from your platform. And I'm not gonna get technical, but you're hitting send from whatever platform you're using, and that person's receiving that email for the first time. There's this handshake that's happening between your sending platform and that person's receiving infrastructure. It could be Gmail Outlook, whatever.[00:11:00] Now, if that person's receiving your email and they don't open and click on that first email that they get from you, mm-hmm. What you are telling your inbox, your provider is, Hey, I don't know who this new sender is. I don't care about them in the future, you could put 'em in the junk folder or the spam folder 'cause I don't even know why they send it to me. That is what you are saying by not interacting with that first email. So the game is that first time you send somebody an email it, that subject line needs to be the most sensational subject line, outrageous subject line. You need them to open it. You need them to interact with it, because then you're gonna generate that signal. To your own infrastructure saying, oh yeah, keep this in the inbox. So it's not, thank you for signing up. Not thank you for subscribing. Thank you for downloading. It's not a receipt that you're sending somebody. Yeah, it's, Hey, you're now a VIP. Check out what's inside.dot awesome to have you on board. This is just for you. Special gift for new people, whatever. Get them to open and interact with that first [00:12:00] email because the likelihood of staying in the inbox, if they open and interact with that first email goes up by over 85% by doing that. So that's step one. I know I can just go on and on on. Do you want me to, let me, should I go further? Teresa: Yes, go further. Jay: Okay, so great. I think the biggest problem that we all have is, and, and we all talk about, we have people on our email database, right? Okay. I got, you know, thousands of people on my email database. Who cares? It's, are people interacting with your emails? Are they opening them? The weirdest stat in all of marketing is that we somehow think it's normal. So let's say you have a database of 10,000 people on your file. Mm-hmm. Your list. Okay. And on average, you get. Maybe a 30% email open rate, 20%, 35, 40%. Why is it normal that the majority of people on your list. Over 50% are not opening your emails. And we're like, oh, that we did great. We got a 40% open rate. 60% of the people didn't open the email. Yeah. Literally. Why are we, it's weird. Yeah. It's so strange. Like way to go. The [00:13:00] majority of people didn't like what we just did and like we high five each other and so odd. So I'm very, very focused on. Get the email open because who cares what's in your email? Who cares about your amazing offer, your copy, your content. So I spend a lot of time and energy saying, okay, and that's why we started subject line.com. What are the things I could do in my subject line? And believe it or not, there's lots of little things, the easiest little things that will get my email open. 'cause every time you hit send, you're in a battle. Mm-hmm. What am I gonna do to get my email opened and not all those other ones around me? And so, for example, people always ask me, well, how long should a subject line be? You know, how many characters should it be in my subject line? Should it be under 50? Under 60? It's the most ridiculous conversation in the world. Nobody reads the whole subject line. You could put at the end of the subject line, Jay's a big loser. No one would see it. 'cause you don't actually read it? No. Okay. And so what you wanna think about is the first character, the first word, the first two words, [00:14:00] your subject line, because we do our social scroll in our inbox,...

When (and When Not) to Launch Your Offer: Ask These 3 Questions First

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, host Teresa Heath-Wareing explores one of the most common (and often overlooked) questions in entrepreneurship: When is the right time to launch? Teresa dives into the strategy behind launch timing and walks you through three essential questions to ask before putting your product or service out into the world. From understanding your audience’s seasonal behavior to factoring in your own personal schedule, she shares practical advice and personal stories to help you launch with confidence and clarity. You’ll also discover why September and January are two of the best times of year to go live—and how to make the most of these natural momentum points. If you’re planning your next launch or just want to avoid overwhelm and guesswork, this episode offers clear, actionable guidance to help you get it right.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Strategic timing sets the tone for your launch.
- Teresa explains why aligning your launch with your audience’s energy and attention (like in January or September) increases your chances of success.

Ask the right questions before you launch.
- Clarifying your goals, timing, and preparation windows can reduce stress and lead to better results.

Balance business with real life.
- Personal circumstances—like school holidays, vacations, or burnout—should be factored into your launch calendar.

Advance preparation is key.
- Teresa emphasizes the importance of giving yourself ample lead time so you’re not rushing or launching from a place of pressure.

Momentum isn’t just external—it’s internal too.
- Launching at the right time also means tapping into your own energy, confidence, and readiness.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Have you ever wondered when is the best time to do a launch? Well, unfortunately it's not quite as easy as me giving you a date on the calendar, although. In this episode, I am gonna share with you the two months in the year that are launching sweet spots that seem to work for pretty much everybody. But I'm also gonna share with you the three questions that you need to ask yourself in order to maximize your launch. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and [00:01:00] strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? I hope you are good. And a voice message sent to me earlier today from one of my one-to-one clients. As you well know if you've been in my world a while, I'm a big talker, so I don't like typing, so when I work one-to-one with people, we tend to use Voxer and therefore I can do like a back and forth, which is so much easier. Anyway, I digress. I had this lovely voice message that said that she was talking to someone else, she's over in the States, and that they were talking about my podcast and how much they liked it and how it was really practical and it gave them good stuff. And then when I was at Atomicon I had a really lovely lady come up to me and basically show me that she was listening to an episode of the podcast, which was awesome. And I just wanted to say that first off, [00:02:00] thank you. I massively appreciate you listening. And obviously I've done a lot of episodes. This is like 410, I think I'm on recording this one, and I'd like to ask a favor, would you be so kind as to do one of two things, or if you're feeling extra, extra kind, you might wanna do both? The first thing is, could you possibly share this on your social media and tag me in and I will share it because it really helps for. People to obviously see what you're listening to. Hopefully encourage some other people to listen to the podcast too. Obviously. From a business point of view, the podcast is my biggest expense. And actually there isn't a return that you can see. There is absolutely a return, but as in there's not an ROI on it. I can't go, okay, it costs me this much, but it makes me this much. 'cause it doesn't, it just costs me money, but I love it and this is my way that I can help so many people By giving you really kind of inspirational [00:03:00] interviews and I've got a great one next week. I'm so excited. He's amazing, but also very practical, strategic and tactical solos. And like I said, it just would really, really help if A, you would share on your social media and tag me in. I'd absolutely love that you'd make my world. And B, if you haven't already, if you could go and give me a review wherever you are listening to this again. That would be such a massive, massive benefit to me and the podcast, and I would appreciate you so very greatly. Okay, let's get on with today's episode. Today we're gonna be talking about when should you launch, and I've got a few questions that I'm gonna be going through that you need to ask yourself before you decide to do your next launch. Now, one thing I wanna caveat before I get started is people work in different ways now I. I'm one of these people that I like to plan. I'm not always brilliant at it, but I do like to plan. We have a plan in for pretty much the rest, not even pretty much. In fact, we have a plan in for the [00:04:00] rest of the year. I know when we're launching, I know what we're doing. I know what workshops we're doing when, and then come towards the end of this year, I will do the plan for next year. And. I really enjoy knowing what is coming up and planning my time accordingly. As you know, and I've talked about it before, and in fact we'll link to the show notes, the amazing Louise Miller is my productivity mentor. I don't like calling her a productivity mentor. I like calling her a productivity coach. She doesn't like me calling her a productivity coach, but basically she helps me stay productive and she's amazing. So she's able to then look at my plan coming up and we are able to make sure I've got everything in place. The reason I tell you this is because not everyone's like that. So I am gonna give you some questions to ask yourself about when you should launch. I'm obviously gonna give you some advice, I'm gonna give you some thoughts, but at the end of the day, and I'm so flipping passionate about this, it's your business. You get to decide, and that's [00:05:00] really, really important. So I will give you all the support advice. Tactics I can, but if it doesn't work for you, don't try and force it. Don't try and make it work for you. Find out what works for you. Some people work really well last minute. Now I'm gonna argue against why I want us to be a little bit last minute, little bit less last minute I should say. However, some people just work better like that. They work better off the cuff, they're more creative. They do things fast like, and if that is you, then obviously keep that in mind. As we go through these kind of questions, I want you to ask yourself and. Like I said, it's your business, you work in a way that is only unique to you, and my job is to empower you to find the best way for you to work. And that honestly is my job with anyone. I work with anyone that's in the Grow Launch Sale program, my job is to find out what they need and what is important to them. In order to then create the launch that works with them. Okay, that being said, I've got that off the table. I've hopefully empowered you enough [00:06:00] to take what you need from this episode. So what should we be asking ourselves about what or when do we launch? So the very first thing I want you to think about is who are you launching to? Now this is important because there are going to be seasons. Now again, I'm gonna. It comes straight in with an unpopular opinion maybe. But unless you are working with people who have children, who you can guarantee will pretty much take the summer off. I think there is a, how do I wanna describe it? I think there is an opinion that no one works over summer and that's just not true. Like I work the whole of summer. I always have. I always will. Like there are lots of people, you know. The supermarkets don't shut. Amazon doesn't stop delivering. Like the world doesn't halt because it's summer. However, I think often in small business we often think that's the case. But like I said, in saying that, I also want you to know and be [00:07:00] confident that if your customers are parents and they are likely to be off the summer or not engage, then yes, you might not wanna consider doing something or launching in the summer, but I do, like I said, I wanted to caveat it both ways. So you need to understand your audience's seasonality. If they are, like I said, parents, they might not be doing stuff in the summer. If they are e-commerce, you might have to launch something way before they're doing it. I was talking to someone just the other day about launching for Black Friday. And as I record this, it's June and we are talking about when she's gonna launch to talk about how she can help them with Black Friday, and it's gonna be very soon. So you need to have a think about that. I've got students who work with teachers. So there are particular times of the year where the teachers are up to their neck in exams and that sort of thing. So again, that's not great. I have got students that I've worked with that they [00:08:00] teach students and they're going to promote their support. Either right after an exam or right as someone's enrolling. So you need to bear in mind when are they going to be ready to buy or when are they going to be able to focus on this thing. Now, like I said, one thing that I am trying to get away from is going, things don't work in August because everyone's off. I am actually doing something in August. You've got a sneak peek. I've never done anything in August before and I'm gonna see if it works. We will find out and I'm sure I will share all. So that's the first question. Who are you launching to and understanding what seasonality they might have and whether it's a good time for them or not. Also, don't let that entirely put you off. You know that my word this year is everything's a test. It's not one word. It's like three. Everything is a test. That's actually four. I'm so sorry. Yeah, so like, I'm just [00:09:00] saying for you to, to take it into account, but don't let it paralyze you. Okay, the next question, what is going on in your own personal world? So the first question is, what is happening in our customers? What is going on in your own personal world? So for instance, oh, sorry, can I just go back one second. This is how you can tell my podcast is never scripted because another thought has just come to me. Obviously you might want to avoid real seasonal things. So for instance, I was once planning on launching and as you know, I have an American audience as well as a UK audience. And it was actually going to be like Thanksgiving. Well, that's a terrible time. I can't do something when it's gonna be Thanksgiving 'cause everyone's off and I would know that everyone's off. So I changed it. So that's something else for you to bear in mind in like, is there national holidays in the. You know, audience that you're dealing with. So, sorry. Now question two, what is going on in your world? Now you obviously need to be available and have the [00:10:00] energy to launch, and I'm not gonna sit here and say that it doesn't take energy or I'm not gonna sit here and say that it's, you know, like it's easy. Or you can have really low level launches that take no energy. It will, like launching in its very nature is creating an experience and therefore it will take some extra energy and some extra time from you. So again, make sure that you are looking at what capacity you have. Consider your own holidays, your own personal time, your own other commitments, and think about. Where are you going to have the time and capacity to do this? Because if you are, I don't know, if you were like speaking the right mid launch, then that might not be great because for me, speaking and being at an event or a conference takes energy and again, launching takes energy if I was going to be away. So for instance, I've just done a small launch and I say it's small, it's like a private launch. [00:11:00] I'm, I need to explain, maybe I'll do an episode on how I launch, but I've just done this kind of small private launch and basically the car opens yesterday as I'm, as I'm recording this and I go away tomorrow to France. So I've had to do all the calls 'cause I offer a one-to-one call to. Discuss whether they want to join Grow launch sale. The calls are today. So I kind of, the timing wasn't brilliant 'cause I could have done with, given them a chance to have a call with me next week, but it just ended up being the way it was. Like I said, it's not that you definitely rule it out because you're going away or because you've got an event, but you just need to bear in mind also from an energy point of view, like running things back to back. So not only do your audience need a break from launching, so if you are selling continuously to your audience, not only do they need a break and do they need you to add some value and give them some love, but also you need a break. So keep that in mind. When do you need or when will you have the time and energy? Now, don't say never. I heard you [00:12:00] say that to yourself and I'm not sure that it's like as easy as saying that, you know, we'll have the time and energy, but when can you clear your diary? The other thing that I have to say that has worked really well for me is in launch phase, which is basically the phase where you are promoting your launch experience. When I have been speaking, that has actually worked really well for me in that phase. I wouldn't do it when I'm actually launching IE. When I'm either delivering the bootcamp or the workshops or whatever it is, because that's too much. But right before that, that's actually worked really nicely for me from a list point of view in getting people in that launch. But yeah. Okay. So you're gonna consider who you're launching to and what affects them. You're going to consider what's going on in your own world. So if you are away with the kids, you've got something personal going on, you are doing something else in your business and you won't have the time and energy. Don't do that. And then the third question is, how much time do you need to [00:13:00] prepare? Now this is the question I get asked a lot. How much time should we have to prepare in an ideal world? So as I record, record this, it's June the 26th and I am doing a launch at the mid to end of August. I think it's mid-August actually. I was just looking at my calendar and I can't read it for me. So that's no good. I am currently preparing for that now. Now this is going to be a big launch and it's something that I've not done before. It's a bootcamp that I've not done, so keep an eye out for that, but. I am already starting to prepare for that. Now, what you guys will see is two weeks prior to when the bootcamp starts, when I start talking about it. But what I'm going to be working on now is the pre-launch content. I'm going to be actually creating everything for the launch. Like it's a beast. All the things you need to create, the emails I need to write. So the more time you can give yourself the better. And the other reason I suggest that [00:14:00] even though. When we get into the launch phase, we, that's obviously done over. So if I'm doing a bootcamp, I'll span that over two weeks and then I'll promote the bootcamp two weeks before I start. So technically, from the minute I start promoting the bootcamp until I finish the bootcamp, you're almost talking four weeks. So you could say to me, well, why don't you just do all your emails in the sales page and all that in that four weeks? Because one, you're gonna be tied up doing the other things. And two, I like to have and I recommend to everyone that I work with, that we have everything prepared as much as possible beforehand. Now, that's not to say that we shouldn't tweak and move if things happen during the launch. Absolutely. We wanna be able to have the head space to go, oh, this just came up and this is brilliant. Let's add this in. However, one of the reasons we get everything ready. Is because launching is an emotional rollercoaster, and what happens is if things aren't going to plan, you might not write [00:15:00] that email or you might not put that post out, or you might not show up in the same way, or you might not write in the same way. So I would much rather, before you even launch that, you've written all those emails, you've done all that stuff as much as possible. It's just scheduled and therefore when you're in the launch, you're not having to worry about that. Also, as much time as you can give it to warm your audience and to build your list is really, really important. So when I'm launching, if I was deciding I wanted to launch to, you know, not today, but if I was gonna come up with a launch soon, I would need to give myself a minimum. I'm just thinking now, so I'd want. Two weeks to plan what I wanted to do and maybe do a little bit of pre-launch content, although that's not very much, two weeks to promote the launch and then...

Know Your Numbers: How to Build a Profitable Business with Jo Simpson

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m joined by the brilliant Jo Simpson, a financial educator and founder of the Financial Growth Academy. Together, we dive into the essential world of business finance—breaking down key financial terms like revenue, gross profit, and net profit in a way that’s practical and easy to understand. Jo shares her own candid money journey and introduces the Profit First methodology, a revolutionary approach that flips the traditional model by encouraging entrepreneurs to pay themselves first. We also explore how to turn business income into personal wealth, manage costs strategically, and plan for long-term financial success. If you're ready to take control of your numbers and build a more profitable, sustainable business, this episode is packed with insight and encouragement.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Knowing your numbers builds business confidence. – Understanding financial terms like revenue, gross profit, and net profit is essential for making smart business decisions.
Profit First helps you pay yourself first. – Jo explains how this method ensures your business supports your life—not the other way around.
Strategic expense management protects your bottom line. – Learn how to manage business costs wisely and plan for growth with retained profit.
Personal wealth starts with business discipline. – Discover how to convert your business income into lasting personal wealth and financial freedom.
Money mindset matters. – Jo opens up about the emotional impact of finances and how reframing your approach can empower better choices.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. Connect with Jo on Website, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: One of the things that can make or break your business is the finance. If you're not making enough money, if you're making the money, but it's going out the door as fast as it's coming in, or if you just don't know how to manage cash flow, there's no judgment here, by the way, because just because we have businesses doesn't mean that we automatically know about this stuff, which is why this episode is so important for anybody in business. Jo Simpson and I go right back to basics in terms of the finance of our business. How to make sure that we not only make money in our business, but we keep the money. Welcome to the Your Dream Business podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that. In [00:01:00] each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host Teresa Heath Wareing, and I hope, you are good. So this week we have an interview and it's a subject that I am learning to love. Okay. One of the things I am rubbish at in my business is the finance side, which can I just be honest here? I think sometimes when we start a business, we expect from ourselves that we should be brilliant at all of the various bits. The finance, the marketing, the selling, the content creating the all the stuff, right? And. [00:02:00] The truth is we are not. 'cause if I was really good at that stuff, I probably would've gone into business doing that thing and I went into business doing marketing because that's what I'm really good at. So I've tried not to beat myself up anymore that I'm not great at the finance thing, but I have also owned the fact that I have to be good at it or I not even good at it. I have to be able to manage it. One of the big problems I have in my business is, or one of the big problems I have generally in running a business is that in the past I've seen money in my account and gone brilliant and have not thought, well, what's coming in in the next 2, 3, 4 months? As I've talked very openly in the past, when I got sober in 2023, I basically kept my business at the level. It was from an expenses point of view, but I didn't have the money coming in that I should have, and I got myself into a bit of trouble, not serious trouble, just not in a place that I wanted to be. So that's why I wanted to. Really focus on [00:03:00] learning the finance side, understanding the finance side, knowing what it I've gotta do with it so that I can get much better at this. And one of the things that I did to do this was enter the world of Jo Simpson. Let me read her bio and then I'll tell you why and how I got into the world with Jo. So since setting up her business consultancy and accounting practice back in 2002, Jo has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs create and scale their businesses. Jo's passion to support ambitious entrepreneurs to build businesses that are profitable. That was in all capitals, FYI. All whilst living a life they love as an accredited profit, first professional, and a multi-business owner, Jo has taken all of her knowledge and expertise and created a range of courses and memberships and Bespoke Mastermind and launched these to the online world in 2016 in the form of the Financial Growth Academy. Since then, Jo has worked with some of the fastest scaling highest net worth online entrepreneurs in the uk, and that has allowed her to bring more value to her program. Jo's mission [00:04:00] is simple. She wants to help thousands of entrepreneurs overcome their fear of finance and become the most profitable version they can be. That should half explain why I entered Jo's world. But basically, as Jo says in her bio, she is in the online world. She understands the online world. She works with people in the online world. And also the other thing that you're going to hear in this interview is Jo is very honest about her own relationship with money and her own finance journey. And I think when someone is excellent at something, it's really good to hear when they're not excellent at something, if you know what I mean. Like when. So, for instance, I am good at marketing. That's what I do. But sometimes my own marketing can be terrible and I don't post on social media consistently or whatever it might be. And sometimes it's good to hear that even the people who get paid to help with these things can also struggle themselves, especially when it comes to money and finance, because I also think it's a very, it's a very emotive subject and not one that we are [00:05:00] taught to talk about a lot. I get Jo to take us right back to basics, so. This is for you if A, you need to know the basics, which I think even if you do need to know them or even if you do know them, I think it's a great reminder for those who know them as to what they are actually are. And then some of the ways in which she's helping people get super confidence with money, but also encouraging people to be happy about paying tax. And I know that might sound a bit jarring, but listen to what Jo has to say. It's super, super interesting. I said I went into her world 'cause I knew she would be the person to help me get a grip of the money side, but also she is as ambitious. Herself and for me, which is awesome. She's also one of the most connected women I know, which is crazy. She seems to know everyone. Anyway, I had to have Jo on. She is super lovely. I love it to bit very grateful that I am in her world, and I [00:06:00] really think you're gonna enjoy this episode, even if you think, oh, it's finance. It might not be my thing. Jo manages to make it feel fun and enjoyable. So enjoy this episode and here is the lovely Jo. Jo, welcome to the podcast. Jo: Thank you for having me. Teresa: I am very excited to have you. You, I have known about you for a long time, and then about six-ish months ago, I decided to take the leap and join your world and basically because I am the worst at money, right? There are many reasons why I'm so grateful to be in your world, but one of them is that you are the queen of getting us organized. So today, if you are listening this and you're like, Ooh, I hate this conversation, then. You're right, you're in the right place. 'cause if I can cope with it, you can cope with it. And it is something we all need to get really good at. So we're gonna start basic, and we're going to start with what are the main things, [00:07:00] the main words in our business that we should know and understand when it comes to money, like profit and revenue and those sort of things. Jo: Okay, so firstly, so many people tell me that they're bad with money and I get told that all the time, or I'm bad with numbers or I'm not very good at accounts, or I don't wanna look at any of that. So just like you said there, let's go back to the absolute basics of what actually money is in your business. 'cause Interesting. The people who always tell me that they're bad with money or they're not very good at the finances and things, tends to be people who want to make money. Teresa: True. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. I want more of it. Okay. Not very good at it. Jo: Okay. So the first one to talk about is the sales. So basically the sales, which could also be called revenue. It can be called turnover. We tend to use the term turnover in the UK because that's an accounting term. Revenue is more popular outside of the uk, so sales, revenue, turnover. That is the, the [00:08:00] sales that I raised in your business in a set period of time. So that is invoices that you've raised. Payments that you've got coming in via stripe or anything like that. One of the most basic terms that people get wrong with turnover and sales is that they might focus on a a longer period of time. So where I would call turnover, let's use turnover for this. Turnover for me is everything you've invoiced in a period of time. So in an accounting year, everything that you've invoiced and everything that's come in. Where it gets slightly more confusing is that a lot of people, particularly in the online space, like to use the term sales and that's not actually what they've invoiced out or received in yet. That could be if that client stays with them four, three years or four years. So when you see, you know, some of the sweeping statements of, mm-hmm I've just had a hundred K sales day, that could be somebody has taken on a client that is committed to working for them. For two years, three years. So [00:09:00] use that term loosely. So turnover for me is the sales or the revenue that is coming in in a set period of time. Teresa: See, that's how I view it. And when I view sales, that's how I would talk about. Mm-hmm. I guess now, although you say that, like if someone did a part payment, see this is the thing, right? So let's say I was looking at someone's launch Yep. And someone did. There was a part payment involved where they could pay over three or pay over six. I would look at the launch as to how much they sold, not necessarily the money that came in at that point, Jo: which is absolutely fine. Yes, that is absolutely fine. So that is turnover. That is not what cash received is. So you have a terminology you've got is actual cash received. Yeah. So there is absolutely no problem at all with using that terminology for if you had a launch. Let's use two examples. I'm gonna use the launch method as an example. Launch and you or you were managing a launch for a client and the total sales value of that launch, it could be a a six month program. Mm-hmm. With say, [00:10:00] 12 month payment plans, you could take that amount of money and say, that was a hundred thousand pounds. A hundred thousand pounds. That is your turnover. That is your revenue sales for that launch. Yeah. In accounting terms, you would only declare it. In the time that you would actually get the money in. So in accounting terms, because imagine if May was the beginning of your financial year. Mm-hmm. And April, you'd turn a launch on the 30th of April. We wouldn't be declaring that whole hundred thousand pounds on the 30th of April because you would then be paying tax on it. So you would then accrue over that. So that is fine. So that's one example. Sales can be used to total up the sales. Total can be for what you have done a launch for. And a lot of online people will do this, so they will now, and they're getting better at it where they'll say, my launch was a hundred thousand in online sales, and then they'll put in brackets, not cash received. Teresa: Mm-hmm. Jo: Where there can be a slight difference with that would be, and I'll use myself as an example, if you came onto me as an accounting client. And I quoted you an [00:11:00] amount of money that it was gonna be a monthly fee that I was gonna be charging you. So it's no different to a payment plan, but as long as we do a good job, you should stay with us for as long as that you're in business. Mm-hmm. So if I look at, uh, when I first started my business, the first five clients I start with are still clients today. Mm-hmm. And that was 23 years ago. So if I look at sales yeah, for that, then that is a totally different figure. So I have seen other accountants, I've seen other people say, I've had a hundred case sales day, and it could be that because they're expecting that client to stay with them for 3, 4, 5 years. So that's the first terminology that I think, yeah, can get misconstrued. So just making sure that you are looking at the right. Figure. So that's why I use turnover, sales revenue for a set period is the terminal, yes. That I would use for that. Yeah, Teresa: that's good. Okay. Does that make sense? So what? Yeah, perfect. So let's talk profit. Okay. So we're getting ahead of ourselves. Oh, are we? Sorry, I jumping the wrong way. Okay. You absolutely not. Jo: [00:12:00] So your sales revenue and turnover is obviously the money that's coming in. You've got one thing before. We get to profit and profit, you've got two types of profit. You've got gross profit. Mm-hmm. Also known as gp. This is very accounting chat now. Okay. And then you've got the final one, which is net profit. So gross profits for most people is not relevant because in the online space, all the costs that you have are overhead and they're all flexible. For a product-based business, gross profit would be applicable. So that means if you are selling. For example, a Stanley Cup, 'cause I've got one in my hand. Yeah. The gross profit would be how much you sell that Stanley Cup for minus the cost of the Stanley Cup, minus the cost of sending that out to the customer and minus all the bank charges and all the things that go with that. And. It is the most common mistake that people make if they move from a online business or a service-based business to a product-based business. They don't account for the gross profit. [00:13:00] So that is the cost involved in actually carrying out the sale because you're gross. So Teresa: would that be for an online business? And I'm glad that I am dumb with this because I'm asking all the stupid questions. Would that be, so for instance, I use Kajabi. Yeah. So is Kajabi. That would be class the same. Jo: So, and I'm glad you've asked that because it is something that, particularly in my trade as accountants, we have a very sort of set accounting principles and I have argued this discussion with quite a few other, I'm gonna use the word argue, other accountants about what the cost of sale is. Yeah. So obviously if you use Kajabi, I use FEA, create that is a cost which I have to host my memberships. Yeah. Everything I do through that, I could not run my online business without it. No. Teresa: However, Jo: could I go to somewhere else? Could I actually just say, right, we're not doing this anymore. I'm just gonna have a WhatsApp group and mm-hmm. I'm gonna put out a Google Doc so it's not actually a cost of sale. Okay. Where I argue a cost of sale would be is if [00:14:00] you, for example, brought me in to do some sessions and you were gonna pay me as a coach within your membership, right? Or with any of that, that is a cost of sale. So that's the most common one. If you bring coaches, consultants, or anything like that into your online business to carry out a job so that you can make the sale. Okay. Again, it can be argued. There's no, there's very gray reason in this because it could be stopped. IEU could run that program or course without me in it, so it could be argued. The one that I feel very strongly goes into cost of sales, which is not accounting principles, normally is advertising. So Facebook ads. So I have a lot of clients who sell digital products, and a lot of these clients do these purely through Facebook ads that they wouldn't have sold that without it. Mm-hmm. So to me, the sale minus the...

What Makes a Launch Wildly Successful? Here’s the Truth

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I share the three powerful secrets behind successful multi-million pound launches—especially for course creators, membership owners, and coaches. Drawing from my own experience and client results. I break down the essential elements that turn a good launch into a great one. From creating high-value pre-launch content to designing engaging experiences and building an irresistible offer ecosystem, this episode gives you a blueprint to elevate your next launch. Also, I highlight the importance of continuous audience growth and staying agile in a fast-changing digital world. If you're planning a launch—or want to improve your results—this episode is packed with practical wisdom you can apply right away. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Pre-launch content builds trust before you sell. - Warming up your audience with value-packed content sets the stage for a smooth, high-converting launch.

Engaging launch experiences drive conversion. - It’s not just what you offer—it’s how you deliver it. Live elements, challenges, and interactive content keep people excited and committed.

Offer ecosystems outperform one-off sales. - A well-designed product suite allows customers to go deeper with you and increases your revenue potential long-term.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

If you are selling a course, your membership, a coaching program, anything online, then this episode is a must. Also, if you know anybody else who's doing that, then make sure you go and send them this episode. 'cause today I am sharing the three secrets of multimillion pound launches so that you can improve your next launch. Hello and welcome to Your Dream Business podcast. If you are a course creator, membership owner, or a coach, then you are exactly where you need to be. I'm Teresa Heath-Wareing. I am the host of this podcast. We are on episode 408. There is a ton of episodes to go back on. If you are new welcome. If you are a regular listener, then I appreciate you greatly and hopefully if you are a newbie, you'll turn into a regular listener. Before I get started with today's episode, I would love it if you would do me a favor. There are hundreds and hundreds of you who listen to this podcast every single week, and yet. There is a very small percentage of you who go and review the show, and as a podcaster, one of the things that can help me the most is if you go and review the show wherever you're listening, so whether it's on Spotify or [00:02:00] Apple or wherever you're listening to this. And it really helps because as you can appreciate, maybe maybe not putting together a podcast is a ton of work. Putting together 408 episodes of a podcast is something else, and I love it, and I love the fact that I get to serve you and give you knowledge and help you with your launching and your business and all those sort of good things. But one of the things that you could do for me if I can ask a favor is that you could go and give me a review and that will help more people see the podcast. And if I get the podcast bigger, then I get even better guests than I already get on. And we know I get some good guests, but I'll get even better ones. So I would really appreciate it if you could go and do that for me. Okay, as I'm recording this last week, I did a talk at Atomicon, if you don't know what Atomicon is, it's a big event here in the UK. Probably one of the biggest marketing events here in the UK for small business owners. And my dear friend Andrew and Pete run it [00:03:00] and they are, I was about to say they're very kind 'cause they have me speak every year. But actually if you were to ask them why they have me speak every year, they wouldn't say it's because they're kind because. They are kind, but that's not the reason they have me to speak. The reason they have me to speak is in their words, because I'm a good speaker. I give great sort of practical strategy things. People enjoy my sessions and I get good feedback. So they send out a feedback form and I always get pretty high ranked in terms of the speakers, which is amazing and I appreciate that greatly. And that's why they have me back. They wouldn't just do it because they're my friend and every year I'm always honored that I get asked to go and speak there because it really is Like this year, Ryan Dice was speaking and Hanley spoke before Drew Davis' spoke. They have celebrities every year. I mean, it is amazing. Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all this is 'cause I want to cover some of what I covered at my Atomicon [00:04:00] Talk because it was a really good, that sounds really up. Like I'm being bigheaded because I'm about to go. It was a really good talk, but it was really practical and I want to give you some of those practical things that I gave in that talk. So the talk was called The Three Secrets Behind Multimillion Pound slash Dollar Launches, and basically I talked about three things that are working really well at the moment because. I started off the top by saying that it's changed. The online space has changed massively. I've been in it about eight, nine years now, and in that time it has changed almost beyond recognition and things were not as they were. And basically we need to work a bit harder. We need to try a bit harder, but we need to be a bit more strategic with some of the stuff we're doing. And the main three problems that I see working with hundreds of people who launch, and when I say launch, can I just clear up one thing? Launching isn't if you have a [00:05:00] new product or service that you are launching IE for the first time. A launch is basically an experience that you are creating in order to sell your online thing. So whether it's a course, a membership, a coaching program. So the three problems that I see, number one is getting people to actually sign up to your launch experience. Whether you're doing a webinar, a bootcamp, or something else like that, is actually encouraging people to get them to sign up in the first place because if they're not in your launch, launch experience, it is gonna be very hard to sell them the thing that you're selling them. Number two is getting people to engage in your launch experience. So let's say you are doing a webinar. It has been proven over and over and over again that the more people who show up to your webinar, the more likely those people are to buy because they're getting to know you and like you and trust you, and they're getting to understand whether you are for them or not. So the second problem is getting those people to actually engage in your launch experience. The third problem that I see all the time is actually making money, getting the sales. [00:06:00] How do we get those people over the line so that they can actually buy something, join the program, whatever it might be. Before I got started on those three points, I needed to reiterate the fact that audience is so important, the size of your audience. I needed to reiterate that constant audience building is a strategy. I've done lots of episodes before on visibility and increasing your audience and things, but I needed to kind of make sure I said that at the beginning of the talk that whatever I share, these three points that I share will be vastly improved if you're growing your audience. So that was the first thing, okay, once I got over that kind of elephant in the room, because that's really important, I then got to the three problems. Oh, also, I have put together a actual masterclass for you, an actual training video where I go through this in more detail and give you some examples of what you can do [00:07:00] in your business. So this podcast episode is basically an overview of the three points if you want to understand these three points better, if you want some of the very cool. Stats and facts and things that I bought into the presentation. 'cause you know, I geek out on that stuff and it just helps me prove my point. And you want some help in terms of how you use these in your business, or what are some of the questions you need to ask yourself in your business? I have created a freebie training that you can download today if you had to. Theresa Heath wearing.com/three things, so the number three and the word things. You will get access to that training or head over to my socials or the show notes and you'll get that link as well. Okay, so let's go on with the three problems and the three solutions. So problem number one is getting those signups. How do you get people to actually join your launch experience? And secret number one is pre-launch content. Now, I [00:08:00] have talked about this before, but it. Honestly, I see so many people not doing this. So what pre-launch content is and what the big launches do, and this was the whole premise of this presentation and of the free train that you are gonna get. When I see multimillion pound launches, this is what they're doing. So if you want a, you know, you might not be sat there thinking, I'm want a multimillion pound launch, but. These three things are going to help you improve whatever numbers you're currently getting. So the big launch is start posting pre-launch content weeks and weeks before they launch. I know someone is about to move into a launch by the content they're creating. I. Basically in the phases we have the launch phase, we have the live experience phase, and then we have the sales phase. And what people are missing is the phase before the launch phase, which is the pre-launch content in the creating the pre-launch content. I want you to ask yourself the following questions, and these are really important questions to help you do your pre-launch [00:09:00] content. Think about the thing that your, your experience, your webinar, your masterclass, your whatever it is, your bootcamp that you're gonna be doing. When you think about that as in the title of it, what you're actually going to get 'em to achieve, ask yourself these questions. What do they need to know or understand before you can teach them that? Okay? And the second question is, what objections might they have about learning that. Obviously if you go and check out the training, the freebie training, then I go into more detail about this. But basically what we're trying to do is find out what do we need to give them? What answers to questions do we need to give them in order to get them ready to go? So I likened the his, I gave a terrible example as I was speaking actually, which came outta nowhere, which has. Basically being a runner, which is weird 'cause that is definitely not something I would be doing. But imagine if you're going to be a runner, what do you need to do before you even get to that start [00:10:00] line? You would need to get some trainers on. You would need to get the right clothes. You would need to maybe do a bit of exercise, you would need to, I don't know, 'cause I'm not a runner. But what things do you need to even allow you to get to that start line? And that's what we need to consider when we're doing pre-launch content. Okay, so in the freebie training, I will go into more detail and I'll give you some good examples of pre-launch content. Problem number two, launch engagement. How do you get people to engage in your launch experience? Secret number two was go all out. What do the big launches do? Well, basically they stack multiple launch experiences. IE bootcamps plus webinars, plus live sessions. Then layer in behind the scenes content prizes and engagement extras. Now, why is it now we need to go all out? Now? People have been doing this for a little while, but it's even more important that I've seen that the people who get the best results are. [00:11:00] Stacking those multi sort of level launch experiences. They're adding a webinar at the end of their challenge, or they're doing bootcamps with live sessions. The reason we need to do this now is one, the market has changed. Now I think the market has changed for the better, even though this is the world I'm in and it makes my job harder and it makes my client's jobs harder. It is better because the market has changed. The people that you are selling to are way more discerning now, and that is a good thing. I don't ever want someone buying from me who hasn't really considered working with me. I don't want someone spending a ton of money on a whim because that doesn't end well for me or them. I want people to do their due diligence. I want them to look at what it is that they're. You know, spending their money on. But because the market has changed, because people are doing that, we have to try harder. We have to work harder to get them to be engaged, to get them to take part in these things. Number two, the platforms have changed. I. Back in the day, you could [00:12:00] do a challenge with a Facebook group and your whole of the Facebook group would see everything. That is not the case now, even when people are going live in Facebook groups, I'm seeing that people are not seeing the live. You think you are emailing them and posting and doing all the things and people just. Aren't seeing it. So we can't just rely on doing one thing on one platform because it's not hitting, and that's for the whole way through on the launch. But in particular, when you're doing your launch experience, some people want to listen to it. Some people will want to come to one mask class. Some people want the challenge, the daily check-ins, like people want different things and the platforms are not helping us. Consumer behavior. Like I said, that's changed as well. They need a lot more effort. They need a lot more encouraging and a lot more motivation to actually get and do these things and everyone is stepping up. So I would love to say that it's just these big, massive people who are doing these huge multi-stack launches, but we need to be doing them too, regardless of the level you are at. By adding in a few [00:13:00] other elements, by using some more engagement tactics, by trying to encourage that. That is really important and that is really going to help your results when you are selling whatever it is you're selling. So what does going all out look like in the training? I go over one of my most favorite launches ever, and it's Denise Duffield Thomas, where basically. I mean, if you want an example of going all out, this is a real example, and in the training I give you the numbers of what her launch looked like and what she got. She's very honest about her launch numbers and she puts them publicly, so I was able to share them, but basically we need to be doing some extra things. We need to be trying a bit harder. So if you are gonna do a. Masterclass, we might need to do multiple masterclasses. We might need to do some other things. Okay. So it, it works because you're creating an experience people wanna be part of. You're catering for different needs and you're showing people what is to come. So when they can see the effort you are going to, the work you [00:14:00] put into it, they know that that is likely to work the same as. When you are doing the actual thing that you're doing, so when you are delivering the course or the in the membership or whatever, the more effort you put into the launching, the more likely people are like, oh, okay, this person's good, and let's hope that is the case. Now, one thing I put in the talk, and this actually, this slide has gone everywhere, which is amazing for me and I appreciate it greatly. I actually put this quote in. Because I'm really conscious that I'm saying to people, you've gotta go all out, but if they don't want to, then don't. Okay. Which is why this quote works so brilliantly. Don't be upset by the results you didn't get for the work you didn't do. That can sting a little bit. It sounds really harsh, but actually it's a real practical, a real practical like thing to remember because. If you do this extra work, you are likely to get better results. If you don't want to do it, don't do it, but just don't expect those better results. It's more about [00:15:00] knowing that for the work and the effort I put in, this is the results I'm likely to get. So it's not saying you have to work harder, you have to do all these things. If you want the better results, then that's what it takes. Problem number three, making the money. How do you maximize the money you make from your launch? And the secret number three was your offer ecosystem. Again, I've done a podcast all about the offer ecosystem, but this is what the big launches are doing. They don't just make money from the main offer, but they are making money from their ecosystem. So yes, they are doing a main offer, and that main offer is bringing in a big chunk of money. However, it's not just that one thing that's bringing them in the money, and it won't ever just be that one thing in the offer ecosystem. I talk about the core offer, the bonuses, the downsell, the upsell, and the cross sale. One of the examples I give is, or one of the reasons I give that you should do this is because you are marketing to where your [00:16:00] customers are at. Not everyone is ready for your full offer, so they might not have certain things in place. They might need something more than your offer. They might need an additional thing or actually a lower version of it, but basically you are giving them options. So there are people that will buy a workshop with me, but they won't buy my big offer. It might be that the money's not there. It might be that they don't need the bigger offer, they just needed the workshop, so I'm giving them an option. I give an example of one of the cross sells that I did. I basically did an open high strategy workshop. So I do these workshops where you can come and basically go deep in on the thing. So I teach you everything you need to know about it. They're fairly low cost. They're over normally three or four sessions. There's a small group involved and. I did...

How Somatic Coaching Can Help You Grow Your Business with Claire Thorpe

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m joined by the amazing Claire Thorpe, a somatic practitioner, yoga teacher, and embodiment coach. We explore the powerful connection between body awareness and business success. We talk about how somatic coaching can help you strengthen your nervous system, make clearer decisions, and grow your business from the inside out. If you’ve ever felt like mindset work and strategy aren’t quite enough, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on why tuning into your body can be the missing link. Clair shares her own journey, and we dive into practical ways to bring somatic practices into your daily routine. Whether you're new to this or already curious about embodiment work, this episode is full of insights you won’t want to miss.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Somatic awareness is a powerful tool for business growth. -Tuning into your body helps you make clearer, more grounded decisions beyond just mindset and strategy.
The nervous system plays a big role in your business clarity and confidence. - Strengthening it through somatic practices can reduce stress and improve focus.
Integrating embodiment techniques can unlock new levels of creativity and leadership. - It’s about connecting mind and body to lead your business in a more aligned and authentic way.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Claire on Website, LinkedIn, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: What if I told you that the key to your next business breakthrough isn't another mindset, technique or marketing strategy, but lies within your own body. In today's episode, the guest and I explore the transformative power of somatic coaching and how developing your nervous systems capacity could be the missing piece to your business. Growth puzzle. Whether you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or simply curious about the difference approach to business growth. This conversation reveals how somatic awareness might be the most powerful business tool that you're not yet using. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, [00:01:00] and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, and as always, thank you so much for spending time with me, for listening to this episode for hanging out. I greatly, greatly appreciate it, which. Can I start by asking a favor? There is a huge percentage of you who listen to the podcast, who don't actually subscribe to the podcast, and I would love it if you could do me a favor and hit that subscribe button wherever you are listening, because what happens when you subscribe is more people see it, especially if you review more people see it. I get to help more people, and by doing that I get to [00:02:00] have more amazing guests. On the podcast because sometimes when I pitch to someone to be on the podcast, I get asked how many downloads I have, and the more downloads I have, the more amazing people I can bring and get their brilliant ideas for you. So we'll make a deal. You subscribe. Do me a review and I will make sure that I bring on the best people who can help you accelerate your business. Okay, on with today's episode. Today I am interviewing Claire Thorpe, who is a somatic practitioner yoga teacher and embodiment coach, and she supports female founders who are yearning for deeper nervous system stability. That's easy for me to say. And. Resilience as they grow and scale their business. And she offers a body led nature inspired approach to inner healing and growth. Now, I just wanna say something before I continue with this episode. If you've been listening a long time, you will know that I. [00:03:00] Certified as a coach a few years back. You'll also probably know if you've been listening a long time, that I went through a real journey of getting sober, which once I had gone through the worst of the journey, I shared a teeny tiny bit on this podcast, and then I actually went and did another podcast all about that. But what happened was I needed the mindset stuff in my world, and therefore I bought it into my business, and I'm not sorry. I bought it in. But it was a distraction that I didn't need, and now I'm really glad to being back and doing strategy and marketing and stuff that I really do excel in and the stuff that I am brilliant at. And I say that with all intention. I think we should be getting more comfortable with saying we're brilliant at things if we are anyway. I've kind of come away from all the mindset stuff. Not personally, I still do a lot of mindset stuff, but I didn't want it on the podcast. And the other reason I've kind of come away from it is 'cause I actually interviewed a couple of people who were a bit more [00:04:00] on the Woo side and. The episodes weren't great, like, and I didn't put the episodes out because when I came to do the hook, which is the bit at the very beginning of every episode before we start the intro, I couldn't think of what to say. I couldn't give you a good reason why to listen to that episode. And if I can't give you a good reason in a one minute hook, then it really isn't a good episode. And it kind of put me off having mindset slightly woo steff on, even though it's still very much in my world. Anyway. Someone mentioned Claire to me and said, you should have her on. I didn't say you should have her on, 'cause I'm never really a big fan when people say that, but they said she's awesome. Yeah, I think you'll like her. And she could possibly be a guest of the podcast. I listened to her staff. I really enjoyed what she said and thought, actually no, this could be really good. And then as weirdness, woo. Universe, whatever you wanna call it, would have it. So I interviewed Claire ages ago, when am I looking? Actually, back in April and beginning of April. And because as you know, I batch [00:05:00] ahead and, and we're always a good number of episodes ahead in terms of the interviews. More than a good number's, probably a good few months ahead. Anyway, I'd done this episode, really enjoyed it, and then I found a guy called Joe Hudson and I found Joe Hudson through Ali Abdul's YouTube channel. I watched the YouTube channel and I watch a lot of YouTube at night. It's all gardening stuff in the day. It's all works up. Joe is a coach for Silicon Valley CEOs, like I'm talking Apple OpenAI, who has chat GPT, and you would think so. He's obviously coaching some hugely successful, very serious business people. I'm assuming the most of the men. And I was kind of watching him thinking he'd be more of like a masculine energy of coaching and he talks all about body emotions and the importance of us understanding our body and emotions in business and as business owners.[00:06:00] And it's just so interesting that I've been watching that and really engaging in that and actually. At the same time have this episode coming out, and it kind of just proved to me that it's the right thing to have on the podcast because actually, as much as I love doing the strategy and I love people talking strategy, I also can't forget that we are human and, Some of these things, even more of the mindset stuff is really, really powerful in terms of growing us and our business. So like I said, it was kind of really interesting that I found Joe and was like really love his stuff. And actually he talks a lot about what we're gonna be talking about today. Today we're gonna be talking all about how your body can really keep hold of stuff, how it can hold us back, how it can make us not in alignment. And obviously there's the book, the Body Keeps the score. Sometimes things cannot be like slotting into place or things cannot be feeling right and we don't know why. 'cause on paper or in our brains, it feels right, but something just isn't right in our [00:07:00] body. So we talk about what somatic means and we talk about how we can get in our bodies. Now this sounds wild that we're even, and I say this on the the podcast like that we are even having this conversation. But honestly, when was the last time were that you were in your body? And what do I even mean by that? This conversation talks about how getting on our bodies can help us make better decisions, gain greater clarity, and ultimately grow more comfortably in our business. It's fairly honest and sometimes a little bit vulnerable because I talk about things, I always like it when I can connect it to me and what's happening in my world. Maybe that's because half of it is I get free coaching and maybe the other half of it is I genuinely think that it helps you when I'm asking questions or when I'm relating it to me. We also talk about how you bring some of it in, how you do some of the work yourself and how do you know if you need it. And the other thing that we talk about, which you know, I love is nature and growing plants, right? But don't be [00:08:00] put off by that. It literally is just a little bit at the end. Anyway, I know you're gonna get a lot from this episode. Claire was absolutely lovely. So without further ado, here is the lovely Claire. Claire, welcome to the podcast. Claire: Thank you So much, Teresa lovely to be here. Teresa: I am very much looking forward to this conversation I had before we got on. I was telling you that I actually, I'll go into it briefly, that my own personal journey went from marketing strategy into mindset and I've come back out the other side because I really needed the mindset stuff in my world at the time. And since then. I've not really, since I've kind of come back out into strategy, I've not really had many people on talking about things that are not business strategy. And today we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about the word somatic. So let's just start by even explaining, not that I can, you can explain what we even mean by the word somatic. Claire: Yeah, sure. So [00:09:00] Soma is the Greek word for the body. Somatics simply means relating to the body. And I think a lot of people, I think we sort of mistake that as well for just meaning the physical body. So you'll see things on social media, like people jumping around, shaking movement like generally if I ask people like, what do you think somatics is like, they'll say movement, they'll say breath work, and, and this is all, this absolutely is all somatics, like somatic practices, I would say. I am a yoga teacher as well as a somatic coach, and I can dig into a little bit more about that as well. But yeah, there's a difference between what I would call somatic practices, IE the breath work and, and like the, I call them, like the, the layers on top, if you will. What I do as a somatic coach is it's very much rooted in the work of Dr. Peter Levine and around somatic experiencing. We're going, we're going straight in there Teresa Teresa: no, that's fine. Let's like my work, there's no warmup we're in. Claire: Yeah, like, so I'm gonna just say [00:10:00] like, the easiest way, this is my like elevator pitch. I'm like, I am like a hypnotist for your body. So, you know, like if you go to a hypnotist and they're like rewiring your neural system and your neural pathways, I am basically helping predominantly women do that. But on a body level. And how we do that is very simple, which is lovely. Which is like very much slowing down a tune into your whole body, which is sensation, images, memories, thoughts, emotions. So a session with me. Looks a bit meditative, I guess, but it's actually being very present, creating a lot of stability in the nervous system and just letting the body lead and really the body will show when we, when we actually, it's like, oh, okay, you're listening. You know? And like it's just a process of letting your soma, your being like, reveal what needs to be healed. I mean, I'm not a massive fan of the word healing, like I don't think anyone needs [00:11:00] to be healed or fixed, but it is like. The layers that can be unraveled in your body that are just stuck from things that we hold, experiences that we hold in our body. So it's very much yet a body led process. Teresa: So, stupid question. Why is that important? Why does it matter? Because I was very good and I have to watch myself sometimes. I live my life on a screen and I'm very good at con focusing on me from the chest out. Almost the point where I don't even realize I've got a body and I know someone's gonna listen to this and go, don't be ridiculous, Teresa But honestly like it. It really was that bad at points like, so why is it important that I even need to tap in to my body and that type of thing. Claire: Yeah, absolutely. Well, why is it important? What do we see around us everywhere so much? Anxiety, so much depression, so much. You know, again, I hesitate to talk about trauma. I don't think like we have to go and meet all our trauma, but [00:12:00] you know, these ways of being these disassociated states that we can find ourselves in. Especially when we're on screens and we're like, you know, we get locked in, don't we? And I think a lot of us are. And sort of operating from this state of what's called like functional freeze, like where we're all just like, oh, like you know, this underlying tension that can sit there. And that can be from, you know, like actual, you know, capital T trauma that happens in our lives, or just the underlying stresses. We have so many don't we in our lives. So we're holding all this tension, all these patterns, and I think a lot of the time we approach this from a very neuro centric. Approach in our society. We, and I'm not to say like it is all needed, you know what I mean? Like the mental health awareness we have these days. I mean, you know, talking a little bit about my story, I was, you know, I, I come from a corporate background like you, Teresa, and you know, in my early twenties I was experiencing anxiety attacks, panic attacks. I haven't experienced anything particularly [00:13:00] traumatic in my life, but it was just that, you know, I started to climb the corporate ladder, the layers of people pleasing, the layers of masking of like. Not really being true to myself. And this, yeah, this materialized. This manifested as very uncomfortable physical sensations in my body. And then, you know, that continued for two decades almost. You know, and then, and I think as well when you say when we're working and I shifted during, you know, that time five years ago, I was still in the corporate life then and yeah, like just seemed to get even worse obviously with everything going on in the world. And that's when I started actually, you know, I was meditating with saying about the mindset, you know, I wasn't in business at the time, but I was. Meditating and I was looking after. I was looking for ways to soothe my body. I got into yoga. Therefore, then I got really passionate about yoga. I realized how much it helped with my anxiety and I did my yoga teacher training, but I was still like experiencing some level of. [00:14:00] Yeah, like just this tension in my own body. I actually started my business two years ago, over two years ago. Now I'm left the corporate marketing world and started as a freelance marketer. And I thought, yes, this is freedom. Now I'm gonna have, oh, all this tension's gonna go away, and this is the dream life. This is the dream business that we're talking about now. Like I loved it and I obviously had. I was living the dream, like I was creating this business. I actually started going into more business mentorship and coaching because I loved, like, I was a, I was a head of marketing. I loved the, the development side and the coaching side with people. So I started doing that, but I was still like, Hmm. I was doing my yoga as well on the, on the side, and I was like. Still, like I am still feeling like shit when I sit at my desk. Like how, you know, like it was very, you know, it didn't, even though I loved what I was doing and I do love what I'm doing, like this pattern held within my body. Remained, and it wasn't to do with more mindset [00:15:00] work or like affirmations. I was like, something needs to shift. And then it was only about a year ago that I actually stumbled into, as we do sometimes, you know, a training on somatic coaching. And I was like, Hmm, that sounds interesting. 'cause I'd just trained, I'd just qualified as a yoga teacher in Somatics. And again, somatics is more about how it feels, not about how it looks or alignment or anything. So I was already familiar with this phrase, this term. I did this training with a wonderful woman, Dr. Sarah Coxin, and I just, I blindly found that, that sense of relief that I'd been...

7 Ways to Create Webinar Titles That Actually Get People to Sign Up

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m talking about how important your webinar’s topic and title are when it comes to getting people to sign up and actually show up. After looking at hundreds of webinars from different industries, I’ve pulled together seven key things that can help make your title more appealing and effective. I’ll walk you through how to craft titles that are clear, believable, powerful, and emotionally engaging — plus how to handle common objections and strike the right balance between being inspiring and realistic. If you’re a course creator, membership site owner, or coach, this episode is packed with tips to help you get more people interested in your webinars.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Your title can make or break your webinar. - A strong, well-thought-out title is one of the biggest factors in getting people to notice, sign up, and actually attend your webinar.

Specificity and emotion matter. - Titles that clearly state what someone will learn or gain—and that tap into their emotions—are far more effective than vague or generic ones.

Balancing aspiration with realism builds trust. - A great title should inspire your audience with what's possible while still sounding believable and grounded, so it feels achievable and worth their time.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

There are so many steps to creating a successful webinar. The perfect slides, engaging, delivery, seamless tech, the compelling offer that it's easy to overlook, the single most critical element. Your webinar, topic and title, what seems like just another chat box on your webinar to do list is actually one of the most important aspects.

In fact, you could nail every other aspect of the webinar perfectly. But if your title doesn't instantly grab attention, create urgent desire to attend, you can find your signup, stagnating, and your show up rate low. In today's episode, I'm revealing the science behind selecting the webinar topic and crafting titles that not only get people to register, but actually show up live.

After analyzing hundreds of successful webinars across dozens of industries, I've identified the seven elements that create a title that will attract your perfect customer. Whether you are planning on your very first webinar or you're a seasoned pro wondering why your [00:01:00] attendee rates have been slipping, this episode could be the game changer that you've been looking for.

Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in.

In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And are gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place.

Let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing today? I hope your week is getting off to a [00:02:00] good start. Can I just say something that. It is so funny. Every time I start any podcast episode, I obviously have a certain voice that I use that indicates to my dog to get up and come and wander under my desk and bang it.

So I'm always very concerned that whenever I start talking that you hear like this background noise of my dog. Getting under my desk. It's so weird every single time. But anyway, that isn't why you're here. I have got a really good episode for you today because one of the things that is so important when planning any launch experience, and in this example I'm talking about webinars, is that topic or title that you are going to be using to get people to come and join you right. Now, that is the most important thing because if that topic or title doesn't draw them in, doesn't make 'em think, oh, I need to learn that, or I need to experience that, or I need to come to that, [00:03:00] then you're not gonna get the right people coming to your webinar. And also the other thing is. You might get 'em signing up, but then they won't turn up because they won't feel like it's a valuable enough thing for them to come and experience.

So in today's episode, I really wanted to dive into the kind of construction of a title for a webinar, which you could also use for challenges and bootcamps and open houses and that sort of thing. Not so much for open houses. If you know how to do an open house because you've done one of my trainings, then you'll understand why that isn't the case.

Anyway. The one thing I wanna touch on before we go into my seven steps or my seven points that are really gonna help you come up with amazing titles that really do help people want to come and join you, is that it has to be something that is going to help them with a pain, a problem, or a transformation that they are in right now.

There's no good creating a, Webinar at the beginning of lockdown, all about [00:04:00] five best things to do out and about somewhere because that is not meeting them where they're at. The other thing to note is I did a webinar a while back now, quite a while back, and it was all about hitting six figures and multiple six figures in their business and.

What was interesting is I didn't get as many signups as I would've liked to that actual webinar, which then made me think, I wonder if my audience is the right audience for that level, or whether they didn't resonate with the point of the journey they were at. So with me going over the seven points, one thing I want to bear in mind is.

It needs to actually hit a pain point and it needs to hit the pain point of where they're at now. And if it doesn't, then they're not going to engage with it. They're not going to, it's not gonna resonate with them, and they're going to have trouble really going, yes, let me come along to this thing. But basically what I'm gonna be talking about is the seven effective elements for any masterclass titles, and I'm going to be giving you some examples as [00:05:00] well.

So buckle in, get your notes ready, because there's gonna be some really, really good points. Step number one or thing number one. Specific outcomes. The titles that have very specific outcomes tend to get the best engagement. And when I mean specific outcomes, some examples I have from you are how to generate your first 5K month with digital products.

Very specific. How to build a six figure coaching business while working just 25 hours a week. Very specific. How to book 15 discovery calls a week using LinkedIn. This is a very specific outcome. I used to be so afraid of getting really specific and niching down because I was so worried about upsetting people in my audience who didn't fit that niche or didn't fit that thing.

And honestly, my success this year has gone faster than it ever has, [00:06:00] and my income is growing faster. Everything is just. I'm not gonna say falling into place 'cause that is definitely not the case. I'm working very, very hard. But ever since I've really niched in and got more specific on what I am talking about, it seems to be working better.

So this as number one, is a really, really important one. Is it specific? Are you telling them something specific, non-specific, might be how to feel better? Like No, it just doesn't tell me anything. How to grow your business doesn't tell me anything. Element number two, numbers and structure for credibility.

Lots of really good webinar masterclass. Titles have numbers in them. It's something that I do a lot and. The psychology behind the numbers is numbers suggests that you've done testing and research, and therefore it really helps with the trust element that if you say it takes three things or takes five steps or [00:07:00] four frameworks, or whatever it might be, it makes me think, oh, okay, you've really looked into this and thought about it.

Also our brains process information more effectively when it's organized into chunks. So therefore, we can clearly see what's gonna happen. And numbers signal a clear and structured approach that won't overwhelm your learner. So some of the examples you could have for this are seven steps to Creating a highly Converting sales page without hiring a copywriter.

Three, client Attraction Systems that work for introverted entrepreneurs. You can see as I'm going through these, they all kind of build on each other, so they're still very specific, but we've got some numbers in. A two hour business CEO system to run your business instead of it running. You numbers really help with that structure and with that credibility.

Like I said, someone would be thinking, okay, well they know what they're talking about. If they know this is the top five steps or the main three things, or the framework, the four part framework. Element number three, transformation [00:08:00] language. Now, I said right at the beginning that obviously it needs to be worked around the transformation that your audience are looking for, but transformational language creates the before and after story so that people can mentally insert themselves into that story.

It helps them with an aspirational self-image. They're more motivated by who they want to become. It's either. A pain that they wanna get away from, or a transformation that they're trying to get to, and it helps highlight the gap between their current stay and their desired stay. The transformation creates that tension and therefore helps create the action.

So, for instance, some of your examples that you could use for transformational language are things like from overwhelmed to organized, transform your content creation process. Turn your expertise into a signature program that sells all year round. Convert casual followers into raving superfans in just 60 days.

Evolve from service provider to sought after [00:09:00] industry authority. So you can see all of these titles are taking them from somewhere to somewhere. They're showing and demonstrating that transformation that they're going to get when joining the masterclass or webinar. Number four, addressing objections directly.

Now this is such a good one and there are some webinar titles, some masters titles that I look at. 'cause as you know, I to say I gee out over this stuff. I mean, if you haven't got that already, then I'm surprised. But I look at some titles and I am just like, genius. This is so, so good. And addressing objections directly is one of those things that is.

One of the best things you can do in a, in a masterclass or a webinar title, because you are literally going, oh, and before you think of this, let me tell you it's not that. But let me give you some examples and tell you why it works. So there's something called cognitive dissonance resolution. When we address the objectives with directly [00:10:00] addressing objectives, and it eliminates the mental conflict between the desired and the perceived obstacles.

So they have an idea in their head, which is. Cognitive dissonance where basically they're going, I could do this, but I can't because of this. Well, this is the resolution to it. We are, we're addressing it straight away. By acknowledging the objections, you're reducing that psychological resistance that occurs when people feel that their concerns are ignored.

And phrases like, even if help combat the, I can't because thought that prevents their actions. So if they are thinking, if I'm saying to you, you can do a webinar. Even if you're not that good at selling, then I am hitting the objection directly of you going, I can't do a webinar. I'm no good at selling. So some examples of titles that include this objection handling is how to launch your podcast even if you're not tech savvy.

So the objection is that they think they can't, they're not tech savvy. Obviously this title hits that. [00:11:00] Building a thriving online business without a massive email list or social following. Again, the objection, I don't have an email list. I don't have big social following becoming a paid speaker, even if you have zero stage experience, so someone might wanna come paid speaker and they don't have any experience.

There's the objection, we're hitting it. How to sell a premium service even in a saturated market. Again, I would, but I can't because it's saturated. The objection one, like I said, when I see it and when I see people doing it, oh man, I'm just like, brilliant, genius. That's excellent. So if you know there is one main objection that you customers have for doing the thing that you're trying to help them with, get that into your title.

Moving on to number five. Number five is balancing that aspiration with accessibility. Now, this is a super interesting one because back in the day, and still today in launching, there has been this thing of like hitting seven or eight figures or. Building the life you dream of. Like I always talk about this [00:12:00] podcast is called Your Dream Business, that sometimes that aspiration is so far ahead that I can't possibly think that it's achievable.

And that's the kind of balance you've gotta get. Like how you can actually show them that something is available to them, show them that. You know, there's that they can hit the aspiration they've got, but while also appearing and being accessible. Because if I said to you, let's say there was a webinar that was like, how to become a size 12 in two weeks, I would be like, well, that is not accessible because.

There's no way that someone could do that. Like that might be an aspiration of someone, and I'm just using this as a, you know, frivolous example. Someone wants to get to that size, but like it doesn't feel accessible. So when you balance that aspiration, accessibility, it suggests progress is possible through appropriate effort and not superhuman abilities or completely unrealistic things.

So some [00:13:00] examples for this could be achieve authority. Build your expert platform in just 12 weeks. So you are telling them it's going to take 12 weeks. There's the accessibility bit, the realistic roadmap to your first six figure launch. Again, just even saying that makes me go, oh, I could do that. That feels accessible because in the title, we've used the word realistic roadmap, which makes me think I can do that.

Steady steps to seven figure systems. Small daily actions with big results, again, feels fairly doable and accessible. The doable daily plan, 30 minutes to marketing success again, sounds like I can do it. So having some of that aspiration versus accessibility in there is really, really good. Onto number six, focus on desired end results.

This is all about showing them what's possible. It's all about what is it they really want? What is the ultimate goal they're looking for? [00:14:00] Because people accelerate towards goals. As it gets closer, end results create a clear finish line. So if you say to them, this is what they're after, or this is what they're looking for.

Then you are gonna help them feel more confident that it can happen to them and it can happen for them. So some examples of this could be the Cashflow Accelerator, turn content into a consistent revenue. Scale and simplify double your revenue while halving your workload. Like what is the end result that someone wants?

They might want to double their revenue, but they also might want to halve their workload. One thing I should say, actually that feels a bit funny to say it now or into number six, but these should be real. Okay. Everything that you are saying here should be doable. We can't just say you're going to be able to double someone's revenue and half their workload if that's not possible.

It has got to be possible. It has got to be something that you can help someone with. I feel like that's a really stupid [00:15:00] thing to actually say. Because surely you know that, but I do wanna say it just in case someone needs reminding that we can't make crazy, wild claims. Even though I'm giving you examples of titles to prove my point.

I'm not necessarily saying say these things if it's not true or you can't make it true. Then the final one, emotional triggers. We, I was gonna say we all know, but that is a very soothing statement. We hopefully will all know that emotional and hitting with emotions has a much deeper impact than. When we don't use emotions, because it's that whole saying, I might forget about what you said, but

How to Be a Thought Leader in a Crowded Market – with Sara Connell

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I had a great chat with thought leader Sara Connell. We talked about what it really means to be a thought leader these days, and how being authentic and thinking outside the box are key. Sara busts the myth that everything’s already been said, and encourages people to lead with their own voice and ideas. We also got into why being visible matters now more than ever, touching on things like the “trust recession” and Google’s “zero moment of truth.” She shared super practical tips on how to stand out—even in crowded spaces—and make sure your audience is actually paying attention. Plus, we talked about writing books, and Sara gave some smart frameworks to make the process less overwhelming. If you’re a coach, course creator, or membership owner wanting to boost your influence, this episode is full of helpful insights.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Your voice is still needed—even in a crowded space. Sara debunks the idea that everything’s already been said. She encourages you to lead with your own thoughts and trust that your unique perspective can make an impact.

Visibility builds trust—if done right –We explored how being seen isn’t just about showing up, but about showing up with intention. Concepts like the “trust recession” and Google’s “zero moment of truth” show why strategic visibility matters more than ever.

Writing a book doesn’t have to be overwhelming – Sara shares simple frameworks to help you structure and write a book efficiently, turning what feels like a massive project into a doable, powerful tool for influence.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Sara on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Who gets to decide that you are a thought leader? Is it an industry gatekeeper, social media, algorithms, or something much closer to home? In today's episode, I am sitting down with Sara Connell to discuss all things thought leadership. We'll be challenging the myth that everything has been said before, and even when there is no original content, how you can still become a thought leader in those spaces. But here's the reality check. You can't be a thought leader if no one's listening. So we also look at visibility, head on exploring concepts like the trust recession and Google's fascinating zero moment of truth that changes everything about how audience find and connect with you. As an online business owner, becoming a thought leader is going to accelerate you and your business. So this is a must listen for all of you course creators, membership owners, and coaches. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing today? I hope you are good. I am very excited about today's episode. I get excited about all the episodes to be fair, and if I didn't, I wouldn't be putting the episodes out. That is a true thing. But today I am interviewing someone who was new to my world and I didn't [00:02:00] know her name is Sara Connell and she, sometimes I get agency or not. Sometimes I get agencies pitching me a lot and lots of the times. Well, I get a ton of pitching, if I'm honest. We probably get two to three people pitch a day to come on the podcast. So it's actually really unusual for me to have someone on that I don't know or haven't had some connection with. But you know when you meet someone and you are instantly like, oh my goodness, I love you. You are amazing. She was awesome. We got on so well. The conversation was brilliant. It's a little bit longer than the normal. It's not ridiculously long, but it's like 40 something minutes that I'm actually interviewing her, but it was because she was so brilliant and I loved it. And you know, the wild thing, I've just come to read her bio to do this intro. There's stuff on here that I'm like, damn, I wish I'd spoken to her about that, because we didn't even, like, there was so much we could have talked about and so much we could have gone into, and actually we didn't even talk about some of this stuff. So basically she's a [00:03:00] five time bestselling author and the founder of Thought Leader Academy, where she helps coaches, experts, entrepreneurs, scale, impact, and create six and seven figures by becoming a bestselling author and an in demand TEDx speaker. She is obsessed with personal growth, peak performance, and transformation. Some of the things I saw in her bio, well first off, she's been featured in Oprah, New York Times. Good Morning America today. Forbes entrepreneur, TEDx, and she's had books nominated for National Book Awards and L Magazine book of the year. She's done. She's a championship rower, completed five marathons and practiced yoga and meditation for 20 years, and she's an avid traveler and LED retreats in lots of different countries. She's also a mom of a 13-year-old and. Like, there's just so much on here that I could have like talked about. She's had, she's recovered from sexual assault and addiction, and again, we didn't get into any of that because we just, I just like started talking about the subject that we're talking about and it just went on and it was brilliant. [00:04:00] So what we talked about, which kind of makes sense given that she is a, helps people become thought leaders is we talked about being a thought leader. And really, you know, that was the right thing we talked about because that's what she does. But we talked all about who decides you're a thought leader. Like it's always really perplexed me of like, I'm a thought leader. Well, who said, do I get to say I'm a thought leader? Or does someone else have to say I'm a thought leader? So she talks about how we decide or how. We can decide that we're a thought leader. She also talks about how it's connected to our own internal thoughts. And I have to say, I didn't think about this at all. Like if you'd said to me, we're gonna be talking about thought leader, what do you think is gonna come up? Internal thoughts and what we think ourselves actually didn't feel like. It would come up, but it did, it was great. We also talk about how do you become a thought leader in a world where nothing is new. There is no original topic, like everything has been talked about a thousand times and she gives an, uh, an example. But another [00:05:00] example that I was thinking about as I was writing this intro was Ali Abdoul. Now, I'm, uh, I, especially a big fan of his, but that sounded a little bit like. I'm a big fan. No, I just enjoy watching his content. He does stuff on YouTube and his main stuff is around productivity. It's actually now about lots of different things, but really productivity was a thing he got really well known for. And obviously there are hundreds, if not thousands of books, blogs, podcasts. Videos about productivity and how to be productive, and yet he was able to bring out a book on productivity and be very successful and have a YouTube channel about productivity and be very successful. So much so you would say he's a thought leader in the space, but that subject has been talked about so many times, and one of the things that she talked about is how we can become a thought leader in a very noisy space by focusing on a particular aspect. That's exactly what Ali did. He had a book that's called Feel Good Productivity, and his is very much about productivity [00:06:00] associated with being happy and finding things fun and that sort of stuff. She also covers things like why we need white space or thinking time and we need to make space for it. And then the crucial bit, how do we become a thought leader if no one is actually listening? Surely a thought leader is someone that people listen to, so if you don't have an audience. Are you even a thought leader? And we come back to that same subject that we always come back to because it is so important. Visibility. How do we get visible and how do we grow that audience? And she talked about the fact that there's a trust recession going on at the moment. And I think that's really fair to say in the online space that we have been in a world where. People in the online space have been selling and saying there's certain things and people don't believe it, and I think they right to be a little bit more shrewd with their time and money and opinions. But she talks about " z m o" the Zero moment of truth, which I had heard about, but I didn't know that's what it [00:07:00] was called. So that was really interesting and why that's so important. And then finally, almost right at the end, we talk about having a book, how we come up with a book, how we do it in a way that is easy and doesn't feel hard. 'cause the very first thing I said to her is honestly the thought of writing a book, literally. Fills me with dread. I can't even think. But yeah, I can't even imagine writing a book. It was such a good conversation. She's so lovely and I really, really enjoyed talking to her, and I know you are just going to love her. So without further ado, here is the lovely. Sara. Sara, welcome to the podcast. Sara: So thrilled to be here. Teresa: Well, we have just been chatting already, which is awesome. That always says it's a good sign of a good podcast when we had to go. Okay, let's record. So I am gonna jump straight in because we are talking about thought leadership and one of the things that always comes to mind is. Who decides that you're a thought leader and can you just decide yourself?[00:08:00] It's like, where's the tick list that I can go? Does that make me a thought leader? Like, so how would you describe it and how does someone know if that is what they are? Sara: I love this question because it has gotten to a point in the zeitgeist, right? We hear like influencer thought leader. Mm-hmm. And we wonder does it have meaning and what does it mean? So I'll just share what it means to me and, and our, you know, members that we coach and thought Leader Academy, where we're, we're developing, you know, and helping people develop their thought leadership. We're not developing them. They're already, you know, thought leaders, but yeah. Do. I'm gonna start. I'm a brain science girl, so I'm gonna start with the inner piece because I believe thought leadership starts with leading our own thoughts. If we are not powerfully and in an empowered way, leading our own thoughts, meaning that we are, you know, committed internally to bringing forth something new and original, tapping into our genius, knowing our own worth, right? If, if we wanna lead others. Are we, are we leading ourselves, you know, in a, in a powerful [00:09:00] place. So we do a lot of work with our clients around, you know, our internal thought leadership, right? Because a lot of times, and I'm absolutely one of these people, sometimes my internal thought leadership is really rubbish, right? It's like, it's very not, not building my, so I think, I think if we wanna imagine being known as a thought leader in our space, it is worth looking inside and seeing like, am I leading my own thoughts in a way that is worth following? Am I committed to mastery? Am I committed to creative thinking? Am I committed to innovation? Like that's a, that's a, that's an appropriate inventory, I think to take, right? In terms of, does someone else get to say we're a thought leader, right? We help people in their thought leadership, right? Bestselling books, for example. Well, the bestselling book is a thing. You have to hit a list of some kind, whether that's Amazon, the Guardian, New York Times, like you have to, you know, you have to hit a list. That's de determined by number of books sold, right? So that's a concrete thing. You either have that or you don't have that with a book. So thought leader like are we [00:10:00] allowed to just. Claim that, you know, for ourselves, right? I want, I hope everyone decides, and I hope they, they write in and write in, you know, to this podcast and see what, what you think. I, I think the next step to decide, if you, to me, a thought leader is someone who is bringing their own unique take on an interesting topic or, and bringing something new. And by way of a new way of thinking, a new paradigm, right? If we're saying thought leadership, you are leading the thoughts of ourselves, right? And then others. So. Kind of like the TED brand. If people have heard of TED Talks or TEDx talks, their mission is ideas worth spreading, right? That's like sort of the tagline of TED and and thought leadership is kind of like that. Like, are we really going deep enough to say something new? Now, I don't mean that we're ever gonna have an original topic because there's. Everyone's already, yeah. Talked about everything . but think about if people have heard of the book, James. James Clear's book Atomic Habits. Yeah. So I like that book a lot and I think it's a great thought leader book. And I think he [00:11:00] is a thought leader. And the reason I use him as an example is because, you know, there's a million books that habit change. Thousands and thousands of Ted Talks books and paradigms and coaching programs change your habits. But he took something surprising. Right. And it isn't even really original. Right. Other people talk about micro habit change. You know, it's not like he, he made it all up, but he brought it forth in a paradigm called Atomic Habits. That's interesting to us. It lets us think about things, you know, versus someone that would say Make incremental change. Like, but he packaged it in a way. So I think there's. Original thinking on a topic, a, a unique paradigm that people can. Get behind and maybe be different at the other side. So I'll, I'll stop there. 'cause I, you know, I could go on forever about it, but again, if I think of like the three criteria, it's first, are we leading our own thoughts from a standpoint of high quality leadership? And then are we being innovative and doing the deep thinking and the, and the exploration and the research to find [00:12:00] out. What hasn't been said, what hasn't been looked at in this particular way, and then they're giving people a way to engage like Malcolm Gladwell did also in the tipping point. Like he didn't make up the idea that you need 10,000 hours to master. He quoted an Erickson study that had been done, but no one was looking at it. Research study by an academic. If you're not in that world, but the masses, right. People say the tipping point now, right? And, and he brought us a way to think about, ooh, am I, am I doing my 10,000 hours? Am I doing my reps? Am I, so I, I think that's, to me, the exciting thing of, and the invitation of thought leadership. And if we're someone who's willing to lead ourselves in a powerful way to do the interesting deep thought, to bring something new and fresh, and then, and then give it to us in a way that people can't. Play with, create a transformation. Teresa: And I think it's so good to hear you say that. 'cause I think in this world where literally [00:13:00] everyone has talked about everything, it's so hard. I think, and if you are a conscious person, which I know anyone listening to this will be, they will be worried that they heard something somewhere and have taken it in their head and. Are they okay to share the concept and, and it's so funny, like I heard someone who's pretty big quote something the other day and said. My dad said this, and I dunno if he came up with it and it was, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Right. And I thought fairly confident your dad didn't come up Sara: 1000%. You could do a quick Google search and know that your dad did not come up with that one. Teresa: And I was watching on YouTube, I, you know, it's pretty huge. And I was like, that is hilarious that they just said that. But like, you know, it was obviously something their dad did say, but it was just amazing. Like, I don't think my dad came up with it and like. Nope. Fairly sure that is not the case. Sara: Don't think so either, buddy. Teresa: Yeah. But is that worry that like, what if I [00:14:00] say something and I am one of these people that. I love research, right? So I am such a geek, like, give me the brain science any day of the week, right? Like, and so because I do launching and because this is what I teach and because this is what I help people win. I am like in other people's launches, pulling it apart. And it was funny, I have a, a new strategy that I talk about called the open hang strategy. And I was talking to someone else about it and they were like, is this your strategy? And I was like. No, not really. I said, he said, well, how did you learn it? And I said, well, actually, someone else did it, but they didn't know what they were doing. Whereas when I went through it, I was like, oh, this is genius. And I pulled it all apart and I was like, oh, and this is why this bit works and this is why. But they didn't know what they were doing. But of course, I. Very cautious to go, this is my strategy 'cause it's not my strategy. And again, like anything I do, it's like, well, I've learned and yes, I have learned from lots of different people and I've taken lots of different things and I've packaged it [00:15:00] up in a different way and, but I think there is always that concern...

From Crickets to Conversions: The 3 Webinar Mistakes Costing You Money

Mon, 26 May 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talk about the big mistakes a lot of business owners make during their webinars that end up hurting their sales and costing them money. Based on my own experience with marketing and running webinars, I highlight three common slip-ups: treating webinars like free lessons, not showing your expertise clearly, and rushing through the part where you actually sell. I also break down how to set up a webinar that really works—like using case studies, setting the right tone, and confidently sharing your offer. If you’re a course creator, membership site owner, or coach looking to make your webinars more effective and boost your results, this episode is definitely worth a listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Webinars aren’t a free workshop—balance teaching with teasing – Give just enough helpful content to demonstrate value and spark “aha” moments, but leave room for curiosity so attendees still want the paid offer.

Show your authority all the way through –Sprinkle in short case studies, quick wins, and personal proof as you teach; this builds trust and positions you as the obvious guide before you even reach the pitch.

Slow down and sell with a clear structure –Warm‑up → story → offer → next steps. Move through each phase confidently, repeat the benefits, and handle questions—don’t rush the close if you want conversions.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever hosted a webinar that you thought was absolutely awesome? You created amazing value. People were super engaged, they loved what you did, and yet when you made the offer, crickets, literally nothing. If that sounds familiar, you've likely made one of these three crucial mistakes that I'm talking about in today's episode. After being involved in hundreds of webinars, reviewing them, participating in them, and running my own for years, I've seen these same three mistakes over and over again. And let me tell you straight, they're not just hurting your conversions, they're actually costing you money. In fact, mistake number two is actually something we've had to focus on even more in the last year because it's becoming. Absolutely crucial for webinars that convert into today's market. If you have plans to run webinars now or in the future, you definitely want to listen to this episode. These simple fixes could be the difference between crickets and conversions. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing Also, I wanna take a minute just to say thank you for spending some time with [00:02:00] me. I really appreciate as a busy business owner. It can be really tricky to make time for things like this, but it's so, so important. I personally spend a lot of time when I'm getting ready, when I'm cooking, when I'm driving. Not that I do a whole lot of that, but I always try and fill those times with watching YouTube, listening to podcasts, listening to audio books. My quest is to constantly learn things and. One of the reasons I love the podcast so much is that I get to share that stuff with you, and I get to constantly learn, constantly develop not only in what I'm learning, but also what I'm doing in the business. One of my words for the second half of this year is experiment and test. And that is something that we are really embracing this year. And the more I experiment and test, the more I can come and tell you what is working, what is not working, and what you can do in your business. So. [00:03:00] I just wanted to say thank you and I appreciate you greatly taking the time out, and I'm gonna ask a favor. There is a surprising number of people who listen to the podcast who don't yet subscribe or haven't hit download on whatever the app is that you're listening to. So if you don't, and if you haven't subscribed, I would love it if you could actually subscribe. The other thing I would really love you to do and I'd appreciate it so very much, is if you could go and give me a really lovely five star review wherever you are listening to this. Honestly, I can't tell you how much it means the world to me, but not only that, it means that more people are going to find the podcast, which means that I can invest more time and more effort into creating an even bigger and better podcast for you that you can use to help grow your online business. Okay, let's get on with today's episode of the podcast. Today we are going to be looking at the three mistakes that I see business [00:04:00] owners make when they are doing webinars. If you're new round here first, welcome. Secondly, I have been talking about webinars for a really, really long time. I've been teaching about them for a long time. I have been doing them in my business, doing them with clients for a really long time. And although things have tweaked and changed and they really have, there are some fundamental things that I see people getting wrong all the time. And I wanna share these three mistakes with you today. Mistake number one. Thinking that the webinar is just a free training now, I think it's not held by the fact that there are lots of different names for different types of things. So for instance, you've got things like workshops and webinars and master classes and training. So what, what is it? And which is which? So what's the difference? Well, a workshop and a training normally is when you are fully teaching them a thing, [00:05:00] and most often there is a cost for it. It doesn't have to be high. It can be a low cost thing, but that isn't what I'd call a webinar. So I do low cost paid workshops throughout the year. In fact, I have one coming up in a few weeks time to do with webinars, so keep an eye out for that and you'll be able to find out more about that. But basically these workshops, when I do them and when I teach them, it's all about giving you the transformation that you are promising. It's all about saying from start to finish you are gonna take 'em through everything. You're not gonna leave anything kind of, you know, behind a paywall or anything. The thing that you have said, you are going to train them on, you are going to fully train them on a webinar or masterclass, just a different name for a webinar. I. Isn't quite like that. You don't give them everything. And in fact, this is one of the big problems I see and one of the mistakes I see is that people are viewing them as a training. They're not structuring them as a webinar because they've seen webinars and they think, great, I just give some free training for an [00:06:00] hour and then I give them a cell. It's a very different format. It's a very different structure, and that might be if you've done a webinar that didn't convert, that might be why you see the problem when you treat it like a training. You are not making your paid product a natural next step. You are basically giving them everything they need. So even if it is a natural next step to buy your thing, they're potentially either overwhelmed or feel like they've got everything they need because of everything that you've covered in that webinar. Whereas actually the webinar needs to, it's almost like a story arc, right? So you know how someone's telling you a story, it's almost like. In a training, someone gives you the entire story from the beginning to the end and you come away going, oh, that's a lovely story. You've heard the whole thing. A webinar isn't that. A webinar is like they've told you the story, set up the bit that gets really exciting, and then they're leaving the end off and you wanna know what the end is. You [00:07:00] wanna get to that final thing. You want to have that complete kind of circle of the story, and that's what your paid product is. You've heard me talk about this before and lots of people talk about this and it still very much stands that a webinar tends to show more of the what and the why and not so much of the how. So for instance, if you were doing a webinar on. I dunno, gluten-free diets. Okay, so it might be what is a gluten-free diet? Why you need a gluten-free diet, but you won't necessarily go into the full ins and outs of how to do a gluten-free diet. Now what I always like to do, because one of the key things for me is that if someone comes to a webinar of mine or a masterclass of mine, I want them to come away feeling like they have used their time really efficiently and it was a. Good use of their time and therefore I am going to give them a little bit of the how. I am going to show them a bit of what they can do, but not too much because I do want it to naturally [00:08:00] lead into the next thing. A webinar needs to be a balance between value and selling. You do need to give some value, but also it is a sales tool. It is a thing to be sold to. Now, depending on your audience, some people will know that some people won't. So for instance, when I invite you to come and do a mask class with me, because you are in the online space, you know full well, I find this whole thing really matter actually. It kind of really makes me laugh. I was just teaching someone to do an open house strategy. I was teaching a, a group of people to do the open house strategy, which is a very cool strategy if you have a membership. And I then sold to those people, and in doing the sales bit, I was kind of showing them what I had just taught them, and also I was like, look at the emails that I'm about to send out. Like I look at people's sales emails with real curiosity, and I love it when people do that to me. I love it when people come to my webinar to see how webinars structured when they opt in for my emails, [00:09:00] to see how things are, like, what emails I send, how I then go into a sale, how I manage pre-launch content. So it always makes me laugh that kind of, if you come to my stuff, it's a little bit meta 'cause I'm teaching you to do the thing. But I take comfort that I am from marketing. I've been in marketing for 20 plus years and this is not just me. Like buying a course on how to do a course and then selling a course on how to do a course that it definitely is not that. Okay? Anyway, now I'm kind of like getting myself into a bit of a hole here. So the one thing that is really important to note is with a webinar, when I teach how to do a webinar, I teach three very distinct sections of the webinar. The three sections are setting the scene. Which ensures that they understand what this is going to be, that you've got the right people in the room. And there are some very specific things that we do here that isn't just training. In fact, there's no training in this bit. This is about making sure that they are the right people and you're gonna teach 'em the right thing. Then we have the next section, [00:10:00] which is delivering the content. And this is the bit where you are giving your expertise and you are telling them the what and the why, and a little bit of a how. And then the last section of the webinar is the making the offer. And I know it's a webinar when someone follows that, that kind of framework, when they have those three distinct sections within their webinar, and by the way, watching someone else's webinar, I can spot those three sections. So they really do work. Okay, so that is mistake number one. This is not a free training. This is a webinar that happens to be teaching 'em something, but it's also selling mistake number two. You are not proving your expertise enough throughout the entire webinar. Again, people almost get it into their head that they teach and then they sell, and it's not, it's so much more nuanced than that. It's so much more integrated than that. And one of the things that I see all the time in my program, in my group, in my Grow Launch [00:11:00] Sale program, one of the things that people are able to do is send me their stuff to look at and I record myself looking at, say, their signup page or their presentation for their webinar or their sales page, whatever it might be. One of the things that I will do when I look through someone's presentation is I will tell them they have not given me anywhere near enough case studies or testimonials that I need, and it's not just about putting them in there, it's a very strategic way in which we put them in there. So, for instance, the mistake I see lots of people make when they do include testimonials and case studies is I see them basically just either. Well, either and at the beginning where they're introducing themselves, they just have like a, this is who I am, I am a, this. A list of things and then a list of the credibility pieces. So you know, I'm a award-winning speaker, I'm a podcast or I'm a this. They literally just list stuff, those things to go look how credible I am, am and my [00:12:00] expertise. Then they might have some logos or places that they've been, or things that they've done. That's one place people put them where we shouldn't. And that sounds quite strong that we shouldn't put 'em in there. But the reason we shouldn't put 'em in your bio bit is 'cause when we tell people who you are, there's a very specific way in which we do that in order to connect it to the webinar and to the sale. So we don't just go, Hey, I'm Teresa. This is who I am and what I do. We tell a story, but I don't wanna get into that too much. So the other place that people put their testimonials and their case studies is they sometimes put them at the end when they go to the office, they go, this is my thing, this is why it's awesome. And this is people who have done it and what they thought of it. And again, that is going to not hit how you want and it's not going to be convincing enough. The case studies slash testimonials need to be throughout the entire webinar. In fact, every single point that you share in your webinar. So let's say someone is [00:13:00] coming to you, they're gonna do a webinar about the three ways you can. Make more money selling badges. I just have no idea where my brain went there. Literally just made that up out of nowhere. But let's roll with it. Okay, so let's say, really I, yeah, not sure what happened in my brain at that point. So let's say that that's your webinar and you've got these three distinct things that people can do. To sell more badges. Hey, if someone is listening to this who does this as a job, you really do need to get in touch. So let's say that you've got these three distinct things. Let's say thing number one is you need to, oh man, now I'm really struggling because I've come up with this completely crazy business idea and now I've gotta think of things that I can add in. I'm just gonna go with whatever. So let's say number one is you're gonna start emailing more. Uh, I know that was a lame, a lame thing, but we're going with it. So number one, you are gonna email more. [00:14:00] What you're gonna do is you're gonna go point number one. You are gonna email more. This is why you wanna email more. This is what I mean by emailing more. And this is a tiny bit of the how. And then at the end of that section, you are going to say, just like my client Fiona did, Fiona had a badge company that this is so niche. I had a badge company where. She was only selling 500 badges a month. She did an email campaign that I worked with her aunt, and now she's selling a thousand badges a month. Well done. This is what Fiona had to say and like I don't even, I wouldn't even read the testimonial. I would have the testimonial on there, but I would talk about her more as a case study. Then let's say you are going to point number two and point number two, God, now I really am struggling, is you are going to advertise in the badge making magazine. Oh man, this is, if this is the first episode you are listening to be on, then I am so sorry. I'm not quite sure what's happening as I record this one. Okay, so number [00:15:00] two, the badge making magazine. Again, you're gonna do the what and the why, a little bit of the how. And then at the end of that, you are going to say, just like my client Robin did. Robin had never advertised the magazine before. We created a great ad, we put it together, we did it, and suddenly now Robin has. 10 his income like, so I wanna see, I'm gonna start with the badge stuff next. I wanna see a case study or proof that the thing you are telling someone to do is useful and works. I know what you're going to say. What if I haven't actually helped someone do the thing? What if I haven't helped Robin advertise in a magazine and 10 X's profit? Then what you could do, or one option is there's lots of options. One options you could do is you could find someone who is doing this and is successful. Now, you are not saying you taught them or you help them. You are saying though. There's this [00:16:00] person, they did this thing and they have this, this strategy works. You're not, and you are definitely not saying it's you that help them. You're just saying, this strategy is being used by this person and it's a great strategy. Okay, now we stopped talking about badges so random. Make sure you prove that you an expertise. Make sure you put it all the way through. I've just given you one example of every time you share the area of like this is what you should do, that you share on, but there are actually many other places that you should be putting in these case studies and you need to be putting them in lots and lots of places. So make sure that you are including the proof that you are good at what you say and you know that what you're teaching them works. Okay, let's get to the last third mistake that I see lots of people making when doing a webinar. The third one is rushing through the sale. And when I say rushing, I kind of just mean either physically, like the minute they [00:17:00] get into the sales bit, they suddenly speed up how they talk. They get very frantic just to click through the slides and be gone,

How to Stay Visible Without Burning Out: Easy Marketing Wins with Hannah Isted

Mon, 19 May 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I chatted with Hannah Isted from HI Communications all about why being consistent with your marketing really matters. We compared it to gardening—if you put in regular time and care, you’ll see long-term growth. Hannah, who created the 'Best 90 Days Ever' marketing program, shared how to break your marketing into smaller, doable steps so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. We also talked about the value of keeping things simple, doing things over and over, and making marketing part of your everyday routine. If you run a course, membership, or coaching business, there’s lots of helpful stuff in here for staying visible and on top of your marketing game.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Consistency builds momentum – Just like gardening, regular and steady marketing efforts lead to long-term results, even if progress feels slow at first.
Keep it simple and doable – Breaking your marketing into small, manageable tasks helps you stay consistent without getting overwhelmed.
Repetition works – Repeating your message and showing up daily helps keep you top of mind for your audience, which is crucial for growth

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Hannah Isted on Instagram, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: As membership owners, course creators and coaches, we know that we need to market our business. If we are not visible, if people don't know we exist, they are never going to be able to buy from us. So that saying, if you build it, they will come just straight up is not true. Also, I like to liken marketing to gardening. You know, I'm a big fan, but when we garden, we have to get all the things we need to give that plant the most success it can have. We need to water it. We need to plant it in the right things. We need to give it the feed. We need to do all this stuff in good faith that one day my tomato plant is going to give me an abundance of tomatoes and. We have to do it. If we didn't do all that work, we have no hope of ever getting those tomatoes, but we do it in good faith that it's going to happen, and we have to quietly wait for months and months and months and months for that day that it finally pays off. And that is what marketing your business is like. We have got to sow the seeds, do the thing, give it the water. Constantly and one day that will pay off. When we think that we do something today and tomorrow we're gonna get a sale. It just isn't true. But how do you show up consistently? Because that consistency is important and is key to really making sure that your marketing is doing what you need it to do. Today I talk to Hannah Ice. That who has a great way of breaking down marketing of your business, that it's simple, it's not overwhelming, and it doesn't take you very long if you are struggling to show up consistently and put you and your business out there, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. An international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, [00:02:00] but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. And are gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing as always, okay. Today we have an interview with the very lovely Hannah Isted. Hannah came into my world a while back now, she was actually introduced to me through someone else I know, and she actually ended up speaking at the summit when I did my summit back in 2024. No. Yes. 2024. Couldn't remember what year it was then. Hannah is the founder of HI Communications supporting small [00:03:00] business owners with their marketing. She is an author of the Best 90 Days Ever book, a marketing membership, and she shares quick and daily prompts that shows businesses how to promote what they do in just 10 minutes a day to make it simple and easy and fun. She's worked with hundreds of business owners helping them to increase their online presence through her membership courses and workshops. In her email, newsletter and podcast, the Social Sunday, she shares marketing advice to help product and service-based businesses get out their own way and constantly promote themselves. This conversation was really timely. As you might know, if you've been a longtime listener, I used to have someone do my social media for me and that stopped, and I've been doing it ever since. And I laugh 'cause I'm doing it terribly. My long-term plan for the business is to bring someone back to help me with content, where basically I create all the stuff and then they just. Make it look great and put it out and do all that, but I [00:04:00] can get really stuck in my own way of what am I meant to put out? What's kind of things can I talk about? You know, the wild thing about all of us is that we have no shortage of content, right? Like the conversations today at the point I'm recording this, I actually have something like six calls, I think today, and two of them. Two of them are coaching calls. One of them is a training session I'm doing. One of them is a podcast interview I'm doing like, I have no shortage of content that I can put out to the world. I talk constantly. There are so many things I can talk about. I have, and I say this on the podcast, I have an entire program full of really cool stuff. Yet when it comes to sitting down and putting together a post for social media or maybe coming up with a podcast episode or writing an email, I can really get in my own way and get stuck and struggle to think of what to say and do. So today's episode is [00:05:00] brilliant. If you are feeling like that, if you are feeling the overwhelm of what we should be creating, if you are struggling to know what to do first, this is exactly what Hannah teaches and how Hannah approaches it. We talk about all things batching. You know, I'm a big fan of batching. That's a good way of getting stuff done. We talk about how to actually post something when you are overthinking it, because I think sometimes as well, we have this need to want to be creative or to create the post that goes viral or to get a message really right and clear in an email that actually it just paralyzes us from doing anything. So. We talk about this, we talk about how to get going if you're feeling a bit stuck, and how to break up your marketing so it's not as big and overwhelming and as difficult as it might feel when you first start looking at it. And as we know, we have to market our businesses. We have to be telling people what we do and why we do it and selling. And [00:06:00] also this is something that Hannah has done consistently. So how has she managed to do that? We cover off all of these things. I think you're going to come away with lots of great ideas, some motivation to get going, and some clear ways in which you can break down your own marketing. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Without further ado, here is the lovely Hannah. Hannah, welcome to the podcast. Hannah: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Teresa: My pleasure. So before this episode, I went down a rabbit hole of looking at your content, and I have a question to ask. Do you post every day? Hannah: Oh, I do something for my business every single day. So it is not always a post. It could be an email, it could be something else like pitching, but I do do something for my business every single day. Teresa: Because one of the posts that you did, is that what you had learned from showing up for 1,200 and something consistently, and it just blew my mind. [00:07:00] I am always in awe of people who consistently show up because this stuff is hard. So I want to start there. How, how are you consistently showing up? Not running out of ideas, not getting fatigued, not feeling like overwhelmed by it all? How do you consistently show up? Hannah: I think the main thing is that I pick the easiest option. So if I'm tired and you know, if I am in that place where I don't have many ideas, then I will just pick whatever feels easy. So whether that's a B-roll video with a little bit of text over the top, you know, a hook, maybe it's repurposing something that I've shared before. You know, I always have this library of content that I can use and go back to whenever I need to. So. I just try and make it as easy as possible, and I kind of know throughout the year when I'm going to have those moments. So, you know, like Christmas period, I'm busy, I'm outta shopping, doing all this stuff. So [00:08:00] I always try and make sure that I've got the stuff there, so I'm prepared ahead of time. So I think it's a little bit of preparation. Picking the easiest thing. And then, I dunno if you saw my reel this morning, but it's the stubbornness of I'm gonna just keep showing up because that's, that's my only option here. Teresa: See, this is the thing. I look at your content, and mainly my content is filled with gardening stuff. So the fact when I even see someone's marketing content is, is impressive. Um, but yours is always like, every time I look at yours, I'm like, oh, I should do that. Oh, I should do that. Or, that's a great post idea. And it just feels like you are coming out with great stuff all the time. Hannah: Thank you. Oh, that's nice. I do think I have trained my brain to think in that way. I think in a post, even the other day, I went and picked up some frogs from my neighbor, from our port, and I have a reel about that ready to go. I've turned that into a marketing lesson because [00:09:00] my brain just now thinks right. How can I connect this part of my everyday life to something that I'm trying to share? Within my business. And I think once you can start doing that, and I see you doing that as well. Like I've seen you do that with the gardening stuff. It just makes it so much easier then, because the thing is, there's loads of stuff that we are doing each day that we don't necessarily think is that interesting, but it's those things that. Connect our audience to us, so if we can share them and then also find a way to link that to our business, that is the way to like consistently share content because it's gonna be so much easier because you're gonna be looking at your seeds, I'm gonna be looking at my frogs and like, you know, I'm gonna be cleaning my house or folding my clothes. All of this stuff that we do naturally, maybe not naturally actually. All of this stuff we have to do. That can become part of our content as well. Teresa: Are you constantly filming stuff? Because that in itself, like I've had this little, you [00:10:00] know, tiny thought of one day being a YouTuber to do with growing vegetables and raising animals and all this stuff. Is that right? Hannah: Love that. Teresa: And, and we watch a lot of YouTube and all my husband and I ever talk about is, that's a shot. They've moved the camera, they've done that. Like, this stuff is hard. So yes, I know you're not filming YouTube, but. Like how much are you constantly filming? Hannah: Not a lot, and actually that is what stops me from maybe doing more on TikTok and things because we have been having the same conversation. Me and my husband, I really want to do like a TikTok series and I just can't figure out how to make it work for the time that I have and. Yeah, the amount that I want to film my business and my life, because I just reuse and repurpose stuff all of the time. So, you know, my Halloween pictures are the same. My Christmas content is generally the same. I have videos of the sea. You know, the videos that I post this summer are probably [00:11:00] not gonna be from this summer. Because the sea is the sea, the C looks the same every year. Yeah. So I think once you have that, that stuff there that you can reuse and repurpose. You don't need to be filming things all the time because if you watch, I think maybe not for YouTube, I think that is different. But if you watch a lot of reels, if you watch a lot of TikTok, there's so much filler B-roll content in there. You don't need to keep filming that. Just reuse it. Reuse something that you already have. Teresa: Yeah. And what about the whole, 'cause the other thing that stops me is I don't look right as in I need to do my face and my hair and my makeup and my everything and like, you know, so are you batching B roll or batching content? Hannah: Yeah, when I've got my hair and my makeup done. A hundred percent. And you know, there are things like when I, I remember when I unpackaged the book and that's like a piece of content that I'll reuse. I didn't have my hair done and I hadn't, my roots are showing I like, hadn't combed my [00:12:00] hair or anything. And I look at that now and I'm like, oh, I wish I'd just done just spiced up a little bit more. 'cause I knew I'd be repurposing that. But yeah, I think if you. Batching is the best way to do a lot of marketing tasks regardless. So if you don't want to film until you've got your makeup on, your hair's done, you've got a couple of outfit changes, then wait until a day when you can do that. But prepare for that time. So have that list of things ready to go. Have the shots that you are gonna be filming. Have a little bit of the script written out, and then you are. Gonna get more done in that time period. And I think the same goes for like emails. You know, the same goes for writing captions, even just deciding hooks and things like that. Do it in one go so that you are not just like doing little bits every now and again 'cause it's just gonna feel chaotic. Really? Teresa: Yeah. I have to say with the email thing, that is something I do. So when I, when I record episodes, so Mondays we [00:13:00] email about the. Podcast. And then on Thursdays it's another email and when we record the episodes, when I'm doing the rest of the stuff that goes around it. So obviously after this I'll do the intro. I'll then record the hook as to why people should listen to this episode, and then I will go and. Start to write that email. Yeah. Because it all fits together, so it's really easy to do, but also when I'm writing normal emails, I will batch them together because when I'm in that kind of flow of stuff, it's easy to do. And this is the funny thing, like I've just been creating, I have a program called Grow Launch Sale, and basically it's about exactly what it says in the tin, how to grow your audience, launch your online product and sell it, and. Within the program, I have lots of different modules, and I've just recorded this morning, actually the bonus, as in a bonus blueprint, how to create bonuses for a launch, and the science behind them and the psychology behind them. And how many should [00:14:00] you have and how much should they be and when should you time them? And what's the difference between an early bird bonus and a fast acting bonus? And like. And this is the thing, right? I've just recorded a whole module four lessons on how to do a bonus. Like we are not sure of any content are we? Hannah: No, there's so much there. And also I think one of the things that you just said, which is a really good tip, is that if you do emails on a Monday about the podcast, you are basically deciding your next 52 emails. Because you, if you're doing one a week, like you're gonna have those already decided. So if you can then also set that aside for your content as well. So whether it's like every, the first day of every month, I'm going to do my ins and my outs, or my goals and my lessons. You know, have a post that you do. First of every month, maybe have something that you do on a Friday. That's a format. And you don't have to say, here's my Friday post. I do every [00:15:00] Friday. Teresa: Yeah. That was a really, really old school thing. Like Wednesday we Monday motivation or but to hate Hannah: Throw about Thursday. All of that. . It doesn't have to spelt out, but it's for you to know. On a Friday, I'm gonna do a single graphic image and my caption is going to be, you know, a post that has the call to action to join my email list. Mentally, you are giving yourself less options and then, you know, it's, it's way easier to decide what to talk about. And I think the same goes for like what you were just talking about with the bonus content. You've now narrowed it down, so you've now got that block of stuff that you can talk about. Pick from that. Just choose from that. You don't need to have anything else now. You don't need to come up with any new ideas. You've got four modules full of content now you just use that. So it's like narrowing down the things that you are gonna talk about. Teresa: I think as well, I think obviously one of the things you said straight away is like the easy, simple option and also the, the form formulaic couldn't get my words out.. Format of [00:16:00]...

How to Build an Offer Ecosystem: Boost Your Sales with Smarter Offers

Mon, 12 May 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talked about the idea of an “offer ecosystem” and how things like downsells, order bumps, and upsells can help you make more money from each customer. I shared what I’ve learned from my own experience and from the Kajabi conference, giving real tips on how to add these to your main products. I also explained what bonuses, upsells, downsells, and cross-sells are, why they matter, and how you can use them in a simple, practical way to boost your offers and get better results.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Small Add-Ons Can Make a Big Impact – Using upsells, downsells, and order bumps can significantly increase how much each customer spends, without needing more traffic.

Bundle Strategically – Pairing bonuses and related products with your main offer can boost value and help customers say “yes” faster.
Keep It Simple and Aligned – Every extra offer should support your core product, not distract from it—clarity and relevance are key to making it all work.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Did you know that someone who offers a down sale increases their average customer spend by $35? Or if you have an order bump, you can increase your average customer spend by $40. But what is a down sale, an order bump, an upsell across sale, and how do they all fit together with your core products so that they're not fighting with them? In today's episode, I'm sharing with you my offer ecosystem that tells you exactly how to add bonuses and upsells and down sells that fit and compliment your core offer. So if you are ready to make more money with your offers, then grab your notebook and pen because you are going to want to make notes. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. [00:01:00] I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you. Season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host Teresa Heath Wareing I hope you are having a great week. Okay. This week I am geeking out. I have been creating loads of content for my program for Grow Launch Sale. I. I've been diving deep and doing big research into some of the more complex subjects in there, and I wanted [00:02:00] to cover one of those with you briefly today because honestly, it's like something has awoken in me and I finally am starting to get some things, which is crazy because I've been doing this a very long time. I have been in the online space for about. Nine years. I've had my own business for 11 years. I have supported and coached and done other people's launches for them, and yet something has just clicked with this particular subject that I wanna share with you. And I honestly think this is where the game changing stuff is happening. I wanna talk to you about your offer ecosystem now. You probably know roughly what I'm talking about. You might think of it as an ascension model. This isn't what I'm talking about, although if you don't know what an ascension model is, I will talk to you about that as well. An offer eco. An offer ecosystem, easy for me to say is basically the various things you offer in and around your main offer. So [00:03:00] let me just go back a little bit and talk to you about something that I saw when I went to the Kajabi conference last year. There's a really good session, which was all about numbers, which like I said, I geek out on. I love this stuff. If you, are new to the podcast. That is something that I really enjoy as well as doing the strategy and mindset and all the other good stuff. And I've done an episode a little while back. We will link it in the show notes. So to get the show notes, you go to teresaheathwareing.com 4 0 2, as in the numbers, and it'll take to this episode show notes and you'll find links in there. And we're gonna link to the episode I did, where I talked about what's realistic in terms of numbers for launching. But I was at the Kajabi conference and I'm always front row. I'm always like front and center when I go to conferences and I'm attending and I was front and row and there was these two people from Kajabi came on to talk about stats and I thought, oh, this might not be for me. Even though I love numbers. I thought, you know, this might not [00:04:00] be for me. Anyway, I flip ing loved it. One of the things they shared was talking about when people do other things. So first of all, they, they broke down the numbers in terms of people who were just offering to one product and people who are offering multi products. And they were talking about the fact of the people who make the most money offer a range of products. So they might have their core offer or service, i.e, Their signature course or their membership, but actually around that they are offering other things, and I'm gonna get to this in a sec. And they're making more money doing that. And they talked about things like down sells and order bumps and various different things, and I'm gonna explain each of these things to you, but they said that on average, people who offer a down sale increase their average spend by $35. Each kind of sale as in each person and people who offer an order bump [00:05:00] can increase their average spend per person by $40, like I said, on average. But basically what they're saying is if you offer things like order bumps down, sales, upsells, all of that good stuff, then basically people are spending more money with you. So I did the module for Grow Launch Sale, which I was ridiculously proud of myself about 'cause it's very good. I did a lot of research. I dug around as I love doing in the online space, looked at what people were doing, look at what people were doing successfully, and I've created a really cool module all about basically the offers. And also I'm putting together a bonus of an offer blueprint for when I next launch Grow Launch Sale GLS, my program. And again, I've done a lot of work on that. So I thought what would be really useful is for me to share with you just the basics of what I'm talking about and just to kind of open your mind, because if you haven't ever done some order bumps or upsells or downsells or, [00:06:00] and again, I wanna just touch on bonuses as well and how that relates to your core offer. If you haven't ever done that. Then I want you just to consider it because I did a little test. One of the things that I am doing this year is everything is a test, so we are putting a lot of effort into lots of different things and we are detaching ourself from the outcome completely. Because I'm just running tests. That's the way I'm viewing every launch we're doing, every workshop I'm doing, every, anything we're doing, we are just running tests. So one of the tests I ran was I offered a product that was a fairly low cost. In fact, the product was 49 pounds and. On. Once someone had purchased that, I then offered them a, you could class it as an upsell, and I'm gonna explain the differences, but you could class it as an upsell and basically gave them something else that would help them with the main thing that I was offering them. And I offered that [00:07:00] at 19 pounds and 47% of people who bought the 49 pound. Thing also bought the upsell, 47%, almost half of people who bought bought the upsell. The other thing that's Ace about this is I already have the extra thing I was selling. So, and I debated whether do I put it in, do I include it, do I not include it? And then I decided, no, I'm not gonna include it. It's really valuable and it's part of my main program. I'm not gonna include it, or it's one of the many things in my main program. But then I thought, oh, I wanna test this out. Why don't I offer this? And I was blown away by the results. So I ended up making a chunk of money that I wouldn't have made if I hadn't had offered that. And like I said, it's a test. I'm testing everything at the moment, but as that test goes, I'm pretty happy with that and I'm likely to do it again. So what I wanna do today is I wanna talk you through [00:08:00] what I call the offer ecosystem. And this is one of the things I teach of. It's not just about creating an amazing core offer, it's about how everything else sits with it. So let's start with the core offer. So your core offer is the primary product or service that you are selling that delivers the main transformation or solution your customers are seeking. And this forms the foundation of your entire offer ecosystem. So I'm gonna try and give you my example of, My Grow Launch Sale program. So let's say the main offer that I offer is the Grow Launch Sale program, and that comes with six months of support. So when someone joins the program, they get a course, a very, very good in depth course on how to basically grow your online business. How to. Launch as in when I say launch as well, this isn't like you're launching something for new. This is like how you [00:09:00] basically provide a launch experience, like a webinar, a bootcamp, a challenge, an open house, and then sell it as in you sell your product, not sell your business. Okay? So they get this big course and they get six months of support with me in a group setting. So that's my core offer. So then you will know if you've been in the online space any length of time that bonuses are really important. And I have a whole module about how to do bonuses and there's some super smart psychological stuff in there as to why we need to offer bonuses. And this is what's wild, right? And it took me doing all this research, like I knew these things, but it wasn't until I really went deep into it to teach more of it that I, it kind of really dawned on me. What I would do, and what I think most of us do is we create this core offer and we make it so flipping good that we leave nothing else that we can do as bonuses. And then what happens is we create bonuses that don't really fit with [00:10:00] the core offer or aren't really in relation with the core offer and therefore. Don't kind of hit and don't kind of work the way we want 'em to work. So your bonuses should be a complimentary resource tool or additional content that accelerates your customer's results to that transformation they're looking for, or overcomes specific objections and enhances the value of your core offer without increasing the price, because obviously your bonuses are free. So. When you are looking at your core offer, sometimes, and I have actually had to do this where I've gone, I would've included that in my core offer, but actually I'm lifting that out and I'm giving it as a bonus because basically we put everything into our core offer that we have nothing left for bonuses, and we need those bonuses because like I said, there's some really cool psychological stuff as to why bonuses work so effectively. And I might do an episode just on bonuses, but basically we definitely need bonuses when we're [00:11:00] selling. And in an ideal world, those bonuses should either accelerate the results, they should either overcome a specific objection or enhance the value of the core offer. They should sit really nicely with the core offer. So to give you an example, one of the things I was going to include in GLS was some AI prompts. Now. In the product, in the core offer, I basically give you a template as to how to write a sales page. So I not only talk you through how to write a sales page, I tell you the the order in which you should do it, and I tell you, or I give you a template of a example sales page that basically you can just then write over and tweak and do your own right. Then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could create a prompt that was based off my knowledge on how to do a sales page and then tell you what to tell it, and then it would write your sales page for you. Right? So this was always gonna be part, this was always an idea of this would be [00:12:00] such a valuable thing for, 'cause the whole point in my program is that I help you do these things much faster. So the more I can do for you, the better. So anyway, I wanted the AI thing. I hadn't done it yet. It was coming. But then when I did the bonus module as in the module in the program about bonuses, I realized I wasn't leaving myself any room to give those bonuses by putting everything into the core product. So I pulled out that AI from the core product, and I'm adding that as a bonus. And like I said, there is something psychological that happens in our brain when we get offered bonuses as opposed to it just being in the core product. So. What else could you offer that compliments it, that accelerates the results, that overcomes a specific objection? So when you're thinking about bonuses, that's what your bonus should do to your core offer. Okay, let's talk upsells. An upsell is a premium version of the offer that provides additional [00:13:00] support. It might give you personalized attention, it might accelerate results for customers who want more comprehensive solution. Are willing to invest in a higher level. Now, again, there is, there is a kind of rule of thumb as to how much more that should be and what the upsell tends to be is For me, it would be more of my time. Or it might be that we do some of the stuff for you. So let's say now I don't currently have an upsell for Grow launch sale. I have options that it could be, but not one that I'm offering at the moment because I give you support anyway, but my. Upsell might be, you can add a weekly, a monthly call with me and a one-to-one, and it would be an extra chunk of money, but you get that time with me one-on-one. So your upsell, like I said, is a premium version of the offer that provides additional support or personalized attention or accelerates results in some way. Let's talk down sales. [00:14:00] So the Down Sell is a simplified, more affordable version of your core offer that provides an entry point for your customer who aren't ready for your full solution. And possibly the price point isn't right for them. So for instance, let's say your core offer had six modules that you were, let's say you were selling a course like, let's take Grow, launch, sell again. This isn't what I'm doing, but this is a way I could do it. So I have grow, launch, and sell three distinct kind of sections of the program. So for instance, as a downsell, if someone didn't buy my Grow launch sell, when I offered it, I could potentially downsell them and offer them. The grow section. So I could be like, this is one of the key bits. You need to have a bigger audience. Or maybe that's one of the objections that they're saying, and I could then give them a lower cost section of the course that gets them going and. The, [00:15:00] the beauty with this is the downsells should be something you kind of already have. Like it should be something that's already created or something that they have an option to just take. So you shouldn't have to create something new, and this is why, when. Again, my mind has changed completely in terms of this because now when we create an offer, we're going to look at all of this. When we create the offer, we are not gonna create the offer, and then as an afterthought, go, what's the bonuses? Is there an upsell? Is there a down sell? Is there a cross sell we're going to sell? Okay, if this is the offer, what are these other things? Right? At step one? Even if we don't offer them all, I just need to understand where they could go. So that I can offer a range of things. So down Sells, like I said, are really, really great because they give them a simplified and a cheaper version of the thing that you are selling. So if they're not ready for the big product, then a down sell could be great. Then the last one I wanna tell you about is a [00:16:00] cross sale. So a cross sale is something like a related, but distinct product or service that addresses an adjacent need that your customers have. So, for instance, what a cross sale might be is. Let's say I was selling Grow Launch sale, and one of the things I don't cover in this is content creation. It's obviously, you know, I could cover everything and some, and it would be ridiculous. So obviously it's very much aimed at selling your online services and products. So let's say I created some templates for social media or a, something that helped 'em with content creation because I know that all of my customers should be doing some kind of content creation that would be a suitable cross sell. Again, the cross sell would be kind of small. It wouldn't be expensive. It would just be a kind of like, Hey, there's this thing that might actually help you as well. I know you also have this other problem. Here's this thing. [00:17:00] Now, this episode was only in mind to kind of go through the basics of that when you are putting them together, how you're putting them together, how it all fits like that is a much bigger conversation. But I just wanted to introduce you to the fact that there are these other things that should be. In your offer ecosystem that you should be looking at as a way to potentially bring in more money, in a way to serve your audience better, because like someone might be dying to work with you, but actually they need more. Personal attention and therefore an upsell would be perfect for them. Or they're dying to work for you, but they can't afford your main offer and therefore something

AI That Sounds Like YOU + Time-Saving Strategies with Jen Lehner

Mon, 05 May 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I chatted with my amazing friend and AI expert Jen Lehner. We got into some super practical tips on how to make AI sound more like you, which tools are worth using, and how to train AI to save time and boost your creativity. Jen shared smart ways to personalise AI tools, stay organised, and use AI to create content and run your business more smoothly. If you're looking to bring AI into your business in a useful, doable way, this episode is packed with helpful advice.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Train AI to Reflect Your Voice – Jen shares how you can guide AI to sound more like you by feeding it the right examples and prompts, making your content feel more personal and on-brand.

Use the Right Tools for the Job – Not all AI tools are created equal. Jen highlights which ones are worth your time and how to use them effectively in your business workflow.

Stay Organized to Maximize AI Efficiency – A little structure goes a long way. Keeping your prompts, brand voice, and content templates organized helps you get better results and saves time in the long run.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Jen Lehner on Website, AI Resource Hub, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: How'd you get AI to really, honestly sound like you? So when it produces something, it actually makes something that you can use and not just create something that sounds like AI's written it. Well, today I am interviewing the Super smart Jen Lehner on the podcast, and she walks us through the exact steps that we need to take to help AI sound more like us so that when we are asking it to do things. The results that we get are way better. If you are a business owner and you are using ai, this is a must have episode for you to listen to, and you'll probably want to grab a pen and paper to make notes as you go. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host. Teresa Heath Wareing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a [00:01:00] business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we' ll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. I'm your host, as always Teresa Heath Wareing . I hope you are doing well this week. Okay. We can't go 30 seconds without someone saying something, ai, without people using ai, without people doing something that you can get help with ai. But I wonder how many of us are actually really using it as it could be used, and how many of us are just merely dabbling with it and [00:02:00] therefore getting frustrated that it's not bringing us. The results that everyone else keeps telling, it brings them. Today I am interviewing one of my very best friends, Jen Lehner. Jen is a digital marketing and system strategist. She shows entrepreneurs how to build audience and monetize their expertise online using social media, digital tools, and strategic outsourcing. She creates online courses and trainings and her favorite place to hang out is in her private mastermind, the front row, VIP. Jen, is amazing. She is so, so cool. She's been in this industry a while. We met a long time ago. In fact, I think we've probably been in a similar amount of time, if not a bit longer. She's had a bit longer than me, but Jen is, and one of the things I say in this interview is it's like Jen's main thing is to help you run your businesses quicker and easier. 'cause for a long while, and genders still help entrepreneurs and [00:03:00] solopreneurs build their team. But Jen is obsessed with all things ai, like we all voice message and she'll be down some crazy rabbit hole doing something amazing in ai and she just blows me away. So I wanted to bring her back on the podcast the second time she's been on. Previously, I think she was talking about bringing on a team member and I wanted her to come on and talk about ai, but in a way that really genuinely helps us save time, do things quicker, create better outcomes, because I dunno about you, but often I will try and do something and it just ends up sounding like AI wrote it and it hasn't really helped me in certain ways that I would like it to. However, there are other times that it's really helped me. But I know that Jen is like the queen of this stuff, and I will often DM her and go, Jen, I wanna do this. Is there an AI that can do it for me? And she just knows all the things. [00:04:00] So she's coming on today and she's talking about not just, you know, AI's good, bad. Great, whatever, but actually she goes through and you're gonna want to take notes on this one, and if you know anyone else who's trying to dabble in ai, then please send them this episode because honestly, there is so much value. I took so many notes when doing this episode with her. So she literally walks us through what kind of things we need to be prompting, what questions we need to be asking, how we need to be asking them, and what systems we should be using for what, because it's not just chat duty. I can't even say it, chat GPT. It's not just that. I know that's one of the main ones, but like there's Claude and then there's a notebook, I think Notebook I think is the one we talk about, but like there's so many clever ones, but she has a really great ability of breaking things down so that it doesn't feel overwhelming and massive. Also, she's got a good freebie that she offers as well, so listen out for that. [00:05:00] But basically I am not gonna make you wait any longer. Here is the amazing Jen Lehner . Jen, welcome back to the podcast. Jen: Oh, it's so good to be here. I love, I love spending time with you Teresa Teresa: I love spending time with you. And this is not our first rodeo. We have done this before and I was thinking actually that like, even though you're talking about a different subject, the. The reason behind your passion for both subjects kind of comes always to the same thing. And that for me, if I am going to like put you in a box, is making our lives easier as business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. Jen: I like that. I'm gonna borrow that. Teresa: Yeah, you can take that. Because you came on before and talked about bringing on a team and you have helped me massively in bringing on a team. And this time we're talking about, and I'm smiling as I say this because I don't know where this is gonna go people, we'll just see how it [00:06:00] goes. But we're talking about ai, your new favorite, favorite slash love-hate relationship thing that you love. So let's start by. I wanna dive straight into the good stuff because we all know what AI is. We're all using Tech GPT , we're all doing that thing. One of the frustrations that I have is I said to you a few weeks back, I need a new team member to help me with content creation and to tell me what to post and tell me how to do it, and tell me what's gonna work on YouTube. Tell me what's gonna work on the podcast. Tell me what titles are great. And you said to me, AI can do that. And I was like, like how any good can that, like, can it really do it? So can we stop there? Jen: Sure. Okay, sure. Teresa: Let's start. Jen: So specifically, well, I mean. It could just, it could do all of that stuff. I mean, I'll tell you right now, I have a, an automation set up so that I speak to my voice [00:07:00] notes and I just do a brain dump about a certain topic. And then what happens is it. Shoots it over to ai, and then AI has been prompted in advance to make sense of it all, and it also knows how to write in my style, because I've created, I've, I've made sure that my brand voice is there and, and then at the same time, it's creating posts for all, for everything. So it's giving me a YouTube script, a TikTok script, a LinkedIn post, a Facebook post, an Instagram post, all of that, and it is putting it on a spreadsheet. And it is simultaneously putting it on a Trello board. And when I tell you that this content you see, but when we first started with chat GPT, right? Like what? Five minutes ago? But no, really, Teresa: two weeks ago Jen: when we [00:08:00] started it was like, it was, it was, it was horrible, right? Like, I mean, we would say but, but we didn't know that we have to give it. More context and we need to make sure that it knows our voice and our style and our parameters. Like you have to do a little bit of work on the front end to make sure that your output is good. And once you, once you nail that, everything changes. So now, oh my gosh. Like our team, my team and I, we are operating at a level of efficiency. And we are putting out more content, more good content than ever before. And that is sort of like really a point I wanna make is that. You know, it's so much more and, and it is so much more than, than something that should, that is saving us time, right? Like, it is actually should be something that enhances your creativity, that enhances the output, that your [00:09:00] content is better than it ever was before. Not, not a, you know, we don't want it to be a consolation prize. We want. Our content and the stuff that we're putting out there now, because we do have these tools at, at our disposal, it should be better than ever before. That should be the bar, not just, it's not just about saving time really. And then if you think about it, if we do save time, if we are doing better work, if we do become more creative, then we also lower our stress and we're happier. Yeah. I mean like, you know, this is how I'm choosing to go into this. This world of ai. Teresa: So I have, and I knew this was gonna happen, and I'm gonna really try and think of all the questions that people are gonna be having as you are talking, because as you're saying things, I'm like that how, how, how, right. So first off, let's talk about the automation, like that's wild that you can voice note on your phone and that sets a whole host of things [00:10:00] like, is that using. Zapier, is that like, how so go on? Jen: It is using Zapier and that is a, you know, that's a level two, you know Yeah. Situation, right? The, but although, I mean, any beginner, anybody who's ever used Zap or make, you know, can, can make this happen. It's, it's really, and, and I'm happy to share the template for that. Automation with your, with you and your audience. Teresa: That'd be amazing. Jen: So I'll give you that and then you could just literally plug that template into, into Zapier. And, and we prefer, we've tried to use make, and we might use, we might get a make account again, but, but for us, we, we just use Zapier so long in my business, but that's what it is. I mean, you don't want me to go into every little granule of that Zap and honestly, my team set it up, so I don't think I could, but, but just know that it's, it's plug and play. Teresa: Okay, Great. So my next question then, just on that before, I wanna talk about how it knows your voice and knowledge base and [00:11:00] that sort of thing. But when we talk ai, we are talking, so at the moment I'm using chat, Claude Manus as like what I would call Realis. Like are you using all of them? Do we need to be using all of them? Like, I'm paying for Claude and Manis at the moment, or I've had to buy some more credits for Manis. 'cause obviously I run out, but. I was, I was paying for chat and then I stopped 'cause I was paying for Claude. And it's like, oh, now I think I need to pay for chat again. Like, are you paying for all of these ais? And how many ais are you using? Jen: I am using all of them, but you have to understand that like, this is what I'm doing, right? Like this is, this is what I'm doing. I'm doing this. So you don't have to, you know, like mm-hmm. I wanna come and say, just use this, this, and this given you tell me what your needs are. And then I'm gonna say, well, these, these should suffice. But, but here is, here's the thing. A couple of answers to that. What is happening is, and I have to say this first, okay, so what is happening? Sam Altman recently talked about this in an interview. He's the guy who's, who is the head of, [00:12:00] of Open AI chat, GPT, and sora . And he, and this just made so much sense, but he said that, you know, AI, right now, what AI is right now is they're all gonna be the same. They're all gonna have the same features. And, and you can see that happening, right? Like, like you get image generation that's Oh, so wonderful and fast recently on chat, GPT. A Gemini adds it to their, to theirs. You know, they're, they're all gonna, they're all gonna have all the same things. Okay? And so this is what it was like a long time ago when transistors were built for radios and other. Like high tech equipment and people would say, you know, with transistor would be like the subtitle on the advertisement. Like with transistor. Well, everything we have that's electronic has a transistor in it that's, it's gonna be ubiquitous, that is going to be ai and so therefore. To answer your question, should you be on all of them? No, but they right now, they all, some [00:13:00] of them all do cool different things. So it depends on like what you want right now. But what is important is that, and that, this is the second thing he said was that. In order for them to be successful, what they have to focus on is keeping users where they are. And he said they need a billion active daily users. And the way to do that is, number one, giving a good user experience. And number two is making it difficult for us to leave. Well, why would it be difficult for us to leave? Well, because we've spent hour, at that, you know, at this point already, probably hundreds of hours. And. And if you've been doing it right and you've been doing it well, chat, GPT knows all about your business and it knows a good bit about you as well, which means you are getting better output and you don't have to keep repeating yourself. And it's just a better experience, right? You don't have to start from scratch. Well, let's say you remember Betamax and VHS if you're older than Okay. A certain age, Teresa: roughly. I mean, I was, [00:14:00] I'm very young, Jen. I'm very Jen: Yeah, you were. You were. Yeah. You were still. On the bottle I'm sure. But like, I mean the baby bottle. That was good. Brilliant. So, so yeah. So you remember like there was all of a sudden like Beta max just disappeared. It was like what? And we all had to go to the. Move change machines or if we didn't have that machine, same thing. So you wanna be able to be nimble and not be held, like to be able to move quickly. And the way that you do that is to make sure that the knowledge that you're putting in, like. All that information that you're training it in on your brand voice and all of that is on minimally a Google Doc that you could just, you know, that can travel with you from place to place, but, but know you don't have to be on all of them. But yes, they right now all do different things and some of the same things and some of the things are cooler than other things for certain jobs. Teresa: Okay, awesome. So let's talk about how, because this is the, this is the kind of key bit, right? So [00:15:00] I'm sure everyone listening to this has at some point played with all various things. I like, one of the things I love the most and my, you know, my husband Paul, but he laughs at me because I chose a really nice voice for my chat. On of course, because obviously you get it and it's like this very nice American sounding guy, and I'm like, every time I'm like, hi, chat. And he's like, Hey Teresa I like swimming. Obviously we joke, you're, but you are so funny. But like I love that feature, which is why I'm using that and why I want chat and I'm thinking I'm gonna have to pay for it again because I wanna keep using that feature. Whereas Claude, I don't think, does that, does it? Jen: No, but Claude is magnificent. I mean, we could talk just this whole podcast about Claude, it, it does have the, it does give you the ability to talk into it and it will respond, but it doesn't itself have a voice. But I'm telling you, maybe even by the time you publish this episode, it will be there.

Celebrating 400: Behind the scenes chat, sharing my lessons wins and challenges

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 01:00:00 +0100

For the 400th episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, we did something a bit different—my good friend Biz Paul flipped the script and interviewed me! We talked all about what it’s really been like to keep this podcast going for 400 episodes, the ups and downs of running a business, and how getting sober has completely changed both my personal and professional life. It was an open and honest chat where I shared how my business has evolved, why showing up consistently matters, and how I’ve found happiness in unexpected places—like gardening! This episode gives you a real behind-the-scenes look at my journey and celebrates how far things have come.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Consistency is Key - Showing up regularly—whether it’s through podcasting, business, or personal growth—can lead to powerful, long-term impact. It’s not about perfection; it’s about persistence.

Personal Growth Fuels Business Growth - Getting sober brought clarity, focus, and balance, which directly influenced how you show up as a business owner and a leader.

Embracing Change Opens New Doors - Whether it's evolving your business or discovering joy in something new like gardening, being open to change can bring unexpected fulfillment and fresh energy.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Biz Paul on LinkedIn, YouTube Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook Teresa: Today we have a special episode because we are 400 episodes old. So I've invited my very special friend, Biz Paul to come and interview me and talk about what it's like to have a podcast that's 400 episodes to be running a business, and how getting sober has impacted me and my business. So today is a bit of behind the curtains, a bit of a. Behind the scenes look about me and my business. I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Your Dream Business podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing an international bestselling author, award-winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, [00:01:00] actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to episode four hundred of the Your Dream Business podcast. I actually can't believe that I have hit 400 episodes. That is a lot episodes so to celebrate I wanted to do something a little bit different. And when I have a kind of milestone like this, I think it's nice to sometimes turn the tables. And I have invited my very good friend Biz Paul, onto the podcast to interview me. Now, one of the good things and bad things about having one of your good friends come on and interview you, [00:02:00] is that. A, sometimes I forget I'm being interviewed 'cause I'm just having conversation with him and also he knows a lot about me. So it's a very honest and vulnerable conversation. We talk about the podcast, how I've stayed consistent, what it's like to do 400 episodes. What, why did I start? Why do I still do it? What does it just do for my business? We talk about how my business has changed in the almost 11 years of being in business. We talk about how I've changed, we talk about how getting sober has impacted me and my business and the changes that I have bought in because of it. And hopefully you're gonna really enjoy this episode and enjoy this conversation and just give you a little bit of an insight to what it's like to create a business. And a podcast that is 400 episodes long. So anyway, I am gonna hand it straight over to my very dear friend Biz [00:03:00] Paul. And if you love this episode, I would love it if you would tag us in. And obviously if you wanna give us a review, I'd really love that too. Okay, here's the lovely Biz Paul Biz: Hi Teresa Teresa: hi Biz Paul Biz: it's lovely to have you on your own podcast. Teresa: Thank you for having me. Biz: You're very welcome. Uh, I, I'm really privileged to have this conversation with you. We've known each other for a long time now, actually. Mm-hmm. And we're really good friends, in my opinion. Yeah. You know, I hope you feel the same, and I'm gonna represent your audience today because the thing that I've noticed about your podcast is you often represent the audience when you're talking to your guests. And I think people would like to know a little bit more about you. And so I'm gonna represent your audience today and we are going to interrogate collectively about you and all sorts of things. Is that all right? Teresa: That is absolutely fine. And I, [00:04:00] I really appreciate you saying that I represent the audience. 'cause that's my, I try and do that. Like I try and think when I interview someone, what would they be thinking or what would they want to ask? So I appreciate you saying that. Thanks. Biz: Well, that's just what I've picked up. So this could be, well, it could be organized, it could be fairly wild as well. Audiences are fickle and things just pop into audience's heads and things will pop into my head. So who knows where it will go, but dear listener. I'm gonna try and represent you as best that I can and ask some questions about all sorts of things about Teresa, about her business, the podcast, and maybe some bits that are fun as well. So firstly, T congratulations on 400 episodes of the podcast. Thank you. I was trying to work that out earlier. And if on average there's 50 a year, that's eight years. Teresa: So it's been less [00:05:00] years 'cause we've done like a few extra in different places, but I think it's at least six or seven years. Yeah. That's insane, isn't it? Biz: It's a long time to be doing something so consistently. Well done. Teresa: Thanks. Thanks. I often have to go. No, that's a big deal. Like when I think I have never, ever missed a Monday, not one. Biz: Wow. That, I mean, that is special. Really. I am not. Consistent at all in that regard. So absolutely. Hats off to you. Absolute for that. What's your secret? Teresa: Well, I was just gonna say, right, we need to say at this point, so BPO has a podcast called Humans Exhaust Me, which is one of my, I actually don't hardly listen to. Any podcast now, unless I watch him on YouTube, which I can also do with yours. But yours is the one I consistently listen to. And I am the person that if an episode hasn't gone out, I will message Biz Paul and go, where the hell's the episode? Because I am waiting for it. So I can vouch for a, his excellent podcast, which is about humans that exhaust him, and [00:06:00] B, that he is not consistent sometimes. So sorry. Biz: That's, that's okay. That's okay. You know, my next question should be why is consistency important? And, and we will ask that, but I'll just jump in with a, a defense of my podcast, if you don't mind, is that, you know, one of the things that exhausts me about humans is their inconsistency. And sometimes it just happens that I'm just not consistent. So we'll just leave that on the table here. Yeah. You tell me, Teresa, about why it's so important to you to be that consistent way of Never missed a Monday. Teresa: I think I am really good at. Being accountable to others, and I don't wanna let people down. I'm a people pleaser and for me, when I say I'm gonna do something. That's the thing that keeps me accountable and consistent is knowing that I have said now in the early days, and probably still to a degree now, if an episode didn't go out, no one's gonna be knocking on my door going like, I'm not gonna have hundreds of people go, and where your episode, I [00:07:00] possibly would've a few people go Where Your episode. But it's just the sheer fact of knowing that I've said every Monday that in truth, can I say it's almost like, it's almost like, can I and will I ever stop? Like, it's almost like I can't now, which I'm not saying I want to, I don't think I do, but it is almost a bit like, well, no, that's what you do. Every Monday there's an episode. So, and, and just in my head sometimes like, well, how long will this go on for? Is this forever now? Or Yeah, that is, it's an interesting one. Biz: I mean, it could get to the point where just one week there's no show and no one knows what's happened and maybe I have to come on and go, she died. She was ni she was 97. Yeah. You know, Teresa: I'm glad you added that because I was just like, alright, that's nice. Not next week. Biz: What if, what if this is the last show? I'm so sorry. Okay. Sorry. Teresa: But maybe we should have that whole thing of like, you know, this is what I would do, you know, have some people have like a death folder. Like if something happens to them, this is what happens to their [00:08:00] business, which apparently every business owner should up. Maybe in mine it says Biz Paul is to do the final episode, Biz: take over the show. You know, it's a big deal when Biz Paul's on the show. Yeah, exactly. It's either an anniversary episode, episode or an announcement. Okay, so, so taking us back to the, the question, because I think this is really important, like be, don't apologize, it's fine. So the. Not missing a Monday. I mean, I just think it's, it's so impressive actually to not miss a Monday. And you've sort of mentioned about how the people pleasing element of you sort of makes that happen, gives you the motivation. But there must be times when the buffer gets shorter and shorter and shorter. Does that not induce a huge amount of anxiety for you? Teresa: Uh, yes and no. We, I have such a good team now. Not now. I've had them for ages, but like they're slick with the process and I know that not so Phil, who edits the podcast, not that I ever really want to think like this, but I know that [00:09:00] if I had a very short window, he would very kindly turn that around for me. And Johanne would do the same in terms of getting it out. I, there's been times where I am so far ahead, it feels like I'm completely disjointed from it and I really struggle. And then there have been times where I am literally like one episode to the next, to the next, to the next. Right now I'm probably where I like to be of about three or four episodes out. So I'm, I'm hopefully always about a month in advance and then I'll let that almost run out and then I do another month. And then, and I think I prefer it that way because I'm not. Like I said, when I recorded especially episodes where I interview, like I would interview someone and go, well, that's going out in six months time. Thanks for being on the podcast. And I hated that. It just felt like it just didn't feel right. So for me now, like I, I do prefer a slightly shorter window, but I still need to have, and in terms of the interviews, they're planned, they're just not recorded. So I have another six or seven, I'm recording in [00:10:00] the next. Two weeks I think, and then obviously that's gonna chuck me out for another few months and then I'll do some more recording in another few months time. So yeah, I don't want to ever leave it, but because like the team and how long we've been doing it, if it was left till last minute, I mean I could, I know that, like I could do it on the Friday afternoon and speak to Phil very nicely and speak to Johanne very nicely. And we could have it out by the Monday. I don't want to and they don't want me to, but I could if I had to. Biz: Just so you know, folks we're recording this in November, 2023. That's how far in advance that she's fan this. So yeah, Teresa: we're really prepping. Biz: Just tell me a little bit more about your team. 'cause you do mention your team quite a lot and your team, I know is important to you and the things that you've done, like go the Philippines and actually see Johanne and Johanne's family. How did you get to the point where you've built the team that you've, that you've got, what lessons have you learned from having a team such as the ones that you have? Teresa: I, my attitude towards the team has changed so [00:11:00] much. Not as in them as individuals, but having a team. I used to think that the sign of a successful business was a big team, and I did it to the point where I. I lost money and not lost money, but I didn't make anywhere near what I should have done because I had a big team. Because I felt that that was the mark of a success of like, look at this huge team I've got. So I must obviously be earning loads of money where I wasn't hardly taking anything and I was just paying out. So now the view of the team is one. I love the fact that they've all been with me for years, like Phil has pretty much. He didn't start with me with the podcast because he didn't even edit podcasts back then. Mine was the first one he ever edited. 'cause I went to him after about, it was probably about a year, I think me and my husband edited it for a long while, and then after about a year I went to Phil and said he was a voice. Actor and I had worked with him, he'd been in my world, and I went to him and said, obviously you're [00:12:00] a voice actor. You do a lot of audio stuff. Who do you know that could edit a podcast for me? And he said I could do it. And I was like, well, would you want to? And he said, yeah. And now he has a whole podcast agency, which is Ace, but he's been with me for years. And Johanne has been with me about four or five years. And my opinion now is actually if my business was to grow much more. I have Michelle. She's been with me about six months now. If I was to grow much more, I really don't want much of a bigger team. Like I said, I think in my head I was like, I need this huge team. I need all these people. And now it's like, actually, I. I don't want a massive team. There's definitely some gaps that I'd like to fill, but we currently don't have the skills or capacity. They're just not their skillset that I'd like to bring someone in, but I think that would be my last person if I was to bring them in. Biz: Okay. Let's, let's riff off that a little bit then, in terms of sort of. Where you are [00:13:00] now and, and some of the lessons that you've learned, particularly over the period of, of 400 episodes. Obviously you've been in business longer than than episodes. So my first question was, why did you start a podcast in the first place? Teresa: The very honest answer is because back in the day, I wanted a business like Amy Port Fields and Amy had a podcast. So what else was I to do than have a podcast like that honestly was probably all that went through my head back then. I think there was a part of me that thought, I'm gonna like that more than anything else because I like talking. But honestly, I think that was, that was as much as went into it as just, Amy's got a podcast, Amy's got a successful business. I want a business like hers. I need to have a podcast. Biz: And I don't think there's anything wrong with. Taking inspiration from somebody that you admire and thinking about the way that they do things and and testing things out and having a go and seeing whether it works for you. So on that basis now, [00:14:00] would you say that the podcast performs a very different function to what it did back then? Teresa: Yeah. Yeah, completely. I think I love doing the podcast. I think if I was to stop, I dunno what else I would want to do as a consistent content. I definitely wouldn't do blogging or anything like that. I would do YouTube as well as the podcast, but that's a whole host of just getting it sorted and it is on the radar and has been for ages. I think for me, what the podcast has done is it's put me in touch. I. With some amazing humans in my space, like to get on and have a hour conversation with someone who is at the top of their game. Like one of the guests I had is Dean Graziosi, and I know not everyone will be a fan of his. And actually I didn't ask him. They came to me and I obviously said yes because it's Dean Graziosi. Although he wouldn't [00:15:00] necessarily be someone that I would go to. He is massive and to have an hour conversation with him, like there's no other way in this world. I could have got that if I hadn't have got the podcast. You know, the same with Denise Duffield Thomas, like Julie Solomons like some of the people I've had recently. Like, oh man, I. Who owned Trafficking Vision, Ryan Deis. Like, I've had such amazing conversations with some of these people and there's no way I could have done that if I hadn't got a podcast. So I think one, to even get connected with those people, the credibility that I have been given because I've had those conversations has been amazing. And I think I just like talking and I think I do it in a very, and I'm not saying this is like how I smile, because maybe it's not the best way, but I'm really authentic. So it's not massively polished, it's not scripted, it's not highly edited at all. Like, you know, Phil does not change the order [00:16:00]...

Real Talk with Lisa Johnson: Trolls, Triumphs, and True Growth

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I chat with Lisa Johnson—global business strategist and Sunday Times bestselling author. Lisa opens up about how she bounced back from online hate and went on to have multi-million dollar launches. We talk about how every business journey is different and why cookie-cutter strategies don’t really work. We also get into the real stuff—like dealing with trolls, what it’s really like to run a successful business, and how the online space is constantly changing. Lisa shares tips on growing your email list, running affiliate launches, and how her idea of success has shifted over time. If you're a coach, course creator, or membership site owner looking to grow, this episode is packed with honest advice and practical strategies. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Your path is your own – There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for success. Lisa’s journey proves that doing things your own way can lead to massive results.

Resilience is key – Facing online backlash didn’t stop Lisa—it fueled her growth. Learning to handle criticism is part of building a strong, sustainable business.

Strategy + honesty wins – From list-building to affiliate launches, Lisa shares real strategies that work—no fluff, just what’s actually helped her scale her business.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Lisa Johnson on Website, Instagram, Facebook Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Do you ever wish you could lift the curtain behind a very successful business where they are making millions and find out what it's really like to earn that money and to run a business of that size? Well, today that is exactly what my guest is talking about. Lisa Johnson is an online business og, and her latest launches bring in millions. However, Lisa has had her fair share of online backlash that she has had to deal with, including 16 pages of negativity on the Mom's net platform. How on earth do you deal with that? In today's very honest, very vulnerable, and. Quite frankly, amazing episode. This is what Lisa and I talk about. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Now today's episode is an interview and with all the interviews that I do, I go back if it was like a little while, even if it was like a few days ago, unless I'm doing this. Immediately after the interview, I go back and [00:02:00] just scan through the interview and I went to scan through the interview and I ended up watching the whole thing, which is really weird when it's your own podcast because obviously I was part of it. But that should give you an indication as to how good. I think this episode is today I'm interviewing Lisa Johnson. For those of you who don't know Lisa, she's a global business strategist and a Sunday Times bestselling author who makes 90% of her money through passive income streams. She's very much in the online space that would sum that up. She passionately believes that every business owner's journey is unique and. The one size fits all approach that dominates the online coaching and mentoring world is fundamentally flawed, inspiring her to take a stand at the forefront of ethical and integrity driven business. Strategic advice, obviously, you know, I'm reading this and I hate reading bios and I'm rubbish at it. Lisa's been featured on numerous TV shows and has appeared in national papers, magazines like Telegraph, psychologies Magazine, the [00:03:00] Guardian, the Fast Company, and has had a Forbes article that's gained over a quarter of a million views in a week. Her podcast, making money online has been downloaded over 420,000 times and has reached number one in the business Podcast charts. In one launch alone during the pandemic, she made 3.8 million in a week earning 1.5 million in her first hour of sales. So she is an online business OG and is a UK online business og. And I'm a little bit annoyed with myself that I've never. Had her on before now, and I actually say that on the interview to her. This interview was awesome, really, really good. Like I said, I went to watch it to make notes to what I could say in this introduction, and I ended up watching the entire thing. And we talk about, so mainly we talk about a few different things. We talk about how the industry's changed because she's been in it as long as I have. We talk [00:04:00] about. Online trolls because if you know Lisa, you will know she has had her fair share of people saying stuff about her online. I'd say fair share. I'd say probably the lion's share of it. We have a super honest conversation about what that must feel like, what it's like to handle how she feels about it now, we then have an honest conversation about. Does that mean or is that one of the reasons she's more successful than me? Because more people know who she is and she gives an ex amazing, unbelievable figure of how much money she earned based off someone being controlled and saying horrible stuff about it. So it was, it was really fascinating. We then go on to talk about launching and affiliate launching. She's just had a very successful launch, but she again, tells us very honestly what it's like to have affiliates on her do her launch with her and what went wrong and what went right. It was just. It was just super, super honest. It was [00:05:00] really honest, really refreshing, and it really does give you an insight to when you see people's businesses online and you see how hugely successful they are from a financial point of view, what is it like to actually live in that business and be in that business? What does she worry about? What does she struggle with? And honestly. I really enjoyed this conversation. I thought it was awesome. I thought she was great, and I think you're gonna get so much out of it. And you're also gonna find out that it's not just about the money, and that was so reassuring and helpful to hear. So I hope you're gonna really enjoy this episode. I really would love you to, as always, show us what you think. Tag me in, tag Lisa in, go and find us on Instagram. Please, please do go and let us know what you think. But. I thought this was a great episode. So without further ado, here is Lisa. Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for inviting me. [00:06:00] I am very excited about this episode and about the conversations we're gonna have, and it's almost like, I don't know where to start or what things I wanna talk about. I think where I want to start is. Now we don't do intros. I've already done an intro on who you are, but you've been in this industry a fair chunk of time and you are successful in this industry. How has it changed and how has it changed you? Lisa: It's changed loads and, and it's really weird because I remember for ages feeling like a newbie in this industry. And now there has been a sudden switch, I think like, 'cause it's over eight years, there's this sudden switch of people going, you've been in in this industry. And one of the longest people, I'm like, I was new. How am I now suddenly one of the longest. But I think it's 'cause so many people come in and disappear. And I have been here all along. The changes have been immense, like. The changes in launching, you know, it's completely changed how we do things, the changes in our audiences and how smart they are. Like they're [00:07:00] really clued up these days. You can't pull the wool over their eyes, which is a brilliant thing. That nobody's really being taken in anymore by any kind of pyramid scheme or anything like that. And I used to talk about these things a lot, and then I realized recently I don't need to, everyone gets it now. Like everyone's clued up on all of it. Even all the kind of. Dodgy tactics out there. They, everyone gets it now. Yeah. You don't need to. It's lovely. So that's all changed. I think that the way people buy has changed completely. Like people don't care as much about a bonus or if the price is going up from 1, 1, 1 to 2, 2, 2 the next day, like no one cares. Yeah. They know. It's just a tactic. And I think what's changed is how. There's two things, two bad things that have changed. I think the first is entitlements changed, but we can't moan about it because we made it by giving away so much free stuff. Now there's like loads of entitlement and people just expecting you to do everything all the time. If you don't get back to them within. Five [00:08:00] minutes, then you're going to get like killed on the internet and be told you're bad. So entitlement has happened, but I don't blame the people for being entitled 'cause I feel like we bought it on ourselves. And I think the second thing that has happened that is not so good is that there are so many more people that believe that. That you can't debate with anymore. You can't have conversations with or have different opinions with online because it can only be their way. And yeah, things have changed in that arena. Like if you say something that people don't agree with, they can't just say they don't agree with you anymore. You're like, literally. They're trying to cancel you within five seconds. And I think that's a real shame about the changes that would happen because one of the things that I loved about social media was seeing different people's opinions and debating those opinions and seeing if I could learn from them and seeing if they could learn from me. That doesn't happen anymore, Teresa: Do you think? And such good points. And actually the phrase being canceled is literally like in the last few years and when I interviewed the last time I interviewed Amy Port [00:09:00] Field. I said, what? What, what are you fearful of now? Because obviously when you get to a certain point, everyone thinks that all your worries and your fears go and hers was being canceled, that she might say something or do something accidentally because no one, I don't think purposely tries to get canceled. But it wasn't even a thing like that was never even a saying. Whereas now it very much is, Lisa: and I think that, I think people do try and get canceled. Tate tries to get canceled because I think that if you, if in, if there's enough talk on you, then it doesn't really matter if it's to be canceled or not. You are always gonna get more people looking at you if you say something stupid Teresa: and I guess the world is so divisive and so divided that actually for every one person that wants to cancel you, there'll be just as many who go. Love what you do. Lisa: Because of that divide. And it's such a shame that there's that black and white divide of like, you are wrong. I'm right. This is the [00:10:00] right answer. This is the wrong view, because that's not real life. There's gray in everything. Everything. Yeah. And yet we've, we've lost the ability to see the gray and to see that we're all seeing things through our own lens. So of course, we're all gonna have these different truths and these different opinions that's gone. And that's a shame because the gray area is where the interesting nuances are. But we don't talk about them anymore because like, let's take. What's like a hot topic at the moment that everyone's arguing about, let's take immigration as a topic. Yeah, so if you talk about immigration, there are people that say that we, we shouldn't have drawn the lines anywhere. They're just lines that have been drawn on a map. Yeah. And actually everyone should be allowed in everywhere. And then there are the people that say, no one should be allowed in. It's our country. You know, like, let's draw a line. Don't let anybody in because it's not fair on our resources. Neither of those points are true. There is gray in the middle of that. There are good points on either side that you can come to somewhere in the middle. That makes complete sense, but you're not [00:11:00] allowed to say that because if you even veer away from one point by a tiny bit. You are bad and you're put into the other category. And so no one dares say what they really think anymore because they're scared that people will then see them as far right or far left or whatever. And actually there's nuance in the middle that we could talk about if we were open to it, but no one's open to it. Teresa: No, you're right. And you, and one of the things we've got chatting to before you hit record was you have. Had your fair share of people having very strong opinions about you and, and from an outward looking in, it feels that you are very strong to stand up to that and you don't mind batting that like or meeting it. Was that always the case and Lisa: no Teresa: is that still the case? Like Lisa: it is still the case, but it wasn't always the case. So if you think about when I first came in. I, when I first came online, I'd been badly bullied as a kid. My biggest fear was this, you know, being canceled or being bullied, or [00:12:00] people saying mean things about me online. But I've grown a thick skin because I, it came to a point probably in about year two or year three of being online where every, if I wanted to say an opinion about something or if I wanted to put out, an idea or a thought that wasn't the norm because sometimes my ideas aren't, I would get so much backlash, bullying, like everyone would be offended by everything I said and it, it got to a point where it didn't matter what it was. So like, I'll then test things. So one of my friends, Dan Meredith, put out a post in about year three. That I thought if I put that post out, I'd get killed for it. How is he allowed to put that post out with his opinion on it? So he said, no, wouldn't, you wouldn't, like you are right. People would agree with you or disagree with you. I copied the post and put it out and got slaughtered. I was like, okay. So it's not actually about [00:13:00] what I'm writing. It's me as a person. People are trying to find a reason that I, Teresa: isn't that even harder? Lisa: No. I get that I get it. I've been that person that looks up at people that are successful and I'm trying really hard and I'm not going anywhere and thinking like, why is she able to do this? And like that envy turned into not a nice feeling for me when I used to look at people like that. And it was only through a friend, Emily Williams. She said to me, when you feel that, like envy in that, oh, it's all right for her. Realize that it's just showing you what you want. That's what MV is. It's just showing you what you want in life. And so thank her because that's shown her that you can have that too, because she's got it. And that changed my whole perception. And so then I didn't think about people in that way anymore. But I know how it feels too. And so when people look at me and they wanna find a reason that I must be bad. Like I must be, you don't make over 20 million in seven years without doing something bad, right. 'cause that's what we've been taught. Which people are bad people. It's in every Disney movie. We've seen it. Yeah. And so I know what they're looking [00:14:00] for. And so of course they're gonna try and find any little thing and blow it up to be a bad thing. And the reason why it's okay that I'm not her. It's all right. I don't need to be like, like Lisa and have all that money because. The reason she's got there is she's done bad things that I wouldn't do, and they're trying to find that because it makes them feel better about the fact they're not where they want to be. And I totally get it. I get it. It's psychology and so I don't really dislike it when people do it. I understand it. Teresa: It must, does it not upset you? Are you? Lisa: Never Teresa: like, 'cause I just think I would sob. Lisa: I used to, like in year three, I'm Teflon now. Like nothing gets through. Like I'm fine and my, my husband isn't, my friends are, my team aren't, they're little sobbing in the corner about something that someone said about me, but I'm like, let's look at it logically. Like their opinions aren't gonna have an effect on my business. Because I think we worry about that, don't we? Like when if people say bad things about us and we get a bad reputation, it will affect our [00:15:00] business and we won't make as much money. Yeah. I have found that to be not the case. Yeah. So much so that I found it to be, I went viral on mom's net like a year ago. A year or so ago. Badly. Not in a very negative way. Because I paid too much money in a launch, and therefore I must be a con artist. And so that there were 52 pages all talking about me as a con artist. Teresa: Oh my God. I doubt Lisa: and well, I, at first I tried to do, I did a very stupid thing and I tried to, oh, I thought that reasonable people, oh, go on and have a chat to them about why they think this, and I'll tell them why they're wrong. Never play with the trolls. What a stupid thing to do. So don't ever do that. Just ignore it. Teresa: Because like, you know, having that conversation to me feels like a good thing. Like, well, let me explain. Lisa: Yeah. I explain why I'm wroong, yeah right. And why actually I call out the con artist, but it didn't work. It just made that they loved it. So I didn't do that again. But what happened was we made about 43,000 pounds extra just from...

8 Essentials for High-Converting Landing Page for your Lead Magnet

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I explore the science behind building landing pages that truly convert. I cover eight key components, including compelling headlines, strong calls-to-action, the value of social proof, and clear personal intros. Designed for course creators, membership site owners, and coaches, this episode offers practical tips to boost the performance of lead magnet pages. I also highlight timeless marketing principles that continue to deliver results. Tune in for practical advice and proven strategies to create landing pages that work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Master the Essentials – Effective landing pages rely on eight core elements, including captivating headlines, action-driven CTAs, and trust-building social proof.

Simplicity Wins – Strategic yet simple marketing principles often outperform complicated tactics and continue to deliver strong results over time.

Tailor for Your Audience – Whether you're a course creator, coach, or membership owner, optimizing your lead magnet page with practical, audience-focused strategies is key to higher conversions.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Creating a great lead magnet is one thing, but your landing page needs to attract people to actually download it. And I don't know whether you know this, but there is actually a science behind a highly converting landing page, and in today's episode I'm gonna break down the eight essential elements that you need to include. From headlines that talk directly to your perfect customer to call to action buttons that actually want to be clicked. You are gonna want to make notes for this episode. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast with me your host, Teresa Heath, Wareing , as always, I hope you are having a great start to your week now. One of the things that I do in my Grow Launch Sell program is people are able to submit their landing pages to me, their sales pages, their lead magnet pages, and I will go through their funnel and I will actually record myself going through it, and then I will be commenting and making suggestions and telling tweaks and changes. One of the things that are really important to me in my business is that I. Have a business where it's higher touch than I used to think. I would love a business where I [00:02:00] sold thousands of people in a course or something like that. And actually I don't want that at all because one thing I love to do is to be able to make immediate changes for people or help people. As closely as possible. And in the Grow Launch Sale program, that's exactly what I do. I give them six months of support, and part of that six months support is I literally go through their stuff and look at their stuff and go, tweak this, change this, do this. And that is really, really important to me because you can buy every course in the world, but without someone looking at your individual stuff and taking into consideration your audience and your. Offer and all that sort of good stuff. It's hard to actually know whether the thing that you are learning is the thing for you or is gonna work for you and your audience. Anyway, with all that being said, this has kind of spurred me on to think about this week's episode and what I wanted to talk about because like I said, one of the things I do is literally look at people's landing pages and I love it. And for me it's really easy 'cause I can see immediately where. Why people aren't [00:03:00] opting in or why people aren't necessarily understanding or why they're falling away. And I thought what I would do in today's episode is I would walk you through, and I know this is a bit tricky, so we're gonna take it slowly, but I'm gonna walk you through what makes up a good landing page. And what I would love you to do. Maybe like listen to this for you listening, and then maybe the next time you are sat at your desk, put this on and look at your landing page while I'm talking to you. And therefore, while I'm telling you the things that should be in different places and what you should do, then you can actually do a kind of little audit on your own landing page. And the other thing reason I wanted to do this is because back on two weeks ago, episode 3 96 yes, we're very close to episode 402 away. In fact, episode 396 I talked about the lead magnet, do's and don'ts. So I talked about actually the physical lead magnet, and I thought it's all well in good, having a really good lead magnet. But if you have a terrible landing page, then people aren't gonna get to that lead magnet. So I wanted to break [00:04:00] down what it is that you need to consider and you need to look at on your landing page. So let's get started. Like I said, if you've got your landing page in front of you when you're doing this, awesome. If not, then just listen away and I'm sure there'll be key things you can take away. And it's surprisingly simple. This isn't. Massive and difficult. It's just a formula. And this is the thing, like I don't say these things 'cause it's nice and I like to look at the page that way. This is what works. So let's look at the top of the page. So if you're looking at the top of your lead magnet page above the fold, and if you don't know what I mean by above the fold, it's basically the point in which a website disappears and you have to scroll. So anything above the fold is what I see immediately. And everything I'm about to tell you in this first section should be above the fold in an ideal world. So the very first thing that you need is an attention grabbing headline, and it really does need to grab my attention. Now. Above that, you could always have the words free download, freebie. [00:05:00] Free audio, whatever your lead magnet is. So you could have, and in my head I'm imagining the free download or free masterclass or whatever it is in smaller text and then in bigger text, we want your headline. In your headline. There's two ways to go in this way number one is you use a specific benefit driven headline, or the second way in which you can use your headline is you go with a pain driven headline. Okay. So a benefit driven headline might look like, do you want, I don't know, I'm gonna make things up as I go here, but do you want more engagement on your Instagram posts in 30 days? Do you want to double your sales in six months? Like, I'm literally just using random things here. But basically it's like, what is the transformation they're looking for? What is the benefit they're looking for? So that's a really good start for your headline, is to put in a benefit driven headline. Now some people prefer to put in a pain driven [00:06:00] headline. Now, where this works really well is, let's say, and I see this a lot with, with mindset people, where they're talking about, you know, stop imposter syndrome now, which would be a benefit. However, I. They might not know they've got imposter syndrome. They might not even know what the word imposter syndrome means. So in cases like that, starting with a pain driven headline is much more effective because they will know where they are. They'll know the pain that they're in right now. They might not know the thing that's gonna help them get to the benefit, and they might not know what the benefit is, even though they might just go, well, I don't wanna feel like this. But they're not entirely sure what they wanna feel like or what anything different could look like. So a pain driven headline could be things like frustrated with low sales or sick of feeling. I'm just trying to think of a mindset one, and I'm struggling off the top of my head, feeling overwhelmed or feeling anx. I [00:07:00] wouldn't even go with anxiety, anxious because again, they might not know that's the thing. So what are the actual feelings? What is the thing that someone would say to you, oh, I'm so tired of feeling this thing. So like I said, pain or benefit driven. That's your headline, not. This is my free download for whatever, whatever. It's like what's gonna grab their attention. I want you to keep it concise. Try not to have too many words here. 'cause bearing in mind you want someone to see this and read it quickly. If you can include numbers or times or deadlines or whatever, that just helps it be a little bit more convincing. So like it's, the more specific you get, the better it is. So, for instance, the example of get three x more leads in 30 days. That's really specific. So it's more kind of, it's more likely that they'll take action on something that is specific. So benefit driven, pain driven, keep it concise, and if you can add some numbers to kind of clarify it or to quantify it, great. So, like I said, a kind of mini headline above the headline that [00:08:00] says freebie or whatever headline. Then we want a subheading. Now your subheading needs to expand on what you've just said in the headline. If you've done a benefit-driven headline, your subheading could be a pain driven thing. Like, you know, if you have focused on the benefit, you might flip it in the subheading and and go tired of. You know, not many sales or whatever, it is you can also use the subheading to look at initial objections and to overcome them. So let's say you do a lead magnet on wanting to feel more peace. You could then, in your subheading, put something like. Without having to meditate for 30 minutes or something where the objection, you know, for instance, like I could do something, so let's go with the three times more leads. In 30 days, you might put, without selling your soul to the devil, like you might wanna think of what is an objection to someone thinking of that [00:09:00] thing. Like, okay, yeah, you say that, but what is the objection and can you put that in your subheading Also? You can reinforce some urgency or in some importance of that situation. So like whatever the kind of pain is, you know, you could talk about the urgency of wanting to stop it. So you've got mini headline of freebie or whatever type you're on top headline, subheading. Then, so this tends to be, if you imagine on the left hand side of the page, that's where all those headings are, underneath those headings. I tend to have a call to action and I'm gonna talk about calls to action on their own, because this is just general, you know, things about calls to action. So I'll, I'll do that in a bit. So then on the right hand side, so imagine all that text is on the left hand and on the right hand side, I want you to have an image of the lead magnet itself. Now people are very visual and they like to see what they're going to get. So I want you to mock up. A image of what that lead magnet might look like. If you're [00:10:00] listening to this and you are in the Grow Launch Sale program, then I have provided all the mockup templates for you. You don't need to do that. You can just go and get them from the program, but you need that. I need to see what am I actually going to get? So a found out image or a scrolling image on a, you know, laptop or whatever. You need to be able to show me what is the thing that I'm going to download, even though I'm not downloading a physical thing, I'm downloading a digital thing, I still want to see what I'm getting. Don't worry about people. Like you're not gonna show them every inch of your lead magnet. You're just gonna show them a little bit of it so they can see and get an idea of what it is. So don't worry about people reading the image. And therefore, and in my head, I'm like, if you wanna actually stop and read every single thing on that thing and not download it, then go you, because it tends to be teeny tiny and it they'd struggle to read it anyway. Teresa: So all of that is above the fold. That is what I wanna see at the top of a landing page for your lead magnet. Okay. Now let's talk about the rest of the page. Now, I guess one thing I should say is at the bare [00:11:00] minimum, that's what I want. Absolute bare minimum. How much more you put in is kind of up to you. I actually don't have any, I was just thinking as I was saying this, I don't have any hard stats on. Whether it increases downloads if you do this other bits or not. But I like to include these other bits. 'cause I think if someone is on the fence about downloading it, if they don't know you, then we need to give them a bit more reassurance. So the next section down, I would use that to explain a little bit more about the freebie, you're offering. And I would do this in a bullet point form or a format, just so that it's broken up text, this is really important. I would look at like. What are the things that they're gonna be able to do once they've got the download? What does it include? But basically you want it in an easy format so they can scan that if they wanna scan it. But this section, this next section, is just to kind of explain a bit more about the benefits of downloading the actual thing then. [00:12:00] What I also would include on this page is some kind of social proof. So include any specific testimonials of people who have used the lead magnet. If you've got, you know, if you have worked with some big clients in the past or have some featured in, you might wanna include some of this on there as well. And like sometimes people put download numbers on there, like over a. You know, 500,000 people downloaded this. I mean, we're not there yet, but we might be. So yeah. So you want some kind of social proof on there where. It basically says, look, this is worth doing because this is good. So even including just some general social proof, I think is really important on these landing pages. But again, you don't have to do loads. Just one or two is fine. And then the last thing I would say that you want on this page is an introduction to you, because in an ideal world, the people coming to this are not people who know and love you because this is one of the main points of having lead magnet is getting new people onto your list. So you want to basically [00:13:00] have something on there that says this is who you are. You want an image of you. So. I'm sorry. If you don't have one and you don't like it, you need to put an image of you on there. It's building that know, like, and trust factor. You want to keep it short, no, I don't want more and peace. I don't want your about page, I just want a paragraph about what makes you qualified to teach me the specific thing that you are teaching me. So you might have a kind of a, an about you or a kind of paragraph that you use to introduce you, but I want you to read it and go with the lead magnet in mind. Does that convince someone why? I'm really good to teach 'em the specific thing. So where you can and where possible, I want you to tweak it to go with the lead magnet that you are actually doing. Okay, so that's it. That's basically the page. Now the other thing you're going to have at the bottom of the page is your call to action. So let's focus for a second on creating clear call to actions. So the first thing I would suggest, and again, [00:14:00] this isn't because I like it, this is because it's proven. Use a contrasting color for your call to action buttons, and I would suggest you use the same contrasting color. So let's say your page is predominantly red and blue. Then you might wanna use a yellow for the call to action buttons. But every call to action button has the yellow in it. Obviously, I'm not saying use yellow, I'm just saying use a contrasting color. So contrasting colors for your calls to action buttons. Write action orientated buttons. So get my thing now, grab your whatever now. Now what person you wanna put it in is up to you. So if you wanna put it in first person or third person, that's entirely up to you. So you could say, grab your download or get my download, however you wanna say it, and obviously make sure that's the same throughout the whole page. But the important key thing is it's the action orientated word that inspires them. It kind of. In their head makes 'em go. Okay. Yeah, like they're taking action. And again, [00:15:00] like make sure that you're positioning a call to action at the top, above the fold. And then depending on how many of these sections you're putting in and how you display your page, you may want a few different call to actions, but I would end with a call to action now. When I say call to action, you may or may not have the form on the page, so the form is the bit where they're gonna fill in their name and their email. If you have the form on the page. Personally, I would say put the form towards the bottom, although weirdly I was looking at some of my pages the other day and there at the top, so dunno what I was thinking there. Anyway, I would normally suggest put the form at the bottom and then the call to action buttons will jump to the bottom of the page. Now if you're saying thinking, I dunno how to do that, Teresa , there's a, I'm positive that whatever system you're using to create your landing pages on. When you click the button, there will be an option to say, take them to wherever [00:16:00] or to another place on this page. And that's what I do. So you have kind of like sections of the pages. So I will call a section, call to action or form or whatever. And when I'm doing it, I will say, jump this to the form page. So, call to actions needs to be really clear. Need to be scattered throughout the page, but you don't need too many on a lead magnet page because it's not gonna be that long. You need a contrasting color and you need those action words, and then whether you click them to a form that pops up and opens up, or whether it's a form on the page. Ask for essential information only. I only ever ask for name and email. That's it. The more you ask,...

The Art and Science of Sales Copy that Converts with Vicki Handley

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I interviewed Vicki Handley, an expert in sales copywriting and founder of Quirky Copywriting. This episode dives deep into the art and science of writing compelling sales pages and emails. Vicki shares valuable insights on the differences between general copywriting and sales copy, the psychological foundations of effective sales copy, and the importance of specificity and urgency. We discussed how to identify core problems from symptoms, create compelling promises, and the nuances of evergreen versus launch-based sales strategies. Vicki emphasizes the need for ongoing testing and adjustments to improve sales efficacy. If you're an online business owner looking to boost your sales copy, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and expert advice.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Know the Difference: Understanding the distinction between general copy and sales copy is essential for creating content that converts.

Psychology Matters: Leveraging psychological principles like urgency and specificity can significantly boost the effectiveness of your sales pages and emails.

Test and Improve: Continuously testing and refining your copy is key to enhancing sales performance over time.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Vicki Handley on LinkedIn, Instagram or Website, Ultimate Structure Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: If you've ever tried to write a sales page or sales emails, you will know that there is a. Real art and science to it. And in today's episode of the podcast, I interview an absolute genius when it comes to writing sales pages. This episode is filled with so much gold and so many amazing light bulb moments that if you have something to sell online and you want to write an email or a sales page. This is not to be missed. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. I'm diving straight in with today's episode because honestly, when I say this episode is gold. I don't say that lightly. I need to tell you a little bit of a story about today's guest. So today's guest is the lovely Vicki Handley, and she's talking to us all about sales pages and copy for sales pages. Now Vicki is in my world. She joined my Grow launch sale program and we did a visibility challenge. And part of that visibility challenge is that I encourage people to get on podcasts, to put themselves out there to become the expert and. Vicki asked If she could come on my podcast, and I said, yes. [00:02:00] I would love to have that conversation on my podcast. I am so flipping grateful. I did because this conversation. Within the first like five, 10 minutes, I am scribbling notes, after notes, after notes. I have to go back there and re-listen to the whole podcast again because there was so much good stuff that she talked about in terms of what sales copy is and what it isn't and all the different things that you can do. So before we jump into what she covers, let me just take a minute to actually introduce who Vicki is. Vicky is, uh, the head of copier, her agency quirky copywriting. She's a marketer who specializes in sales copy and evergreen sales are her forte with her most popular offer. Actually, name Evergreen helps you sell seamlessly behind the scenes with researched, written, and refined email sequences, removing the need for endless launches. Vicki has worked with hundreds of business owners helping them refine their copy so that they can actually get sales through [00:03:00] it. So this conversation is very much aimed at the fact that sales copy and copy copy is very different. When I say copy, copy, I mean people can write copy for blogs, for social media posts, for things like that. When I'm talking about sales copy, I'm talking about sales pages, sales emails, and in this podcast we talk. All things sales copy. She talks about the fact that sales copy actually isn't that creative. It's very formulaic. It's based on psychology and it's basically trying to give people without doubt absolute certainty whether something is for them or not. She has a great analogy that it's like going into a courtroom. She also talks about. The things that people are missing in sales pages and what some of those things should be and how we need to get really specific and really certain around who it is we're speaking to. She talks about the fact of sometimes we just try and keep it quite broad 'cause we don't wanna put someone off or we don't want to miss someone out. But in doing [00:04:00] that, we actually struggle to sell the thing anyway. She shares a phrase with us that is something she calls twisting the knife, and it sounds really awful, but actually it's really important when you're doing a sales page. Basically as she was going through all of these things that in the first kind of first 10, 15 minutes, I was literally just writing question after question after question after question. Like I said, I have not written this many notes in a long time, and I just had all the questions to ask her. What's the difference between a sales page and sales emails? How do you add that urgency, which she says is so important for a sales page. What's the difference between selling something to, to get someone to buy as opposed to get someone on a call? We talk about so much. If you are selling something online, which I'm assuming you are 'cause you're listening to the podcast, this is gold for you. Also, I want you to do me a favor because this is such an amazing episode. And Vicki works so hard to bring you such a cool episode. I would love you to share this for, [00:05:00] for both me and Vicki. I would love you to share this with a business friend that maybe is selling something online. Share it on your social media. If you have a business following and, get some of this stuff out to people because actually I see people create products and services online and then they don't sell, and it's heartbreaking and so disheartening, and actually so much of what Vicki says today is gonna help you sell those things online. So without further ado, here is the amazing Vicki. Vicki, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. I am excited to talk about our subject because, well, I'm just gonna dive straight in and go. Tell me why sales copy is different to someone writing normal copy. Vicki: Sales copy is very different to normal copy because I think even copywriters fear it because you are. Demonstrating your ROI, it's really easy. It's really easy to see if it's working or not. It's clearly visible and it's clearly tied to, uh, [00:06:00] either a financial figure or the number of call bookings, et cetera, and that people are like generating as a result of your work. I personally see it as a challenge. I like to work out what works and also it's, it's not. Creative sales copy. That might sound a bit weird coming from a copywriter, but it's very formulaic. It's very structured. It's, it's very much based on your ideal client's psychology and persuasion, and ultimately it's spin. It's laying out all those cards on the table, but it's, yeah, I often refer to it as courtroom, like closing arguments in a court. I come from a legal background, so that's why I kind of use that as an, and I'm also a big. Crime series fan. So it's the bit at the end of the trial where all the evidence has been presented, they then step up and they state the most powerful aspects of their case to the jury. Full certainty, no space for doubt. This is how things went down. Advocate for either my client being guilty or innocent. And that's co obviously, by or not by in this case. So it, it's very, very different and it's. It requires a lot of [00:07:00] groundwork to have been done before you get to that point as well. So there's a space for other copy and content and all the rest of, there's all sorts of things aren't there that people need to be putting out there into the world. But this is the final, this is the big guns. Everything's laid out on the table, and this is the thing that actually gets them to act, um, inspires the action in your audience. And if it doesn't do that, it's a fail, I'm afraid. Teresa: I love that. I feel like I could just end it now. Thank you, Vicki. Goodbye. Like You're welcome. Honestly, that was brilliant. That was such a good, strong argument for copy, for sales, copy over copy. And I think I have been in this industry a long time, about 11 years now. Uh, my business for 11 years, I've been in this online space for about eight, nine, and if not a bit more. And, and lots of copywriters don't get sales copy. Like one of the thing about sales copy is we're taking them on a journey, but it's. How is that differing to, I think the reason I bring up the journey thing is I think lots of people, lots of copywriters understand the taking a customer on [00:08:00] a journey, but they're not converting them or they're not being direct enough with the journey. So what, what are they missing or what are people missing where they're like, 'cause it is a journey, but how does it differ? Vicki: So. When I'm writing sales copy, I focus heavily on specifics. Mm-hmm. I think if you're trying to do like a lot of things that I see, I've seen a lot of bad sales pages in my time, and I like to focus really hard on the problem that they're solving, and I think that that's, that's often a missing piece. They talk about the generalities, but they don't talk about the specific problem, the specific pain point, the specific challenge that is. Well, it's, I've never said specific so much, but it's specific to that particular target client. Yeah. So there's, there's the target, the individual, like the one person that you are talking to is the first thing. I think a lot of, um, copywriters and people writing their own copy try to appeal a little bit to everybody so that they've, they like hedging their bets, like someone's gonna respond to this for actually that data that you, you. Gathered in order to write that, um, sales page and the [00:09:00] specifics of the problem and the needs, wants and expectations of that individual is really, really important for kind of creating your case. You also need to, I, I call it twisting the knife. That bit, it's a little bit, focusing a little bit on the, the pain and the challenge that they're experiencing, but then the next part. Is focusing on the opportunities that that brings. That's kind of bringing desire into that forefront. And what you're doing with, with sales copy, whether it's an email sequence, whether it's a sales, um, page, whatever is, you are kind of amplifying that journey and you are really, really focusing in on the specifics so that they feel seen, they feel understood, and they feel called out. as well Because a lot of the times when people convert, it's because they're like, oh my God, that's me. That is literally me. Yeah. And the social proof that you're using later, oh my God, that's me. That's where I am now. And this person is like me. So I can see the progression, I can see how things have changed for them in a short period. And the other thing that's often missing is the why now. Like why should they do something now versus six months time when things are worse? So another thing that I love to [00:10:00] do is to make sure that you call out the cost of inaction. And you're, what, what you're doing with your sales page is, like I said before, is you're bringing out those big guns. You're making sure that all your bases are covered and you are engineering that social proof that you have. 'cause that's another thing, social proof, credibility, signals, why you are the only logical choice. All these factors work together in line with the structure, um, of like building a bridge ultimately from a place of challenge to a place of desire or next level u. And kind of. Validating the promises that you're making. Like this is, this is the promise that I'm making. That's the other mistake that I see as well. People don't actually make a promise. They don't actually say, this is what you will get from this program, this service, whatever, because they're scared of hanging their hat on a result, and that directness, that certainty, that no space for doubt is what sets apart good sales pages from not so good ones. Teresa: Right, Can you just repeat all that again because I just normally I have my, my remarkable and I take notes, right? And I thought, oh, I didn't pick it [00:11:00] up, and you just said so much good stuff in there. I feel like at the end of this podcast, I'm gonna have to go back through and listen to this podcast because. When, when I'm interviewing or when I'm doing an episode with someone, I'm having to actively listen in a very different way as just taking it in so that I know where it's going next, or I know the conversation that we're having or what I wanna pull from that one thing rather than actually just going, oh my God, that is so smart. Okay, so. Uh, I've got like a million questions now buzzing around my head. Vicki: Okay. I love questions. Teresa: Let's talk about, oh, what should I talk about first? Hang on. I need to write this thing down because I'm gonna forget you said about sales page or emails. I wanna come back to that. Okay. But I'll forget. So twisting the knife. Okay. In my head that feels like, oh, that's mean. Right. And I think let's like just talk generally about sales as well. People are like. This is, this is horrible. Sales is horrible, right? [00:12:00] Talk to me, and I'm playing devil's advocate because actually I get the whole twisting the knife thing, and I think we have to do it more than ever now because people are getting far more. I, I think looking at all the launches I'm involved with, all the launches I watch, they're not as successful as they have been, and I think we're having to go an extra mile. So what do we talk about? Give me a practical example of. If you can think of one off the top of your head, what writing would look like for a particular product or service, and then how twisting the knife would be. Vicki: Okay. So yeah, so with twisting the knife, I, I view sales a service, so I'll just, I'll just step back a little bit first, but I view sales a service. Yeah. If I know that my product, my service, whatever it's, I'm writing about, or my client's, um, product or service can help someone, it's my duty to make the best possible case. And how I usually do that is, I call it twist the knife. It's a little bit tongue in cheek, but it's, it's basically, it's basically. Pointing to the problem. I'll try and think of an [00:13:00] example as I go along, but pointing to that problem and turning it in their mind from a, something that they need to fix, but actually it's not that urgent to a non-negotiable and something that they actually need to prioritize. It needs to be something that they deal with now to avoid the consequences of, of not doing it. I'm struggling to think of an example, but I'll come back to that. Okay. And yeah. Basically what I'm looking to do when I, when I look at this, is before I write anything, I will have had loads of conversations with the, uh, my clients' clients or my clients if I'm writing something for myself, and I will go deep on what their struggles were when they joined, before they joined, I should say, or before they started working with the client. And I will go deep on the kinds of things that at that moment in time they were thinking. They were feeling and they were experiencing as well as the kinds of things that they were doing that was actually sabotaging themself or stopping them from moving forwards. Teresa: So when I'm, okay, so let me just cover that. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That they were thinking, they were feeling, they were doing, Vicki: doing. Yeah. [00:14:00] And stopping And what would that And stopping them. Stopping them from moving them moving forwards. I'm happy to share my little handout after if it would be helpful for you to refer. Teresa: Perfect. Perfect. That would be, thank you. Cool. Vicki: Amazing. So yeah, so that's, that's what I'm aiming to do with twisting the Knife. However I do that so that they see the opportunity, because with what I'm doing when I'm interviewing those people and then converting that into copy is, I'm making clear that. They see the opportunity because I, I work a lot with expansive clients as well. I don't typically work with people who are stuck like really in lots of pain. Like it's, it's terrible. It's awful. Yeah. I work with people who are looking for the next level. They're looking for that next opportunity, so that more expansive client by just looking at the things that they were doing and the, um, things that they were experiencing. Often you can spot symptoms of a problem that they don't either know exists yet. Or something that is, they're experiencing the symptoms rather than the root cause. And I'm just trying to think

Lead Magnets that work: Here’s What to Do (and what to Avoid!)

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talked about how to create great lead magnets that actually help grow your email list. I shared the top five dos and don’ts to keep in mind, giving practical tips that work whether you’re just starting out or have been list-building for a while. I also threw in 20 creative lead magnet ideas to spark inspiration and boost your marketing game. Don’t miss it if you want to make sure your lead magnets are doing their job and growing your list effectively!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Master the Basics: Follow the top five dos and don’ts to create lead magnets that attract and convert effectively.
Get Creative: Explore 20 unique lead magnet ideas to keep your audience engaged and interested.
Focus on Results: Ensure your lead magnets are optimized to grow your email list consistently.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Successful list building is crucial to the success of your business, and one of the most effective ways to list build is still through using lead magnets. In today's episode, I am sharing with you the top five dos and the top five don'ts of creating a lead magnet. Regardless of if you are just getting started with building your list or you're a seasoned list builder with multiple lead magnets, this is definitely an episode you want to listen to. 'cause if some of those lead magnets aren't performing, it might just be that you're doing one of the don'ts. Hello, and a super warm. Welcome back to the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? So this week I decided to kind of go back to my roots, as it were. One of the very first things I learned in the online space was about lead magnets and converting people onto your email list. Obviously you have to remember that I come from marketing background anyway, so. I came into the online space knowing a lot about marketing, but weirdly, lead magnets was something pretty, well, I guess no one ever called it lead magnets in other places, like in other marketing things, we had ways of getting people on our email list, but we never talked about lead [00:02:00] magnets or used that term. So when I came into the online space and I heard the term lead magnets, it was one of the very first things I learned. And actually I ended up going to Minneapolis and doing a three day course with lead pages, who, if you've not heard of them, they're basically help create landing pages, or it's a system that creates landing pages who I used to use. And I went and learned with them all about how to get people on your email list and everything around conversion marketing, which was really, really cool. So I thought. Do you know what? I'm gonna do an episode about lead magnets because I think it's a subject and something that comes up all the time. So if you've heard me talk about it before, great. This is gonna be a really good reminder for you in terms of what's working, what's not. If you haven't heard me talk about lead magnets, I'll just take a quick, brief minute to explain what a lead magnet is. So basically you are giving your customers something for free. In exchange, they're giving you their email address and you are [00:03:00] getting them on your email list, which as you will know as a business owner, as an online business owner, your email list is where it's at. Like I would like to pretend otherwise, but honestly without an email list, even if you have an amazing social media following. You are not gonna be able to necessarily convert people like you can off an email list. So it's so, so important. And basically it's crucial if you wanna grow your business, you need lead magnets in your business. And I know there are some people out there who are like, they don't really work anymore, or you might have heard that they're not as successful as they were, but honestly. I am yet to find a world where they are not useful and they do not keep adding people to my list. And that is how I keep adding people to my list by having an opt-in that they can choose to come and join my email list. So today's session, today's podcast is going to be very specifically. Five dos and five don'ts for creating a lead magnet. And then I'm going to give you 20 different ideas [00:04:00] of types of lead magnets. So if you're sat there thinking, I just don't know what to do, or what kind of thing could be a good lead magnet, I'm gonna give you 20 ideas to give you so much good stuff to go at it. If you have a business owner that is a friend, then please do share this episode with them, because this is something that every business should be doing. I know that I specifically talk to online business owners, course creators, membership owners, coaches. However, every business should have lead magnet. I am not, you know, in my 21 years of marketing, there is not yet have been a company where I've thought, you don't need one. Now, the type of one you might need might differ, but there's definitely always the need for a lead magnet. Okay, let's get going. We're gonna start with the don'ts first. Let's start on the kind of like, don't do this and then we'll talk about the Jews. So the first thing, don't give too much away now. I need to explain this because this isn't about making, giving something away that's really good. This is about the number of [00:05:00] things you give away. Again, I need to explain myself. Let's say you are going to do a lead magnet that is a a hundred ways in which you can do something, a hundred ways in which you could lose weight, a hundred ways in which you can grow your business. I don't want to know a hundred ways in which I can do something that is overwhelming, that's too many, and as we know. When you have doubt or when you have questions, it just means that you don't do anything. You just don't take action. So I would much rather you give someone the three top ways to do the thing, because honestly, the others are gonna waste my time and they're going to waste your time. No one necessarily needs a hundred ways to do something when. I just wanna know what are the top three ways that I can do it? And you are gonna save me so much time. So if you're thinking more is better, it's not always the case. Give me the thing that's gonna actually give me the transformation, not all the millions of ideas that you have in your head. So for instance, I have done a podcast episode that talked [00:06:00] about the lead magnets that are working now, and we will link up to that in the show notes. And I basically tell you like the top two or three. That are working right now, and I will say them again later on, even though I'm giving you 20 ideas, like sometimes you might have some of those and you need some more ideas, but this isn't a lead magnet. This is just giving you ideas. Whereas if I was doing a lead magnet, I would make sure that I'm giving you the top three as opposed to here's all hundred of them. The next don't. Don't be too smart, too advanced, or too complicated. One of the things, again, that I see all the time when someone sends me a lead magnet to review. One of the things that my grow launch sell program people get is they get me and my eyes on their stuff. So I look at their lead magnets and I will say to them, actually, you know, change this, do this, or. One of the things I say to them often is they're going too deep. They're going too deep into giving the person who's reading it, all the stuff, telling them all the things, and often [00:07:00] they're doing it at a stage where the customer isn't ah, so they're getting too complicated or they're being too smart. Not in a arsy way, but they're being, you know, they're just trying to prove like, look, I know all this stuff. Whereas your customer is not at your level, your customer. Is it a starting level where you need to just give 'em the basics. And the same as the don't that I've already talked about? If you kind of go too deep, you overwhelm them and they won't take any action. So even though when you're putting together a lead magnet, you might think everybody knows this. This is ridiculous. It's not gonna add value. The truth is that's not the case. So keep it simple. Don't. Number three, don't make them work too hard for it. And what I mean by that is you need to make it very simple in terms of the process. You need to make it have a very clear landing page where the only thing you can do on that landing page is actually put in the details for the lead magnet. You need to make it really clear what they're asking [00:08:00] for, what they're going to get when you actually then give them the thing. When you send them that first email, as I talked about in my onboarding email podcast a few weeks back, you need to go, here's your thing. So in email, number one, here's your thing. Don't make anything too complicated, because if they can't just get the thing that they've asked for, then there's a problem actually as a side. One thing I wouldn't always recommend doing, and I, I can't give you a straight, don't ever do this 'cause there might be some cases that you do. However, in most cases I would not recommend this is giving them the thing on the thank you page. Because when you give them the thing on the thank you page, so let's say I'm downloading a cheat sheet or something. If I get to the thank you page and it's like, here's your cheat sheet. I have no reason to open your email and it won't get me into the habit of opening your emails. So don't deliver the thing on the thank you page, but do make sure you've delivered it and only talk about delivering it in email, number one, and make sure that the process into actually getting the lead [00:09:00] magnet is as simple as possible. My next don't, don't. Number four is very, it really like links onto that, and it's very similar to this in the sense of don't ask them for too much information or excessive information to get the lead magnet. This. The caveat for this is if you're doing a quiz, obviously if you're doing a quiz, you're asking for more information, or if you're doing a survey, you're asking for more information. But people expect to give lots of information on that. What they don't expect is when you say, do you want this download that you basically say to people, can I have your name, your address, your email, your phone number, your. Two sides, like literally keep it so simple. In most cases, the only things I ask for are your name and your email, nothing else, because again, the more you ask for things from people, the less likely they are to do it. If you're keeping it simple, keeping it really clear, the process is clear, you are going to have less people drop off that process. The final don't for your lead [00:10:00] magnets is don't give it a boring title. Okay? I talk about sexy titles all the time, and this is so important. You have got to attract me to want to download the thing, so make it sound enticing, make it sound interesting, make it sound something that I'm going to want, that something that I'm like, oh, this sounds awesome. I definitely want this thing. Sexy title. Obviously, we live in the world of chat GPT and Claude. Ask them to make it sound enticing. Tell them what it is and say, can you create me a title that makes people want to download it? Okay, those are my don'ts. Now onto the dos. Do make your Lead magnet really good. What I mean by that is, I know our initial idea is to get people on our email list, but what are they going to feel like if they have downloaded something? Yes, tick, you've got the on your email list, but the thing that they downloaded was absolutely pants. They're not going to [00:11:00] see you in a very good light. They're not gonna think this person's great. They're not gonna think, wow, look at the content they've given me. What else might they have? So do make it really good, like. Give them some actual thing that is gonna help them in their business or help them right now with the problem they've got and wow them. So sometimes when people get worried about giving too much, which is why this is, I know my first don't, was don't give them too much. But when they talk about giving them too much, they worry about, well, why would someone buy my stuff? But honestly, in most cases, you need to give them something good so they know you are good. Okay. Do number two, meet them where they're at. Now I'm not gonna talk to you about creating your perfect customer profile. 'cause I know when every time I mention that, like. Mentally, people in their heads are yawning. So I'm not gonna talk about that. I'm going to assume you know who your customer is, and I'm going to say that you need to meet them where they're at. And what I mean by this is a couple of [00:12:00] things. Firstly, it really helps you understand where they're at in terms of what product you can offer them. So let's say you have a product where I used to have a product where I would help you get started building your email list. And now I predominantly focus on growing. So growing your visibility, growing your email list. Let's say I had two lead magnets. Lead magnet number one was how to start an email list, which I think I still do actually have, and it lead magnet number two was how to grow your email list. I am meeting my customers where they're at, and not only am I meeting them where they're at, IE, either they don't have a list or they do however. I am also understanding where they are in their journey, so I know what to offer them next. Because let's say you've just started an email list and I'm going, Hey, to maximize, or like. No, sorry. Let's say I'm focusing on, uh, growing your email list and you don't even have one, then I'm not meeting you where you are at. So meet your customer where they're at. A really good example of this [00:13:00] is a few years back I used to have a product called Build My List, and I walked people through how to create an email list. It was during lockdown. And one of my clients, one of my students on that program was a, basically, she had a membership or a, a community for a local area. And they would often talk about, you know, what restaurants were opening, what activities were going on. And the problem was her current audience, like the thing that they were helping with, they couldn't do because it was lockdown. So she decided to create a lead magnet that was all about like the best party ideas for an online or for a, you know, virtual birthday party or whatever it was. And she was meeting them where they were at at that point, the problem that they had at that time. Now, obviously the idea is that she would go back to her normal content when the world opened up, which she did, but at that point, there was no point in her creating a lead magnet for the best five restaurants to go and visit in a particular area. If. You couldn't do that. Okay, number [00:14:00] three, do. Number three, do fix the problem, a pain, and basically give them the transformation that they are looking for. I know that with a lead magnet, you're not going to be able to straight up change their world in one lead magnet, and obviously that's what your product and service does. However. It needs to help them with something they're struggling with. And if you are struggling to think, what should I do, a lead magnet about? What are you asked all the time? What is the question that you end up answering all the time? What do you keep saying over and over and over again to your customers? That's what you wanna create A lead magnet in the lead magnet has to be of some kind of benefit. So it either needs to help them with a pain or a problem, or help them with their transformation if it's not doing either of those things. The chances are they're not gonna download it. So ask yourself, what is my customer struggling with? What do they need help with? Go back to the point number two, with meeting them where they're at [00:15:00] now, and what can you create where you help them with something. Number four, make sure that it's easy to consume. Now, what I mean by that is I talked before about don't make it too complicated to get it, but what I mean by easy to consume is make it simple and attractive. The actual thing you're giving away. For instance, let's say you are doing a video download or something, or you are doing some kind of video for a lead magnet. Don't make them go to one page, then another page. Then click on this thing to watch this video over here. That's, that's not easy to consume if you're doing a PDF Don't have five pages of. This is why I'm so wonderful. Or this is my story, or this is background information to X, Y, Z. No, just tell them the thing. So I literally use, in the templates that I give away in Grow Launch Sale, I literally give them the template for the first page is the, this is your introduction. [00:16:00] Hi, thank you for downloading my lead magnet or whatever. You'd never use the word lead magnet, obviously, although I might. Because my audience understand what it is, but you know, this is a brief intro and then you go straight into the content because otherwise they're gonna be like, yeah, great, I didn't want this. I downloaded it to find out the thing. So do number four is make it easy to consume and then do, number five is set the stage for your product or service. For instance, I could do a lead magnet all about a physical product, right? I could do a lead magnet that is how to do lead magnets for physical products. 'cause there are ways to do lead magnets for physical products. However, I sell nothing to do with physical products. I have no services that help people with physical products. Therefore, that lead magnet would be pointless because it doesn't lead to anything. It doesn't go to something else...

Mastering Authentic Personal Branding Through Powerful Photos with Vicki Knights

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I dived deep with Vicki Knights, a pro photographer and positive psychology expert, about the challenges business owners face with photography and personal branding. We talk about why so many people feel uncomfortable in front of the camera and how to overcome that to look authentic and confident in photos. Vicki shares some great tips on preparing for a photoshoot, feeling at ease on camera, and using photos to boost your personal brand. We also touch on why investing in professional photography matters, how your appearance impacts how your business is seen, and Vicki's unique career blending photography with visibility coaching. This one's perfect for coaches, course creators, and anyone looking to level up their personal brand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Overcome Camera Shyness: Learn how to feel more confident and authentic in photos, so you can showcase your true self for your brand.

Invest in Professional Photography: Professional photos are worth the investment because they can significantly impact how your business is perceived and help build a stronger personal brand.

Leverage Photography for Visibility: Use photos strategically to enhance your personal branding and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Vicki on LinkedIn, Website, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Whether we like it or not, as business owners, we have a personal brand and part of that personal brand is showing up and showing our face. And one of the ways in which we do that is through having our photographs taken and posting images of ourselves, whether it's on our website, whether it's on social media. But why is it that so many of us hate having our photo taken and how can we get over that to make sure that we're showing up authentically and with the confidence that we have in our business, but in our photos today, we are talking all about that with the amazing photographer and positive psychology practitioner, Vicki Knights. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a [00:01:00] business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, And are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing . As always, I hope you are doing well. I have to say I am recording this and the sun is shining and the sky is blue and it just makes me feel, so flippin happy and the sooner I can get out into my garden again, if you don't follow me on Instagram then and you're interested in a bit of vegetable growing and baking, you might want to follow me over there because that's what I do when I'm not helping people with [00:02:00] launches and the fact that the sun is shining and spring is coming, it makes me feel so, so happy. Today, we are talking about something that I think lots of people might hate, and I have learned to love. Today, we are talking about photography and having our photos taken, and being confident on camera, showing up authentically, and how to Be willing to show our faces because at the end of the day, if you're listening to this, I am fairly confident that whether you think you are or not, you're a personal brand, everyone is a personal brand to some degree. I've been watching a lot of Daniel Preece's content, and he talks about the fact of. how personal brands are way more powerful than companies. If you look at someone like Virgin, he gives this as an example, how Richard Branson has way more followers than any of his Virgin companies. And he gives a ton of different examples. And it was so prevalent in today's conversation, the fact of we do need to show our face and we need to understand that we [00:03:00] are a personal brand. And today I'm talking with the very lovely Vicki Knights. Vicki is a visible strategist with a positive psychology practitioner and is one of the UK's leading branding photographers. Vicki uses photography and positive psychology to help business owners to be seen and show up with joyful confidence. She has photographed over a thousand female business owners across the globe over the last 15 years, and her work has been featured internationally in publications like Vanity Fair, Forbes, The Sunday Times, and Cosmopolitan. Vicki's photography is amazing. Now, I have never had a photo shoot with Vicki. I would like to have a photo shoot with Vicki, and the reason I haven't is because she lives quite far away from where I am, and I just haven't found the time to free up a few days in my diary to be able to go somewhere, for a photo shoot. The photo shoots that I have are either in my house or sometimes when I go to the States and stay with my lovely friend Mary, who has a beautiful house, [00:04:00] I have photos done with her. She doesn't do them. We have a photographer and someone come in. So I just haven't got round to having some photos done with Vicki, but I want to because she is excellent. So that's your first job today to go and follow Vicki on Instagram if you don't already, because her photo shoots are just awesome. But we talk about having photo shoots and having photos taken and I say pretty early on that actually, I don't mind it. I quite like it now. I never used to, that was never something that I loved, but I got used to it. But one of the things that always worried me was how do we show up authentically? Well, also trying to have a really good photo shoot and I tell a story about how I am with my photographer and how I can turn it on really quickly in terms of getting some good photos and how authentic does that actually feel and how authentic is having your hair done and your makeup done and showing up and being positioned potentially. So we talk about all of that and how Vicki ensures that her customers and people who work with her are [00:05:00] comfortable and do shop as their authentic selves. She also talks about how to feel confident on camera because it's not something, and I think as women as well, it's not something that we're used to doing. Like. Other than the business friends that I have, my friends and family who are nothing to do with business, none of them have had a photo shoot. And it feels like a very weird and bizarre thing to do when you think about it, when you're not in business. And we talk about this as well. And we talk about showing up and feeling confident and all of that good stuff. So I think if you are a woman in business in particular, you are going to find this conversation really, really helpful. And if you. need a photo shoot, want to photo shoot, and you're about to have one, then this is definitely going to help you show up with confidence and have your best photos yet. Okay. Without further ado, here is the very lovely Vicki. Vicki, welcome to the podcast. Vicki: Thank you. I'm looking forward to an opportunity to talk to you again. Teresa: Me too. I came on your podcast, didn't I? This is quite some time [00:06:00] ago. Vicki: Last year. You were one of my first guests, actually. So it must have been last April or May. So yeah, nearly a year. Teresa: And it was one of the first and very few episodes that I've done where I talked about the journey I'd been through and everything that happened. And not that I don't intend to talk about that, but just unless someone says, can we talk about it? I don't intend to bring it up, but it was really, it was a lovely episode. And I actually re listened to it. Is that sad? Do you ever do that? Vicki: Yeah. Especially if I've been a guest on someone else's, you want to make sure that you haven't made a complete idiot of yourself. I always think. Teresa: Well, yeah. Sometimes I wish I didn't re listen to some, but no, I did re listen to that one because it got such good feedback and, and your audience said really nice stuff as well. So it was like, okay, let me, let me have a listen to what I actually said. Cause also I think sometimes during a podcast, you forget. what you've actually said and where this conversation went. Vicki: So, how was it listening back? Okay. Teresa: It was good. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was good. I'm very, I am very vulnerable, [00:07:00] which is one of the things that we're going to talk about in terms of like showing up authentic and vulnerable and all that sort of stuff. And I think that's okay. I like that. I like that. I am very authentic and vulnerable and happy to share and all that. So yeah, I was happy with how it came out. I thought you were great. Vicki: You were fantastic. And I had such great feedback about that. It was such a, I knew when I started the podcast, I wanted you to be one of my very first guests. So I'm very pleased you said yes, but I thought you were fantastic. Teresa: Thank you. I appreciate that. So you, Vicki, are a photographer and a mighty fine one at that. You, On my list of people I would like to go and have a photo shoot with because your stuff is brilliant and very much like how, how I like seeing photos and how I like them styled. But I suspect that I am probably very different from most people that you will photograph [00:08:00] because I have learned to love. having my photos taken. That's so good to hear. This is not something that you deal with on the regular, I would imagine. Vicki: Occasionally it happens. And actually, because I've been doing this for so long, I have a lot of clients come back to me. And so they know that they like it now. It's always the ones that I am photographing for the first time that just Have this preconceived opinion. They're going to eat it. And then it doesn't feel like them. And then afterwards they're like, Oh, we actually really enjoyed that. It's quite addictive. I want to book another one in. So yeah, I do get it from my regular clients, but yes, you're right. First time round, people are so nervous about it. And I would say well over 90 percent of the people I photograph first time around just say, I hate the camera. Camera hates me. I don't look like the women on your website. I'm not photogenic. I hear all of that all the time. Teresa: And how do you deal with that? Vicki: So how do I deal with it? Well, first of all, it's quite common that we would feel that way. If you think about all the conditioning we have through our lives, [00:09:00] right. Of like, not showing off and not getting too big for our boots. Suddenly actually booking a professional photo shoot feels a bit like, a lot of people just say, this doesn't feel like me at all. Like booking this is, is a really brave thing for me to do. So I think that's the first thing to just think. Actually, that's perfectly normal that we would feel like that. And I think also the other thing is, and I don't know about you, but this has happened to me quite a few times, is we see an unflattering snap of ourselves, probably on a night out that a friend might've shot, you know, when you think, Oh, I look really good in that dress. Suddenly see them and you're like, Oh my. Teresa: That's me on stages. That's me when I speak on a stage because none of them are flattering. Normally I look like I'm gurning and I talk with my hands. So my hands are doing weird things. And exactly what you said, I'll see an outfit and go, Oh, that's not what I thought that looked like. Vicki: Yeah, exactly. And I can say it's really difficult to take a great photo of someone on stage because you're generally shooting from underneath as well. Which is why I don't, I don't photograph [00:10:00] events. I did a few and then I don't do them anymore because I want people to see their photos and feel amazing, rather than me having to shoot in conditions that I don't wanna be shooting in that I know they're not gonna love because I'm shooting in bad light from underneath their like you say, like, yeah, it's just difficult to get a good shot. So yeah, that's what, and I know when I look at a photo of me, it happened recently, and I was like, oh no, that is just awful. And I was sh even though I know I can look at that and know why. It's an unflattering photo because the lighting's wrong. I know where they were shooting from and everything else. But I saw it's like showing my husband and like one of my mates going, does this, is this actually what I look like? And they were like, no, that looks like you with an ugly filter on. So I knew it wasn't that, but you'd still have a moment of going, Oh no, is this actually how people see me? So quite often when people come to me and they say, I'm really unphotogenic. It's because they've seen those snaps of them that are really unflattering. So once they actually get in front of my camera and see themselves [00:11:00] through my eyes, through, you know, my years of experience, then they go, Oh my God, I've not, I literally had someone last week say to me, I have not had a photo of myself this good since the nineties. She said, I'm not kidding. I managed to get, you know, a PR shoot one day. I managed to get in front of the photographer's lens in the nineties. I haven't liked any photos since then. And that's just such an amazing feeling. And I think the way around it as well is. Well, one thing is what actually, one thing I did want to talk about is the fact that we, what we see when we see, when someone takes a photograph of us is not what we see in the mirror. So we are seeing a flipped version of ourself. So often what happens is people are so used to seeing themselves in the mirror. Also selfies, flip it, you're seeing a mirror version of yourself. So then when you actually see a photo, maybe that your friend's taken, you're like. Oh my God, my face looks really weird. If you've ever seen a video of yourself, obviously that's then flipped. The right way. Even on Zoom, we're mirrored. We've got our mirror image so I can touch my hair and know which way it's going. So it's, yeah, when we sit the right [00:12:00] way, which is how people, how the world sees us, we're like, I don't look right. And yet, to everyone else, they're like, now they're seeing a flipped version of us. So it's almost like, I always say to people, try and do a bit of exposure therapy. So take photos of yourself and flip it and then look at it. Take a video of yourself and flip it and look at the flip video of you, which is the correct video of you. Just so you can get used to it and you can see it because we like what we see the most. It's that whole mirror exposure effect. So what we see the most, we like more. So just, it's like listening to your voice. I bet the first time you listen to your voice, same as me, you go, Oh no. And then the more you hear it, like I listen to my podcast all the time. I'm now used to it. You just, I don't love it, but you get used to it, don't you? Teresa: Totally. And I think there is this element of that, like you said, exposure therapy of the more you do it, the more. you have no choice but to just get on with it and like it and, and actually. not hate it and not hate the result either. I listen to, I don't actually listen to my own [00:13:00] podcast at all really, but on occasions like this morning when I was recording a solo episode, I kind of edit a little bit as I go, so I might mess up and I'll swear on it. And to save Phil, my lovely editor's ears, I will go back, re listen, delete that bit and carry on. And although he might, it might be very entertaining for him if I left it in, but Therefore, I don't mind hearing my own voice and I listen, and my stepchildren laugh at me because they'll be like, just listen to yourself again, T, as if, you know, all they ever see on my screen is me looking at myself, listening to myself, like as if I've got this massive ego and it's like, you kind of just have to get used to it. Vicki: Well, sometimes it's exactly the same thing to me, because sometimes, you know, you're engaging with people on your own reel kind of thing, so I'm on Instagram. comment, you know, replying to comments and stuff. It's like looking at your own stuff on Instagram again, mama. Yes. Teresa: Yeah. What of it? Vicki: I'm a complete narcissist. Teresa: So let's just touch on that in the fact of like, [00:14:00] it is a weird concept and You've been doing this for, did I read, 15 years you've been in photography? Vicki: Yeah, over 16 years, long time. Teresa: So when you started, brand photography was probably not a thing. Vicki: No, it wasn't at all. So I started as a family photographer and used to do headshot photography, we called it back then, on the side. Yeah, it's a couple of years into my business. I start, I was in...

Mastering Email Onboarding: Turn Subscribers into Customers

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talk about why having an onboarding sequence is key to turning new subscribers into paying customers. I walk you through a simple 4-email sequence: delivering the lead magnet, introducing yourself, offering more value, and finally, introducing your product or service. I also share my personal swipe files and examples, focusing on keeping things simple and building a personal connection. Plus, I cover the tech side of automating these emails and managing subscriber tags. This episode is great for business owners and marketers who want to improve their email onboarding process and grow their customer base. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

A Simple 4-Step Email Sequence: To convert new subscribers into customers, focus on a clear, easy-to-follow email sequence—delivering the lead magnet, introducing yourself, providing extra value, and then introducing your product or service.
Personal Connection is Key: Keep your emails personal and relatable to build trust and make your subscribers feel more connected to you and your brand.
Automate for Efficiency: Set up automated emails and manage subscriber tags to streamline your onboarding process, saving time while nurturing relationships with new subscribers.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Ever wondered how to turn someone who just downloaded your lead magnet into a customer? Well, in today's episode of the podcast, I am sharing why having an onboarding sequence is so important and also the essential four emails that you need to warm up your new subscriber, help them further, and then introduce your offer. I even give you examples of what to write in these emails. If you are struggling with your onboarding, this is the episode for you. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream. business podcast. How are you doing today? Okay. We are 394 episodes in. We are just seven episodes away from 400 episodes of this podcast, which is. wild. And if you have listened for a while or even to many more than just one or two episodes, I want to give you a humongous thank you. I love doing the podcast. I find it so awesome when someone says, I listened to your episode or I listened to your podcast and I look at my stats and see all these numbers of people [00:02:00">00:02:00] who download it and listen to it. And it just seems crazy to me that there are all these people out there listening to my voice. So I appreciate you so very much. And I want to ask a favor. Now I should be planning something for my 400th episode. And if you've got any ideas, please come and DM me. I would love to hear them. However, what I would really love. is to get some more reviews on the podcast. So if you have never reviewed my podcast, I would appreciate it so hugely if you could go to wherever you're listening to this, Apple or Spotify or whatever you might be, and go and give me a five star review and tell me what you liked about it. Was there a particular episode that you enjoyed? Do you like my very relaxed, slightly unprofessional style? What is it that you're getting from it? Why should someone else go and listen to this podcast? Like I said, I would massively appreciate it if you would do that for me. And I know not only it helps me as a podcaster, but also [00:03:00">00:03:00] hopefully helps other people because the reason I do the podcast is it's a free resource. It takes a lot of work. It costs money. It's probably the, the most consistent and hardest thing I have to do in my business. And it involves the team and it's like a whole big effort and therefore the more people that listen, the bigger impact we have. So I really, really appreciate you doing that. Okay. So today we're going to talk quite specifically, you know, Sometimes after 400 episodes, I think, what on earth can I talk about? But the truth is, there is still so much I can share. And not only that, but after 400 episodes or nearly 400 episodes, I, my thoughts and things have changed and the industry has changed and what's working now has changed. So actually for me. probably stuff I talked about many, many, many years ago might have changed or might not be the same advice as I would give today. I know my, I know I have definitely changed [00:04:00">00:04:00] beyond recognition and like I said, some of the things I said back in the day, I maybe wouldn't stand by now, which is why I guess it's good that the podcast keeps going. So one of the things I want to talk about today is quite specific, but it's on I'm The whole bringing your audience on, because as we know, there are three main areas to having an online business. It's growing your audience, launching your online thing and selling it. Okay. That is the thing that's going to bring you in the money, those three activities. And that's why my course grow, launch, sell focuses around those three things. I say course, it is more of a program. You, you get to work with me for six months and it's a very small numbers. I keep it tight because I'm one of those people who likes to know who I'm talking to and literally has conversations with every single person in the program. So The program is focused around those three areas. And as part of that area, the very first one is the grow. And if I could say one thing for you to do in your business, it's [00:05:00">00:05:00] growing your audience, that would make the biggest difference. You can sell something not massively effectively, but if you have an audience, you could still sell some. You. You could sell the best way you could possibly sell, but if you don't have an audience, you're not going to sell anything. So that grow part is so, so crucial. And within that, there's lots of different things as we know, cause I've talked about it for a while, but one of the key things is getting people on your email list, because we're not just talking about growing an Instagram following or a LinkedIn following, we want to get them onto our email list. Because as we know, if we've been in this game for a while, the algorithm changes, people's viewing habits change, they change the platform, you now have to do reels or whatever it is. So getting them on your email list means that that data belongs to you. You are not marketing on borrowed ground, which is what we're doing when we're marketing on social media. They don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing social media. It's brilliant. I have lots of social media people in my world who work with me to grow their businesses. [00:06:00">00:06:00] And it's a great tool and believe me, like back in the day when I started marketing 20 plus years ago, I know terrifying, social media didn't exist. It wasn't even a thing. People didn't even need websites. So it is an amazing tool that basically has leveled the playing field more than anything else. In fact, I don't think I ever talk about it on the podcast, but did you know, I did a TEDx and my TEDx was about how social media has changed the marketing landscape. Now, this was a while back because I did that, oh gosh, I can't even think how many years ago now, probably six, seven, maybe more, but I'm going to link to it in the show notes. So if you want to go and have a look at that TEDx, it's on the TED stuff, it's on YouTube under the TEDx thing. So yeah, search my name and TEDx and you'll find it, but we will put a link to it in the show notes. So yeah, social media really did change the marketing, you know, platform in terms of like the playing field, sorry. In terms of like what is available to small businesses compared to the marketing I did when I first started, which was if you had a [00:07:00">00:07:00] big ass marketing budget, you could do marketing. So I'm not dismissing social media. It's brilliant, but we want people to come and join our email list. And when people join our email list, we have the job of loving them and bringing them into our world. And one of the areas I want to focus on today or the area I want to focus on today is that onboarding process. Is that what do we do when someone initially opts in to our emails to onboard them, to get them engaged and also warm them up to them potentially buying something from us? Okay. So I am going to take you through the onboarding emails and the process that I use and I teach when you're doing a lead magnet. Obviously, hopefully, you know, by now what lead magnet is, but just as a quick heads up, if you're new, a lead magnet is something that you're offering to people for free in order for them to give you their email [00:08:00">00:08:00] address. So for instance, I have a ton of them as you would imagine, but if you are looking at launching and you were to go to. tereseaethewaring. com forward slash launch, or you were looking at list building and you were to go to tereseaethewaring. com forward slash list building, you would find lead magnets that basically will help you with those two things. And in return, I'm asking for your email address. But then once you sign up, how do I communicate to you and have a conversation with you that basically introduces who I am, what I do, kind of starts building that relationship and then potentially brings you to a product? It doesn't always have to, by the way, but some cases it will. So when I'm talking about an onboarding sequence, that's what I'm talking about in very simple terms. It is a set of emails that you send that are automated, i. e. you set it up and then you don't need to worry about it. It just gets sent every time someone opts in over a [00:09:00">00:09:00] set period of time, which introduces them. And then once they've gone through that onboarding, they will then be put into the main emails. And These are what I call broadcast emails, not just I call them, lots of people call them broadcast emails. And those broadcast emails are the ones that you send regularly. So for me, I send an email every Monday, every Thursday. If I'm in a launch mode, if I'm promoting something, then I will email a lot more than that. I used to be very fearful of that. I didn't like it. I didn't want to bother people. And now I've got over that. We can talk about that on another episode. Actually, can I interrupt this just as a side to say, if you have any ideas of what you want me to talk about on the podcast, episodes that you would find super helpful, then please come and DM me. Come and DM me over on Instagram. That is my favorite. That is where I am the most. Just search Teresa Heath Warren. You'll find me over there. And come and let me know if there's a topic, a subject, there's something you don't [00:10:00">00:10:00] understand, you want me to talk through. I will happily do that. Just let me know. Okay. So going back to the onboarding sequence. So the onboarding sequence is literally just a set of emails that are going out. I want to talk you through a very simple onboarding sequence that will get you started and will help you onboard these people so that they know who you are and what you do and potentially lead to a sale if you want it to, but you don't have to, I'm going to talk you through what to put in each email and then hopefully you can use this to set up a very simple onboarding because normally what happens or what can happen is that people just say, here's the thing that you asked for and then that's the only email they send. So I'm going to talk you through the emails in particular, and then I'll just touch on briefly, kind of a bit of the automation. Obviously, this will depend on what system you're using, but let's talk about those emails first. The first thing I should say is there is a lot of differing opinion out there. So take what I'm [00:11:00">00:11:00] saying. And if it works and helps use it, there are lots of people who will do like, there are some people who do onboarding sequences of like 90 days or 50 emails. That is not what I'm teaching here. I am teaching you a really nice, simple onboarding thing that you can use today that will introduce you what you do and hopefully start to warm them up to become a potential client. Okay, very first email that gets sent immediately. So when you are actually setting this up in whatever email system you're using, you want to select immediate as the timeframe, not a day, not one day, not whatever. So the first email that goes out immediately is the actual email that delivers the lead magnet. And the only objective of this email is to deliver the lead magnet. That's it. Nothing else. One of my main aims with emails is to give you one thing to do, because when you [00:12:00">00:12:00] give people choice, it gets confusing and then you don't get them to do anything. So when someone comes to me and says, which of these three things should I do, or I want to include all these three things, I say to them, if you wanted and wanted that person to take one action, which of those actions would it be, that's the thing to include. So the aim of email one that goes immediately is just to deliver the thing. What I'm going to do is I'm going to briefly talk you through a little bit of the copy that I use as well, just to give you an idea of what you can include on this. Also, again, as a side, I offer all of these templates and all of these swipe files and so many swipe files in the Grow Launch Sell program. There is a wait list for the Grow Launch Sell program. It's not currently open. If you go to teresaheathwearing. com forward slash GLS, then you can get on the wait list there. Okay. So email one, like I said, the aim of this email is just to deliver the lead [00:13:00">00:13:00] magnet. Don't include anything else. So I would use a title like here is your whatever it is they've opted in for. So for instance, if you were offering a lead magnet of a recipe guide, you would put here is your recipe guide. Then it would basically say something simple like welcome and thank you for requesting my whatever it was. I really hope you find it useful. Click here to download. I look forward to seeing what you think. And then basically I tell them that I will be in touch in a few days time. So one of the other things that people get worried about is bombarding people, bothering people. I think as long as you manage people's expectations. That's fine. If you tell them I'm going to be in touch in a few days time, be in touch in a few days time, that becomes irritating when you a don't do the thing or if you don't tell them and then you start emailing them every other minute. Email number one, just deliver the thing. The only link in there should be to download the thing that they've asked for. Don't try and say come and see me on [00:14:00">00:14:00] insta. Don't try and do anything else. Just give them the thing because that is what they've asked for. That one thing. So super simple, email one is just delivering the thing. Email two, which I tend to do on day two. So if you imagine day zero is when you've delivered and day two is the next email. So it's two days later. So I'm going to keep saying the number of days as in when we start count at zero. On day two, the aim of this email is to show the reader that you understand them and also to introduce you and help them know what makes you different from someone else. For me, I use this email to really kind of say to people, look, this is who I am. This is what, you know, why you want to listen to me and that sort of thing. So, like I said, understand the situation and also to introduce you. This is the kind of swipe that I include for the grow, launch, sell. So in this email that goes on day two, I use the title. Let's get to know each other a bit better. [00:15:00">00:15:00] And then I say, sometimes emails feel so impersonal. Don't you think first name, but as you'll start to discover, I like to see them as a two way communication. Can't even say the word with my amazing community. And I actively encourage you to email me back when you feel like it, but I understand that it might seem a bit odd as we don't know much about each other yet. I'll start. So this is the bit where you include who you are, some fun facts, something interesting, and your USP, and then I encourage them to reply and tell me about them. Now personally, and again, this is me and my business, I reply to all of those emails, so they all come into my inbox. The team don't touch them. They know that those are ones I replied to. It might take me a couple of days, but I will get back to anyone that personally emails me into my inbox off one of my emails, because when I wrote this swipe copy, I genuinely believe that email is a two way conversation and it is part of a community. So like I said, email too, is to show them that you understand, [00:16:00">

The Truth About Marketing: Long-Term Success vs. Quick Fixes with Caroline Cox

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I chatted with Caroline Cox from Caroline Cox Marketing, a boutique agency in Nottingham, England. With over 20 years of combined marketing experience, we got real about what marketing is (and isn’t), busting the myth that it’s a quick fix for business success. Caroline shares her journey—from working in marketing to launching her own business while raising a young family—and how her story mirrors mine in many ways. We talked about why long-term strategies matter more than quick wins, the challenges of personal branding, and the ups and downs of running a business while balancing family life. Packed with honest insights and useful takeaways, this episode is perfect for business owners, marketers, and anyone trying to juggle entrepreneurship and family.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Marketing is a long game – There’s no overnight success. Sustainable business growth comes from consistent, long-term strategies, not quick-fix tactics.

Personal branding is powerful but challenging – Standing out in the marketing industry requires authenticity, visibility, and confidence, which can feel overwhelming but is crucial for success.
Balancing business and family is tough—but doable – Caroline shares how she manages entrepreneurship while raising a young family, proving that with the right mindset and strategy, you don’t have to choose between the two.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Caroline Cox on Facebook, Instagram, Website or LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Marketing is often seen as the magic bullet that is going to be the answer to all of your prayers, but can we really do something in marketing and then suddenly the sales flow in or does it take a bit more strategy and a bit more time than that? In today's episode, I'm speaking with a marketer of 20 something years who shares with us what marketing should really look like in your business. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. On today's episode, I interview someone who's been in my world for a while. It's funny, I always talk about people being in my world and when I set up the community aspect for my one to one people, my accelerator people, and for people who are buying Grow, Launch, Sell, the community is called Tease World because the team decided that That was a cool name, given that I constantly talk about people being in my world, but today's guest really has been in my world for quite some time. Today, I'm interviewing the very lovely Caroline Cox. Caroline is the owner of Caroline Cox Marketing, a boutique marketing agency that is based. near, I don't know, it's in Nottingham, but basically in the middle of England. [00:02:00] And Caroline has been working with me for years and years and years as a member of my membership. And it has been so amazing to see how her business has changed, how she's changed, and also to have a fellow marketeer to talk to because. Her story is really similar to mine in the sense of she was working in marketing and dad 15 years in it, had done her degree in it, and then basically decided to start her own business when her children were little. So again, really similar to the story that I had. And in today's episode, we have a really great conversation about marketing in general and what we should be doing. When we think about marketing our businesses and showing up to market our businesses, we also have a really interesting and open discussion about what marketing isn't. And sometimes in this very fast paced world that we live in, we actually end up thinking that marketing is the answer to everything and it isn't [00:03:00] always. So we have a really cool discussion around that. And then we finally finish off with talking about how she manages her business with a small young family. So she has three children, two of which are twins, which honestly it's like a bonus child. If you think I'm having another one and you end up with a. third one. But yeah, so we have a chat about that as well. It's a really lovely conversation. And Caroline is honestly one of the nicest people in the world. So I think you're going to get lots from today's episode. So without further ado, here's the lovely Caroline. Caroline, I am so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Caroline: So excited to be on your podcast, Teresa. Teresa: so you have been in my world a long time. which is ace. And there's something Caroline knows is that every time I speak to her, it's like going home. It's really odd. And there's like a tiny bit of family connection. So Caroline's from near Nottingham in the UK, and I have some family. And one of my cousins, who is probably my favorite cousin lives in Nottingham and has a Nottingham accent. Not that I'm massively close to cousins, but [00:04:00] so whenever I have Caroline, in my world, it's like, ah, it's like coming home. Caroline: Well, whenever Teresa mentions it, it makes me want to sit up a little bit more and I think, oh, am I being a little bit No, Teresa: not at all. Not at all. So if you're American listening to this, then obviously, weirdly, how distance wise, how far are we from each other? About an hour and a half, maybe two hours? Yeah, I keep meaning to just double check that, but I think it is that. And yet we sound so very different, like the accent is wildly different, which I love anyway. Anyway, so apart from I love having Caroline in my world, and she's been a long time, and her accent makes me somehow feel like home. Um, Caroline is joining me today because Caroline works in marketing and like all of us runs a business with a family and all that good stuff. And two reasons actually why I've had Caroline on is one, I want to talk about that and the whole running a business and being a mom and all of that. And I think we'd have a really good, [00:05:00] honest conversation about that. The other reason I wanted Caroline on is from a selfish coach point of view, because I've been working with Caroline on getting her visibility up, which is something that if you guys listen to the podcast, you'll know I talk about a lot. And I said to her. With people in my world, I will say to them, why haven't you asked me? So I would love to start on that bit in particular, because when you work in marketing, people will assume you are very comfortable being very visible and putting yourself out there and, and marketing yourself. Talk to me about that visibility challenge and putting yourself out there and what was going through your head as we were doing all that. Caroline: I think the hardest find is that I have with personal branding, that's a big buzzword at the moment, is personal branding, is, is that you put, you are literally putting yourself out there. I can put myself behind brands, behind companies, and I [00:06:00] am the biggest cheerleader and I will pinpoint things that they don't see and I'll be like, that is your selling point. But to do it for myself, I find it really difficult. I find it really difficult. And I launched this business when the babies were like six months old and like I'm coming into year six now. And I'm still not sure where I am. It's that transition between mom, business woman, and so much has happened. But this year. I've given myself, well, you've given me the challenge of visibility and I need to get that personal brand out and just stop caring about what people think or stop caring about perfection. Just make it happen. Teresa: Yeah. And one of the things that you said that was really interesting is prior to starting your business, which you started when you had your children, you were totally out there doing all the stuff, showing your face. Why do you think? What's changed? Why is this now so much harder? Caroline: I know, before, before, the job that I did before, I was [00:07:00] literally like the networking queen. And I would connect businesses together and I'd, I'd give them platforms, you know, we'd run a business awards and things. And then I think it was always a dream of mine to launch a marketing company. Um, and then I had my sort of now or never, and I just got my head down and just launched the business, but then I just didn't know how to project. myself. And then I think during those six years, I've gone through so many different growth stages. And I was listening to a podcast yesterday, Rachel Heisler, I love. And she said, you're allowed to change. And I think that's what's happened to me is. I'm allowing myself now to change and I'm not thinking about, you know, the clients that I've had from, from day one, some people I've outgrown and they don't want you to change. When I've looked back, they don't want you to change. And that sort of knocks you sort of confidence in a way. So it's, [00:08:00] it's a bit of confusion there. Whereas now. I've sort of found myself in a new era where I'm feeling more confident and, you know, I've got proven track record and the clients that I've got on board now, you know, they, they wouldn't care if, if I'm doing certain like presentations or being out there, et cetera, cause they knew, know who I am. So I feel like I'm sort of in this. different sort of growth stage where I'm more comfortable to put myself out there. Maybe it's cause I have got the credibility and the proven track record now. You know, when you just start a night, it's sort of finding your feet and, and finding your sort of target market. And I feel like I've found that niche now. Teresa: But you, what was your, You were doing marketing before you started your business, weren't you? Caroline: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, an old uni friend said to me not so long ago, she, she lives in Dubai now. And then when we met up, you know, catching up on everything. And she was like, you've literally just done marketing. Like you did it at uni. And like all of my friends, like they were off in like different careers and stuff. She's like, You've [00:09:00] just stuck to it. And I was like, I don't know. I know it sounds pretty boring when you say it like that, but it's, it's just such a passion man. Like when I started out, it was all very much what's classed as traditional marketing, you know, media and everything like that. I've been through the transitions and I'm still constantly, I mean, it's, it's never moved as fastly as within the last five years. God, you've got to hold on tight. You've got to know your stuff more so than what it was in the 15 years prior to that. Um, and it's just, it's just something I like to light people up. I love it when we get results. And you know, when you're dealing with small businesses and they can really feel the results of what you're doing, that really does light me up and that sort of keeps me going. And that, that's sort of where I've always been with, with the roles that I've done, just wanting to sort of shed the light on. on people's qualities and just help them grow. Teresa: To me it's so fascinating that, and you and I are really similar in the sense of like, we both did [00:10:00] degrees in marketing, we both were doing marketing. How long were you in marketing before you started your own business? Caroline: Um, about 15 years. Teresa: Okay. So I was 10 and then started mine and I'm 11 years this year and also you're six. So, but really similar. And yet, and I can totally feel this with myself and what I've done. You said that you obviously were in marketing for 15 years and you're only now getting comfortable showing your face because you feel like now you have the credibility. Like. Isn't that wild that 15 years in marketing, you were confident, you were happy, you showed up, you did all the things, you then started your own business and you needed to wait for some credibility to actually go, look, I know what I'm talking about. Caroline: I know. I know. It's crazy. And you know what? I get a lot of comments. And at first, when I launched the business, I got a lot of people saying. Wow, you're brave. And I took that the wrong way to begin [00:11:00] with. And I was like, I took it as a bit of an insult. And then I'm sort of reflecting, you know, you get to that age where you are sort of like the grown up in certain situations. Teresa: I hate it. Caroline: I know. It sounds like some younger lady sort of asking me for advice and things. And I'm like, Is it because of my age or is it because of my experience? And then it's sort of, look at you as today. And then I think it's quite important to sort of paint the picture of how you have got there and what sort of mindset tools and, you know, network you've got that's, that's got you there. And I went, I sort of went back to that wording of, Gosh, you're brave. And somebody else said it to me quite recently. And I thought, no, actually I am brave. It is really brave to step away from the corporate world, that sort of security, that sort of team, that network, and just completely step out. [00:12:00] on your own. And again, then I sort of then was like, I was confused. I thought you're brave enough to do this and you're good enough to have kept it running for six years. And during that time, the little ones, the COVID, et cetera, I thought now it's time to sort of put your big gill pants on. I've been told about a few times, big gill pants on and now elaborate a little bit more and make yourself. a bit more visible without thinking what you might put out there, somebody might challenge us wrong. It's not wrong. It's so sort of subjective marketing is, and that's what I needed to get out there with and just find my voice again with it all. Teresa: And one of the things that we talked about a lot was, you know, you're not saying you're the only voice. You're not saying that everyone else is wrong. You're just saying with your 15 years of experience, with your six years of then experience of running your own business. all the knowledge you've accumulated over that time, this is your take and your opinion and your experience of that. [00:13:00] And you have a place to speak about it like anyone else does, and why shouldn't you find that place? Caroline: Yeah, exactly. And Sort of, I still find it difficult to find, you know, doing a competitive analysis as you would with any of your new clients. I find that difficult to do in my business for me. And that's not coming from an arrogance of nobody does it like me. It's not quite sure. I'm not the massive marketing agency that, that sort of up the road, but there is a reason why. Somebody is buying from me. So it's sort of honing in on, on your, your niche, which, which isn't easy, but everybody has a niche. And when you're coming up against having conversations with companies that have worked with marketing agencies, and they've got a style of going in and, and promising the insights and promising the data and promising that, you know, all the metrics, et cetera, and putting a load of budgets together. They can go in and promise that because then [00:14:00] they've got the, they can go in and do the project and get out again. Whereas where, where I come from, if I'm taking on a retainer client, I'm embedding myself in the business and I'm interested in the long term and I won't work with you if you are constantly panicking and pivoting your strategy because you're looking for the quick wins. And it's, it's hard because. you'll have agencies that are ringing them up that will promise those quick wins and they'll try and undercut you and they'll be like, we'll get you here within six months for X price. So you know, you're going to have the head turns, but then they're not my people. And that's what I've sort of become a little bit more comfortable with. And, you know, and the one thing that I've identified is. My accidental niche is family run businesses and they're not small businesses. They are large multimillion pound businesses, but they are interested in the long term because they really do need that sustainability within the business. They want people that they're comfortable with. [00:15:00] Um, and that's sort of where I've found people that if I'm comfortable with them, I'll, I'll fly. Um, that's where I've, I've sort of seen my niche and that's where I'm going to hone in on. Well, there is a lot of that that's. going on that, you know, the competition that, that can make the promises, but there is no quick win and no easy wins. You've got to have your long term strategy and you've got to be brave and you've got to stick to it. And my key is always, you need that consistency because you might be looking at the data. Nobody's looking at social media. Nobody's looking at the website. That's what you're thinking of the data, but holistically, when you do get yourself out...

The Dos and Don’ts of Speaking: How to Nail Your Next Talk

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

As a business owner we are constantly presenting ourselves and for those of us who can take this a step further and become a speaker it can be game changing for your business. After 10+ years of being a speaker and attending hundreds of events I know a thing or two about speaking. Thats why in this episode of the Your Dream Business podcast, I dive into how speaking can help you stand out as an expert and grow your business. I share the key do’s and don’ts I’ve learned along the way. We cover everything from understanding your audience and crafting attention-grabbing titles to using storytelling effectively and turning audience engagement into business opportunities. Whether you're a seasoned speaker wanting to improve or just starting to explore public speaking for your business, this episode is packed with practical tips to help you succeed. I also highlight the power of authenticity and why less is often more when it comes to information overload. I also share my massive bugbear when it comes to speaking - I hope you don’t do this one!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Public Speaking Builds Authority – Speaking at events positions you as an expert in your field, helping you gain credibility and attract new business opportunities.
Engagement Matters More Than Information Overload – It’s not about cramming in as much info as possible; it’s about connecting with your audience through storytelling and delivering value they can actually absorb.
A Strong Talk Can Convert Into Business Growth – With the right strategy—like an enticing title, clear messaging, and an engaging delivery—you can turn audience interest into real business opportunities.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

THW - Ep 392_Final Being a speaker isn't just about standing on a stage, delivering a talk. It's about positioning yourself as a go to expert and growing your business. It's one of the most effective tools to make you stand out as the expert and to help you get in front of audiences and have audiences find you. And as a speaker for over 10 years, I know this to be true because this is a strategy I use in my business. However, there are some major do's and don'ts that can make or break your talk. From knowing your audience to crafting a title that actually gets people to show up, I am sharing everything I've learned from my very first speaking gigs where I would have my laptop and three people, through to speaking on ginormous stages. So if you've ever wanted to use speaking to grow your business, then make sure you listen to this episode because I'm going to share with you all the things that you do not want to do and all the things that will help you deliver an excellent talk and [00:01:00] convert more people into your audience. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing today? Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time to join me. I [00:02:00] know that your time is super, super valuable, and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. And if you haven't subscribed, because lots of people don't subscribe, it's a really interesting phenomenon if that's That's the right way to say it. If you haven't subscribed, please go ahead and hit subscribe. And if you're feeling particularly generous, I would be so grateful to have you go and give me a lovely review on whatever platform you listen to. I have been getting so much good feedback from the episode I did with Julie Solomon a couple of weeks back. So if you haven't listened to that, then go back and listen. We'll link to it in the show notes. But the reason I bring this up is because my aim is to make this podcast absolutely amazing for you. And my commitment is that I will bring on the best guests and I will have the best solo episodes with great content for you to take away to help you grow your online business. And I really need your help to do that. I need you to share the podcast. I need you to [00:03:00] give me nice reviews of the podcast, and I need you to subscribe. So any of those things that you can do, honestly, I'm so, so very grateful. And then, like I said, my commitment to you is to bring you a, an amazing podcast that helps you grow your business. Okay, on with today's episode. Now, one of my aims this year is to get out to events. Now, you will know I'm a speaker and I speak at different events. However, I am trying to just go to events as well, which you won't believe this is actually really out of my comfort zone. I love it when I'm a speaker at an event because I have a purpose. I know what to do. I know what my reason for being there is. And when I'm not speaking, I actually get really I'm a bit of an introvert. I actually find it really difficult to go and connect with people and have conversations. So I tend to just kind of sit at the side of a room, keep my head down, keep myself in my own lane. And I always worry that this makes me look rude and [00:04:00] I'm really trying not to be rude. That's not my aim. My aim is, like I said, I'm just a bit of an introvert, which is so odd because I am so not an introvert at other points. Anyway. It's my aim to get out to lots of events this year. And it occurred to me that one of the things that I talk about all the time is getting in front of other people's audiences. And one of the ways in which you can do this is speaking at events. And to give you a bit of a background, I started speaking at events. Really early on in my business and I started really small. There's something in the UK called Biz Mums. I don't know if it still exists, but it did when I started the business like 11 years ago. And they used to, there were mums in business who would meet up in a child friendly. like Playbarn or Softplay. Personally, even as a parent, when my daughter was young enough to go to these, I hated them. I didn't like to take her. So as a business owner, going to these places to go and do a talk seemed very wildly out [00:05:00] of what I would want to do. But I knew that getting in front of people, them getting to see who I was and getting to decide whether they liked me and my content was a really good way of growing my business. And what I thought I would do today is talk you through. Some of the do's and don'ts of speaking because unless you have been trained to speak years and years and years ago, when I was employed, like, literally, gosh, I don't even want to think how long ago now, I did do a presentation exercise course, but it was literally like a one day thing and it was for corporate. And I've not really had much official training since then, but I guess the more you do, the more you know and the more comfortable you get. And I thought it'd be useful to go through some of the do's and don'ts of speaking. So if you are thinking about going out there speaking as a method to grow you, your audience, your business, then this is definitely going to be an episode to listen to. But also, even if you're not thinking of speaking, but [00:06:00] you're thinking of going on podcasts, you present for a living, there is definitely going to be some things that you can take from this episode. So if you're thinking, I don't want to stand on a stage, Teresa, that is fine. I still think there's going to be loads of good stuff for you to take from this. So like I said, I started speaking really early on in the business, and this is one of the things I'd recommend before I get into the do's and don'ts. I would recommend personally, starting small and growing because in the early days it's about honing your craft. It's about finding how you best work and as we go through some of the do's and don'ts, you'll see that it's not really based on necessarily how I like to present. Hopefully they're generic things but for instance, I don't do verbatim what I'm going to say. I know someone who is a very good speaker who literally writes a script, records themselves. doing the script and then listens to the script and tries to do it verbatim on stage. If I tried that, [00:07:00] it would be an absolute disaster. Like it honestly, that would be the furthest from my comfort zone ever. So I tend to go on stage and I joke that I wing it. I don't really wing it, but I just have prompts and I talk around the prompts. So. In the early days, when you're doing speaking in smaller places, smaller groups, and you're having the ability to go, Oh, okay, I did that. And that didn't work. So I won't do that again. The last thing you want to do is be given a big opportunity, get on that stage and you not be super confident. And the only way you're going to get super confident is by practicing and doing it in real life. Also, the other thing I want to say is it's not just about the big stages. Now I have got, it's not about speaking, but I've got a great example of this and a story to tell you where I reached out to, I was doing some outreach for podcasts for me to be a guest and I found this podcast and it was pretty new. It didn't look like it was particularly massive. I had never heard [00:08:00] of it. They didn't have tons of followers. And I reached out to her and I said, are you looking for guests? Would you like me to be a guest? And she so very kindly came back and said, I would love you to be a guest. That would be amazing. And I went on her podcast and her downloads are low. Like she doesn't have many or didn't at the time have many downloads. However, One thing I want to say is from that one podcast episode, I ended up bringing in just short of about twenty odd thousand pounds. Now, the way in which I did that wasn't by selling something on the podcast. It was about someone, so actually the hosts themselves decided to work with me. And then they recommended me to someone else and they recommended me to someone else. So I ended up getting three clients from one podcast. And if I had been that type of person, which I am totally not, when I'd gone, well, there's not many downloads, or this isn't a [00:09:00] very big audience, or I haven't really got time for something so small. I didn't, I reached out to her, you know, I was asking her if I could go on a podcast. If I had never done that, I would never have a built the amazing relationship I've got with the host now who I adore to bits, but I wouldn't have got that business and they wouldn't have referred me to another client who then worked with me, who then referred me to another client. So I just want to make that really clear of like, I know the big stages are so, so attractive and don't get me wrong. I like speaking on the big stages, but it's not always about that. And especially if you haven't spoke already, or if you're not proficient at it, then starting small is not a bad thing. Okay. Let's jump in to the do's and don'ts. I'm going to start off all positive with the do's, although it's not all negative with the don'ts. So do know who you're talking to. One of the things I teach in my visibility stuff within my course, Grow, Launch, Sell, is how to come up with three possible talk [00:10:00] titles. And within those three talk titles, you come up with the descriptions and the outcomes, all that various stuff. I give them a framework. But basically, what three areas could you talk about with absolute ease? The idea of getting them to do that is so when they pitch, they have something they can talk about. However, Sometimes you still need to tweak it based on the audience you're talking to. I was. pitch to go out to Greece to go and do some training. I'd already spoken for this company and they said to me, we want you to do a whole day of training on content. I had already got some, a presentation put together and I was like, yeah, absolutely fine. This is what I'm going to talk about. This is what I'll cover. And it was about, I don't know, a few weeks before the event. And I was feeling very happy and very confident because I'd done this stuff before. And. I contacted them or they contacted me and somehow it kind of come out of like, do you want a list of who's in the room? And I was like, oh yeah, that would be really helpful. See, I think they [00:11:00] asked me. I don't even think I asked them. So I'm literally giving you all my mistakes so you don't have to make them. So they came to me and said, would you like a list? And I said, yes, please. Thank God I said yes, please. Because the content in my presentation, because mostly who I speak to are small businesses. And the content in my presentation was aimed at small businesses. So my examples were small businesses. One of the examples was me as a small business. Anyway, they sent me a list of who was in the room and it was Greece's number one telecom company, FedEx, and like, basically massive businesses. And the minute I saw that, I thought, Oh no, this is not right. This presentation is going to fall completely flat. It wasn't the concept or the strategies. It was my examples. My examples weren't going to hit. And therefore the examples weren't going to confirm the strategy that I was telling them to use. So I ended up having to go and get Big examples. So like I chose Dove as a company and a couple of other tech firms because I knew [00:12:00] we'd got some tech people in there. And I created the same presentation, but I tweaked it for that audience. So do know the audience and if possible, and if you need to then tweak your presentation to match. And sometimes that tweak literally looks like some of the words I say on stage. It's not even necessarily a full presentation review. It's just, okay, I'm talking to these types of people. I'll slightly change that how I'm speaking. Do number two, have a sexy title. Okay. I know this sounds weird. Your title is first of all, it's got to work really hard. The first thing it's got to do is attract. the event organizers to want you to speak in the first place. And then it's got to attract the audience to want to listen to what you've got to say. So when I say sexy title, what do I mean? I mean, it's something that is either super intriguing. Maybe slightly controversial, although, you know, I'm not that controversial. So I would err on the side of [00:13:00] caution from that or something that like bucks the trend or something that addresses a problem directly. So for instance, one of mine is the importance of visibility for business growth, becoming the go to expert in your industry. Now, knowing the people that I. to give that presentation to that would make them go. Yes. I want to be the go to expert. Another one is unlocking business potential. How Chris Hemsworth can help you master your mindset. Again, intriguing. What like, what is she talking about? So make sure that you have a sexy. I mean, I say that laughingly title, but a title that is going to attract your audience and attract the, when you're pitching the actual event organizers to go, this sounds really good. Another do is tell stories where possible. Now, as I've gone through this episode, a little bit on purpose, but generally because I like to storytell, I love a story. I've already told you a few stories about, you know, where [00:14:00] I first started off, about how I best started. speak about someone that does it verbatim, and those will be the things that you remember. People remember stories, and it helps to really solidify a concept or a strategy or an idea. So where possible, I want you to include stories into your speaking, and If you have a theme or a story that runs through the entire talk, awesome. Let's not get too hung up with that, but I'm just, you know, just be aware that telling stories is a really nice, useful way in order to get people's attention and it will keep and hold their attention better. So where possible, add in stories. Another do, have a lead magnet. The whole idea of you getting in front of someone else's audience is for them to become your audience. And one of the ways in which you're going to do that is get them on your email list. Therefore, offering them a lead magnet is really, really good way to do this. The other thing in my experience is that people don't [00:15:00] like you to sell from stage. Personally, I absolutely do not like selling from stage. And therefore the only real conversion you're going to be able to get is to encourage them to download a lead magnet. I have done lots of different lead magnets. I've done workbooks for the presentation I'm giving for them to do at home. I've done my slides that they get, although when I get to some of the don'ts, you'll see why maybe that isn't as useful. I've done just a lead magnet that goes along with it. I've done lots of different things. But definitely have something that encourages them to get on your email list. And then my final do before we move on to the don'ts is be authentic to you. Now, I have seen this where people have got on stage and they're trying to put on a persona and I, I get it. I really do like, you know, it is a performance. However, you need it to be. You performing as you, not you trying to perform as someone else. And what happens is when someone gets on stage and tries to be someone else, [00:16:00] it's not authentic. And being authentic is one of the best things that someone can do when they're speaking on stage. Not everyone will like you, and that is fine, we need to be okay with that. In my time I've done lots of different events, and some people get on stage, and some people do not like their vibe, how they speak, what they do, and some people get on stage and they love them, and you don't know whether you'll be on the loved or the not loved....

Fame or Fortune? Creating Content That Actually Sells with Lyndsay from Jammy Digital

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I discussed content creation with Lyndsay from Jammy Digital. Focusing on the vital question of whether your content is geared towards fame or fortune, Lyndsay shares valuable insights on crafting engaging content that converts into sales. The conversation covers practical strategies for content creation, the importance of transparency, and the role of consistency in achieving business goals. Ideal for small business owners, course creators, and coaches, this episode aims to provide actionable advice to optimize your content strategy.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Fame vs. Fortune – Know Your Goal- Before creating content, decide whether you’re aiming for visibility or actual sales. Content that builds a business looks different from content that just gets likes!

Transparency Builds Trust - Being open and honest in your content helps attract the right audience and convert them into customers. People buy from those they trust.

Consistency is Key- Success doesn’t come from one viral post—it comes from showing up regularly with valuable content that aligns with your business goals.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Lyndsay on LinkedIn, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: As small business owners, I think we are all totally accustomed to the fact that we have to create content. But I have a question to ask you, are you creating content for fame or for fortune? There are some social media accounts out there who are massive and yet when they try and sell something. They get tumbleweed. So which is it? Which content are you creating for fame or for fortune? Today's guest talks all about what she means from that point of view. She shares brilliant content ideas in terms of how to actually engage your audience and how to get them to convert to buy. She also shares this, why being transparent is so essential, not only as it's a good thing to do, but how it can attract your perfect customers. This is definitely not one to be missed. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast with me your host, Terese Heath Wareing. I hope you are having a wonderful start to your week or middle of the week. or whenever you are listening to this. Also, can I just take a minute to say thank you so very much for taking time out of your day to listen to the podcast. I know that if you are a business owner, [00:02:00] which I'm sure you are, you are very busy and you have lots of things going on in your world. And I really do appreciate the time you take to listen to what I've got to say and the amazing guests that I bring on. And I've got a favor to ask. Is there any chance you would be so kind as to go and write me a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to this podcast because when people write reviews it gives other people confidence that it's something worth listening to and I would be so, so very grateful and also my aim is to bring you an amazing podcast with amazing guests and the more people that listen to it, the more I can do that. So I just want to thank you so much for doing that for me. Okay. So today is talking about content and I needed this just so you know, I really did need this conversation because even though I am consistent on the podcast and emails on social media, I have not been so great. And. Also, I have wondered whether [00:03:00] I could be more strategic in terms of my content. And I think now, like we talked about with Julie Solomon a few weeks back, we have to work harder than ever to show up and attract our audience and convert our audience. And one of the ways in which we do that is content. So today I'm having a wonderful conversation with the amazing Lyndsay, who runs Jammy Digital with her husband, Martin, which is an award winning content marketing agency for businesses that aren't afraid to stand out. They transform founders, CEOs into globally recognized names. Giving them the power to set industry standards, make connections with game changing people, command a premium pricing and attract top talent. Martin and Lyndsay have also published a bestselling book content fortress that protects business owners from unnecessary stress by helping them attract their dream client. I've met Lyndsay a few times and she is just awesome. Love her to bits and so freaking smart. The two of them are so smart. So it was great to have her join me on the podcast today. We [00:04:00] talk all around content. So content as a whole, in terms of what should you be doing from a long form to short form? How do you connect the two? And we talk about. Doing content for fame versus fortune, which I just thought was an amazing concept of, are you creating content because you want to get famous? Or are you making, creating content because you actually want to make money and eventually sell something? We talked about what makes a great piece of content, what attracts your audience, what types you should be doing. And honestly, it was just an all round amazing conversation. I really love Lyndsay Tibbetts and I am so grateful to bring her to you, my amazing listeners, because I think you are going to get so much from this episode. So without further ado, here's the amazing Lyndsay. Lyndsay, welcome to the podcast. Lyndsay: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so, so excited. Teresa: Me too, because it's funny how you come across people, how you see people and you guys, because there's two of you in your business, you and your husband, [00:05:00] and you had been in my periphery for a long time. And then I met you at something last year and I was like, they are so freaking small. Like. And so we end up going to another event or the same event, but later on in the year. And I immediately was like, I'm sitting on your table. You're so smart. I really need this today. My aim of today's podcast, just so you know, is we're gonna talk about content, but my aim is to give me and my audience some real practical stuff that we can go away and do and inspire me because right now, like lots of us content, feels like it can be quite a hard slog. So I really want to cover that. How does that sound? Lyndsay: Sounds really good. Yeah. And practical advice is what I'm speciality in. Teresa: Perfect. That's the thing. Like someone's taken their time out to listen to this. Hi. Thank you. I want them to have something that they can take away. And I [00:06:00] know that you and what you do in your business, you have done some really, really cool stuff and can help people with this massively. So before we got started, you said something to me, a statement that you can talk about, and I'm just going to jump straight in with it. Fame versus fortune. Like, discuss. Lyndsay: So I think there's a big confusion at the moment with content marketing and the confusion comes from people that pick a fame strategy over a fortune strategy because those are very different. And so a lot of people think that to do good content marketing, to get leads and sales into their business, they need to be famous. So they need to create content that has a very broad appeal that gets a huge audience. And then, and it kind of makes sense, you know, you get a huge audience and then you can monetize that audience. That kind of makes sense. But what you find is that people who follow you for entertainment, follow you because they think you're funny, or they find you inspiring, or they want to know about your lifestyle, don't [00:07:00] necessarily buy from you. And there's countless examples. There's, there's one huge, really, he's a really, really nice guy and he's a business influencer. He's got millions and millions of followers. Um, and he struggled lately to sell a book. To his audience and his 20 book. So not, not expensive, but people were complaining that he'd, you know, put it for sale and they were saying, you know, you know, you normally give me stuff for free. Why are you trying to sell me this book? And it's because he'd grown an audience, a really broad audience who didn't expect to buy from him. So what you should be doing is you should be following a fortune strategy, which is really honing in on your target audience, creating content for them. Instead of going really broad, making sure that that content really clearly reminds people what you do and gets leads and sales off the back of it. So it's not about being famous. So the best kind of, the best people I, I usually say is, you know, you can walk down the street and no one would know who you were. But if you went to like an industry specific, uh, industry specific, you know, conference. Yeah. You'd have swarms of people around you because they really respect you. They know you, you're well [00:08:00] known in that room, but outside of that room, no one knows who you are. So that's what really, if you want leads and sales from your business, you should be sort of aiming for that. Teresa: My constant joke is you're not Beyonce. Right, because sometimes in this industry we can go to a conference and like you said people are like, my God, there's that person. And it's like, no, if they walked out of this room now, they would, no one would know who in earth they were because they're not Beyonce. So the thing is though, we've been. indoctrinated or led to believe or our ego desperately wants us to have lots of followers like, and it's embarrassing, legit embarrassing when you put some content out there and it's tumbleweed. So how do we, are we saying we just should? Have the tumbleweed? Are we saying, like, is there a certain point? Like, are we saying we need to build it to a certain point and then not worry about it? What, what do you think around that? Lyndsay: Yeah, so, obviously we don't want tumbleweed, but there's a [00:09:00] way, there's a way to make content interesting, but still relevant for a very specific target audience, and still linking back to your products and services. So if you're, if you're creating content, right, this is, I could, I could get loads of likes tomorrow on LinkedIn if I've just posted a picture of my cat, you know, but whatever it might be, that's not going to get me leads and sales. But if I post something that's about say content marketing or how to do a video or whatever it might be, I have to think of a way to make that, entertaining, and that's using things like good hooks, making sure that you tell a story, making it interesting, giving lots of value, things like that. And eventually if you start doing that, and that does require more effort, but if you start doing that, then you get kind of both the sort of likes and the comments and the leads and sales off the back of it. So there's a way to do it where You know, you have to think about how can I make this really interesting? What's the angle of this, you know, what would really resonate with my audience? I'm really thinking about that for every time, every piece of [00:10:00] content that you create, because there's countless, there's so much content out there. And I feel for people sometimes because they pull their heart and soul into content and they, they produce this content. That's like how to do this thing. And they've gone into real depth of how they do what they do and really broken it down and it just gets nothing because it's not really of interest to the, to the audience you have to think about. you know, how to make it really engaging, but also link it back to what you sell at the same time, which is tricky to do. Definitely. Teresa: So you've said a load of stuff there, which I'm going to come back to some of these points, which is awesome. But like, as you're saying this, bearing in mind, I produce content. I produce a podcast that goes out every single week. I'm even exhausted listening to you talk about it. It's like, It is hard work. Is it right? So is it hard work? Am I making this something big in my head? Is there something that I'm missing that I can produce good content without thinking this is a massive deal for me to do? Lyndsay: Yeah. So what I usually recommend and it's [00:11:00] quite, it's It's quite difficult to actually say how much content you should produce, um, and, and to what level. I usually say if you're at say five or six figures in your business for seven or eight figures, it's slightly different. But if you're a five or six figures in your business, usually, and the problem is, is usually that people are trying to focus on lots of different platforms. And I usually say pick one organic channel. which is a channel where you'll get organic traffic. You know, people searching for you, that could be blog via Google or chat GPT . Cause now that recommends can recommend your blog posts, or it could be YouTube where people are searching on there or your podcast, which is what you're doing amazingly well. And then from there pick one social channel. So for me, that's like LinkedIn, you know, for, for others, it might be something different and try and basically use. Just two channels. So sometimes when people get overwhelmed, it's because they're trying to do too much and too many different channels. And as we know, content should be very specific to that channel. So if you're trying to like repurpose the exact LinkedIn content, [00:12:00] Instagram, it's not going to work. It's just going to flop probably on both on both channels. So it's just best to try and kind of. Do you want channel really, really well. So that's the first thing, not, not to get sort of overwhelmed. And the second thing to do is realistically say to yourself, how much can I do, you know, on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, can I do. One blog post a week. Can I do one long form video a week? And then can I post on LinkedIn three times a week? And you kind of have to give yourself that set amount and stick to it. Religiously have that time in your diary booked out where you are producing this content and you, and, and one thing I actually do, which works really well is I separate the thinking from the doing. And I think that uses like two different sides of the brain or something. So I'll have one point in the week where I think about my content ideas. I'll think this will be really good to do or, you know, and I'll break them down, but I won't kind of create them in any way. And then the other part of my week, I will actually create that content. So I'll be [00:13:00] recording, I'll be writing. It's just completely different. So I don't have to sit down in front of a camera and be like. money in a video on, you know, I've already got those ideas that I've already kind of got it half scripted out. So that makes it a lot, lot easier when you, when you do it that way, but it's about being realistic with ourselves, which is really hard to do because I'm like, Oh, I could do everything. I know I've got a content team. So, you know, if you don't have that, Teresa: you could do everything. So first off. You talk about one social media platform. So for me, Instagram really is the place that I like to hang out on. However, I constantly feel guilty about LinkedIn because LinkedIn is pretty good. And, and therefore I do share content to LinkedIn that I've created on Instagram. Is that, is that a case? Because again, I remember like, you know, we've been doing this a long time. How long have you been doing this? Lyndsay: 10 years? Teresa: Yeah, it's a similar amount of time to me. So I remember the times where it was like, Oh my God, you can just share it to everywhere. [00:14:00] Then I remember a time of like, Oh no, don't just share it to everywhere. You have to be specific. And then it kind of went back to it because everyone realized how difficult it was. But anyway, like as I'm creating the content on Insta, is it, is it pointless me sharing it to LinkedIn? Or is it okay me sharing it to LinkedIn knowing it's not doing much, but at least I looked at vaguely active on there? What's your thoughts? Lyndsay: Yeah, there's no harm in sharing it. I mean, I do the same. I'm like you, but in reverse. So I'm a LinkedIn girl. She's very less, you know, much less exciting than Instagram, but I will share what I share on LinkedIn, on Instagram, knowing that it's, it's getting me a few followers. It's making sure that, you know, when people go on my page, it still looks active. And I think that that's fine as long as you don't think, Oh, you know, why is that channel not giving me anything that that's okay. Teresa: Super realistic. Lyndsay: Yeah. Super realistic with that. And I don't expect for us, I don't expect much to come from Instagram because it's not where we're like channeling our energy really. So you know, I would expect it from LinkedIn, but it's [00:15:00] nice to keep Instagram updated. Teresa: Okay. So then let's talk about the organic content, i. e blog, YouTube podcast. So, first off, my opinion is they have to have one of them. Okay, good. We agree. Lyndsay: We agree. Teresa: What about then, so I've been going through this thing of, oh, and, and so the other thing, my brain works in very weird ways. I love the fact that you said if your business is five or six figures, and if it's over seven, it's different because that is so important. I think people look at businesses that are seven figures plus and think, oh, I...

How to Get More People to Show Up for Your Webinars & Challenges

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast', I addressed the challenge of low attendee turnout at live launch events like webinars, bootcamps, or challenges. I discussed the significance of live attendance for building trust and increasing sales conversion rates. I offered actionable strategies to improve live show-up rates, including sending multiple email reminders, creating a workbook or cheat sheet, offering exclusive bonuses, promoting live Q&A sessions, and leveraging social proof from past events. Ideal for course creators, membership owners, and coaches, this episode provides valuable insights to ensure more engagement and higher turnout for your next live event.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Live Attendance Matters – Getting people to show up live helps build trust and increases your chances of making sales. A strong turnout can make a big difference in your launch success.

Reminders & Engagement Boost Attendance – Sending multiple email reminders, offering a workbook or cheat sheet, and creating excitement with exclusive bonuses can encourage more people to attend.

Social Proof & Live Interaction Work Wonders – Showcasing testimonials from past attendees and promoting live Q&A sessions can make your event feel more valuable, encouraging more people to join in real time.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

It's super frustrating where you spend a lot of time and effort creating your launch event, like a webinar or a bootcamp or a challenge only to do the live thing and not have many people show up live. Over the last few years, I have seen a slow decline in the number of people who show up live. And yet it's more important than ever that we do get those people to show up live in order to help convert them into customers. So what if I told you there is a simple and actionable strategies that you can take to actually get people to show up live? In today's episode, I'm sharing with you five key tactics that you can use in order to increase the number of people who actually show up live to your next launch event. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am so grateful to have you here with me and spend your very valuable time. In this week's episode, we are going to be talking about something that's super important when running a launch experience. One of the things that we have seen in the past year or so when running a launch experience is that the show up rate has been fairly low compared to previous times. And what I mean is [00:02:00] webinar or a bootcamp or a challenge, The number of people who sign up compared to the number of people who show up have been much lower than they have been in the past. When I first started doing webinars, like eight, nine years ago, I would expect easily a 50 percent turn up rate. And then. It started to die off a bit and then during COVID it really picked up again because obviously no one was going anywhere, they had nothing to do. And then it's died off again and really now if someone says to me they had anywhere between a 30 or 40 percent show up rate, I think that's good. So first off we're going to look at why you want them to show up live and then I'm going to talk you through five tactics that I have to help you to get them to show up live. So let's start off by talking about why you want people to show up live to your launch event. Now, it goes without saying, if you're doing a webinar or a challenge or a bootcamp and you're doing it to an [00:03:00] empty room, that isn't going to feel very good for starters. So apart from that very obvious reason, there are lots of other really important reasons as to why you want people to show up live. The first reason is it creates a stronger connection and trust between you and the person that is on the live webinar or the challenge or whatever it is. And when that comes to the buying part of it, people only buy from who they trust. So when they see you live answering questions, addressing concerns, offering immediate value, they feel more connected to you and your brand. And this connection often translates into a higher likelihood that someone will buy from you. It also helps them if they think that there's a sense of urgency. So having someone come along to an event with a deadline date is really helpful because it's like you want to come and take part in this while it's still available. There's a higher perceived value when they turn up live. So You'll know that if [00:04:00] you, I don't know how many webinars and things you've signed up for, and you think, Oh, I'll do that afterwards. And you never get around to doing it because we're not perceiving it as a very high value. Whereas if it's a really good event, launch event, and I perceive value in it, then I'm going to make sure I turn up live. And when I'm turning up live, that automatically means I think this has some value. And the perception of a higher value increases the likelihood that people will take your offer seriously and be willing to invest in your program or course. So. Again, it's super, super important for that increased accountability and commitment if they're willing to show up live to a challenge or a webinar or a bootcamp or something that's free. They obviously have a much higher accountability and commitment. They, you know, they are saying, no, I really want this. I'm really interested in it because they're willing to show up live to do the thing. Also, it really helps with things like live testimonials and social proof. Often when I've done challenges or [00:05:00] webinars, I attract some people that are already in my world and already work with me, which is always lovely. And then what happens is they end up saying. Hopefully really nice stuff on the call and you kind of end up getting live testimonials and live social proof. Even if you don't know them, even if it's a cold audience, hopefully people should be kind of saying that was great. That was helpful. And you should be getting that reassurance as you go through. So in short. Getting people to show up live is really important for many reasons, but predominantly the sales aspect, they are more likely to buy if they have come along and they've engaged and they've seen who you are and what you do and can make a much more better informed decision. The key thing with doing any launch event, live launch event is encouraging those people to turn up live and take part live. So how do we do that? Okay. I have got five tactics that [00:06:00] you can use when planning any launch event in order to encourage your launch attendees to show up live and take part. Tactic one, send multiple email reminders. I am confident that you are probably not sending enough emails to the people who have signed up. We are often so, I guess, are preoccupied by getting people to sign up that once they sign up, we kind of forget about them. When I do a launch strategy for myself, or if I help someone else do it, we have A chunk of emails that go up to people who haven't signed up and a chunk of emails that go out to people who have signed up. They're actually very similar in their themes, but rather than saying, Hey, come and join, it's saying, I can't wait to see you there. Or it's saying, you know, I'll see you at the live, whatever it might be. In terms of how many emails you should send, that gets a bit trickier. Now, if [00:07:00] I had done something, if I'd been promoting an event two weeks out, I work backwards from when the event takes place. So let's say I'm doing a webinar and the webinar is at two o'clock on a Thursday afternoon. As the webinar goes live, I might do an email that says, we are live now. Come and join us. I might do an hour before. I might do 24 hours before and then before that I might do one three days before, six days before, eight days before, ten days before. You basically want to be sending those emails to remind them what amazing stuff they're going to get by coming to this thing and attending live. It's a really, really helpful to. Encourage them to show up live, to come and take part and for you to keep those, the same points, like I said, the same points that I would put in an email to go, you should come and join me and, and sign up for the thing I'm using for why they should turn up live. [00:08:00] Also within those emails, I'll be mentioning some of the other tactics. So some of these other tactics that I'm going to be mentioning, I would include in the copy of the emails. So tactic number two, create a workbook or a cheat sheet. Now this is a really super interesting one because it's a really funny one that comes down to kind of psychology as to why this works so well. But for everything I do, I always create a workbook. And I encourage people within the emails that I'm sending, once they've signed up, I go, here's the workbook. And I encourage them to print it off and put it on their desk ready. And there's many reasons why workbooks are so useful in encouraging people to turn up live. Firstly, it's a reminder. So if they have gone and put it on their desk and printed it off, it's a kind of constant reminder. Oh yeah, I'm going to do that thing. Oh yeah, that thing's coming up. Secondly, it gives them a perceived value and accountability. Offering a workbook or a cheat sheet increases the perceived value of an event. They feel like they're getting something practical and [00:09:00] tangible to help them take action. So there is a real reason why when they have something valuable to take away. That actually their sense of investment is higher, which means they're more likely to shop live to the event. And just as a quick, quick heads up, the workbook doesn't have to be massive and huge and beautifully designed. It can really be quite simple, but it's that act of having a workbook that is really important in terms of getting people to actually show up and attend the live event. Okay. Next one. Tactic three, offer an exclusive incentive or a bonus for attendees. This is really important. And again, this is something that you can include in your emails in a webinar specifically, and in other, like I said, bootcamp or challenges, it works in all of them. I will often do a bonus for those who attended live. This would be something value wise from a kind of lead magnet value. Hopefully it's not something that you're using somewhere else. Hopefully it's something that. Kind [00:10:00] of compliments, but doesn't take away from the product you're trying to sell. So for instance, if you were trying to sell, I don't know, some ideas for something, and you're going to give them some ideas for free as part of that gift, that's not going to work. So. for instance, if you, I might give some templates away, or I might give a swipe file away or something like that. So what is it that you can give for free as a bonus that is exclusive to show them that actually when they turn up live, they're going to get this. And like I said, talk about it. in the emails and say, you don't even have to tell them what it is. You just have to say, I have a special bonus for those of you showing up live. I also then include it in the introduction bit of the webinar, the bootcamp, the challenge, and say, for those of you who turned up live, if you stay till the end, this is what you're going to get. So having some kind of incentive or bonus for attendees to turn up live is really, really helpful. Okay, [00:11:00] tactic number four, talk about the fact that you're going to be doing a live Q& A. In most launch events, there is an opportunity for you to show up live and provide them with some kind of Q& A rather than It just being a pre recorded thing. And that is part of the beauty of doing a launch event is that they get to pick your brain and they get to have a conversation with you. So make sure you make that clear because that is a real incentive for someone coming along along live to the launch event. Maybe even give them some, some suggestions of the things that they might want to ask or questions that people have asked in the past, but make sure you say to them. come along because this is going to be your chance to ask me questions and your chance to get me to answer these things for you. So make sure you include that in your emails and in your sign up and make that a real point of this is the reason you've joined this to get this live [00:12:00] access to me. And tactic number five, leverage social proof. This is really good. If you've done something like this before, if you've done a challenge, a bootcamp, a webinar, show people how good people think it was. Show people the value that people got from it. So if you've got screenshots of chat, if you've got testimonials that people have put in or comments that they've said where they've basically gone, this was amazing. I got so much from it. Make sure you include that again in your emails, in your sign up stuff, make sure that you are putting it everywhere that basically you are saying this is not going to waste your time. And of course, the most important thing is don't waste their time. Make sure that when you do put something together like a bootcamp or a challenge or a webinar, that it is good value and that they understand what they're going to get from it and what they're going to walk away from it with now. An additional tactic, which I didn't really want to talk about too much because I haven't done it myself, but I've seen others do it, is not [00:13:00] offering a recording. Now, often with most live launch events, there is a replay of some sort. So whether it's a, especially, I'm talking really if it's a webinar, if it's a bootcamp or a challenge, then really they tend to have a dashboard or somewhere where those things sit. sit for a set amount of time and people can go back and review them on a webinar on a masterclass. One option is to not offer a replay that for sure will have an impact on your turn up rate. I guess the thing that you need to think about is there are going to be some people who just can't make that time and date and actually they are really invested and they are really interested. They just can't make it. Whereas if you don't offer a replay, you lose them altogether. Where I would say this works better is where you are doing more than one masterclass. So the examples where I've seen people do this, where they are not offering a replay at all, is where they were doing three masterclasses over [00:14:00] three days. at different times. That is another option and it'll certainly help with getting people to turn up live. In terms of conversion, you'd have to look at how that works from a who then buys. But because the other thing that's interesting about the people who turn up live is they are really interested and therefore your conversion might be better when they actually, for, for the people who buy than if you don't do a replay. So all of this stuff and everything I've said is very much about trial and error and test, but I can assure you that the ideas I've given you are tried and tested, smart strategies in which you can use to get more people to show up live to your launch event. Okay, I really hope that this has helped. Let me just recap those five tactics again. So tactic one was send multiple emails and ones to remind them, sort of, 24 hours out, an hour out immediately. Create a workbook or some kind of cheat sheet that they can have as they go along the free training. Offer an [00:15:00] exclusive incentive or bonus to attendees who show up live. Make sure you make it clear to them they are having a live Q and A or having the opportunity to pick your brain and then leverage that social proof. If you've done it before, show them what people thought of it and that they thought they got genuine value from it. Okay. I really hope that this has helped. If you have any other cool ideas that have really helped you get people to show up live, I would love to hear them. Please come and find me on Instagram at Teresa Heath wearing and drop me a DM. I'd love to hear what strategies you're using as well. I will see you next week with an interview.

Unlocking Online Growth: Messaging & Audience Strategies with Julie Solomon

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 01:00:00 +0100

I had a fantastic chat with Julie Solomon, an industry expert with over a decade of experience! We dove deep into the world of online business, specifically how your messaging and understanding your audience are KEY to growing. Julie shared some amazing insights on how the online landscape has changed and how to adapt your strategies. She also talked about her own journey and how she helps others build their online presence. Plus, she what is working for her right now. It was a super insightful conversation – definitely worth a listen!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Power of Messaging and Audience: Understanding your target audience and crafting compelling messages that resonate with them is crucial for online business growth.
Adapting to the Evolving Online Landscape: The online world is constantly changing. It's essential to stay updated on the latest trends and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Leveraging Low-Cost Strategies: Building a successful online presence doesn't always require a huge budget. There are many effective and affordable strategies available, such as the low-cost training options discussed by Julie.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Julie on Instagram, Influencer Podcast Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: There are two parts of an online business that can really make or break your success. Those two parts are the two things that I am talking to today's guest on the podcast about. Judy Solomon joins me and discusses the two main areas of messaging and audience. that are crucial to growing an online business, if you have not got the right message, you are not attracting the right audience, which means you don't have a business. Not only does she give us some really valuable insight to this and how we can do this in our business to make sure that we are choosing the right messaging that is attracting the right people, which in turn will just make us more visible, but also she shares insights after being in the industry for over 10 years. We talk about how the industry's changed and what is working for her right now. And she talks us through one of the strategies that she's currently using, which I think you will find so insightful. Welcome to the Your Dream Business [00:01:00] Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you. and the season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you are a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. With your host, as always, Theresa Heath Waring. Now, if you're new to the podcast, one of the things that you need to know about me is I am a numbers geek. I love anything that's like stats and numbers [00:02:00] and understanding it. And I was doing some research and did you know that 70 percent of the people who listen to podcasts don't actually subscribe to them? So whether you're listening through Apple or Spotify. 70 percent of you haven't actually hit that subscribe button and I would love to ask a favor from you. I would love it if you could hit subscribe on whatever it is you're listening to this on and in return my commitment to you is to work really hard to bring you the best podcast I can possibly bring you, to bring you the best guests. That inspire you and motivate you and help you move your business forward and also to put together amazing solo episodes that are strategic and give great advice. So I hope that in return for me putting my all in and making this the best possible podcast that can be, that you would just do me the very small favor of just hitting that subscribe button. Okay. On with today's episode. And today I am [00:03:00] interviewing the very lovely Julie Solomon. If you don't know Julie, she is a personal brand coach, a best selling author and a chart topping podcast host, and she's empowered lives for over 15 years through her in demand classes and mastermind. With a background in public relations for some of the world's most influential music acts, thought leaders, Julie launched her online course and coaching mastermind in 2016, mentoring thousands of leaders and creatives around the world. Her passion is helping women turn message into movements. And empowering entrepreneurs and creatives to successfully build, grow, and scale their business. Recently named one of the top 100 leaders in influential marketing. Julie's work has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Weekly, Business Insider, Success, and People, among others. She is the author of a bestselling book, Get What You Want, how to go from unseen to unstoppable. Julie has been in this industry a long while, [00:04:00] which was what made, makes this conversation so fascinating. Cause I really enjoyed picking her brains around the online business, what's working now, how it's changed over time. And then we really get into some great, great content around messaging, how to ensure that messaging talks to your perfect customer and how to use that messaging to get visible. And you will know if you've listened to the podcast a while that. I am big on visibility and making sure that we are all being as visible as possible, because if people don't know we exist, they can't possibly become our customers. And this is what this whole conversation is about. So I think you're going to get so much good stuff from it. Also, one of the things I love about this episode is that we dig into what Julie's currently doing now in terms of promoting her own business and what strategies are working for her now. Okay. Without further ado, here is the very amazing Julie Solomon. Julie, I am so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Julie: Teresa, thank you so much for [00:05:00] having me. I feel like when we got to meet in person, so lucky to have you on my side of the pond. It was like this instant kind of connection. We, we vibed with our stories, our histories, our, a lot of stuff in our personal lives, our humor, like all of it was just great. So it's so great to be here with you. Teresa: It was. It was so, so lovely. It was a great evening. We met at Amy's and Julie, amongst other things that she's amazing at, was our like, aficionado for caviar tasting. So, is that, is that just a little hobby or is that something you're really good at or? Julie: Well, you wouldn't know, I mean, if you're actually, I don't know if you're seeing this or hearing this, those that are tuning in, but if you're seeing this, you're probably like, she doesn't look like she would be a caveat, but she, Anatta with her hat on and her, and her sweats, I've, I've had sick kids at home, but it's something that I do love luxury and I love the finer things in life and I love things that make me feel. Fabulous and Parisian, and that's one of those things and I just make no [00:06:00] bones about it. So yeah. I love caviar. I love the, the just it's, they're really good on a baked potato you've ever, I know. Teresa: Doesn't quite seem like something they normally serve it with, but Julie: Right. But it's really good. So yeah, there's all different kinds of ways you can enjoy that. But no, it didn't grow up eating caviar, but I definitely have loved it in my adult life for sure. Teresa: I love it. I love it. But that was such a cool evening. It was really, really good fun. And like you said, it was so good to share stories and have conversations. And, and I think doing that in person is there's just no way we'd have made the connection and on with an online thing. And obviously this was a personal thing anyway, but that's why, even though it was over in Nashville and I'm here in England, coming over and doing those sort of things are kind of non negotiables for me in terms of spending time with people, because. You just can't replace it. Can you say, but anyway, so I, we have so much good stuff I want to talk about and so much that you're expert about, but the one thing I wanted to start us off with is the fact that you are like an OG in the online space [00:07:00] and that actually is quite rare. I would say there is probably a handful of people that I have known about for a really long time that have been in this space. And I'm interested to see what you, what your take on it is now, because obviously the online world, just to kind of put it in respect of other people that probably, you know, they want to be in it. People want the online business. They want their work from the beach, make money while you sleep, dream, don't we all? How has that changed? And what does it look like now? Julie: Yeah. So I S I started in this online industry in 2013, not with the business that I have now, I actually started as a blogger. And what we would now call content creator. And that was my thing for about three years. I really focused in on how to monetize my content. So I would, my background is in PR. So I knew how to pitch. So I came into the online space pitching my heart away. Like, can I [00:08:00] pitch myself for a media opportunity? There wasn't even podcasts really back then. I mean, it was just like Amy and Dave Ramsey. So. So I wasn't pitching myself a podcast, but for media opportunities, contributing posts, that's really how I started to gain, if you would say some sort of kind of visibility for my website, I would pitch myself for contributing articles and I would write them. I would also pitch myself for brand deals and brand partnerships and sponsorships. And so. That's how I started in this industry. And then when that started to kind of take off, because I am really good at messaging and pitching, pitching is just a form of messaging. I had people starting to ask me like, how do I do this? And people would come to me cause they would say, Julie, I don't mean to sound rude, but you have like no following and you're monetizing your content better than I am. And you're getting the, this media and you're getting these brands to pay you money to talk about their products and services. How are you doing this? And so in [00:09:00] 2016 is when I really kind of stepped more into the online education space and I created my first course, which was. teaching people how to pitch themselves to get brand deals and media opportunities, because that's what I had been doing successfully for three years prior. And then from then, I really kind of built the online education business that people now see. I started my podcast in 2017. After that course really took off, it became a seven figure course in a matter of a year. I started to create more courses, masterminds, hire to get coaching programs, and, and then that's evolved to. now, which is, you know, what year is it? 2025? Where, where are we? So I have been in this game for a long time, and I've also been a part of the evolution of myself in this game and then this game in general. And so to answer your question about really what has changed, you know, I didn't really realize it at the time, but I, I feel like. Not a whole lot [00:10:00] when you compare it to, I compare things to pre COVID and post COVID when it comes to this online industry. And when I really think about 2013 to 2020, a lot had changed in my business because of my growth. You know, I became a seven figure online education business. I had started a podcast. And so there were evolutions with the opportunities that we who were in this game early on. Add to get more reach, get more visibility, get out there more. But really during COVID is when we saw this just massive insurgence of everyone and their dog wanting to kind of dip their toes into this industry and. I think that's a beautiful thing because I believe that that shows that there's abundance in this industry, there's money to be made, there's collaboration to be made, people want to create an impact. Um, the, the competition is, you want competition in an industry that, that shows that it's, it's a healthy market. You don't want to be in a dying [00:11:00] industry. Um, but with that did come challenges, you know, and the way that I kind of put it as simply as I can. And this is no judgment to anybody. I think this is just part of the evolution of an, of an industry that's so in its infancy. But I think during that COVID era, I think that a lot of people came into the industry and kind of got lost in the glossy glamour of, Oh, laptop lifestyle. I can work from anywhere, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And. That's really why they were interested in being this industry. It wasn't that they were really interested in being a coach or being an online educator or creating curriculum and support that really help a client get from point A to point B. They just wanted this freedom of, of kind of the shiny things that a lot of us, including myself, market, right? Because that, that really is and can be one of the results of, you know, having an online business is that you do get to work from anywhere. But because of that, you had a lot of people [00:12:00] that either had no business being coaches coming in and saying, I'm a coach now because I took a course for three days that told me that I was. And so now I'm going to start this coaching business or I'm going to create a course or whatnot. And I think that you had a lot of people, consumers, if you will, that really had no business being consumers of the. The online industry that started to consume a lot of that and so what happened is that it, it left a lot of people with like a sour taste in their mouth, you know, a year or two after the COVID boom, so to speak in the online space is the first time Teresa, and I don't know if, if, if you recognize this either, cause you've been doing this for a long time as well. It was the first time I ever heard people say like, Online coaching is a scam. It's a pyramid scheme. It doesn't work. These people don't care about you. They don't create anything of value. Because when I came into the industry and, you know, 2013 and 2016, and, and there were, you know, people like Amy [00:13:00] and you know, at the time I remember, you know, Marie Forleo on YouTube and these women who had really built these incredible businesses that not only gave them maybe quote unquote a laptop lifestyle, but. It, it gave them this ability to create impact for a community and also as I got into the industry and I really started to invest in the industry and, and learn it because that meant that was important to me. I also realized that this laptop lifestyle just doesn't come like you have to work really, really strategically, really. Uh, smart and really hard, especially during those, those growing phases. And I just think that because people either didn't want to do that or they didn't know how to do that, they kind of chalked the online coaching industry off as being this, you know, scam. And, and since then, I think for the last few years, what we've had to really bear witness to and really kind of be work through, [00:14:00] even if. I wasn't part of the whole scam language myself, me and my business, we had to kind of wait out for that dust to settle, so to speak, and really to for the cream to rise to this to the top. Um, and kind of, um, the, the universe, if you will, kind of took care of maybe some of those people that had no business being here in the first place. And so cut to 2025, I think that hopefully, even though this year has started out come really weird, especially here in the States with the fires in Los Angeles. And, you know, we had an election several months ago and I mean, there's just been a lot of crazy stuff happening globally, obviously, and here in the U S it started a little unstable, but. I just do, Teresa, I have this really good feeling about 2025 and this really good feeling about, I think that consumers of the online coaching space are very, very discerning with who they work with right now, as they should be. And I think that the market has gotten, has gotten more sophisticated, thank [00:15:00] goodness, because we want that. And so it's, it means that. Coaches and online educators like you and myself, we have to be really flipping good at what we do, and we have to really care about the results of our clients. And we have to be able to be resilient and be adaptable and to meet clients where they're at, because it's not a one size fits all. And I think that for those listening, if you're in this space or want to get into this space, that's really the biggest gift that I could give you is to, to, to come in it, whether you're refining or whether this is your first time in the game. To really be honest with yourself about your intentions and to really be truthful with yourself about why you're here, who are you meant to serve and how do you do that in the most impactful and effective way possible to really help that person get a transformation. And so I'm excited for that. I think the discernment is a great thing and I think that we're going to see just a beautiful evolution and strengthening of this industry as a whole.

The Secret to Growing Your Audience Faster: Strategies That Actually Work

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast,' I discussed the importance of strategically growing your audience for business success. I emphasized that simply posting on social media or having an email opt-in on your website is not enough. I also provided actionable advice on utilizing lead magnets, social media, chatbots, ads, and collaborations to effectively expand your audience. I also highlighted the significance of leveraging other people's audiences through podcasts, stages, and email swaps. Ideal for online business owners, course creators, membership owners, and coaches, this episode offers valuable strategies and tools to boost your online presence.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Posting Alone Won’t Cut It – Simply showing up on social media or having an email opt-in isn’t enough. You need a strategic approach to attract and retain the right audience.

Leverage the Right Tools – Use lead magnets, chatbots, ads, and collaborations to actively grow your audience and engage with them in meaningful ways.

Tap Into Other People’s Audiences – Get in front of new people through podcasts, speaking opportunities, and email swaps to expand your reach faster.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

If you've been in business for a little while, you'll know that growing your audience is one of the most important things that you can do. And in my experience, when business owners think they are trying to grow their audience, they're not really doing it as they need to be. Most business owners think. that growing their audience is just about showing up on social media and posting, when really it's so much more than that. There is a strategy that you need to employ in order to make sure that you're getting your name, your face, your business out in front of the right people. And not only that, getting them to convert onto your email list. In today's episode, I'm going to be taking you through what we really mean by growing your audience and some of the most effective strategies to get that done. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Theresa Heath Waring, and I am so very grateful that you have decided to hang out with me today. I never take that lightly. I know that your time is super, super precious and in. Thank you for spending time with me, for sharing this podcast, for writing reviews. For those of you who've written me a review, I will do my utmost to produce [00:02:00] and deliver a really good quality podcast. My aim is that, and if you're new to the podcast, is that every other week you get a solo episode and every other week you get an interview. And I've really honed in on who it is I'm helping, what it is I'm doing. So if you are an online business owner, a course creator, a membership owner, a coach, then you are absolutely in the right place. And I am going to be delivering you amazing value to grow your online business. And with the solo episodes, I aim for them to be really strategic, really practical, give you some really good step by step. Sometimes I give you some downloads to go with it. And with the interviews, again, I aim to bring you the best people in the industry with the best strategies and the best results. So today is a solo and we're going to be talking about audience growth. Now, this is something that has been coming up while constantly comes up. It's not even something that's coming up recently. It is something that is constantly coming up in my world. And the reason for that is [00:03:00] I help people launch pretty much all day every day. That's what I do. I help them grow their audience, launch their product and sell it. And that's what I do all the time. And one thing that is constantly on my radar and should constantly be on my radar and your radar is that very first step is that growing their audience. Because This comes down to a numbers game, and I hate saying that because it sounds like I don't care about the humans at the end of it, and I absolutely do, and if you're in my world, you know I care deeply about the people in my world. However, when it comes to selling and having a successful online business, it really does come down to the audience, and it comes down to numbers, and therefore it makes perfect sense that the more people you have in your world, the more people you have to sell to. So I want to talk about audience growth today. And before I get into what I mean by audience growth and, and give you some ideas as to [00:04:00] how you can grow your audience, because I'm, you might be thinking, well, I am growing my audience. I'm trying to grow my audience, but we need to talk about what that really honestly looks like. I just want to remind you of some of the. Numbers that we talked about back in episode three, six, eight. So if you want to go back and listen to that episode, then please do so. Where basically I break down what is realistic, but some of the numbers that we talked about are your list, your email list size. And actually, I've broken this a bit further down for you on this episode. So we have your email list size, then we have what we call a launch list. So if you were doing something like a bootcamp or a webinar or whatever, that would be your launch list. The people who opt into that is your launch list. So you have your list size and then you have your launch list. Now, roughly between 15 and 30 percent of your list size will opt into your launch list. Okay. And I'm going to go through some numbers in a minute with this to help you understand this. And then we'll have like an engagement and a show up percentage, which I'm [00:05:00] not going to talk about in this episode, but I did in episode three, six, eight, then roughly between one and 8 percent of your launch list will buy. So let me explain how that looks from a numbers point of view. Let's say that you have on your email list, a thousand people, and let's go with the lower number, the 15%. And only 15 percent of them Join your launch list. So that means from a thousand people, 150 people are on your launch list. Then let's say, and I've rounded it up slightly from the 1%, let's say 2 percent of those people buy, which means from 150 people, two people buy. Okay. Which means if you were selling a product of 997 or pounds, you've roughly made 1, 994 or pounds. That's from an email list size of a thousand people. Okay, so then let's say our email list size was 2, 500. So you've increased your email list to 2, [00:06:00] 500 and we're going to go with the same percentages. That would mean that your 15 percent of that list would go up to 375 people who signed up for your launch list. And then let's times that by the 2%. Well, that means that roughly 7. 5 people are going to buy. We'll round that up to eight, which means based on our figure of nine, nine, seven, that you're making around 7, 976 or pounds. So you can see that with that increased audience, you're going to make considerably more money. Now I've done it on the lower percentage. And yes, there are lots of things that we can do within a launch that can help increase percentages, but. Ultimately having a bigger list at the beginning is always, always, always, always going to help. Also remember that if you are doing the same launch and you don't grow your list, but you keep advertising that same launch to your list, that that percentage of people who go from your list to your launch list is going to decrease and that's going to get [00:07:00] worse over time. So we always want new people coming into our audience, and the faster and quicker we can build our audience, the better. Now we've understood that, let's start by saying what audience building isn't. Now this is slightly controversial, but audience building isn't just going on social media. I'm not saying it's not that at all. I'm not saying that, forget social media and it's rubbish and it's not working. However. It is more than just posting on social media. It is more than just showing up and doing stories or posts or whatever it is. Audience building has to be way more strategic than that. Now, I have been in marketing a really long time and it used to be different. Maybe easier, but different and social media used to be different and yes, you probably could post on social media and build a good audience, but that is not the case anymore. The algorithms getting harder. The everything is tricky. It's not as easy as it was. It's [00:08:00] still a great resource and it's still something brilliant to use. However, audience building is so much more than that. Also, audience building, the one thing it's not, is you just having a join my email list on your website. That is not audience building. So, if you at the beginning of this episode thought, yeah, I do audience building, and your audience building consisted of social media posting and having something on your website for people to go, yeah, I'll opt in, I am very sorry to break the news to you. That is not audience building. Audience building is way, way more strategic than that. And what I want to cover in this episode is some of the strategic things that looks like proper audience building and working really hard to grow that list. One thing I have to start by saying though is lead magnets are still one of the most effective ways to build your list and to get people onto your email list. People need a reason to get on your email list. And lead [00:09:00] magnets are still a brilliant way of doing that. They're not dead. They people, some people are really anti lead magnets. Honestly, if it's a good lead magnet, they still work really, really well. And they are always worth having in your business. and multiple lead magnets, if possible. And we can talk all about that in another episode about what works for lead magnets and all that sort of stuff. And I have done in previous episodes, but the lead magnets are really, really important. However, the other key bit is, and I think this is again, a mistake that people make is they think I'm posting on social I'm. I've got an opt in on my website, and I've got a lead magnet. Why is my audience not growing? Because again, it's back to that thing of, if you make it, they will come, where unfortunately they won't. I'd love it if they did, and it would make our lives so much easier. And holding out to go viral would be ace, but I don't think any of us can rely on that. We really need to have a strategy that says, now I have this lead magnet [00:10:00] or now I have these different lead magnets. How am I going to get that in front of more people? And that's the key bit that people are missing out. That's the audience building bit that people aren't quite getting their head around and being strategic about. Or Where they are being strategic, they're not doing it enough. Again, having that list building thing isn't just about a created lead magnet. I posted it a couple of times. Now I'm good to go. It is an ongoing thing. In fact, so much so that within my world. And when I say my world, we actually have a community that is for anybody who works with me. So whether they are on the grow, launch, sell course, whether they are in my membership, whether they work one to one with me or on one of the accelerator programs. They all have a community, which my team have very sweetly and funnily named it Tease World, because I talk about people being in my world. And we did a challenge at the beginning of 2025, where I encouraged them to [00:11:00] apply and to reach out to 14 places a week to a day, to try and get in front of other people's audiences. And that's the kind of strategy that I'm talking about. Now, Can they maintain 14 a week? Probably not. Could I maintain 14 a week? No. However, as a challenge, it was great, but there should be a level of something that you are doing every single week, the same way as you wouldn't not post on social media or you wouldn't not put your content out there. I want you to view the audience building activity, the audience building strategy, the same way. So I've got some ideas for you as to how you get people in your world and how you get that lead magnet in front of those people. That's the key bit. Again, it's all well and good and nice having people in our world, but we want them to see that lead magnet. And I've got some different ideas. Now, the first one is obviously organic social media. If you are posting regularly on social media, I want you to regularly post your [00:12:00] lead magnet. People get really het up and worried over this about what if people are getting annoyed? What if they're getting frustrated? What if they think I'm selling to them? Well, first off, you're not selling to them. Secondly, hopefully you have created a lead magnet that is a value and that is really important in my world. We've all downloaded stuff. That's absolute dog poop and we don't want our lead magnets to be that case. We want it to be really good. So hopefully you're doing something of value and it's for free. So why wouldn't you want to share it? Why wouldn't you want to get it out there? And why wouldn't your perfect customer want to download it? Also, as we've already talked about, the algorithm can work against us sometimes and very few people can see our posts. So even if you feel like you were posting it every single week, actually in reality, not many people are seeing it. So that's the first thing. I want you to be posting it on social media and I want you to be posting it. or your lead magnets really, really regularly. Also, with that, you can have different images, different captions. [00:13:00] You don't have to post the same thing every time. You can have different ways that you talk about it. Secondly, chatbots. Now, I did an episode back on, back in 2024, episode 365. We'll link to it in the show notes. If you ever want to see the show notes, you go to thereseaheathwaring. com forward slash, and you just put in the number of the episode. And this episode is number 388. So all the links will be in there. So we did an episode with the lovely Mel Ellers, all about chatbots and how effective they are. getting engagement, but also using them for things like getting opt ins into your email list. And we would have all seen them. It's fairly simple, but there are some kind of important rules and things. So do make sure that you follow Mel and have a look at her stuff. I'll make sure we link up to her as well. But basically what you're doing is you're getting people to comment a word and you're sending them a link to then. opt in either a link to opt into your lead magnet or you're getting them to opt [00:14:00] in through the bot itself. But it can be a really effective and simple way for your audience to get their hands on your lead magnet. And if it's a good post, it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Hopefully, you'll know that what happens with social media is that when someone likes or comments or interacts with your post, the platform goes, Oh, okay, people are finding this useful and they show it to more people. Well, when you've got a chat bot on there, and I'm talking specifically about Instagram here, this is where I've used them, and someone comments, then that helps with the engagement, which helps more people see it. It can be, from a list building point of view, using chatbots can be so, so super effective. The next point I've got down here is ads. So you don't have to put any money behind chatbots. If you pay for many chat, I think there's an element that you can still do it for free, but chat, many chats not. expensive. But if you did have some budget, you could run ads to your lead magnet. So again, you could set that up in Meta, you could do LinkedIn [00:15:00] ads, you can do Pinterest ads, wherever it might be, but you can put some money behind it to get it served to a new audience, people who don't know you, and then give them the option to opt in and get this thing for free. The next strategy is something I talk a lot about. And in fact, if you go and listen to episode three, four, six, it goes more in depth, but basically other people's audiences. And there's a few different strategies I want to talk about specifically under that umbrella. The first one is podcast stages interviews. Where can you go and speak? or be a guest on a podcast or be interviewed for something where it's being put out in front of their audience. That's such a great strategy and it's one that I use. I speak a lot. I like to go on other people's podcasts. FYI, if you have a podcast and you want me on, I would love to come and have a chat with you about that. But yeah, that's a strategy that in terms of getting in front of other people's audiences and serving up lead magnets, other people's podcasts, stages, i. e. you're speaking at places that can be virtual or in [00:16:00] person and interviews. The next point is training in other people's groups. This can be really, really useful. Now, there's probably a million questions about this I get asked in terms of, should you get paid? What should you do? When shouldn't you do it? How much content should you give them? There's a lot around this. However, in short, often, no, I wouldn't get paid for them. I have been paid for some groups to speak in. And as long as it's the right group or it's the right audience, it's not even about the numbers. I mean, I've done some sessions to really small audiences of like five, six people knowing that it will be in the vault and there's more in their membership, but maybe five, six people turn up live. I have no problem with that. It's not about the numbers. It's not about like, yes, would I turn down a group of 5, 000 people? Not in a million years. Like I would be there like a shot. However, It doesn't mean I won't do it if it's not a ginormous group. And I think that's something that when...

Overcoming Social Media Challenges with Karen Cureton: Tips for Authentic Engagement

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast,' I talked with Karen Cureton, a multi-award-winning social media trainer and speaker. We tackled the common dilemmas businesses face with social media, from engaging effectively to overcoming the fear of visibility. Karen shared her journey from corporate sales to helping women in business grow their social media presence, demystifying the process with actionable strategies. Tune in for insightful tips on building relationships online, maintaining authenticity, and consistently engaging your audience for business growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Overcoming the Fear of Visibility: Karen shared practical tips on how to conquer the fear of being seen online and why embracing authenticity is crucial for building trust with your audience.
Building Relationships Through Engagement: The importance of genuine, consistent interaction on social media was emphasized as a way to foster meaningful connections and grow your business.
Simplifying Social Media Strategies: Karen broke down actionable steps to demystify social media, making it easier for businesses to create a strong online presence and maintain consistency.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Karen Cureton on LinkedIn, Website, Facebook, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

If you are in business, you know that social media is something that we have to do. Some of you might love it, and some of you might think it's a necessary evil, something that we have to do. And some of you might feel like you're not doing it at all, and you really should be. But you might be thinking, why do I go to all that effort of putting all those posts out when it's just tumbleweed? And people talk about getting clients from social media, but it's never really happened for you. Well, today's guest is addressing all of those things. How do you show up where you actually do engage with your potential customers and turn them into clients? Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? I always love it when I can bring you guests that I know really well and today's guest is no exception. Karen Cureton has been working with me for the past 12 months. She's actually been in my world a very long time as a voyeur and a lurker which you will hear more about people lurking on social media and she's watched me for quite some time and about 12 months ago she started working with me and it's just been an absolute pleasure to work with her. And as you'll hear in the interview, one of the things that I talk about is that I encourage everyone [00:02:00] I work with to increase their visibility by getting on podcasts, by putting themselves in front of other people's audiences and putting themselves out there. And Karen obviously came to me and said, well, could I come on your podcast? And I was like, of course you can. So it's really lovely to have Karen come and join us today. Karen is a multi award winning social media trainer and speaker, and she works with women in business to inspire them to grow through being visible on social media. She is not your typical social media trainer. She is an ex pat Geordie with over 20 years experience in corporate sales. But for the last decade, she's focused on helping women in business navigate the social media maze, where she is passionate about ditching the jargon and creating a safe space to learn. Karen has a program called Social Media for Grown Ups because as Karen shares in this episode, she was not of an era where she grew up with the internet and therefore her passion lies in helping other women and people who have had the say, where social media [00:03:00] isn't second nature, isn't something that they grew up with, and help them demystify what it is like and get on it. We have such a cool conversation with some really good actionable takeaways for you. So at the end of this episode, I summarize some of those actionable takeaways, but we're talking about how to show up, how to get engagement, how to be proactive with your engagement and how to feel. like a real human being when you're on social media and how to come across as a real human being so that the people you're trying to interact with know that and they know that you're not some spammy horrible salesperson who's just trying to jump in their DMs and irritate them, which we've all probably had experience of. Well, I certainly have had loads of it, but most of all, it was just a really lovely chat and so lovely to bring it to the podcast. So without further ado, here is The Awesome Karen. Karen, a really warm welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? Karen: I'm really good. Thank you. The sun is actually shining, so I'm happy. I'm [00:04:00] happy. Teresa: Actually, you're not wrong. It's, it's a little bit, a little bit blue sky here. Obviously, if you're listening to this and you're not British, then you might find it weird that we just immediately talk about the weather, but that is obviously our MO, like, you know, we talk about weather. Karen, you have been in my world for some time, which is lovely. And What was super interesting was we, one of the things I do with my students and clients is we talk about visibility and it's what happens whenever I teach people the visibility strategy of getting in front of other people's audiences, they then get really nervous to approach me because I've taught it and you sent me. In fact, you had heard someone I'd interviewed and you were like, I'm never gonna ask to come on the podcast, didn't you? Karen: Yeah, true. Teresa: But you did it and you're here, which is great. I, because Karen: no, I message to you and said, I'm putting my big girl's pants on and I'm gonna apply. Teresa: Yes. And look what happened. So Karen: there you go. Teresa: If someone is sat there thinking, oh, I'm too scared to do that, [00:05:00] just do it. You just never, never know. And actually, I. Love what you do. And obviously, I've been watching what you do for some time and even in my world for some time. And I think lots of people are going to resonate with this conversation. We are talking about social media, but you come at it from a different angle. Now, obviously, if someone's listening to this, they can't see you, Karen. So maybe let's start with why you come at the angle you come at. Karen: Well, I come at the angle I come at because I didn't grow up with the internet. I am a woman who grew up, I don't even want to say what decade, that's really scary. But I grew up, didn't grow up with the internet. I grew up when my old boss used to send me faxes on a Sunday night with my reports and stuff like that. So I came to social media, I was still a really early adopter. I was on Twitter, God forbid that, Ooh, don't get me started on that, but Twitter was where I very first started [00:06:00] because I was in a sales role. I was sales director for a national house builder. Absolutely loved what I did and then was stupid enough to have a kid, you know, who does that? And then I started looking at, I didn't want to go back into the corporate world and I thought how can I attract new clients? Because I didn't have a big budget, I didn't have lots of money and I came at it from a perspective of, do you know what it is? everything that I've learned about selling high end properties. which is where I worked. It was about building relationships and social media is exactly that. People forget, like we just say, it's, if you forget, it's called social networking and you build relationships with your future clients. And so I started looking at it as a woman in business with very little budget. It didn't grow up with the internet and thought, do you know what it is? I [00:07:00] think this could be a goer. I think it could be absolutely a goer. And that's what, 14 years ago. Teresa: I think, I think this, I think my audience is probably a little bit split in a sense of, there are probably some people listening to this, like, yeah, I love social media. I'm great. I'm good on it. It's brilliant. And then there are some people who are like, I just can't get my head around it. And how, If you deal with people who, like you said, didn't grow up with the internet, didn't grow up with social media, you know, we all know that when we look at, you know, your children are older than my daughter, my daughter's 15, and how old are your boys? Karen: My son's come, he's 19, he's 20 in May. Teresa: Well, it's so second nature to them. That's all they know. So how do you go about encouraging someone who didn't, they didn't grow up with it, they don't even necessarily like it? Like, some people don't, you know, it's not their thing. Like, how do you encourage them to [00:08:00] actually even consider it in the first place for their business? Karen: I think, I think there's two things there that I want to address, which is I, I assumed because I'm the wrong side of 40 that it was just people who didn't grow up with the internet. But I actually trained a young woman last year who was a personal trainer. and she said, I absolutely hate, hate social media. I'm terrified of it. And I think whether you are her generation, younger, I'm actually coaching a young woman who's 18. Who's working at a dad's business, doing the marketing, and I'm coaching her to do the social media for that business. She's terrified. So I think. We almost need to swipe the age thing out. I think it's a thing where people lack confidence. They're fearful of judgment. And then it's the donor looks silly. [00:09:00] You know, I remember the very first time I went live. Back in the day, I went live on Facebook, I was absolutely bricking it. And I planned it all out and I did it and I thought I'd done a decent job. Then this horrible woman messaged me and it's the only time in 14 years somebody's done it. And she messaged me, oh, I thought your lighting could have been better. I thought you could have done this, could I? And I just responded and went, thanks for your feedback and blocked her. But my point is, I said this to a lady, well, just before Christmas and she said, I really don't like social media. I know I need to be there. It's a necessary evil. And I said, well, your options are you are the pay somebody to do it for you, which is never the same as your voice. No, never the same as your voice or you learn how to do it. So what I do is I bring in my old sales tools and I say, well, what if. You learned this stuff. What if you then signed up, [00:10:00] say five new clients in the first six months, what would the value of that client being to your business? And how would that make you feel? Well, I'd feel great. And I think it's that it's like. You know, I'm an introvert extrovert. I know you. I'm quite comfortable chatting away and I will chat away, but I'm also the person that flew to Australia and didn't speak to a soul. Yeah. I'm not sociable in that way with people I don't know. And, and in social media, I, I do that. I think I dress for work and I think I'm putting my, my work avatar on, which is confident Karen. And so I'll say to, to clients and I'll say to your listeners. Take a step back for it and think about how you'd feel if you get the results you want, but I think it's, it's take it to the point that what we want to do is build relationships first, because we forget if we walked into a really [00:11:00] smart shop. for me, it would be a handbag shop. We walked in there into Mulberry and it would go, can I help you? And you go, don't touch me. Don't touch me. Whereas actually I went to Mulberry before for my birthday, I went to Mulberry and this lovely woman came up to me and said, she says, Oh, you've got a Daria. She says, Oh, she says, Oh, it's one of my favourites. And we ended up talking handbag. She built a relationship with me. Teresa: Yeah. And I think. That's the key thing. I think often when people are scared of social media or don't want to do it, they're not thinking of, which was always the problem in the first place, they're not thinking of forget the Forget the, the actual, you know, platform itself, it's about, that's all it is. Like it just happens to be a different way of doing it. It's the, the essence of what you do doesn't change the, the building, the relationships that have in the conversations that doesn't change. It's just the format in which you put that out, whether it's in person, whether it's something [00:12:00] else or whether it was on social media. But I guess people really get hung up with the, the actual mechanics of using social media. Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think it's about one of, one of the ladies I worked with about five, six years ago, she said, what I need is a workable way to do this stuff. And I think, you know, I, I have, I, I, in my head, which can be quite, crazy at times. I have four things and I try and keep it really simple. I have four things that I think we need to learn and we incrementally, it's a bit like, you know, when your daughter was learning to ride a bike, she wouldn't get on that bike and go straight to the end of the street and back without falling off. We build up, we build up our learning. So I'll say to people, if you think about the foundation of your, knowledge starts with the plan because we still have a plan for our businesses. You know, I have my big flip chart in my office where I have what I'm doing month by month, what I want to do in my business, [00:13:00] what I need to do to get there. Your social media activity should be just the same. So you start with your foundations, your planning, what, where do I want to be this time next year? What do I want to be doing? Then you build up by the next layer. It's almost like a cake. Next layer of super chocolate icing, let's call it chocolate icing. And then that's the juicy stuff. That's your content, that's your imagery. Maybe creating reels, going live. Some gorgeous branded imagery. Understanding that and then building up again by then starting to build your audience and then engage with them because that's the piece every time I go to a networking event, somebody will say to me, Oh, I'm paying my VA to do my social media, do my social media. And I said, well, what's she doing? Yeah, well, she's posting. I said, and who's engaging, who's talking to your audience and, and it's a bit like if we [00:14:00] shouldn't just hit a tennis ball at a wall, it would be very exciting that's posting on social media, not actually, let's get to be hitting that ball back to us and talking. Teresa: That's a great analogy. The whole, you know, the difference between playing tennis with a partner and just banging it against the wall. Like, you know, you're not getting anything back, you know, Karen: like boring. It's boring. You know, I remember when I very first started on social media. I was in selling mode. I wasn't, I was in almost in that panic, you know, that fight of like, just sell to them, just put stuff out about how you can work with me. And then I took a step back and, and I'll do this now. I would actually urge your listeners to do this. Do an audit of your last 20 posts. How many of them are building a sense of your personality? How many of them are authority positioning you? How many of them are talking about your pedigree? And what your clients say about [00:15:00] working with you, how many of them give you a sense of what results you can achieve and the difference you make and your differentiation. So I'll say, take a step back, have a look, because actually quite often when we all start, we all start with selling because that's the easy thing to do. Teresa: Yeah. So, okay. I've got questions coming out of my head. Okay. So. Firstly, what if you are literally getting tumbleweed? So what if? And I think this is the mistake that you kind of touched on and, and, and we can talk more about is that just the posting thing that I'm posting, I'm showing up and doing the thing and I'm getting nothing. Let's talk about that first. Karen: I would strip it all back to basics. So I would say, okay, who do you want to attract? Because majority of us, a lot of us offer services. And I think there's a thing around positioning our expectations. How often does somebody need what we offer? [00:16:00] Now, if somebody was buying the pen. That's really easy. You know, I buy loads of stuff on Instagram for the cats, you know, it's what I do. It's, it's an easy quick sale, isn't it? Yeah. But if you have a service, I would take a step back and think about, are you clear about who you want to work with? And will your profile Your bio resonate with them, regardless of platform, and my ethos is very much around, it doesn't matter which, you said it before, it doesn't matter which platform. Mechanics are different, but actually the principles are the same. Your bio, your profile. needs to be something that's going to resonate, it's going to talk to that person. So I would say if you're sitting there and you're getting nothing happening, do a bit of a family and friends test with your bio, ask people, your friends, people that you trust, what do you think I do? Who do...

5 Myths About Launching That Are Holding You Back From Your Most Successful Launch Yet!

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 01:00:00 +0100

What if everything you thought you knew about launching was wrong? When it comes to launching there are so many beliefs out there about what it takes to have a successful launch—beliefs that might be the very thing holding you back. In today’s episode, I'm going to challenge some of the most common assumptions about launching and uncover what’s really standing in your way. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure if you’re ready to launch, this episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Big audiences aren’t a must – You don’t need a massive following to successfully launch your business. Focus on building a loyal, engaged community instead.

Perfection is overrated – Waiting for everything to be flawless can delay your launch. Take practical, manageable steps and launch even if things aren’t 100% perfect.

Keep it simple – Launching your business doesn’t have to be complicated. Focus on clear, simple strategies to achieve success without overcomplicating the process.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Join my Masterclass Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

What if everything you thought you knew about launching was wrong? There are so many beliefs out there about what it takes to have a successful launch. Beliefs that might be the very thing that's holding you back. In today's episode, we are going to challenge some of the most common assumptions about launching and uncover what's really standing in your way. If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure if you're ready to launch, this episode's for you. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Riz Heath Waring. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and [00:01:00] strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and motivated. And are gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing this week? One of my goals this year is to increase the podcast downloads. It was kind of a goal last year, but I didn't focus on it as much as I needed to. So this year is definitely going to be the year. And I was doing some research. And do you know that around 70 percent of the people who listened to this podcast have not subscribed to it? So I'm wondering if you'll do me a favor. If you currently don't subscribe to this podcast, I would really appreciate it if wherever you're listening to this, you hit that subscribe button so that it tells Apple or Spotify or whatever you're listening that you like this content and hopefully we'll share it with others. And my commitment to you is that I am going to work really hard this year to [00:02:00] create the best podcast that I can. I'm going to bring in the best guests that help you move your business forward. And I'm going to work really hard on my solar episodes to make sure that you walk away with real tactical, strategic advice that helps you move the needle in your business. So that is my commitment to you. And all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, you hit that subscribe button. Okay, let's get on with today's show. Today, we are talking about the five myths about launching that are holding you back. Now, when it comes to launching, it can feel really intimidating, especially when you're stuck believing one of these myths that simply aren't true. So today we're going to bust five common myths about launching that might be keeping you from achieving your launch goals. If you have an online business, you might be thinking that you can't launch or your launch isn't going to be successful because of one of these five things that we're going to be discussing today. And I want to either reframe them in [00:03:00] your mind or just give you the facts about it and that it actually isn't true. So let's get started with the very first one, which is a really popular one that I see. Myth one, my audience is too small. Now you might be thinking, I need, tens of thousands of followers or people on my email list in order to do a successful launch. And let's be honest, the more people you have, the better the chances your launch is going to be. I'm not going to deny that at all. However, stopping a launch or not going into a launch because of the size of your email list is not something I would recommend. You see, when we get to some of the later myths, you will realize that launching is about learning and You can do that with a small list without doubt. The other thing that's super interesting about having a small list is often your list is more engaged than a big list. So the other day I [00:04:00] was, I was actually taking part in someone else's online day. It was over the new year and they happened to mention on the live call. So it was a zoom call, how many people had registered for the event. Now this person is a big YouTuber and they had 100, 000 people register for the event. But what was super interesting is their turn up rate was about 16, 000 people, which I know you're probably sat there thinking, I'd give my right arm to have 16, 000 people on my email list, maybe. However, when you work out the percentage, which is very easy in this case, that's a 16 percent turn up rate. Normally, if I was doing a webinar or if I was doing something where I get people to join and I want a turn up rate, I would hope that that turn up rate would be more like 30%. So sometimes when you have a small list, you can actually get way better [00:05:00] percentages In terms of your engagement, your turn up and your purchases, then sometimes if you have a massive list, it's not about the size of your list, it's about the quality and how engaged it is. And often those smaller lists can be more engaged. And just because you have a small number of people on your list doesn't mean you shouldn't launch. The people on your list are as likely to buy if they're on a massive list as if they're on a smaller list. They don't know. Someone on your email list has no idea how many people are on your email list. For all they know, you can have 100, 000 people on there. So it makes no difference to them as to whether they're going to sign up, join. Get engaged with the launch that you're going to do of the size of your email list. I've had really brilliant success stories with members that I've worked with and clients I've worked with who have had a small list and they've launched because one of the things that they can do, which you can't do when you have a big list, is you can do a lot more personal [00:06:00] outreach. You can do things like personally DM people, follow up with video messages. You can have one on one conversations with these people to understand more about them. When your launches get bigger and when your list gets bigger, it gets a lot harder to do that. And actually the reason I want you to launch with a smaller list is because now's the time you get to learn and practice. Imagine doing your first ever launch to a room of 10, 000 people. That would be terrifying. And if you messed up, you're going to mess up in a big way. This is why you should be doing it. So your list is never too small to go ahead and launch. Yes, the truth is the bigger your list, the more you might end up with more customers. But the, but the fact of the matter is there is no size too small. Okay. Myth number two. I'm going to give away too much of my content. This is a really interesting one. And one that is often a [00:07:00] conversation that comes up in my coaching sessions with my students. How do they know what to do in something like a webinar or a challenge or a bootcamp so that they're not giving away too much information And to make sure that the balance is right because what we don't want to do is we don't want to waste someone's time. We don't want someone turning up to our launch experience and actually all we do is sell to them hard from the minute they get on to the minute they finish because that's not going to engage anybody. But also what we don't want to do is we don't want to you. Bring them into our launch experience, give them so much stuff that they need to go away and do some of that stuff and actually feel like they have no need to come and buy the thing we're trying to sell to them. The truth is we need to give them something. We need to give them some content. We need to give them a quick win or an understanding. And I think this is more key. We often talk about share with them the what and the why and not the how. And I think that still stands. I think you [00:08:00] need to demonstrate. what it is they need to understand why they need it. And then your course or your, um, membership or your coaching program will give them the how in detail. For me, one of the webinars I've done in the past is around the five steps to building an email list. I talk them through what those five steps are and why those five steps are really important. But what I'm not doing is showing them how to do those five steps. Now, if they wanted to take those five steps and go and research them and go and do them themselves, then absolutely fine. No worries at all. Those people are going to do that anyway. They weren't ever going to come and buy my thing, but at least I'm giving them something to go on, but I'm not giving them everything. Bear in mind, like I said, it's the what and the why, not necessarily the how. Myth number three, my product isn't ready yet. Now, you may have heard in the online space, sell it before you make it. And I have done [00:09:00] this a few times, including the last launch that I did back in December, which was a very small private launch to a select number of people. And I didn't have the product ready at all. And I sold it on that basis. However, like I said, one of the things that I did was that it was with a very small group of people that I had worked with on a, I'd done a workshop with them over four sessions. And they had got to know me and understood how I worked and my knowledge and all that sort of thing. It was much easier to offer them something and say, look, it's not ready, but it will be by this point. I think there's nothing wrong with that. As long as you deliver, as long as you then say, this is what you're going to get. And this is when you're going to get it. And the people that bought it back in December bought the course that I'm selling, they, the people who bought it back then got it for a much cheaper price because it wasn't ready. So it's almost like you're having to buy something before you see it and [00:10:00] before it's built out. And therefore you're getting the benefit of a cheaper price because of that. One of the reasons I really like is this strategy, not always, but one of the reasons for me personally, I like this strategy is that it pins me down when I say I'm going to sell something new or do something new. So for instance, let's take YouTube and I know it's not selling it, but I'm I've been talking to you for a while now, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, about starting YouTube. And it is a huge intention for me to start YouTube. And it was last year, but things got very busy and I had to push it. And then I'm having conversations with my team about whether I need to push it again, which I really don't want to do. But as I've not promised it to anybody, and as I've not sold it, and obviously I won't be selling it, it's YouTube, but as I've not made myself make a commitment, I can push it. And that's the same with launching a product. If you have already sold the product, then you have no choice but to get it done. And but to ensure that you are [00:11:00] doing the thing. However, if you think I'm going to get it ready and then sell it, you might not ever get it ready. The other thing is You want some help in getting that product really good. And sometimes creating it with your customers is a really good way of doing that. You haven't just spent the last six months creating a product to put it out to the world to realize no one wants it. Or they want it and they get it and it's not in the right format, or it wasn't quite what they thought. So sometimes you don't have to have that product completely ready. You need to understand what's going into that product. So I was able to tell them the outline of the modules. I was able to tell them what templates they're getting. I was able to tell them the structure of the calls they were getting. However, it wasn't actually done. until the new year. So if you haven't created your product and you're thinking I've got to have my product perfect before I actually get it out there, this might be the sign that you've been waiting for to go ahead and start to sell it. [00:12:00] And again, this is where small audiences can be good because you can have those conversations with people. You can keep it quite tight and You can really kind of help them understand whether it's for them. But maybe this is a sign that you've been waiting for to get on and get that product launch. Myth number four. Everything has to be perfect. Now, I am a perfectionist through and through. I look at other people who launch and bearing in mind I don't talk about launching and teach launching and do launching for a living. And this is very much my wheelhouse. And I look at the biggest and the best people launching and I in my head go, I need to be as good as them. I need my sales page to be as beautiful as theirs and as orchestrated as theirs. I need the funnels, the emails, that all of those things, I need it to be perfect. But the truth is they never started that level. You might look at my stuff and think. I want to look like Teresa's, but I didn't start at [00:13:00] this level. I started at the pages that weren't perfect. The funnels that weren't a funnel, the webinars that weren't really well structured and kind of the way they are now, it was so different. And I think thinking something has to be perfect is an absolute nightmare. When we try and make it perfect, We just don't do it. We just don't end up doing the thing because it never will be perfect. Things I write today are still far from perfect, but it never will be perfect. And I know that. The other thing that I mentioned earlier is I want you to understand that Every time you launch, you learn something. You learn, okay, I did that and I didn't like it. I did that and I did like it. That had no effect. That did have an effect. And while you're trying to make something perfect, and while you're waiting for it to be perfect before you do anything, means you're not doing anything. And it also means [00:14:00] you're not learning. So there's a saying, which is a little bit cheesy, Like, but it's, you know, I think it's useful, which is you either win or you learn. So you never lose, you never fail, you learn from it. And that's how I learned to do some of the things that I've done. That's how I know what works, what doesn't. That's how I know what converts well on a page and what doesn't. Because I have gone through it so many times. I have shown up to a launch on a webinar and one person has shown up live. I've had launches literally fall on their backside and no one bore. I have had people that have come along and gone, this was the most amazing webinar ever and didn't convert. I have had Every type of launch you could imagine a boot camp, a, um, challenge webinars, open houses. I've done them all and none of them have been perfect. Not one single one of them. So if you are waiting for it to be perfect, you are never ever going to do it. The [00:15:00] key thing that you can do on every single launch is track it, track everything that you're doing, whether you track it and go, God, I hated that, or that's a terrible result. Still track it, still think about. What can you learn from that thing? And the other way to think about it, if this is helpful, is the person that you're trying to help on the other end, they don't need it to be perfect. They need the help now. If you're thinking of doing a challenge to get people motivated to, I don't know, start movement or finally clear out their wardrobe or whatever it might be, that person who you're trying to help, they don't care that it's perfect. What they care about is that actually, I just want you to help me get motivated to do that thing. And by you holding back because you want it to be perfect, you're doing them an injustice. You're not helping your perfect customer. You're not helping the person who's out there who needs your help show up. Do it the best you can, knowing it's not going to be perfect, but you're going to learn from it every [00:16:00] single time. Done is better than perfect, and learn from every single thing that you do. Fifth and final myth. Launching is too complicated. Now, people believe And I'm not going to say that they're wrong, that there are many moving parts to a launch and they're going to mess it up. And the truth is launching can feel really overwhelming and I get it. However, this is where you have bits that come from everywhere and you're trying to piece together different things. And also when you're looking at someone else's launch thinking, I need to do that. I...

Boosting Visibility: Using Awards and Books to Grow Your Brand

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, the wonderful Sophie Milliken, MBE, the founder and CEO of Moja, is chatting about the importance of getting noticed through awards and writing books. Something that makes many people uncomfortable, we discuss why winning awards matter and the common mistakes to watch out for when you are nominated for an award. Sophie also talks about how writing a book can help boost your business's visibility. Plus, we share tips on how to tell if an award is legit or a scam, and how to make your submissions stand out. If you're a course creator, coach, or membership owner looking to grow your brand, this episode is full of useful advice and strategies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Power of Awards – Winning awards can significantly boost your business’s visibility, but it’s important to submit thoughtfully and avoid common mistakes like submitting for the wrong categories or ignoring the submission guidelines.

Writing a Book for Business Growth – Writing a book can be an excellent way to increase your visibility and credibility, positioning you as an expert in your field while attracting new opportunities.

Spotting Legitimate Awards – Not all awards are created equal. It’s crucial to be able to differentiate between genuine awards that will add value to your business and those that are simply out to make money off unsuspecting participants.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Sophie Milliken on Instagram or LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever thought about going for an award or been put up for award and didn't get it? Do you wonder whether it's worth the effort because sometimes we have to go to a fair bit of effort in terms of putting a submission in and convincing them why we need to get it? Or maybe you don't even think about going for them in the first place because you're thinking I'm not good enough to win an award. In today's episode, we are talking about the importance of getting visible and specifically around awards and winning them, how to know whether they're worth it, how to know what you should look out for when you're putting together an award submission, and And some of the common mistakes that people make. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Theresa Heath, wearing as always. And I just want to thank you so much for spending the time with me and listening to this episode of the podcast. It really does genuinely mean the world to me. Obviously I sit and record it on my own when I do solos and things. And sometimes you can feel really disjointed from the people listening. So I just want to say a big, massive, thank you. I really appreciate you being here on today's episode. I am talking about. One of my favorite areas, or one of my key [00:02:00] areas that I talk about, we're talking about visibility and how to become visible. You, if you've listened to this podcast before, we'll know that this is a big thing that I teach. It's a big thing that I talk about because if we're not visible, if people can't see us and they don't know that we exist. exist, then they're never going to be able to buy from us and becoming the go to expert is really important in terms of growing an online business. And that's exactly what we talk to today's guest about. Although we do talk about it in a slightly different way. Today I'm interviewing Sophie Milliken. Sophie is an MBE. I mean, that's like so impressive. And the founder and CEO of Moja. I think I've said that right. It's M O J A. She worked with entrepreneurs and senior executives to amplify their personal profiles and become the authority in their industry. As I've said, this is very much in my wheelhouse, which makes this a great conversation. She's a multi award winning businesswoman [00:03:00] and a proud mom. She also enjoys supporting the North East region where she lives in the UK. and is a co founder of City Ladies Networking, a networking group for women in business running a monthly breakfast events in Newcastle, London, and Paris. Very fancy. So, Sophie came on to talk about visibility and we kind of ended up going down to like roots or two rabbit holes, which I'm super glad that we did because these are two things that we've not really talked about before. And the two areas of visibility that I don't talk a lot about because these aren't my zone of genius, but they are for Sophie is we talked about award winning, which yes, I won some awards, but I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in award winning things. And we talk about writing a book and how these two things can be huge for your visibility and help you show up as the go to expert. So when it comes to [00:04:00] awards, we talk about are they worth going for? How do you know if you are good enough to go for an award? What should you look out for? And what are some of the common mistakes that people make when applying for awards? And then from the book point of view, we talk about what it takes to actually write a book. She's written three. We talk about how long it will take and what it will do for your business and for your visibility when you have a book. So this is a really nice rounded conversation about two areas that Sophie is really, really smart in and gives some really good insight to both of those things, whether you're looking to go for awards or write a book, I still think you're going to find this a really interesting conversation in terms of getting visible and how important it is for your business. So without further ado, here is Sophie. Sophie, welcome to the podcast. Sophie: Thanks for having me on. Teresa: My pleasure. I'm excited about today's conversation because we're talking about something that always makes me cringe when I say it. [00:05:00] When someone says about my business and I say I'm a personal brand, it always makes me feel like, like my ego is all on show there. Like, yeah, I'm a personal brand. Like it just feels horrible. However, Well, we're going to get into this about why we need one and what it is. And that's the thing, but let's start with what do you describe a personal brand as? Sophie: So I have this love hate relationship with the term personal branding because it's just bandied about all the time now and people are always going on. You've got to have a personal brand and you see all these personal branding coaches pop up all over social media and it's just become a bit of a thing. So I think what people, a lot of people think is is just doing a banging LinkedIn post or an Instagram post that does really well, and you get loads of likes on it, and that's kind of what people associate with personal branding. For me, the social media part of it is actually the very last bit, because A [00:06:00] social media post doesn't really last for very long, whereas all the other stuff that I think underpins someone's personal brand will be around forever. So I often say to people, you know, Google one of my clients, for example, and all the stuff that pops up should be stuff that we've helped to put there. And it might be things like an award win. It might be that they've spoken at an event or Or they have a new book out, or they've got a podcast, or they've been on someone's show, or they've been on TV. So all those different things that will raise someone's profile, make them more visible, which they can then talk about on social media. Teresa: Yeah. And in my experience, this becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in this fact of you have to, and I think this is where people get the mistake or make the mistake. They think it just happens. They think that I wake up one day and just get an award or wake up one day and get invited on a podcast. That is not the case. What they haven't seen behind the background is all the work that's going into it. But the more you [00:07:00] do, the more you put out, the more people invite you to do things. Is that your experience? Sophie: 100%. It's like a snowball effect. And the way I got into this as a business is quite interesting because I had my first business was a graduate recruitment and employability consultancy. So we used to design assessment materials for big employers like JP Morgan, Marks and Spencers. And then we did some really cool stuff with the universities to prepare students to get graduate jobs. So it was super niche. And when that business really took off and started doing really well and scaling up massively was when I was doing all of these activities. However, there was no plan. It wasn't intentional. It was a mistake. So what happened was actually that I Uh, had a co founder who was a bit more shy and retiring than I am. And he was afraid of the limelight, I suppose. Whereas I, I could see that by being more visible, it created opportunities. I just didn't really [00:08:00] realize that there should be a strategy behind it. So one of the things that I did when he exited, exited the business was to have awards as part of my marketing strategy. And they were good quality awards, which have fantastic communities. So they weren't scammy ones, which I warn people against. They were good. Teresa: This is a whole question I'm about to ask, but let's go on. Sophie: It is. It is. And, and what happened with that is we start getting shortlisted for stuff. And then there was it, there was this one year where I literally won everything that was going. It was got to the point where it was a bit embarrassing, if I'm honest, but it all paid off. And to be fair, we, we had in that the business was flying. It was really successful. All these things were happening. But then what happened is I was saying yes to more things and it was this snowball effect. So my first book came out and I did a couple of book launches. I got offered two TEDx talks off back of this book launch. I'd never even watched a TEDx talk at this point. Didn't really know what one was, thought I did, said yes to the first one. Then figured out how I was [00:09:00] going to do it. And literally it was the most scariest thing I've ever done in my life. But then off the back of that, I got offered a column in a magazine and I got, you know, all these things that happen and you'll have experienced this. You know, when you do one of these things, five more opportunities pop up. So this was, you know, it just made my profile really high. And then what the beauty of it was, because there's a bit of a, so what question to this, like, why are we doing this? And what happened was. I was then rocking up to sales meetings with prospects and they felt like they knew me because they'd seen me at various things and they'd seen that I was sharing I'm at this thing on LinkedIn or whatever and it just made the conversations really natural and really easy because they felt like they knew me already when they didn't. So it made sales really easy and it created more fun opportunities. So then fast forward a few years and I sold that business and stayed on And then decided I wanted to leave and I couldn't operate in my old industry anymore because I had 5, 000 [00:10:00] restrictions as to what I couldn't do for a period of time. And I was chatting to a friend and said, she said to me, what are you going to do now? And I said, I've got this idea. Don't really know what it is or what to call it, but I feel like there's a process in all the stuff that I did to raise my profile. And I feel like I can do that for the founders. And that was how my current business Mojo was born. It was just this random idea and it is now growing into, into a full offer. So that's the, the long version of that story. But I think it's, it's interesting, isn't it? Teresa: And it's super helpful to understand the difference this can do for someone's business, because sometimes it does feel a little bit frivolous and, or. On some of these things, which I have to say is like most marketing that I talk about, you're not going to necessarily see the results on day one or minute one. You, this is like, I liken it cause I'm a big gardener. I grow my vegetables. My audience know this. I'm obsessed. But anyway, this is like planting a seed. You know, I have to plant the [00:11:00] seed. I have to love it. I have to water it. I have to make sure it's warm. It has enough light. I have to nurture it in those early days, even though it's doing nothing. All in the hope that at some point it will bring me tomatoes. And if I do it properly and I keep putting that time and effort in, then it will reward me having the summer. But what happens in so much marketing and in things like this is we go, yeah, I didn't say anything. Like we're waiting for the instant result. There's no instant results. So we just assume it's not done anything. Okay. I want to talk about the awards thing because it's very interesting to me. So I have won a couple of awards. I have won a most professional female speaker, which quite honestly gobsmacked me because I was like, of all the things I've been told most professional, I'm not sure was one of them, but I want a female speaker award, international female speaker award. And then just literally last week, I won role model of the year for digital women, which Sophie: congratulations. Teresa: Thank you. And it feels like a really [00:12:00] lovely award to win because like being told you're a role model is kind of amazing for my ego. It loves it. So those awards, very honestly, uh, the digital women awards, I was nominated by other people, but in order to actually put yourself in for the award, they contact you and say, you've been nominated for these awards. And it was actually about four or five awards. And then I just went for two that I thought were the most, you know, kind of like a chance of winning, not even chance of winning, but ones that mattered to me. Like some of the others, it's like, actually, they don't matter to me and what I do. And then I had to submit a whole thing as to why I think I would be a good person for that award. And the other award was just a submission. So I submitted my thing and it feels sometimes like, is this a bit. Like, and obviously with lots of awards you have to pay to go to the event and all this sort of thing and, and some awards you just have to outright pay to be part of them. How do we know whether it's worth doing Incredible and how do we know [00:13:00] when it's literally just a, a kind of tick in a box. Sophie: A money making scam or a tick in a box. Yeah. So I have a few things that I would advise people to look out for. So I think awards should be part of everybody's strategy. I think there's an award for everybody at any stage in their business, whatever industry they're in. But there are a lot of scammy ones. So if I was advising someone to put a strategy together, I would advise them to look for the whole year, to look at what's going on across the whole year. So they're not having any panics around, Ooh, there's a deadline tomorrow, I'm just going to put this thing together so that they can really think through it. And also I would say, don't apply for everything. Choose specific ones that you know are more likely to, to deliver some kind of benefits because the reality is if you are writing your own award entries, it takes ages. It's like doing a really good quality job application. You can't just do this scattergun thing where you put loads out and hope that one of them sticks. You've got to spend the time [00:14:00] if you're doing it yourself. And this is why a lot of people pay us to write their award entries because there's actually a skill to it. And sometimes it's quite hard to step out from your business and look into it. and come up with the stories and the stats and the evidence that a judge is expected to see. But if I was, if someone, if you said to me, Oh, there's these awards here and I'm not sure whether I should apply for them. I would say, well, go and have a look and see who the judges are. Are they credible people in your industry that you either know, or you can see that they have a credible bio, for example. I'd have a look at who the previous winners are. And again, same thing. Do you know who they are? Are you impressed by them? Can you see why they would have won? I'd be looking at things like, are they expecting you to pay to enter? Now, there's a bit of a caveat on this because some industries that is just the norm and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're scammy. So you might need to delve into that one a bit deeper. There's other things that I really don't like about awards where Wandswear, it's a popularity [00:15:00] contest and they expect you to go and get people to vote for you, for example. So I tend to steer clear of Teresa: Because who's got the biggest audience? That's who wins. Sophie: Yeah, it's just weird. Teresa: It's a numbers game. Yeah. Sophie: Yeah, I find that bit strange. Or Wandswear, you have to be at the awards ceremony to have a chance of winning because yes, you should want to go, but it shouldn't be a requirement to even be considered. So there's a few things within there that I think will will help you see if it's a bit of a scam. The other thing is that people should absolutely steer clear of ones where you get an email and I get these three or four times a...

2025 Goal Setting for Success: A Step-by-Step Guide

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In part two of my review and plan series, I provide a step-by-step guide to setting goals and creating a marketing plan for the year ahead. I’ll guide you through the importance of reviewing past performance, setting SMART goals, and breaking them down into actionable steps. I also cover the significance of creating a consistent content calendar and leveraging various marketing channels to reach your target audience in 2025.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

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Transcript

There is a reason why some of the most successful business owners in the world goal set. That reason? Because it works. Because having a direction that you are going in is so powerful. Not only does it give you something to aim for, but it also really helps to keep you focused. One of the things that business owners struggle with, and I'm sure you have too at some point, is the shiny object syndrome. It's so easy to get distracted by other things, to think, oh, that's the thing I should be doing, or that's the direction I should be going in. But when you have a clear, set path that you are heading down, and it's one that aligns with you, and it's one that you want so much, it is going to help you stay focused, stay on track, stay on goal, and keep you motivated throughout the whole year. And that's what I'm teaching you to do in today's episode of the podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Theresa Heath Wang, and I am very grateful that you have decided to join me today. I never take that lightly. I am so honored that you are spending your time with me. So thank you. I appreciate you being here today. We are [00:02:00] talking about goal setting for 2025. This is part two in a two part. podcast episode that I've done. The first part was episode 382. So if you haven't listened to that, then I would suggest you go and take a listen to that first. And then this is the second part. And to go along with both of these parts, there is a download. So if you go to teresaheathwaring. com forward slash 384, the numbers. then you will find a link to the download. If you listen to episode 382 and you click the download there, then it's the same download. You don't need to re download it again. Okay. So in part one, we focused on reviewing your 2024 and some of the questions that I ask myself every single year. And in this part, we're going to be looking forward. We're going to be looking at how do we actually goal set? What are the goals that we set? How do we do deep dives on and how do we plan our marketing for the rest of the year? So again, get the workbook if you [00:03:00] haven't got the workbook, because basically I'm walking you through what is in this workbook for you to do yourself. So the very first thing I talk about is setting the goals. Now, when I do. this for my clients and my members. I take them through a number of different activities. One is the questions that I asked in part one, episode 382, which was reviewing 2024. The next thing I tend to do with them is go through a Wheel of Life exercise, so that we can look at where things are right now and where their life is right now. And then I actually took them through a meditation. So I did a future them meditation, a visualization of thinking forward, what will life look like at the end of 2025. And then I use all three of those things to help us start to set goals. Because when you have all this information kind of in front of you, you're able to see Some of the things that kept coming up, and even if you don't do the meditation, you don't do the [00:04:00] Wheel of Life, you can go back and look at your 2024 review, and you'll start to see, actually I didn't do that, and that's important, I'd like to make sure I do that, or I did do this, but I'd like to improve on it. This is where you're able to come up with your goals. I normally suggest that people have anywhere between 4 and 12. goals for the year. I wouldn't have more than 12 and I probably wouldn't have less than four. Sometimes people think, well, I've just got one goal to make money and that's fair enough, but actually there are some other goals that you can put in there. And in terms of the goals, you really do want to try and think big and think ahead and put some kind of dreams behind it. You don't want the goal to be like, yeah, I'll definitely get that. You want it to push you a little bit. And in the workbook, one of the things I show you is the smarter framework from Michael Hyatt. We've had Michael on the podcast before. We'll link to that episode. It's one of the best episodes or one of the most [00:05:00] downloaded episodes, if you haven't heard it. And maybe you want to just. hear it again, then we will link to that in the show notes, but basically his smarter goals go through things like specific that it needs to be simple, sensible, significant, measurable, meaningful, and motivational actionable. Start the goal with an action verb to be verb. Risky. Don't make it too easy. You need it to be, to stretch you. Key times. It needs to have a deadline, a time trigger, or a frequency. Exciting. You need to get excited when you think about it. And relevant. Make it appropriate for your season of life. And this is super, super important. And actually in last week's episode, if you didn't catch that with Nikki, we talk about seasons of life and how that affects us and our business and what success looks like for us. So there's no point in you saying you're going to work really hard in this season. You have got other things in your life like [00:06:00] children or aging parents or something that is going to get in the way. Maybe this point in your life is not the time that you can do that. Maybe this point in your life is exactly the time you can do it. So bear in mind, where are you in your world and then start to write your goals. What do you want to achieve? I tend to write personal and business goals every year. In fact, I tend to find it easier to write the business goals than I do the personal ones, but it should be things like Well, not should be. My stuff is like how much money I want to earn. Like, how much do I want to grow my audience by? Do I want to focus on something new, like doing YouTube that I've talked about before? Do I want to travel new places? So, one of my goals last year was to go to new places with my daughter and my husband. And I ended up traveling to the Philippines, to Japan, to Canada, and America twice. All new places. So that was amazing. So totally [00:07:00] tick that goal off. It was awesome. And that's probably not going to be one of my goals for this year because the season I'm in at the moment is, I want to really focus in on making some money and I have a new product that's coming out. So I need to focus on getting that right. So yeah, so write down your goals. Like I said, in the workbook, I've actually given you spaces for eight. You don't need eight. You can have more. You can have less. It's entirely up to you. Then the key bit is once you've decided your goal, I've given you a sheet called the goal deep dive. Now I'm going to go through it briefly here, but really this is kind of where you do want to get this download because it breaks it down on a sheet and I give you an example. So the things that we look at with the goal deep dive, and this is how you get from having a goal to actually how on earth am I going to achieve it. So the first thing on the sheet is your goal summary, which is basically the thing that you've just written down. Then I get you to break this down into three mini actions. So taking that big goal, what three actions could you break this down into? So the example I give in the workbook is [00:08:00] if you want to build your email list to a thousand subscribers by the end of 2025. So the three mini actions I've put down is you could run Facebook ads through the year. I could have three different lead magnets and I could make sure that I post about joining my email list. Then the next step is take each of those three actions and give me one next step that you can take. This is where we're turning that goal into the actions. And one of the things that is so key and important here is a goal is great. But you can't always guarantee that you are going to achieve that goal. What you can guarantee is the action you take. So for every goal, we want an action attached to it. Let's say your action, your goal is to get a thousand people on your list. You can't guarantee that you're going to get a thousand people on your list. What you can guarantee is what actions you can take to help that goal. become a thing. So if by the end of [00:09:00] quarter one, you have taken some of these actions and it is not giving you the result you wanted, or it's given you a better result than you wanted. Now, you know, either I need to change up some of the actions or I need to do more of what I'm currently doing. And you can pat yourself on the back, regardless of that number of people on your email list, because well done, you took the action and now you have something to do. Measure and you have something to review. So this is why taking the goal to the action is so, so very important. So next three steps. So in my example that I've given you in the workbook, I talk about that you're going to, or one of the things I'm going to do is plan when I will run ads and what kind to run the other action. The other next step from the action that was have three lead magnets might be to review your lead magnets and come up with some new ideas. Next step for the action that was make sure I post about joining my list. I will add posting to my email list to maybe my habit tracker. [00:10:00] Okay, next thing is how will I know when I've achieved it? Well, this is a pretty simple one because it's basically I'll know because I've hit a thousand. And then how will I feel when I've achieved it? And this is really important and it maybe sounds a little bit woo, but honestly, when it comes to, we don't like, We don't want a thousand people on our email list just for the sake of having a thousand people. It's to do something. It's to get somewhere because the more people we have on our list, the more chances that we can grow our business. So how will I feel? And take a minute to think about this. How will I feel when I've done that? So I've put here in the example, I'll feel proud and happy that I'm growing my business. The next section, which is key, is how might I self sabotage? Now, setting your goals is great. Setting your actions is even better. Sitting down and giving some time to how you might mess it up yourself is key because whether we like it or not, self sabotage is a thing. And I should [00:11:00] imagine that when you reviewed 2024, there was probably some stuff on there that you were like, Oh, I could have tried harder or I could have done something different. That's why we do this work preemptive. That's why I am asking you to sit and think how might you self sabotage some of this. And then, the next box to it is, how do I prevent this? Like, what can I do to prevent this? So, I've given three examples on this worksheet. So, I think I don't have enough budget for ads. Well, my, how will I prevent this? I will make sure I keep money aside for ads no matter how little. This is an investment. The self sabotage in terms of the lead magnets, not posting back my email list, worrying that I might be annoying people. How can I prevent this? I'll remind myself that I'm in business and I'm there to serve, add it to a habit tracker. And then I might find myself procrastinating while trying to create new lead magnets. So how will I prevent this? I will break it down into smaller tasks and give myself a reward as I do it. And then the last section on this deep dive for your [00:12:00] goals is where are you starting today? In business, it's really easy to get distracted by other people because when other people have successes and share it, which is amazing. And I celebrate them. Sometimes we can find that we compare ourselves and think, Oh my gosh, they just celebrated getting a hundred thousand people on their list and I'm trying to get a thousand or whatever it might be. So the reason I've put this last section in is because I want you to remember where you started and celebrate the move that you've had. If you've not read the book, The Gap and the Gain, I highly recommend it. It's a really, really good book and it really helps you realize how far you've come. And instead of at the end of the year going, well, I've only got 900 subscribers, not a thousand. And therefore I failed. You'll look at the, the gain that you've had. And in my example, on the worksheet I've put, my list is currently 350 people and I have one lead magnet, which I don't post often. So. And then when you're doing your review, either quarterly or at the [00:13:00] end of the year, you can look, okay, that's where I started. Have I improved? And you can celebrate that improvement no matter how big it is or how small it is. Okay, that's how we deep dive into the goals. The other things that I've included on the workbook for you is then going into KPIs. I've just given you a sheet where you can basically track numbers. Some of the numbers you might want to track are things like the size of your email list, your sales, how many, uh, If you do things like clarity calls or sales calls, how many of them you have and what your conversion is, you might want to track things like your social media followers, your engagement. Obviously, I would track things like my podcast downloads. If you've got YouTube, you can track that. So I've just included a sheet for KPIs just so that you can track them throughout the month, uh, each month for each, for the year. And then we talk about marketing. I've broken it down into a very simple marketing funnel of free content that is short and long, gated content that is [00:14:00] your stuff that's in your list or maybe on a Facebook group, and then sales. And what I want you to do is I want you to make a note of what you're planning on doing for each of these sections, because there is a reason why all of the people that you look up to Short form content, long form content, gated content, and then they sell something. It's because it works, and yes, it takes a bit of work, but unfortunately, no longer are we just business owners, we're content creators. On the form, I have given you space to decide what you're going to do from a social media point of view, what you're going to do from a long form point of view, What you're going to do from an email point of view, i. e. when you start emailing or if you are emailing, how often are you going to do it? What you have from a lead magnet point of view. So I would list what lead magnets I have. And if I want any more, I've also included a section for other people's audiences, because if you've listened to me for a while, you'll know this is a big, big [00:15:00] section that I talk and teach on. And then the last section is just other. So anything that I haven't included that you're doing, it could be something like networking. It could be events, whatever that is. But the aim of this is to go through and list what you're going to do and then list how often you're going to do it. I want you to make a commitment to yourself because as we know, That horrible word consistency really is the most crucial thing here, but each of those things, how often are you going to post on social media? How many emails are you going to send out? How often are you going to blog or podcast or do a video on YouTube? I want a slight kind of word of warning here. If you're saying monthly for long form content and email, I would really highly encourage you to try and do more. But on the other hand, I'm also going to say, I don't want you to set the bar really high and then fail and then beat yourself up. If you've not done a blog before, if you've not, [00:16:00] if you started YouTube or if you're starting something and you're like, I'd love to do it once a week, but actually you're just not sure, then go for every other week. And then as you know, and as it. helps and, and as it gets easier, then you can up it. I don't want you to fail. I do want you to do something more than once a month because once a month really is not very often. It's 12 times a year and it would be great to try and do more than that. However, I don't want you to set yourself up to fail. And then the last thing I do is look at the first six months and decide you've got all of the marketing that you're going to do consistently as you go through. But some of those things like creating a new lead magnet. Or if you launch, which obviously I do, when are you going to launch? When are you planning on maybe putting a new product out there? Whether you're planning on putting a new lead magnet out there. So it just take a minute to go through the first six months and just sort of pencil in when I'm going to do things. And then at a later date, I then go through and do it more detail. And I actually do it in Asana and we [00:17:00] really plan out what's going to happen. Okay, this was a short and sweet episode again, and I really was flying through that document. So if you haven't got the download, obviously you can take notes as I was talking. That's not a problem. You don't have to get the download, but the download will certainly save you some time. The download is available at TeresaHeathWearing. com forward slash three eight four. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I really hope that you are ready to go and get 2025. However, that looks to you and achieve what you want to achieve. I am excited that I am here doing it with you and I have got you every single step of the way. Have an amazing week and I will see you next week.

Redefining Success: Balancing Business and Motherhood with Nicky Elliott

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m having a very candid and meaningful discussion with my guest Nicky Elliott, a female entrepreneur and founder of the Wilder Collective. We delve into themes such as the personal definition of success, the influence of societal expectations, and the challenges of balancing business with motherhood. This episode highlights the importance of flexibility, changing perspectives, and the evolving concept of success, with both of us sharing personal anecdotes and practical insights for female business owners navigating similar journeys.

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If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

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Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

What does success mean to you and how do you define it? Have you been in the trap that I have where you've looked at someone else's version of success and measured yourself against it and then felt really rubbish because you hadn't quite hit the mark or the bar that they set and is it okay to change your mind to define success as one thing and then to change your mind to another thing and how do you get so clear on what it is that you want, that you are so bloody minded in the fact of, I don't care what anybody else thinks of me or my business. This is how I define success and this is what I want. Well, these are some of the fascinating conversations that I have with my guest on today's episode of the podcast. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning [00:01:00] speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Okay, you are gonna love today's episode. When I record interviews, I batch, so when it comes to doing the intro and outro, oh, I don't do an outro anymore, but when it comes to doing the intro, I go back and quickly, like, fly through the episode to remind myself [00:02:00] of what we talked about. And I literally listened to the whole episode with this one because I was like, oh, wow, we talk about so much different stuff and it's such a good conversation. And not only that, I think it is the most perfect episode for this time of year. So at the point this comes out, it is the 30th of December, and this episode is actually sandwiched between a part one and a part two, all around reviewing your year and goal setting and that sort of thing. And I would love to say that I planned this, but I didn't. The universe just obviously, like, made this happen because this episode is so, so perfect for this time of year. Today, I'm interviewing the very lovely Nicky Elliott. Nicky worked in events for over 15 years and founded her own agency in 2011 before having her children. On her second maternity leave during the pandemic, she knew she could not return to a full. hour. That's right. Daily [00:03:00] commute and spend so little time with her kids. So she started a unisex kids clothing brand after riding the waves as a product based business, investing a lot in it and losing it. She used her platform that she had built to share stories about amazing female founders that she had met along the way. She now has a podcast where she has women's stories from early memories right the way up to present day, which I have already been on. So we'll make sure we link to that in the show notes. And what her listeners can learn from them. And in 2024, she launched the Wilder Collective, an online community for female founders and freelancers to share their journey and support each other. Nicky and I have such an interesting conversation. Like I said, I went back and started listening to it to get the main themes that we talked about, remind myself of some of the stuff and therefore obviously let you in this intro know. what is coming up. We talk about so many different things and we generally talk about, if I had to kind of sum it up, [00:04:00] this would be very much an episode of what it's like to be a woman in business and in the world and what, how we define ourselves and how other people define us and success. Like that's a really kind of short summary of what we talk about. We talk about the fact of the success is the main theme. And, and I don't know whether you know, but there's a good reason this podcast is called Your Dream Business, because I am very much of the opinion that you get to decide what your dream version of your dream business looks like one of the things that we talk about in this episode is especially in the online industry, there is a big push to having people who, you know, have seven figure launches and, and have eight figure businesses and all that sort of thing. And almost defining success as that, that money is the only measure of success. And my opinion, which has never changed for all the years that I have been doing this has [00:05:00] been that you get to define it. If it means working less, if it means earning an okay salary for not much work, then brilliant. If it means taking the summer off, great. Like whatever this means to you, that is your version of your dream business. And that's what I want to empower you to do. But also we talk about how it's absolutely fine to change your mind. Because we go through seasons of life, and in those seasons of life, different things are important to us and different things matter to us. And actually, I have gone through various different seasons of life since having my business, of which I talk about, and, and I have changed. And sometimes that has not helped me in the sense of, I don't know, I guess, In the last year or two, I have been much more confident and happy to say that I want to earn good money. And I want, and I do see money as one of the measures of my success. And really, it's about the case of having [00:06:00] no judgment for anybody who feels like that, or no judgment for someone else who doesn't feel like that. It's just different, and we can all make our own decision as to what that success looks like for us. So we talked through that. We talked through some real kind of fairly deep conversations about bringing up children and up my own. I share quite a lot of my own personal thoughts around this and my own personal thoughts about. schooling and starting businesses and that sort of thing. We also talk about how it's fine to want to talk about money and how it's fine to change your mind. There is so much packed into this episode. I think you're going to get so much from it. It really was a great conversation. And I think, like I said, I couldn't have planned it better. I didn't plan it this intentionally, but I could have planned it better to be at this time of year. So I hope that you are, if you are listening to this over the Christmas break and over the new year break, that you are sat doing something nice or just chilling out and listening to this. We would love to know what you think. So [00:07:00] please do go ahead and DM us or tag us. We would love to see that. Okay. Without further ado, here is Nicky. Nicky, welcome to the podcast.

Nicky:

Thank you for having me.

Teresa:

I'm excited about today's conversation. We're actually doing a bit of a podcast swap, so I'm going to be on Nicky's podcast soon ish, depending on when my episode comes out. Anyway, just check both of them because, you know, it's hard to say. There's a lot of planning that goes involved in podcasts. It's a lot of work. So anyway, so I'm excited about it. And also you sent me my questions the other day, and I'm really excited about answering the questions because your podcast is a bit different to the questions I'd normally answer. So that's very exciting. So we'll just. you know, leave that there for them to come and find it.

Nicky:

Yes. I'm looking forward to asking them.

Teresa:

That's very cryptic. You will need to go and look at Nicky's podcast next. Okay. So we are talking today about redefining measures of success, which is a very subject, very close to my heart, because I think in the [00:08:00] online industry, we often define success as a seven figure launch or a six figure launch or something like that. But something happened to you that helped you redefine success for you. So can you just take us back to that point where you went, hang on a minute, I don't think this is right anymore.

Nicky:

Yeah. I mean, as is the case for a lot of people, I think when I became a mom, A lot changed for me. And it wasn't like a sudden moment, but it was more like a, that was part of what happened during this process. So I had my daughter and I went back to work. I used to work in corporate events for 15 or so years. I was in quite a senior ops role running a group of people. Companies. So that was my big job in inverter commas, if you like. And that had a decent salary. And it was based in London, and I was commuting in and out of London. And then I had my son at the beginning of 2020, [00:09:00] which obviously was the old Pan D. Yeah. And I was on maternity leave through the pandemic and. did what a lot of people were doing. It wasn't unusual. It wasn't peculiar to me. I had a big reevaluation reassessment and felt that having two kids now rather than just one meant a balance tipped even more sort of away from that role I'd had. I had a four hour daily commute, two hours each way, which was really challenging. So when I was doing that with my daughter, I was out of the house before she was even up. My husband took her to the nursery. I would pick her up at six o'clock, chuck her in the bath, chuck her in bed. No quality time. And my kids are school age now. And you know, I just wanted to have more time with them. So I started my own business for the second time because I had started an events company in my previous career. I started a unisex children's clothing brand. Because I had a daughter and a son and got very caught up in [00:10:00] issues around the way they dress and kind of got on my soapbox a bit about that and launched a clothing brand, which I absolutely loved. And it evolved into a women's wear brand. And I did that for a couple of years, but it was in a really, really challenging marketplace. And Over the course of doing that, I'd met other amazing female founders running their own businesses and had created this kind of network for myself. And that was when all of these conversations started happening for me about measures of success. And I started thinking about what success looked like to me because I had gone from the big job and a high five figure salary to zero pounds a month income, which I appreciate is a privileged position to be in. My husband and I talked about it. We did a lot of belt tightening. So it's not like we were swimming in money and it, and it came easily, but it was possible. But with that, I had to completely change what success meant to me because with, with a startup, especially a products based startup, [00:11:00] you don't make any money and you don't make any money for a while, but that doesn't mean the business wasn't successful, wasn't selling. You know, I had sellout collections. I had really, really loyal customers. I had all five star reviews, repeat customers. So that was when it started shifting for me. What is success? Because We're all fixed, fixated on money and status. And on the status front, I had also dropped down, you know, feasibly because I'd been in this big role now amongst my friends who are all in their late thirties, early forties, they've all been in their careers for 20 years. We're all starting to progress. And I suddenly put myself to the bottom of the pile. Yes, I'm CEO, but I'm also tea lady. of this one person startup operation. So on the money and status front, I really had a just a huge, huge reassessment and it was all part of that, that big journey, really.

Teresa:

So I feel like I'm about to jump into a very deep question. I've [00:12:00] got so many comments on that, but I just want to ask you one thing. Why do you think it is so inherent to us? Because I was exactly the same. I worked in corporate. I got made a director at the age of like 30 something early thirties. My title meant everything to me. I was probably horrible. Like I was so up my, my own ass, like, because I was like, I'm a director now. Like, oh God, it was awful. Why do you think it's so important to us and do you think it's. Just certain people that it's important to or where do you think this comes from?

Nicky:

I think it's important to almost everyone and I think it we are all a product of a capitalist system and we are sold to and sort of talk to from all angles at all hours of the day. And it's impossible not to be influenced by that. We also grew up [00:13:00] with parents who were billionaires, who were making more money than their parents before them. And we were growing up with films like Wall Street and, you know, people who were successful, were making money, those two things went together, like success was money and status through that lens. And it's really, really hard to unlearn that and unpick that if you, if you don't question it. you will just carry on on that path. And I was on that path. And of course I still get caught up in that. I still get caught up in, you know, what my friends might be making or because I'm a human being who exists in the, in the world in 2024. But It's like I have to check myself on that front. So yeah, I think it's a societal thing. I think there is so much noise, so much external stuff, what we grew up with, what's still around us now. I do hope it's starting to shift a bit, but these things take a lot of time [00:14:00] because I can exist in an echo chamber where people are like, yeah, I agree. I agree. But of course that's a very, very, very small part of the world and actually out there people are still measuring success on, on money and status. So. I get it, but I think, yeah, it goes very deep.

Teresa:

And do you know what, I was debating whether to say something because you were saying that, which shames me a little bit, but I think it's important. The very, my, my daughter, who's 14 going on 25, as they all are, she has a boyfriend, a new boyfriend, I say new, he's been a few months now. And my question to her was what do his parents do?

Nicky:

Okay.

Teresa:

Like, isn't that? ridiculous, right? Like, even though I have gone through a similar, and I'm still going through similar stuff in terms of, and I think we evolve this all the time, you know, in terms of what's important to us, but isn't that awful? Like [00:15:00] that, that was my measure. That was my, you know, not are they nice people, not are they got good values, not any of that. My immediate way that I could very quickly in my head, make an assumption about them is to know what they did as jobs.

Nicky:

Yeah. I mean, it's not surprising. And I don't think you can beat yourself up for that because. It is a way of creating a picture of someone in your mind. It's certainly not the whole picture, as you said. My husband and I had a, had a conversation about a school dad just last night about the fact that he does a manual job and the assumptions that we had made about him and how the way he communicates is really incongruous with how he appears. And, you know, people are putting certain things out into the world. So, it is difficult. And again, generationally, we are all defined by what we do. You know, I talk about this all the time. We talk about, you know, what do you want to be? And we mean, what job do you want to have? But we're tying our entire identity to what we do for work. So it's not surprising that you asked her [00:16:00] that question.

Teresa:

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not. And I do, you know, Part of me, like I said, as we just said, I thought, do I even admit to that? And I'm like, well, no, I, you know, it's important that we do because then that's a point where I can go, okay, yeah, no, probably that isn't the best idea. So that brings me on to another question then about your children. And okay, again, I'm going to talk really personal stuff, but I think it's really important. So in my family, in my aunties and uncles and siblings and like the kind of extended family, I am probably the only person who has their own business, right? And I look at the world in an entirely different way to the way they look at it, right? And it's almost kind of weird and hard and makes family occasions very uncomfortable for me. Because one, I turn into the biggest shelf on this planet, which, I mean, unpacked that. for starters, which no doubt I will at [00:17:00] some point with my therapist. But I tell you this massive show off, but two my mindset, my thought, my everything is completely different, right? And I'm not saying mine's right. There's wrong or vice versa. It's just different. And my thoughts when it comes to my daughter, is very different to my ex husband's thoughts because he is in a traditional role, traditional, like, you know, got a job, working a job, and obviously I am not in that space. So when it comes to my daughter, my opinion of traditional education, my opinion of getting a job, my opinion of life experiences is very different to my ex husband. So I'm interested as to In all these conversations of, like, success and life and, you know, the kind of patriarchal, I can't say that word properly, like, you know, go and get a job, sit in your nine to five, do your job.

2024 Wrap-Up: Reflect, Learn, and Plan for 2025

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this solo episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast’, I’m guiding you through a year-end review process to reflect on 2024 and prepare for 2025. As part one of a two-part series, I reveal the questions I use with my clients to evaluate their current year, laying the groundwork for future planning. I’m also sharing the importance of tracking sales, expenses, and marketing efforts, and learning from both successes and setbacks. PLUS there’s a free workbook to assist you in this evaluative process.

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Transcript

This is the perfect time of year to review how your year has gone and get ready for 2025. I am giving you all the questions that I ask myself and all of my clients and students so that they can review their current year and get ready to plan the next year. This is a two part podcast episode with the second part coming out on the 6th of January. This first part is about reviewing what you've done to date, and then part two will be about planning for the following year. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Waring. Now, this episode is coming out a couple of days before Christmas in 2024, so I'd never like to do a super long episode around Christmas, only because hopefully you're taking time off, you're enjoying a bit of downtime, and you're not necessarily in business mode as such. However, for me This time of year tends to be a really, really good time for me to work on the business. Now, I have to say I'm pretty good at working on the business because that is [00:02:00] kind of what my job is, is working on my business. However, obviously at this time of year, it's really good because one, during Christmas and New Year, no one expects anything from me. I never have any calls booked in. I never have any kind of stuff where I have to be on camera. And then, It's really good that when your brain starts to relax, that maybe you start to think about things. And what I wanted to do was create an episode that maybe you could do over Christmas. And I've actually put together a bit of a workbook for you. So if you go to teresaheathwaring. com forward slash 2024, you are going to find a download where. All the questions that I'm going to be giving you today and also 'cause this is gonna be part one of a two part podcast. The next part to this two part podcast will come out on the 6th of January. So if you go to choose wearing.com/ 2 0 2 4 the numbers, [00:03:00] you will be able to find the workbook where I list all the questions I'm gonna talk to you about today. And I list the exercises that I'm gonna talk to you about in part. Two on the 6th of January. Okay. Hopefully that covers that. So let's start with the questions I ask myself at this time of year. The very first thing I do when I work with anybody from a goal setting, strategic planning, marketing plan point of view, we start with these questions first. The very first thing I get them to do is tell me what their total sales are for the year. Like, this stuff is really important that we know our numbers. I don't know about you, but I track mine every single month. I have a spreadsheet that basically takes all the information from all the different places, even though obviously I use Xero and things like that. It just puts it on a spreadsheet in a way that I can see it much easily, and it tells me what I've made each month or what I've turned each month. It doesn't tell me the profit. Well, that particular spreadsheet doesn't. And the other thing the spreadsheet does, which I, [00:04:00] is one of the questions that I've put in the download for you is what products and services did you sell and what percentage did you get from an income point of view? That is really important when understanding and analyzing your business, because You could basically have a product that you love and actually when you do this exercise it makes you no money or a product that you pay and it makes you loads of money and it just will help inform you for thinking going forward what you want to do. The next question that we look at is we list all the main expenses. So in an ideal world, we want to know what are we spending out each month as well. And those are kind of just done as like overview numbers more than anything. Okay. So these are where the real questions come in. What went really well in 2024? I asked myself this every single month. I have a productivity coach. She doesn't [00:05:00] like being called a coach. So she calls herself a productivity mentor, but basically she helps me be productive. And in fact, I've done a podcast episode with her. So we will tag that in the show notes with the amazing Louise Miller. And we do this every single month. So every single month we have a call where I go through and I list out everything that went well in that month. So when it comes to doing the end of year stuff, it's really quite easy for me to go back and go, well, what did happen? I highly recommend that you do this, that you ask yourself every single month, what went well, because you will be absolutely amazed how much you forget. The summit I did was this year, and that feels like it was three years ago. And that was a huge success for me, my business. It was a lot of work, and it would be so easy for me to forget that it was at the March this year because so much else has happened since then. So list down everything you can think about. And the other thing I would say [00:06:00] is this doesn't have to just be business. It can be personal as well. We are our personal brand. So, or we are our business. So make sure that you write down as much as you possibly can in terms of what went well this year. When I do this in a group activity and I do this for my members, my clients, anybody who works with me in any capacity gets invited to a strategy day, which actually at the point of recording this, I'm actually doing tomorrow on the 11th of December. One of the things that's really good is I get people to share what wins they've had that year and that really helps other people go, Oh yeah, I did that. Oh yeah, this thing came up. The other advice I give you is to go through your camera roll or also to go through your calendar. Both of those things really helped me go, Oh yeah, this is what happened this year. Next question. What didn't go as planned this year? Now you'll see that I don't write what went terribly this year because The truth is it just didn't go as you hoped or expected it to go. [00:07:00] This section, people normally find really easy because they find it so much easier to berate themselves than actually celebrate themselves. So I'd almost want you to not give yourself too much time on this because otherwise you will just keep going like with all the questions and all the things. So for me, it's a case of like, what's the main things that didn't go as planned this year? Then we look at what did you learn from this? This is the beauty of when things go wrong is we learn something every single time. People think that like the thing in business or the one thing that you can do wrong in business is fail. No, no, no. The one thing you can do wrong in business is inaction, is taking no action. Because when you take action, you either win or you learn. And the things that didn't go so well, in 2024, [00:08:00] you will absolutely have learned something from them. You might learn, I don't like doing that thing and therefore I won't do that again. You might learn, actually, this was the result I got, but I think if I change this or tweak this, I would get a better result. This is the really important bit of that previous question in terms of what didn't go so well. It's what did I learn from this? What can I take from this in terms of what didn't go so well? So what did you learn this year? The next one, what do you plan to do differently in 2025? And this can be really generic or it can be really specific. So we obviously in part two, I'll go into the specifics of goal setting and things for next year, but This can be, do you need to show up differently? Do you need to overhaul stuff? Do you need to create something new? Like, what immediately comes to mind when you think, what do I need to do differently in 2025? Again, [00:09:00] it could be thinking like, I need to bring in my morning routine, or I need to take more time for me, or I need to get more organized. Now I hear people say that one all the time. And I have to say someone I have coached for years and years kept saying that to me. And in the end, I had to say to her, maybe you're just not an organized person. We can't all be organized. Like that isn't, you know, there's a reason I have a productivity coach to help me be even more organized than I want to be. So like, don't try and change fundamentally who you are, because that might be basically you setting yourself up for a fall. Okay. So what do you plan to do differently in 2025? So then. We look at the marketing specifically. So the next questions that I ask are what marketing have you done in 2024? Now, again, just a quick note on this. If you would set yourself a goal to do YouTube, in fact, that was one of my goals later in the year, I was going to start YouTube and life and work got in the way and it didn't happen. And I'm not going to berate myself about that. I'm not going to be [00:10:00] angry about it. I'm not going to think I'm useless or stupid or any of those things. I'm just going to go, I didn't do it. And I can write, what did I learn from that? Well, it wasn't the most important thing at that point. And then I can kind of debate with myself, is it still important? And do I want to bring it forward to 2025? When it comes to what marketing have you done in 2020? 24. I just want you to be really realistic about what did you actually do? So I could put in there that I consistently put a podcast episode out. I was consistent ish on social media. I consistently put emails out. Again, this isn't to go, look how amazing I am or look how terrible I am. You're basically, what you're doing at the end of every year or what I do is you're drawing a line in the sand and you're going, that action got me those results. What if we do different action? So then we look at what worked and what didn't. So for instance, I was really consistent in the podcast, which is brilliant. And you are listening to this, which I am so, so grateful for. [00:11:00] But in terms of growth of the podcast, it didn't grow particularly this year. Now, was it one of my main objectives for the year? No. So I'm not going to beat myself up about that. I'm just going to go, okay, that's interesting. I didn't do anything different and therefore it didn't grow. So. When I go, what worked and what didn't, well, what worked was I was really consistent. What didn't work was we didn't have any growth in the podcast because we didn't focus on the podcast. Like I said, these questions are only meant to help you think, they are not meant to judge you. The beauty of doing this is that you're learning and we can change. The, the person who doesn't even go to the effort of doing this are the people who are the most unlikely to make any changes in their business. So spending some time thinking and going through these questions is really going to help you move forward in your business. And then the last one within this review section is what marketing do you want to do in 2025? And this isn't any detail. This is just your [00:12:00] initial thoughts based on what you've just written down in that previous section in the, what marketing did you do? What, what, what didn't, what do you want to take into 25? Just notes, because in the second part of this podcast, so the one I'm going to do on the 6th of January, I'm going to take you through a bit of a marketing plan and how I do that for the next year. Okay, like I said, this is really short and sweet. If you are listening to this before Christmas, I wish you a very, very Merry Christmas if you celebrate it. I hope either way you have a chance to sit down, recoup some energy back, reflect, enjoy some time with your family. And I will see you in the next episode.

Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Shaping the Future of Diverse Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs with Vinay Solanki

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this final episode of my special Channel 4 Ventures series, I interviewed Vinay Solanki, the founder of Channel 4 Ventures. He explains their role in supporting diverse businesses through media for equity investments, with a focus on fostering innovation and inclusivity. Vinay shares his personal journey and the challenges of creating opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs. We also discussed the importance of providing access and support to boost new products and services, especially those that address real-world challenges. It’s an amazing episode full of content for entrepreneurs, start-up founders, and anyone interested in the intersection of media investment and social impact.

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Transcript

Teresa:

Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international best selling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Your Dream Business Podcast and our fifth and final episode in this special series that I'm doing. with channel four ventures. We have had some [00:01:00] phenomenal conversations during this week and these episodes. We started off the week with Nikki Wicks, who is the CEO and the creative director for body coach, also Joe Wicks, his big brother. We then spoke to the amazing Sam, who is the founder and CEO of Stellar insurance. We had a conversation with Tom who. knows everything that there is to know about investing and is a super smart man. And then yesterday was the awesome Grace who starting her business in university and talked about how she hustled in those early days and just went for it regardless of what the outcome could have been. And today we are finishing off with Vinay. Vinay founded and runs Channel 4 Ventures. It launched back in 2015 and is now the number one media for equity investor in the UK. Media for equity is an investment activity that swaps media and for shares in typically [00:02:00] unlisted companies like a venture capitalist investor. Binet is highly entrepreneurial, thoughtful and a seasoned digital media executive across many transactions, projects and sectors and geographies. Prior to Channel 4, Vinay led Getty Images European digital business development activities. Outside work, Vinay is a single parent to a teenager and enjoys cooking, running and music. He has a degree in law from UCL and an MBA from Imperial College London. Okay, you know how on Tom's episode I said I felt really stupid? And I felt a real bit of imposter syndrome talking to someone who is super smart? Well, that exact same thing happened when I interviewed Vinay. He is such a nice guy. And actually, what was so lovely is right at the beginning of the interview before we started recording, Vinay was like, We had a conversation about being a single parent and, you know, managing children in families that are living apart. And, and it was [00:03:00] really nice because it really kind of, you know, found some common ground, which was awesome. And then when the conversation started, I was like, Oh man, this guy's smart. And I guess. He's in an industry that I'm not in, so he's obviously going to be super, super smart about that. Binet helped me understand and better explain what the role was that Channel 4 had in not only the research, but what they are going to be trying to be doing going forward to ensure that more diverse businesses are being invested in. We also talked about how Channel 4 is a perfect, in my eyes, perfect company. to do this, given that the channel itself, the media that it puts out is very diverse and they're very proactive in that world. So it felt like a perfect fit. This conversation did push me a bit in terms of like, understanding and really [00:04:00] getting to grips of what this was all about. And I think it's a really nice one to finish the week on because it kind of sums up what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what the opportunities are. And there are some really exciting opportunities. So if you are listening to this, if you have listened to all of the episodes this week and were like, I need to know more about this, then This episode is really going to help you understand more about what it is that Channel 4 Ventures are actually doing. It has been my pleasure to have these business owners, these entrepreneurs, and these experts on over the last five days. I really hope you've enjoyed this special little series within my normal podcast. I have loved being given the opportunity to work with Channel 4 and being given the opportunity to speak to some of these amazing business owners, and I really hope that you have taken some awesome stuff from this. Cheers. But without further ado, here is the final interview of the week. Here's Vinay. Vinay, welcome so much to the podcast. How are you doing?

Vinay:

I'm doing very good [00:05:00] today. I'm excited to be here.

Teresa:

I am really excited to have you here and to get going with this conversation and topic and this wider discussion that we're going to have about this part of the world, which I've left it, anybody listening to the beginning of this, like, what are they talking about? What is she talking about? So let's just start by you explaining who you are and what you do.

Vinay:

So I'm Vinay Selanki and I work at Channel 4. I've been there, I'm very close to completing my ninth year. And I've had one job here in that time, which is to, I was the first employee into Channel 4 Ventures, which was called the Commercial Growth Fund at the time. And put very simply, we. We use the benefits of our nationwide broadcast, um, linear and streaming, which reaches 50 million people a month. Uh, we give that to startups in, in exchange, um, for equity instead of cash. Um, and it's, uh, it's honestly, it's a truly fascinating job and I'm very lucky to have it.

Teresa:

[00:06:00] So you've been there nine years, so is that when it started, you were the first employee?

Vinay:

Yeah. So prior to me joining the channel for was talking to a German peer around the model, they spent about two years investigating it, and they decided to go ahead with it. And then they hired someone to head up the activity. And that was me.

Teresa:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So the reason I came into your world or you came into my world was because of something new that Channel 4 Ventures are doing that was kicked off by some research. So which way do you want to play this? Do you want to talk about the research that you did first, or do you want to talk about the new venture that you're doing?

Vinay:

I might do neither. I might talk about how, how, like, how the dots connect between the, both the research, a little bit of my lived history and, and, and, and how maybe all, all of it sort of hangs together. So I grew up in Leicester as a, as a kid and I [00:07:00] grew up in a, a very. you know, very basic underprivileged set up where, you know, and those shaped my formative career experiences when I went into investment banking in my twenties. And I could see challenges at that time. So I had a lucky break at some point, which I got to university and, And I've lived, sat and lived with experiences where I felt, well, firstly, I couldn't even talk about what I'm talking about for a decade or two, right? So the, so, and those experiences shaped very clearly people who, my perceptions of people who are in the club or outside the club, when you think about venture, and those are very big topics and we don't need to go into them now. When I've had the, if you then think about Jonathan Ventures and its core role, we've been, we are a minnow and like to remain a minnow in the investment world. And, and through the asset class that we have, and, you know, we syndicate our investments with all of the investors. And it gives me an extraordinary insight into, um, how it works, how the deals put [00:08:00] together, who's in the deals, the cultures, the sub times, types of deals coming through. And it's very evident to me that if, if you step back a bit into the, the challenges around, say the UK economy or the challenges around the innovation economy, or specifically the challenges in the consumer economy. And I'm going to deep dive here, um, slightly the consumer economy has seen a lot of investment come into it. Much of that investment is predicated on the efficiency of marketing costs, of course, and if you look at my investment model, which doesn't put in cash, it's about getting access to 50 million, up to 50 million people, marketing costs. So, so, and I believe, and I hope to have some more research on this topic. Consumer companies are not flavor of the month right now. And one of the drivers. For investors is marketing costs. And I think, you know, the lean startup, I think was written in 2011. Right. So, but it's still a guide that guides the kind of, how can I say the [00:09:00] incumbent thinking in the company, you know, book says don't spend anything money on marketing in 2011, it probably would have been correct. I need to check on this, but like, it's, it would have been correct at the time. And it's, you know, that time I don't think, you know, TikTok wasn't a thing, it didn't exist. Right. So the, the. I believe what you're seeing right now with the proliferation of digital platforms and the number of, is that the costs don't translate to scaling up, which is turning consumer investors away from consumer. And then if you come back to my broader argument and some of the observations I'm making in my lived experience, it's very clear to me that if, if you, if you use the following analogy and the data that we did in, so Channel 4 Ventures, is providing marketing to a range of businesses. It has a different capital structure. And when I think about, so, and you know, we could just look at that from a straight financial lens, or you think about what is our role in the ecosystem? So that's point [00:10:00] number one. But if you think about a deeper point, if the data shows both the VCs and the founders are coming from the two streets of London or two streets of the UK, there's 98 other streets to go for. Could that spark innovation? And I think the things that we, the things which I hopefully will have some research on soon is that I think I kind of anecdotally observed very consistently that Many of the consumer businesses coming through target people who are affluent target people who are, you know, the products that are sexy, that, you know, in wellness, fitness supplements, et cetera, et cetera. I'm glad to see there are some bigger, you know, I'm definitely seeing more female founders. I'm definitely seeing like different solutions coming out, but what if, what would happen if you create more access? Uh, to the 98 other streets in particular, and there's two arguments to that as a media investor, you could say, we, we are solving for the marketing [00:11:00] challenge that the specific cost of digital marketing, but we will write very large checks potentially to create most brand companies, but I'm interested in the things that may not be that sexy. Like, but, but go to the heart of some of our clear challenges in our education, access to education, actually access to skills, age, living well as you age, staying at home, home modifications. So living well, living, living, you know, that targeting people clearly, like, you know, the, the, the, the sectors that are like still underdeveloped, like women, there's a support to service of women, but also, yeah, the list goes on. There's not still not enough. And I think we can, and that might mean we back different kinds of businesses from that are not necessarily getting the attention from the incumbent venture capital industry, Um, but, but, you know, with obviously [00:12:00] aligned to creating shareholder value here, what's really interesting about all this is as a government owned entity, all the profits go into a clear purpose, which is different again, to the lens we can look. And I, I wonder if there's more room for modern fight that.

Teresa:

You've just said some things there that actually hadn't struck me up until this conversation that I had been looking at this and obviously at the point we're interviewing this, I've already interviewed some of the interviews to come. It's weird, like I constantly work in a, you know, am I in the future or in the past? What struck me was. I had been focusing on or I'd been thinking about the opportunities that the business owners have not been given because they might be, you know, a female or someone of color or someone who didn't have the educational upbringing that, you know, or whatever some of the reasons are. But one thing I didn't think about until you just said it was [00:13:00] the products that are coming forward. So not only, you know, Is it, and obviously I'm saying this in my own words, but not only is it better for the world to be able to give opportunities to people that possibly haven't had them or haven't had them as much as they should have to date, but also the products and services that are bought to markets are the people who are are trying to access them who are trying to get some of those things or need those things in their life aren't getting them because and like you said it's kind of understandable that it almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy of someone lives a certain style of life when they're you know looking to invest in something to make money they're investing in things that they know or things they know will sell so That for me is fascinating because like I said, I hadn't actually stopped to think about the consumer products that are being sold. I just thought about the people who are being invested in.

Vinay:

Yes. I think I'd like to do more research on this topic. Um, but like, I think [00:14:00] we will have inherent biases. Um, and, and, um, that's the nature. We shouldn't judge it, you know, it's just aware of it.

Teresa:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that's the thing. And I think what I want to kind of conveys from what I've seen from channel four ventures so far is. there is no judgment. There is a, we've seen something and we would like to take an active role. You know, you're controlling what you can control because this is a much bigger beast than anybody. But you as Channel 4 Ventures are controlling what you can control and you're trying to do something different. So let's just touch on the, on the research and just some of the stuff that you found from the research and then how that confirmed what you had already experienced.

Vinay:

Yeah, the short answer is that the research findings did not surprise me in the slightest. It's been the least surprising, you know, and you can look back to, you know, my personal lived experiences, the, I [00:15:00] believe he took a straw poll of people, you know, either at the event or, or, you know, people who read the survey, you know, I'd be surprised. I mean, I did, I did recall some people were really quite depressed and, and I understand that too. It's shocking on the one hand, but the.

Teresa:

Not on the other.

Vinay:

No. Yeah. So look, I felt sad when you met, um, for the people who found it shocking But the, from my lived experience, it's not shocking at all. Yeah, based on the, I think it I want to go away from the judgment lens on, on that. I think the, it's also very understandable why this happens. And again, you need to create space for why it happens. And look at that quite compassionately, I think. And if you do that, then you can then spin quickly to, this is an opportunity.

Teresa:

Yes.

Vinay:

Really big opportunity.

Teresa:

Yeah.

Vinay:

So, and so then that gets into much deeper commercial arguments around those, all right, like new products and services. [00:16:00] And we think the UK is a net exporter, net creator of products. It's lingua franca, it's, it's been a top of design forever, right? And, and right across the UK, and of course, London is a world class center for, for that too, of course, but it's, it's spreading, spreading out. We have extraordinary cross functional capabilities where we bring, we can combine both, you know, branding, design, science. Building. Yeah. We have capital markets. Those are conditions that should continue for us to create new visionary consumer companies right across the board. We, we, we do it with companies like Dyson, but there's no reason why future entrepreneurs shouldn't be inspired by, by the, the, the heritage we've got here. It's also our history, links to our history. The fact that we, we, we've, we, I think genuinely, like we, we, we have certain traits, which are the end of the world, frankly. Mm-hmm . [00:17:00] And it links to our history. I am part of the fact that we have a verbal village here. . Uh, that, that leak, that allows us to continue that, but like, and you know, I, so with the lens I'm putting on is you can, we can really dial this up if people give more access and hopefully we can find the new James Dyson's. And I really believe that because we've got it all here. Right. So,

Teresa:

yeah. And one of the things that came through on having the...

Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Overcoming the Challenges of being an Underrepresented Founder with Grace Ubawuchi

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Grace

Ubawuchi is

the trailblazing founder and CEO of the award-winning cocktail brand Xin and Voltaire. Grace shares her inspiring journey of creating a disruptive offering in the food and beverage industry, leveraging her youthful fearlessness and problem-solving mindset to over come the

challenges of being an underrepresented founder.

Grace shares her approach to securing investment,

demonstrating how persistence and creativity can open doors for entrepreneurs.

It is a must-listen for any aspiring entrepreneur.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

Apple podcasts

Spotify

and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Grace Ubawuchi on

Instagram

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. This is the fourth. episode in the special Channel 4 Ventures series that I am doing. [00:01:00] And today I am interviewing Grace. Now, Grace is the founder and CEO of award winning cocktail brand Zinn Voltaire. And for years, Grace has been dedicated to pushing boundaries and redefining the cocktail drinking experience, harnessing innovation in food technology, science to create a disruptive offering in the world of F& B. Now, the thing that struck me the most when interviewing Grace is She's in her 20s and it made me feel very old being a 45 year old woman and having only started my business 10 years ago. But what was so fascinating about her and what was so inspiring about this conversation and something that I have seen all the way through with, you know, Tom, the conversation yesterday, Tom almost said something identical. Sam says or something almost identical the day before was they identified a problem and they thought. Why isn't someone fixing this? And this is exactly what Grace did. She saw a problem [00:02:00] that she wanted to elevate the kind of cocktail experience and where you could access cocktails and what they were about. And she couldn't understand why anybody wasn't doing this already. So she decided that she would fix it. And what was just amazing was imagine Now, I have stepchildren who are 21 and 27, I think she is now, and my daughter is 15. And if you are a parent, you will know that, like, they get to that age and they think, like my daughter thinks I'm an absolute stupid idiot and she knows everything. She's way smarter than me. And also they take different risks or they're not bothered as, as other things. It's like. I think as you get older, what I'm trying to say is as you get older, I think you get really conscious of like, okay, what if this goes wrong? What will happen? And I think what was one of Grace's best advantages is that she was young. So she thought nothing of just thinking, right, I'll [00:03:00] fix this. I'll make this. I'll do this. She talked about, the stories of how she guessed people's email addresses and just reached out to them. And when you find out some of the companies that she was having conversations with, and some of the people that she was in front of, it's wild to think that she just thought, screw it, I'll just send them an email. And I think sometimes as business owners and as humans, we don't want to take that risk because the thought of being told no, the thought of being turned down, the thought of being ignored. And I think her age helped her have that. And I think also there is, one thing I talked about her and, and And Tom, I felt the same, was like, their brain must work in a certain way that makes them just go, let's fix this. I think there are lots of people who wouldn't think that, that wouldn't look at a problem and think, how can I fix this? There's a lot of people that would just moan about the problem. And both of them really inspired me from, they just went, how am I going to fix this? And I wonder whether there's like a certain trait or something in [00:04:00] those, people that they have, their brain works in a certain way. Anyway, I digress slightly. So we talk about the random emails that she sent and how she got in front of some huge people. She also talked about the fact of how she basically pitched the product when there was no actual product. She hadn't even done a prototype to a massive company and how she got through the door, which was fascinating. And then we talk about the fact of, did she know she needed to start. Did she know she needed investment from day one and that and what like? I think it's really interesting the businesses that kind of go day one, I need investment and the ones that don't even think about investment being an option where she knew she had this amazing idea and she had this brilliant company thought, but she needed money to get started. So she knew from day one, she needed to have investment and how she went about finding that being in a world where. She didn't know that existed. So it's a really fascinating conversation. I found her super inspiring. I think you'll [00:05:00] love her. I did. I thought she was awesome. So without further ado, here is the lovely Grace. Grace, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?

Grace:

I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this.

Teresa:

My pleasure. So am I. So Grace, let's start off just for my listeners. Tell us who you are and what you do, and how you kind of got to do what you do today.

Grace:

Amazing. I've always found that to be the hardest question. I feel like now it's such a philosophical thing, but briefly, so I'm Gracie Ubawuchi, obviously I am the founder of Stina Walter's Pair. We are an avant garde alcohol brand, and we make what we've referred to as high proof sorbet cocktails, which are essentially high proof frozen cocktails. I was lucky enough to work with a very inspiring woman called Nina Mettier. For about two years to develop our products. And I think we have a really incredible range of flavors that we're proud to put out into the world with some more coming, of course. So how did I get here? Uh, putting one foot in front of [00:06:00] the other. I was a uni student. When I, when I started and now fast forward, like seven, eight years, it's well into well, not well into my twenties, but almost 30. Yeah. For me, it was just by inquisitive nature. I loved cocktails and like you do. And I wanted more, I wanted more outside of the bar. I wanted to be able to have it in all the different occasions that you do and you find yourselves in. And so for me, it was. Well, who's doing it? And I found nobody doing it. And so one person who was at Diageo at the time said, why are you asking us to do it? Why don't you just go do it yourself? And so I thought, actually, yeah, why, why don't I just go do it myself? And, and yeah, now here I am doing it myself, but luckily with an incredible team of people who are, who are kind of the foundations of the business.

Teresa:

So, I love the way you talk about, you know, yeah, I'm just doing it myself. Like, I definitely think there is something in someone's [00:07:00] brain that either has that or they don't. Like, lots of people don't think like that. Lots of people don't go, Oh yeah, no, why isn't this thing like this? Or let me change that. Let me create something. And also to be in a business that is like, this doesn't seem an easy thing to get into. When you first thought, okay, do it myself, had you already got people in place that you could talk to or what were you doing at uni just out of interest?

Grace:

So I was studying business and international relations. So I was on my second year and to, do you want me to dive into the question? Because I think, yes, to be honest with you, yeah. Basically, for me, it was quite, I've always been a problem solver, so I called myself at the time, which seems so silly, but I called myself a solutions provider, which was whenever I see an issue, it would frustrate me to just bang on about it, right? I just [00:08:00] loved, so what's the solution here? Oh, you know, this is going wrong. So how do we fix it? And so I've always been that person. And so for me, I hated when I didn't have an answer to everything. And so if I didn't have one, I just went out and found it myself. Cause I just, I think, I think that's the naivety that you find in young people. We, we kind of just feel like the world is our oyster and we can just do everything. And And so I think that was the thing because I wasn't so concerned or I didn't even really know what the potential issues were. It was just like, Oh, well, I'll just, I'll figure that out on my, on my journey. And so, yeah, that was pretty much how I, how I did it now, how I physically did it. I didn't know anybody. I was coming at it as a consumer. And so, you know, I had a love for cocktails and it was like, well, who do I need to know? to be able to answer this question for me, who's doing it? So who owns all the cocktails and all the alcohol brands out there? And so once I kind of started going down that Google wormhole, [00:09:00] I couldn't fight myself out of it. And so, and this is something I don't actually shout about. I used to guess people's emails. I was actually very, very good at it. And so I would construct an email and say, okay, you're the person I need to know. Okay, cool. Use LinkedIn, find out who they are. And just write them an email and be like, Hey, you know, you're who I need to speak to. Do you have a moment? And crazy enough, they did. And they, they actually made time for me, which was, I think about it now. I'm like, these are some of the busiest people in the world at Diageo, at Beam Suntory, you know, and they made time for me and I'll never forget that.

Teresa:

And that is huge for so many reasons. One, there are so many of us in business that would it. One of the biggest things that I deal with, with my, in my world and in the coaching I do is the fear element, that fear that holds us back, that stops us from doing those things, that puts us off [00:10:00] sending that email because, oh, we can't find the email address or they probably won't read it. Oh, then definitely not going to reply. And I love that. The thing that you came in and said is that you just did like an almost an and I hear what you're saying in terms of an age thing. I'm 45. I have my daughter's 14 and my my stepchildren like in their 20s. So I get the like where they come from of Oh, no, I just this should just come to me, right? Like I just expect But in this instant, that is such a superpower because you just went, well, why couldn't I, why shouldn't I, you know, why couldn't that, why wouldn't that person respond to me? Was there any part of you that was like, no, I'm super scared to do that? Or what if it didn't respond?

Grace:

I think that, okay, I'll tell you a little bit more about me in the way that I think when I had my surgery, when I was younger, I wasn't afraid until I got into the operating tables that, oh my God. They're going to cut into my hand and like [00:11:00] things like that. I have a very delayed reaction. I only have a look at the opportunity and then when it's time to actually do it, I'm like, Oh crap. Now I actually have to talk to this person because they, you know, they've given me the opportunity. And I think that's the thing. It's like. Be careful what you wish for. I don't mean it to sound so ominous, but because you might get it, if you do, can you, can you handle it? And so for me, it was like, oh, right now I, you know, the last thing would be that they don't respond, right? So I don't actually have what I went out to go and get, but I'm the exact same as when I sent the email, right? The best thing that could happen is that they listen and they respond. And so my motto at the time was, if you don't try, you don't get. So you might as well try because you might. potentially get what you're asking for. And, and I think that was the thing. So I didn't have the nerves when I was doing it. It was only when that call, and this was before Zoom. So thankfully they couldn't see me. They didn't know who I was, you know, it was [00:12:00] just a phone call. And I think the earliest call I had was like five in the morning when I, there was an investor. in Australia who was open to having a conversation with me and I was like, Oh my God, now I have to have this call and it is a stupid time and I, so I would write a script that I was going to say and I was so nervous and I would read that script and they were so kind to listen to me from the beginning to the end and I realize now that actually that was kind of my training from the very beginning, you know, to be able to, to be able to have those conversations and be, to be open and confident in them. Because I was like 21 during these conversations,

Teresa:

which, you know, like that blows my mind from a Well, at 21, my brain was not working that way, but like, you know, that you were able to get in front of these people and hold these conversations. And would you say they took you seriously? I don't want to assume and go, they took you [00:13:00] seriously.

Grace:

Yes. If anything, I would say my entire career was built on this particular way of working. So I got my investor from a cold email. You know, I got business. from cold emails. And so actually they did take me seriously. If anything, I'm talking the president of like these huge organizations who would get their whole innovation team, like there'll be four or five people on the call. So they definitely did. And now that I think about it, I'm like, that was such an opportunity. Yeah. I wish I had, you know, I do, I guess I do have these opportunities now. It's not so daunting, but you know, when you're 21, you really don't know who you're speaking to. And you, you don't have a clue how serious it is.

Teresa:

A good thing in some ways, because you'd never have done it if you had. You'd have been like, no way, too big.

Grace:

But I knew, I knew what was working against me. And I think that's what I always knew, which was I lived in [00:14:00] Manchester. No one's going to find me here. You know, I don't have any presence. I don't have any experience. And I, I needed to put myself in positions of opportunity. And the only way to do that was for me was to create my own opportunities. So it was kind of breaking those walls down. I, I think it was until like two years later, I realized these people had PAs. I didn't even realize they had blockers because I was directly sending these emails to them. So, yeah, I'm glad they took me seriously because I think it instilled this hope for a future that had, had they not done that, I think I would have probably quit. Because you realize that actually in life, you know, unless people help you on the journey, you, you kind of, Don't believe that there is something to, to like look forward to because that hard work is kind of going nowhere. No one's receiving it. No one's kind of really taking it in a way where they, they take you seriously. So I'm kind of glad that they did. I think [00:15:00] so. There was someone who asked me at one point, how do you know our president? And I was like, how am I going to tell them? I have no idea who he is. Can I guess to be wrong? And then it's okay for me to say now, because you know, many, many years down the line, But back in the day I was like, I don't want to tell anyone because they're going to think I'm a crazy person.

Teresa:

Yeah, like, how did she even get here? Like, you know, we've just let her into the world. She's in like part of our world and no one actually knows how she got here. That's brilliant. So let me just talk about the, the business and the investment side. So did you pretty much know straight off the bat you would want to grow this business to a point where you needed investment?

Grace:

Yes, and it was from the very beginning because there's, like I was saying about the email thing, one of, when I got the idea that this was something I wanted to do, I was like, well, who would buy it? And I was on a flight actually with British Airways and I saw that they had all these spirits and all these wines. But they [00:16:00] had no cocktails and as a uni student, our definition of cocktails at the time was really Jack Daniels and Coke, right? That's just a mixer, but that was our cocktail. That was us getting a mixer and mixing it and that's how we were doing it. And so, you know, I felt like that's all they had, but they have all this sophistication and all this budget. Why are they not doing anything? So what? I sent, I reached out to Kelly Stevenson at the time and she, she received me with open arms. She was like, this is what we need. Cause I, I basically saw it as a portfolio. I was like, you have this, but you don't have that. And I'm sure you're having the conversation about how you get from A to B and how you get this cocktail solution. I have your, I have your solution here. Like this is, this is an incredible product. It's a frozen product and you just need to add alcohol to it. That was my first iteration at the time. Flavored ice. Yeah. And so you have your cock, you have your spirits, I have the flavor, let's work together and make cocktails. And so she was like, yes, come in, you know, and I went right to the top. It was British [00:17:00] Airways letting me into a meeting kind of almost two months after I decided I was going to do it. And she's telling me numbers of like, we have 90, 000 footfall and, you know, we, oh my God, I only have 90.

Teresa:

And to this point, there wasn't the product.

Grace:

There wasn't even a product. So I had to then find, you know, my parents were nice enough to kind of gimme the money to, to go create this, this, this prototype. And then within a month I had a prototype to go to the, to go to the meeting. So it, it was literally like, okay. She said, yes, now I need to actually go make the product. Yeah. And so I got into the meeting and it was like, this is something. And this,...

Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Empowering Underrepresented Entrepreneurs with Tom Adeyoola

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In the third episode of the Channel 4 Ventures series, I interview Tom Adeyoola, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Extended Ventures. We discuss his journey through the creative industries and his experiences in raising investments for his startup, Metail, where he secured £25 million. Our conversation delves into the challenges underrepresented founders face in sourcing investment, the emotional nature of early-stage funding decisions, and the importance of expanding the funnel to include diverse founders. This episode is ideal for course creators, membership owners, coaches, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of business investments.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

Apple podcasts

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Tom on

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

Hello, and welcome back to this special series of the Your Dream Business podcast, where we are teaming up with Charmful Ventures I'm bringing you some phenomenal business owners [00:01:00] talking all about not only how did they create their businesses, but also what experience they've had in getting investment for their own businesses and the journey that they've gone on. Today, I am interviewing Tom. Tom is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and board director across the creative industry companies, private and public. He grew his fashion technology startup, Metail, to exit raising 25 million pounds. Tom is also the co founder of Extended Ventures, which uses insights to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresentative founders, and now sits on various boards. Boards, including Channel four and leading independent schools, St. Paul's. He's actively involved in investing and policy co-authoring a labor startup review. Can I be completely honest? I felt so stupid talking to Tom. This guy is so smart, right? And he. Like [00:02:00] the stuff he's done, you know how some people are just serial entrepreneurs. That's what I got from him. I'm just looking at my notes and I literally have written fingers in many pies. He has done so much stuff. He's involved with so many things. He has been in non profit. He sits on steering boards. He is a massive expert in this space. And, and I was like, I don't know that I was intimidated by him because he's such a nice guy, and the conversation was great. And I have to say, if I'm being completely honest, this whole series that I'm doing is feeling very intimidating because it is an industry in an area that I don't understand enough about, and I feel like I'm getting serious imposter syndrome of like, who am I to bring this to you because I don't understand it well enough. However, I think sometimes when it comes to, and I've told you guys this before, like if I'm interviewing someone on a subject, I don't know, I become even better at [00:03:00] interviewing them because I am like, okay, no, explain this to me. And now I need, yeah. Like I really kind of delve deep because I'm coming from a place of, I don't know what you're talking about, or. I need to understand this. So I hope that's the way it's going across, not, Therese doesn't know what she's talking about. But Tom was so smart, he's such a nice guy, but it really was Like I said, he's, he's super smart. I felt a little bit intimidated by what he knows, the experience he's had. And sometimes I fail like my little teeny tiny business over here is like laughable to what he might be doing, but you know, there's scale in everything. Like, and I'm sure Tom would look at someone who runs a multi billion pound company and think the same. So, you know, different people doing different things. But one thing that was super fascinating was we talked about how people go into business when their family doesn't come from an entrepreneurial background. His didn't, obviously mine didn't either. We talked about how he has two sides of him. So [00:04:00] interestingly, he went to Cambridge because he got a scholarship, but he does not fit in the white wealthy man box. And that was super interesting for him. And he said a couple of things in the interview where. Because he went to Cambridge, people almost saw him as a white, wealthy man, which is really, really interesting. I've written here again, he was so smart and fascinating. And we talked about the fact that I assumed investment came from smart people who looked at facts, and it's not an emotional thing or a connection thing. But that's exactly what he said it was. He said a lot of investment comes from connection and emotion, which is why there are very few people in underrepresented societies that are white. getting investment because the people who have got the money to invest are becoming connected with someone who is like them. And then we talked about how he's driving change in this space. It's not about backing businesses that aren't good enough, but being open to [00:05:00] businesses that wouldn't normally get funding. It's a really great conversation. I think you're going to love it. Like I said, see how stupid I signed on. Hopefully I hold my own as an interviewer, but You're really going to enjoy this episode. Here is the awesome Tom. So Tom, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on.

Tom:

Thank you for having me.

Teresa:

My pleasure. So let's start because you're, I feel like you have many things in many pies to do with what we're doing here and this conversation. So let's just start with you explaining to the listeners who you are and what you do today and kind of how you got there.

Tom:

Sure. So, so my name is Tom Adeyula. I've been in the sort of startup space around the creative industries for over 25 years now. So I've worked in various startups from sport to telco to film, TV, Pirate Jets. I even managed a friend's band for a while as a, as a side hustle. And then I [00:06:00] ran my own fashion technology startup. for 11 years, which was very sort of high IP focused around computer vision, but originally was inspired by some research work that was done around replicating antique ornate statues. And it was all around trying to solve the online clothing fit problem. So I, I, I've been in that space for a long time, I've seen a lot of things and fundamentally I'm inspired by trying to solve problems and disruptive innovation. I sold that company in 2019 and subsequently I've invested in a few startups specifically trying to look into sort of, Climate change, positive society, overlooked spaces in terms of how I focused. I also co founded a non profit called Extend Ventures, which is about using insight to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresented founders. I also sit on the steering board of the Startup Coalition, which is the voice for startups in [00:07:00] the UK. I co authored the Labour Startup Funding Review for Rachel Reeves, and I also now sit on the board of Channel 4.

Teresa:

Wow. I'll just end with a wow, because that is crazy amount of stuff. Like, that is, to me, what that says is you are absolutely an expert in this space. Like, you can't and wouldn't have done all the things that you've done if you weren't very knowledgeable about this space. But I just want to go back really quickly, just for my own curiosity, how did you get started? In creative startups, like what? What did that look like? Did you come out of college and get a job or? Were your families entrepreneurs? Like where, how did that happen?

Tom:

No, so both my parents were immigrants to this country. So my mom's Norwegian, my dad's Nigerian. I was sort of fortunate enough to get a scholarship to an independent school, was bursary funded through, my dad worked on the buses, my mom worked in day nurseries. So there was no sort of entrepreneurial bent, if you [00:08:00] like, there. But I was, yeah, I was, a good student. I was really interested in lots of different things. And I, I, I sort of followed all the opportunities that was given to me at school. And I, I recognized that it was a real sort of privilege in the sense of my sister went to a comprehensive. I ended up at an independent school. I went on to Cambridge. She didn't do a level. She didn't go into university. And I think. Like, going through school, in, most of the time I felt like I was a jack of all trades and a master of none and I envied people who had a singular passion about a specific topic, but I was interested in everything, I wanted to try everything. Um, and I did economics at university and the gravy train would have been into banking and I did some internships, but I found it really boring, like, and I didn't really see the sort of like societal value of just pushing paper about, and I wanted to do something a bit more interesting. I originally started as [00:09:00] a management consultant. And it was very focused around pharmaceutical sector and I, I got a good grounding in how to do spreadsheets and analysis and all of that, that good stuff right at that time, the internet being was happening and there were lots of like really cool startups starting and it felt like it was a moment where. you could get involved and it sort of didn't matter who you were. And there was no sort of like fixed hierarchy or structure. And with a friend, we, we were getting meetings with potential investors as, as, as kids straight out of university. And it seemed a really exciting space in the end. We felt that what we were trying to do, we were too late to the party, but through the experience of, of getting involved in what was a really exciting sector, commercial director, a company called Sportal, which is a big sports internet portal at the time, um, he, he saw me and he, he sort of, Tried to hire me and [00:10:00] ended up joining that company and sort of working directly for him pre vetting deals and then running all of e commerce across the websites because we ran the websites for AC Milan football club, Juventus football club, which we ran Euro 2000 football championships. We had run the websites for South Africa, rugby America, sorry, Australian rugby, et cetera. And it was early days, but a real sort of like world west type environment. And. It was still too early, but it was that thing where if you solved a problem, you were just given more. So it felt meritocratic. It felt exciting. And it, it was, it was great for someone like me where I felt like I could do well and I was rewarded subsequently. So that, that, that got me sort of going in terms of the entrepreneurial types of companies.

Teresa:

I love it. One thing that's really interesting about your story and fits so perfectly, hence probably why you're doing what you're doing today, is that [00:11:00] you almost had, when we think about the investment into businesses and the type of businesses that get investment, we, one of the things that came out in the report was the fact of the. you know, predominantly white males were the people who were getting them and well educated white males. So, you know, people who were going to the likes of Cambridge and places like that. and mixing it. And it was almost like, and I guess I can say as a bit of a boy's club, you know, if you're in, you're fine. If you're not getting in is really hard, but you had two sides to that, that coin almost, you had the side where you went to Cambridge, you had that kind of in, but also, you know, You have the side where you weren't brought up and I can't, and this, this isn't the podcast for it, but I would be fascinated to see how you got on at Cambridge as a scholarship student and, you know, and, and, and, well, obviously at school and, and mixing when [00:12:00] your lifestyle didn't necessarily match up with some of those other people's, that would just be for my own interest. So we won't go to it today, but. You had the other side where you didn't come from a hugely wealthy family, you know, you came from, I guess, a fairly working class family, you know, you, your family were immigrants, like, and that's kind of the, the, the interesting part of this is that in one way you fit really well, and you would be like, tick the box, yes, you would be in that world, but in another way, you don't fit well and you don't fit in that world. So how was it for you, I guess, coming into the world of venture capitalists, coming into the world of, you know, startup businesses and, and seeing both the sides of that coin.

Tom:

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's really interesting. Like if I think about my time at school in university, I would say that There were only ever two black kids in the school at any given time. And yeah, whereas, so I didn't have any black friends. Whereas my sister [00:13:00] did, cause you went to a comprehensive and it was actually way more mixed. And then when I went to university, it was the same. So, and I actually, one of the, the other black kids was also Norwegian, Nigerian, and he, he became a friend. Fake IT person and is, you know, that his character is what the intranet at Channel 4 is named after in terms of Moss from the IT crowd. Yeah. And, and I went into IT proper. Um, but it, it was that sense of like, I was part of this network of privilege, if you like, and, and to some extent, I remember having a board meeting once with somebody in my startup and they said, Oh, yeah, that the problem with your management team is that you're, you're, you know, you're white and middle class. And I was like, that's interesting. So that there's a color blindness here. And you haven't recognized as well that. My CTO went to Comprehensive in Bradford, um, is working class background to me. My CFO is from Hong Kong, but you've basically, because we speak well and highly educated, we've jumped into a sort of [00:14:00] different stratosphere in terms of how we've viewed. Yeah. But even still, I would say that, you know, and I'm quite diplomatic. I would say I've got quite EQ so I can see and understand how things happen. And even so, like it was, It's trouble for me to get money in the UK, I would say. So I went to sort of different avenues to try and raise money. I ended up raising about 25 million for my company, but more than 20 million of it came from Asia. Like I went to where the money was very directly related to the problem. So trying to get people who are so motivated by the problem you're trying to solve that it's just a very straightforward conversation, which isn't about, yeah, am I investing in. Yeah, they can see past the who you are, because I think the difficult thing always is like, can you generate some sort of relay relatability with the investor on the other side of the table in a conversation? And what is unfortunately true is that the investor in a conversation when you're meeting them [00:15:00] has made that decision where they're going to invest in you or not within five minutes. So before you ever get out of the deck, so if you're spending that first five minutes trying to relate and there's no common ground, it's, it's very difficult to get past that. So, and you're going to have much shorter time to present ultimately is business because actually an investment in the early stages is an emotional decision, but that's the bottom line. And as, as a business grows and you become. More established, it's a decision based on metrics, financials, and so on and so forth, but in the early stages, people are investing in you, and the vision, and if they don't connect to you, it's not going to happen, and fundamentally, the, the sort of sphere of people who have money is, you know, biased in one particular area, and, Hence, where they're looking for some sort of [00:16:00] person to work with, they're sort of looking within a meritocracy, as you might call it, rather than anything else. So what's, what's, what's the way in which, which they can connect, connect. That's not to say that there are people who are more open than that, but in general, the people are thinking about their own money. They're trying, they're going for the path of, you know, least resistance really. Yeah. Who am I going to be able to, you know, have a relationship with over five to 10 years?

Teresa:

Which was a super interesting conversation that I talked about with Sam on her interview where we talked about the fact of like, In my head, very simply having never gone through anything like this and probably never will, because my business is based on me as a personal person, and I can't see how it would ever be that type of business. And I'm not sure I'd want it to be that type of business. But one of the things we were talking about is I assumed that it was very factual, that these smart people were [00:17:00] looking at. stats and facts and maths and going, that makes a good business that doesn't make a good business. And obviously, what is coming out in these conversations with you is it's not done on that at all, or not to the degree it should be. But also it's that, Like you said, you know, they are looking for people who look like them. But the problem is, the people who aren't getting the funding, they can't find people who look like them to A, show them that it can be done, and B, go out and have those conversations with them. So, obviously, this is where Channel 4 have come from, and this is where their untapped has come from, in terms of like, okay, how can we help this? But what's your thoughts on that, in terms of that as a strategy? Like, you know, How well do you think it's going to work? What do you think about it?

Tom:

Well, your point about the facts, I think the thing that people don't realise is they think that people use facts to say yes. It's not how it works. People use the facts as a reason to say no, whereas everything is about an [00:18:00] emotional connection to generate BS. So that's all about how you connect and how the vision is. So whenever I'm talking to founders about how they present themselves, it's all about finding that story, that vulnerability and connecting as a person and making sure you can try and find that. And you're, you're looking, you know, do the research in advance about the investors, try and find that. That, that personal hook, because it's all about the emotion, say yes, in fact, all about why to say no, or that's, that's...

Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Gender Equality + The Power of Resilience with Sam White

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I interviewed the brilliant Sam White, founder and CEO of Stella Insurance. We discussed Sam's journey into creating a female-centric motor insurance business, her challenges as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the difficulties in raising investment, and her unique approach to resilient entrepreneurship. Sam shares her experiences of starting her first company at 24, her struggles with financial institutions, and the innovative solutions she employed, including a media for equity deal. We also talk about gender disparity in business funding and highlight the importance of supporting diverse entrepreneurs.

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Transcript

Teresa:

Hello and welcome back to the Dream Business Podcast. This is episode 378, but it is number two in this special series that I'm doing with Channel 4 Ventures. [00:01:00] The first episode, which I aired yesterday was with Nikki Wicks, who is the brother CEO and creative director of Joe Wicks The Body Coach. And I loved that conversation, so I would love to hear what you thought of it. Today, I am interviewing Sam White, who is the founder and CEO of Stella Insurance, a female centric motor insurance business that's unapologetically led by women and designed for women. Now, this conversation was really, really good. I was super inspired by Sam. We had conversations around the fact of Why would you even get into insurance in the first place? I'm laughing saying it, but like of all the businesses that people set up, surely insurance does not seem like the easiest thing. And it doesn't seem like the most simple, it's a really heavily regulated industry. What makes someone starting a [00:02:00] business want to go into it? We talk about the fact that She was 24 when she started and that she loved solving problems and she was frustrated with some of the things in the industry. So it was her own kind of need for an answer that made her create the answer herself. We talked about how difficult it was for her as a woman, not only in this industry, but also to try and raise money and the difficulty that she had with financial institutions. And then we looked at what makes her resilient. How is she motivated? How did she pick a really difficult industry and go on to make a really successful business? I think you're going to be super inspired by this. I really loved her frankness. I really loved her direct conversation. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think that you are really going to enjoy this episode. So without further Here is the amazing Sam White. Welcome Sam to the podcast. How are you doing?

Sam:

Not so bad. Thank you for having [00:03:00] me on.

Teresa:

Well, thank you for giving me your time. I was just saying to you before we hit record that I don't think I've ever interviewed anybody who's in insurance or certainly not set up an insurance company. So I am fascinated about this conversation.

Sam:

So nobody ever, when referred to insurance,

Teresa:

think about like the entrepreneurial world, there's not many that, you know, go, this is the route I want to go down. So let's start there. So how, how is the big question and why did you decide that that was the business you wanted?

Sam:

Yeah, look, it's something that gets said a lot in insurance circles. People would say, nobody actually chooses to go into insurance. They fall into it. I think my path was probably quite different in the, I set up my first company when I was 24, um, and really just because I couldn't stand the thought of working for somebody else. I realized I was unemployable at a very [00:04:00] young age. Young age. And so I didn't really care what I got in. So as long as it meant that I could work for myself and be independent and not have to kind of live by somebody else's rules. So the first business that I set up wasn't actually in insurance. It was around insurance. I set up a business supporting insurance brokers with their motor claims. And the only reason I did that is because the only job I had. previously was in that sector. So it was what I knew and it seemed like a safer landing point. And it kind of evolved from there.

Teresa:

So 24 is very young to start a business. Was that something that had always been on the cards? Was your parents, were they entrepreneurs? How. Did you get into that?

Sam:

Yeah, look, we, uh, my mom had had her own business when she was younger, so there was probably some kind of seeding of that, that mentality as, as a [00:05:00] child. But I think, you know, as a teenager, I used to go out washing cars in the neighborhood to make money. I always had that energy about me of wanting to create something in the moment out of nothing. And I, I didn't like, you know, I had Saturday jobs. I had a job in Gregg's actually as a, my sort of first paid employment and I didn't get paid a lot and it was very, very hard work and I hated the rigidity That kind of structure. So I think I was always of a mind that I wanted to push out against that, that kind of framework.

Teresa:

Yeah. And I think I always, I used to joke, and I don't say it so much now that I'm like an accidental entrepreneur, because that was never, I wasn't one of those people. I follow rules really well. I love being patted on the head and being told I've done a good job. So the fact that I now have my own business is mind blowing. And again, I could never go back to [00:06:00] it. But I think like, if you've grown up and had that kind of passion, what Because again, even though you'd had some experience in that industry, that doesn't seem like a particularly easy industry to get into. It feels like there's loads of legal stuff and you've really got to know what you're talking about.

Sam:

Yeah, it is. It's heavily regulated. It's also extremely Male dominated, which I talk about a lot. It's, you know, it's financial services. So the majority of senior decision makers in the industry and male, it's not necessarily an industry that really attracts entrepreneurs either, because it's seen as a very capital intense area and therefore it, it puts people off. For me, I just like solving problems. And I, I kind of, I'd, I'd started because I'd started working in claims, I kind of understood the industry almost under the, the [00:07:00] hut in terms of some of the challenges that the market has generally. And as I'd started to build out a claims business and work with insurance companies, I was getting frustrated that there was things that I wanted to change. That I couldn't change because I wasn't in control of that part of the process. You know, it's funny you talk about the accidental entrepreneur. My personal belief is that 90 percent of us are accidental entrepreneurs, but some are better at lying about it post being successful because, you know, I, I, I don't believe in this really thing. Cookie cutter, clean plan that plays out exactly as you expected it to. And it's one of my big objections to sort of traditional VC is, uh, they, they, they tend from my experience of them to come from the big consulting firms. Come from a financial background. [00:08:00] So you sort of CFO mentality that says that everything works on a spreadsheet. Then real life happens. And, and, and that isn't how most businesses that I know and entrepreneurs that I know, and I've met a Tom that have been wildly successful. And when you're sat at that after dinner party and you're chatting and you really get to the honest nub of it with them, they've all had that rollercoaster of experience where they thought they were going in one direction and then they had to go in another and the pain points and the trauma and all that stuff. And it kind of flies in the face of the. The way that we expect them to present when trying to raise funds, the two of them really kind of fit together very well.

Teresa:

No, and I think, you know, this is where we look at like people's zone of genius. And I think to be an entrepreneur, to come up with those ideas, to have the guts to go out there and do it, to be [00:09:00] brave, to be scrappy in those early days, like they're not necessarily the, the spreadsheet type skills that you would have necessarily. So, so one thing that I really want to understand is when you decided to start, when did you start Stella Insurance?

Sam:

So Stella Insurance I launched in 2020 actually in Australia. Um, but I, I had the backing of my own successful businesses in the UK that I'd organically grown to be able to do that, to even be able to go out and check out the market and say, is this something that, um, I could do, uh, was possible because of the business that I'd built previously.

Teresa:

Okay, so you hadn't necessarily had investment in those other businesses, not because you had grown such a good business and had such a foundation that enabled you to kind of flip onto the potential new business. So had you got [00:10:00] investment from day one in that business? Did you literally start with, I'm, I have investors for this?

Sam:

So with the Australian business, it was the first and only time I had any kind of investment. So part of it was my own investment. So I, as what I said for myself with, with Stella was, I really want to do this. I really love the Australian market. I love the potential of what we're going to do with this business, but for this, because I've done the organically grown like freedom services group had got up to 20 odd million pound of turnover and it was profitable. But it is, you know, blood, sweat and tears, lots of falling over and face planting the mat and getting back up again. And I said, I, I want to experience building a business with funding and backing and what does that look like? So I got a small amount of local VC funding. And I put money in and I also actually interestingly [00:11:00] did a media for equity deal, which was my first experience of the whole media for equity dynamic. I did a deal with Bauer Media at the time across all of their female magazines in Australia. I got sort of 15 million in inventory across their now magazine, Marie Claire, et cetera, to launch the brand. But it was a, I'm not doing this by myself again. I want to have somebody in on board day one.

Teresa:

So there's a couple of things I just want you to clarify for me. So when you talk about the media deal, can you just explain to listeners what you mean? What does that look like? What is it?

Sam:

Yeah. So look, there's, there's many different ways to skin a cat, as I like to say. And over the years I've learned that bartering in business is really helpful. So you can't always, getting debt into a business, getting traditional investment is unbelievably hard, particularly if you don't fit the classical, Mold. And what I've learned over the years is that you can [00:12:00] exchange things. So if you know that you're providing a service that another bigger business has a requirement for, you can sometimes do a deal where they may help forward fund you in order to be able to get more of what they want from your business, from a supply chain viewpoint. Um, media for equity is, is for me, is a bit of a bartering system where You've got a company like Bauer who have various media businesses, whether it be magazines, radio, etc. And they will have inventory that they are selling to other companies. And a media for equity deal is simply saying, is it me paying you for it? I'm going to give you some shares in my business. And in doing that, you're, you're playing for the long term. So you get, you're going to give me some of this space. You're going to help support the marketing of my business. But you accept the fact that I'm not giving you cash day one, I'm giving you a share of [00:13:00] the business and hopefully we'll all win together in the future.

Teresa:

So I'm assuming then for someone listening to this and maybe thinking about, you know, straightforward, we'll give you some money for a percentage of our business. And then this type of investment. What would you do? Is there one that's better than the other? Is there a reason you chose that one? Would you have rather had the straight money if you could?

Sam:

Look, there's lots of different ways of looking at it. I can only speak to sort of my motivation. At the time, the deal metrics were more favorable than I would have gotten a straight cash for the equity deal. But also my mentality was, If, if you just purchase the media, it's an exchange, it's a financial exchange, but it's done. You've spent the money, they're gone. If it's a media for equity dynamic, then they only get that return if you're successful. So one of the [00:14:00] motivating factors for me was the idea that there was skin in the game on both sides, that there was, there was a sort of active interest in being, um, in the business being successful and being able to do that. But the, the other factor was. I think the media world is probably more open minded to different types of entrepreneurs than the financial world. And I had had a terrible time of it trying to raise money over the years. In, in my previous businesses, my, my original bank manager, when I set up on my own, when I was 24, the first thing he did was remove my personal overdraft. And that kind of was a pattern across the, the entire time, whenever I've engaged with financial institutions, it's just not, it's not been good for me. So, I kind of, you know, their engagement with us because we were a fresh brand, we were doing [00:15:00] something different and interesting. They were excited by the possibilities of what we wanted to do as, as a business. And it was a very different response to the response that I'd had before.

Teresa:

And that is so interesting and kind of really nicely brings us onto the work that is being done with Chavarron Tapped is that one of the, when you think about investments and people who give investments, they tend to fit a very small, box and the people that you had like this TV box and then the people that they're giving investments to. And that was one of the most shocking things about when we went, um, at the time recording this, it was last week. I knew the stats would be bad. Like as a woman in business, I knew that. The people getting funding would be low when it came to anybody that wasn't necessarily a white male, but I was gobsmacked. I mean, from your point of view, obviously you weren't [00:16:00] surprised because you've been in it, but what were your thoughts about it?

Sam:

I wasn't surprised. I mean, it, it was even worse than I thought and I had a fairly low opinion. So it was, it, it was kind of like I was, I'm just, I'm a bit embarrassed for them. So like I'm a part of a lot of female entrepreneur groups and some incredible women doing phenomenal things and, and the thing that I've found in my experience of dealing with. Female entrepreneurs is they often have like a societal lens as well. So they're not just building businesses that are good for them. They are trying to build businesses that are good for everybody. And this is a consistent theme that I kind of come across. So. I, I look at them and I go, why on earth wouldn't we be backing the, these incredible women? And for, I think, you know, the Rose review pointed out that if we backed female entrepreneurs in the same way that we do men, there'd be another 250 billion [00:17:00] in the UK economy. So I look at that and I go, this is like, it just doesn't make any logical sense. So yeah, the stats were hugely disappointing, but not surprising. And having got a small amount of investment in Australia, but then trying to do a series A after really successfully scaling the business, you know, to a substantial number of customers and turnover and being very close to profitability. And systematically failing in that endeavor, having been told that we were, like, perfect profile, perfect, you know, incredible this, incredible that, I kind of, I kind of wasn't going in there with an expectation that the stats were gonna surprise me, put it that way.

Teresa:

Yeah, and I, like, it just, for me, I work, I would say, probably 90 percent of my audience are women. And, I think we're starting on the right foot anyway [00:18:00] in getting in a business and the day to day things of running a business of, you know, I had a, in one of my groups, there was a conversation going on that the husband was ill or the children were ill. And the assumption was the wife would just go and pick up the childcare, even though they were speaking at a really big thing online. And the husband wasn't very happy about the fact that actually he might have to take the time off, you know, and he had the real job or the proper job and, you know, and, and I think so, burst off straight out of the gates. You're dealing with that. And of course, when it's in your head as well, and society saying, you know, The successful people at the top, the people who have the biggest business that, you know, the, the people who we should look up to are not, they don't look like us. And obviously this wasn't just a male female thing, you know, it was very much a, you know, an ethnicity thing as well. Like if they're not seeing those examples and obviously this is what untapped is there to do. It's to, to try and help bring. a more diverse portfolio of people who [00:19:00] are being invested in. How are we meant to, like, how did you keep fighting, keep, like, going back up there and asking the question and trying again and building, like, where did that resilience come from?

Sam:

I mean, look, there is no safety net for me. So there isn't another option and I am deeply passionate about what I do. So you just do find another way. And...

Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Scaling to Success with Nikki Wicks

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this exclusive series I interview five distinguished entrepreneurs, courtesy of Channel 4 Ventures, starting with the incredible Nikki Wicks, CEO of The Body Coach.

He shares fascinating insights on the evolution of their business, their content strategies, the shift to mobile app development, and the challenges and opportunities in separating a personal brand from the business. Ideal for small business owners, course creators, membership owners, and coaches looking to understand the dynamics of scaling a business and attracting investment, this episode highlights the importance of investment when scaling a business. Full of practical tips and inspiring stories, you’re going to love it!

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Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

Hello and a really warm welcome back to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And this week I have something very special for you. You see, we're not just doing one episode like [00:01:00] normal. We're actually doing. Five, which I know sounds a bit crazy, but I have a super special podcast series that we're doing for this week only. You see some time ago, I was invited by channel four to go to their offices in London because they were having an event alongside other media sort of business outlets and leaders in business. amazingly got invited along to go and see what they were doing. And as part of this, I have put together a special series of podcast episodes. As part of this event, they had four really amazing entrepreneurs come along and talk about various things. And I was given access to these entrepreneurs and the ability to interview them for the podcast. So this is going to be really, really cool because I have got some people who are coming up that you will probably recognize their [00:02:00] business names, if not their names. For those of you who are not in the UK, Channel 4 is one of our main channels. So like the BBC, you'd probably know about that if you're not in the UK. Channel 4 is one of those channels. So it's, you know, one of the first four channels that we UK. So it's quite a big deal from my point of view to be part of this. But basically, Channel 4 has an arm of their business called Channel 4 Ventures and it's an investment team within Channel 4 that specializes in media for equity, where high growth, unprofitable startups exchange shares, i. e. equity in their business for Channel 4's advertising space. So if you want some investment in your business rather than getting money, you can do that. You will get advertising and Channel 4 would get a, you know, part of your business. They would get a section of your equity. Channel 4 Ventures has completed over 50 deals backing companies such as What3Words, Oddbox, Purple Bricks, [00:03:00] Crowdcube, and Pinterest. So the reason I was invited is because Channel 4 Ventures did some research about who was most likely to get given investment in their business. And I know this is going to surprise you all, but it was mostly well educated white men. And they basically did this research, which didn't really come as a surprise to anyone in the room and the entrepreneurs that I speak to in this special little series I've got here. So basically, um, They profiled hundreds of founders that had secured investment valuing their company at a hundred million or more since 2013. And the data was based on analysis of founders own disclosure of their race, gender, education, background, employment history, and company base. And this was just some of the data that was found. So 94 [00:04:00] percent of founders were men, despite men representing only 41 percent of all UK graduates, and those founders We're 51 times more likely to have graduated from an Oxbridge university or it's us equivalent. Consumer companies in London, Oxford, and Cambridge are 11 times more likely to have raised valuation of a hundred million plus than companies located anywhere else in the UK. And white university graduates are 10 times more likely to have founded a consumer company with a valuation of a hundred million plus than a black university graduate and nearly twice as likely as an Asian graduate. So like I said, none of these stats, I mean, they are all shocking, but when you think about it, it's not that shocking to hear in terms of not that shocking from an unexpected point of view. It feels surprisingly, yes, that sounds like what it would be like, although it's not fair. It's not [00:05:00] right. It's not okay. It does feel like, well, I get it. I get that that's the case. That's not a surprise to us. And it's broke and they need to fix it. So when Channel 4 came to me and spoke to me about doing these podcast episodes, I was a little bit kind of, is this going to fit with my audience? Obviously you are my audience listening to this and most of my audience, that listen to the podcast are small business owners, lots of online business owners, very female heavy, or people who identify as a female heavy audience. And part of me was like, this really doesn't fit. Like I'm talking about bigger businesses. I'm talking about capital investment, media for equity, things that I don't necessarily understand well enough. But then. I thought about it and I thought, no, that's the reason I should do it. The reason I should be doing it is because we should be having these conversations in places where they don't typically happen [00:06:00] in places where you wouldn't typically hear about it. And I was being given an opportunity to bring some information to you and in the process, bring some really cool business owners to you. And actually, that's what I'm going to do. So I am really, really happy about doing this, about bringing a conversation to you that might seem like it's not one that you've thought about. It certainly wasn't one that I've thought about. I had the conversation, I think, with one of the guests about, you know, I don't ever see me ever wanting investment in my business because it's just me. And I, I can't see why I would need that. However, This type of things, the investment sort of, you know, space has been behind closed doors and in most cases, from my opinion, quite fancy closed doors, so unless you're a white straight male from Oxford or somewhere like that, then you don't have these conversations, which is why I thought it was even more important. to have these [00:07:00] conversations. So Channel 4 gave me the opportunity to speak to some amazing, amazing business owners. And this week I am going to be sharing with you an interview from those five different people. So we have four business owners and then someone who works for Channel 4 who heads up their Channel 4 ventures. And They were fascinating conversations for so many reasons. There is so much that you're going to get from this, not only hearing what some incredibly successful business owners have to say about how they became incredibly successful, the drive they have, the way they look at problems, but also you're going to get an understanding of this may be part of a world that you didn't know about, or maybe you did, and I'm just kind of bringing it back to you. The world of capital investment. private equity, all words that I wouldn't understand a lot about. I know a little bit, but not a lot. So this was as educational to me as hopefully it will be to you. And it [00:08:00] was super inspiring. So like I said, we have some amazing, amazing guests coming out. And today we are kicking off with the super, super lovely Nikki Wicks, CEO and creative director at The Body Coach. Forward slash Joe Wick's. Brother, if you have not heard of Nikki or Joe, the Body Coach is a global fitness and wellness company on a mission to make the world fitter, healthier, and happier. Previously, Nikki was a journalist and an editor working across sports, lifestyle, and trade magazines. Prior to joining the Body Coach, Nikki was based in Singapore, where he worked as an editor at Campaign Magazine. His team, Austin affectionately. Call him the crying CEO and Nicky thinks one day this will make a great title for a biography if he ever writes one. Fun fact, Nicky was an extra in the final Harry Potter movie where he played a snatcher, a member of an organization of bounty hunters formed by [00:09:00] Lord Voldemort, which I'm completely gutted I didn't read prior to interviewing him, so I wasn't able to ask him about it, but still, it's still an amazing episode. So like I said, This week, you're going to get an episode every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I've got some incredible business owners, some incredible conversations, and I hope you enjoy them. Let's get on with the first interview. Nikki, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Nikki:

Hello, morning, Tracy. Yeah, good. Good to see you again. Um, thank you for inviting me.

Teresa:

My pleasure. So I want to be super honest. You said to me before we got started, you don't often do podcast interviews. So, and I guess this would make sense when we explain who you are and what you do. So, Can you start off by just explaining to my audience who you are and what you do?

Nikki:

Sure. Yeah. So I'm Nicky, but, um, I'm the CEO of The Body Coach. Um, I guess firstly, actually I've done it in the wrong order. I'm Joe Wicks's brother. You may have [00:10:00] heard of, lots of people have heard of Joe Wicks and, and actually be surprised. Some people scratch their heads when you, when you say The Body Coach, even though they're, you know, Joe is The Body Coach, but yeah, I'm Joe's, Joe's brother first. CEO, now CEO of The Body Coach, which always feels weird when I say that because it was, yeah, I never thought I'd be CEO of any company, but yeah, here we are.

Teresa:

So that immediately brings up loads of thoughts and questions in terms of How did you get, because like you said, you, you never expect to be a CEO of any company. So how did you get to come into the company in the first place? Because working with a family member, I have three siblings, two older sisters, one younger brother. I'm not sure I could work with any of them. So working with a family member and then becoming CEO, how did all that come back? Was it from day one or was it as it grew? At what point did you kick in?

Nikki:

Yeah. And, and you meant, you know, that concern about working with a family member was a massive thing for me. So [00:11:00] Joe and I are very close. We've always been close. We're, we're close in age. There's 18 months between us. You know, my, my mom had us very young. She was 17 when she had me. And I think she was just 18, just no, maybe just 19 by the time she had Joe. So very, very close as siblings. And I was working as a magazine editor and journalist for about seven years. And when Joe asked me to come back and, and help him, I said no, pretty much straight away. And was like, look, don't think that's a good idea. You never, you never hear many happy stories about family members working together. And I just was very worried that it was gonna affect our relationship. So for about three months, I kind of resisted the idea of coming back and, and working with him. So, yeah, that was a thing. But no, to answer your question, so, um, Joe and I, we're living together. So the body coach has been going for 12 years this year. So 2012. And I, I won't go the, the short version of the story. And Joe started out as a, you [00:12:00] know, a personal trainer doing bootcamps in the park. And that was in 2012. We were living together at the time. Um, and I was working as a journalist on the London Olympics. So had an 2012 was an amazing summer. I always looked back at, with such good memories, having a chance to work on the official magazines and programs for London 2012. And Joe started at this boot camp in Richmond then I was living with him. Yeah, it was sort of, you know, in those very early days, it was, I think all the family at some point was out helping him do some flyering. We were all kind of, called it, called to do a shift, handing flyers through doors to try and get him, you know, more people sort of coming to his boot camp. And so then I carried on with my career, he started out, and then Yeah, I think it was 2015 when he'd started to get a quid, got a bit bigger following on social media. And, you know, he sort of said, look, I think this is, he started getting some traction and really wanted to sort of, you know, give it a go and try and, you know, his pitch to me was come and help me get more people moving and more people, you know, I really think we can use social media and people seem to be connecting [00:13:00] with my message that he was putting out. And yeah, so I, I eventually came back, I was living in Singapore and I decided to come and, you know, see if I could help him out. Yeah. Cool.

Teresa:

What were you doing in the early days? Like what was, because I guess a lot of his business at that point was social media, like huge amount of content creation. So, and obviously that is a hard thing for someone else to get involved with, especially when it has to be his face. So was there a natural kind of fit for you to come in and go, this is my skill set. This is where I could be a great asset.

Nikki:

Yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent. Like I, you know, I was very clear that I said, look, I, I, um, I think I can help you with a certain part of, you know, what you're, what you're trying to do and it was content and the media, I guess I, you know, having worked as a journalist, I'd, you know, I'd originally wanted to work in magazines. I still love magazines now. Like I still love print. Even, uh, you know, during my career as a journalist like print was starting to struggle and, you [00:14:00] know, it's moving more digital. So a lot of the work I had done, you know, before coming back to Joe was sort of, you know, content, building community, engagement, and really kind of like, I'd say, yeah, it was very kind of content. That was my expertise, really. You'd now call it content. I mean, I was a journalist and a writer and an editor, but that was becoming more and more digital and social. So, you know, Twitter was a huge in, you know, in the early and still is for, for journalists and for media companies, I'd started doing more video over some of the projects I was working on. So there was a real, like natural, my skillset was very much in, Content, creative, I suppose, like ideas of how do you engage people and when I, when I originally came back, my role was, yeah, as head of content was the role that we sort of loosely gave myself. But it was very much like, let's launch a YouTube channel, let's do more video content on social and it was always about how do we reach more people [00:15:00] and how do we get more people moving or cooking healthy food. You know, and Joe had already started the Lean in 15 videos at this point. He was, he was well into that, but I guess we really just doubled down on, when I look back now, I think we really kind of doubled down on like content and engaging and building community. And it's still 90 percent of what, of our business now, I would say.

Teresa:

Joe kind of got the dream, right? I think I work in an industry full of online business owners, so loads of people who have courses and memberships and coaching, and they are super skilled and passionate at the thing they do. Like Joe, you know, they have a service that maybe they offer one to one or maybe they do done for you staff. And then they want to move into the one to many, which is exactly what, what Joe's done. And, and really to look at his business. And as I think I mentioned to you, when we met that him and I spoke at the same event and I met him, which was lovely, like he's the dream, like he's the, his business is like, Oh my God, if only our businesses could be as big as [00:16:00] his. Was there something like, was there something you look back on now and think that's what caused that? Or is there something, would you view it very differently now doing it? Do you think that success would, I've asked you two completely different questions there, so let's start with there. Is there something that you look back on that think that's what caused it?

Nikki:

Yeah, I mean, Joe gets asked that a lot over the years and I, and I, and I can't even think what his answer is to that question. I was there a moment or was there a thing? I think now, like, you know, 12 years into the journey, I think, Joe's, I, I, this is just my opinion, my view is that Joe, Joe's superpower I think is his ability to connect with people like he, and, and whether that's on, in, in real life, face to face or over digital platforms. I think he's, you know, he's, he's, he's got a natural, very natural way of connecting and he has a lot of empathy and compassion for, for people. And I think [00:17:00] he, he genuinely cares about. everyone. And I think he cares about people a lot. And I think, you know, without going into sort of too much sort of, I don't want to turn it into a therapy session, but I think both of us recently have been on a bit of a journey and sort of learned, I guess, a bit more about our past and why we have that sort of, you know, You know, drive to help people. And I think that was always Joe's drive. And I think that's, he, he, he's somehow been able to translate that from being in a room with someone in a park to doing it via, you know, social media. So I think Joe's superpower is, is, is his ability to connect with all different people and, you know, from preschool kids in nurseries, when we do our schools tours, all the way to. You know, two weeks ago he was in an, in an old, in a, in a care home with a hundred year olds and 95 year olds who were doing his workouts. And he seems to be able to connect and inspire. that extremity of sort of [00:18:00] different types of people. So I think that's what he's, you know, I think that's what his superpower is. I think the other part of your question, I think you're asking about, and I think is about, you know, and I think timing is a really important part of Joe's...

The Hidden Key to Business Success: Unlock the Power of Customer Transformation

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Have you considered the importance of truly understanding the transformation your customers desire in order for your business to be successful? Many business owners can miss the mark with this, resulting in ineffective marketing and lost sales which we do not want. So in this episode, I share a structured approach with seven key questions to uncover the exact transformation your customers want. Through real-life examples and actionable strategies, I explain how identifying this transformation can lead to a truly successful launch. You’ll also get a FREE downloadable worksheet to help you apply these insights to your own business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Power of Transformation: Understanding the desired transformation of your customers is crucial for creating effective marketing messages and products.
The Seven-Question Framework: Use the seven-question framework to uncover the core desires and motivations of your target audience.
The Importance of Authentic Connection: By truly understanding your customers' needs and aspirations, you can build stronger relationships and drive sales.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Do you really know what your customer's transformation looks like? And more importantly, do you understand why it's absolutely critical to your business success? So many business owners that I've worked with think they know what the transformation is that their customers want, but in my experience, most of them don't.

And if you don't have clarity on that transformation, then your marketing message is likely missing the mark, which means you are leaving sales on the table. That's why today I am walking you through the seven key questions that I use with my clients to uncover the exact transformation that their customers truly want.

And when you get this, and you truly understand the transformation your customers want, it's going to be the difference between a wildly successful launch, And one that falls flat.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the your dream business podcast. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I really, really do appreciate it. I know that your lives are very busy and my aim is to deliver you some really good strategic, inspirational content that hopefully helps move your business forward.

[00:02:00] Today, is a great episode. I nearly said good and I thought, can I say great? Yeah, I can say great. It's going to be great. Today we're going to be talking about understanding the transformation that you are trying to get for your customers, because this is something I have seen so many people get wrong and it's really harming their business and it's really harming the results that they can get in their business.

So I wanted to do an episode just devoted to how do you understand and how do you find out the transformation. But this is incredibly difficult to do when you're talking generically because it's such a personal thing and it's so easy for me to sit with a client, be on a group call with some of my members, and for me to get the transformation out of them really quickly because I'm asking the right questions, I'm probing, and also My job as a marketeer is that I understand these things and I can work out the transformation pretty quickly, which then [00:03:00] enables them to better market to these people.

So how am I going to help you understand your transformation when we're doing this over a podcast? Well, I've got some real life examples to give you and that's how I'm going to do it. The other thing that I've done is I have put together a little download with the key questions that I'm asking in this episode so that you can Ask yourself these questions and hopefully get to the right answer.

So if you want to download that, head over to teresaheathwareing.com/376. They're the numbers, not words, and you will be able to get the link for this free download where the questions that I'm going through here, which are ones I ask people when I'm having a call with them.

They're the questions that you're going to get to be able to have in a worksheet, make notes and come up with your transformation for your customers. The reason this is so important is because basically this is everything. This is all the marketing that we do. Everything is around, where is your customer now and where are they trying to get to?

[00:04:00] And anything that you create from a sales page, webinar, landing page, lead magnet, any of those things all leads to what is the transformation that your customer is looking for. In this example, I'm going to give you, I'm going to treat it as if we're doing a webinar for these customers, because one of the things that I've been talking about and I share when I talk about launching is that we do a prelaunch.

So the prelaunch is before you even talk about the fact that you're going to do a webinar or a challenge or a bootcamp, there is certain content that you have to do in the prelaunch that is going to prime and ready your customers and. Get them to the point you need to get them to in order to then start promoting the webinar or the workshop or whatever it is that you're going to promote before you then go into the sale.

And there is a really smart strategic process in which we use to go through this because [00:05:00] if you don't have this, you're kind of just dropping things on them and some people will get it, some people won't and hopefully by the end of this episode, you're going to understand what I mean by that. Also, if you have any friend in business and you really want them to succeed, I want you to send them this episode and say, this woman who I listened to, she said, I had to send it you because I want you to succeed.

So I want you to do that. And I want you to send them this episode because I promise this is going to help anyone in business, even though the examples I might give are webinar examples or talking as if we're doing a webinar, don't fear. I'm just using the launch process and the webinar process as a way to structure me.

It's not really that you have to go through a webinar. Okay, so let me give you a really wide example, and then I'm going to give you two actual examples. One, actually, at time of recording that I just had last night. So at time of recording this, I am running my [00:06:00] webinar workshops and we had the first call last night and this was actually a conversation I had on last night's call.

So it was such a great one as I was doing this podcast recording today. And then another of my clients, I'm using them as an example to give you another idea how this works. Okay. Let's start with the big example. Big example is, imagine you want to book some flights. When someone markets you from, I get BA emails all the time because I used to fly with BA all the time, although they're not great between you and I.

So, so I get emails all the time. Now BA very, very rarely market the plane or the flight to me. Because the transformation I'm looking for isn't getting on a flight. The transformation that I am looking for is getting to the destination. So when an airline company promotes or markets their services, they never share, or I [00:07:00] don't say never because you never know, but they predominantly do not share content around the food you're going to have on the plane, or the seat, or.

what it's like waiting for the plane or any of those things about the actual journey itself. They show you the destination. They show you the thing that you're going to get at the end of it. When it comes to the transformation that you're looking for as a customer, you're looking to get somewhere.

You're looking to get to a destination. And In all reality, you don't really care how you get there. You want just the quickest and easiest, and that just happens to be a flight, predominantly for places that are not in your country. And they know that. They know that the plane journey is just part of the process.

And the plane journey is the means to the end of getting to another destination. When they mark et They don't necessarily market around the plane journey. They market around the destination. They [00:08:00] look at what is it our customers want. What they want is to get somewhere they're not. And that's where they focus their marketing.

So that's a really simple way to understand marketing the transformation, not necessarily the thing that you do. And this is the main problem in, in small business marketing and online marketing that I see. is that people are trying to sell and promote the thing they do. Whereas that's not always what your customer wants.

Now, I'm not saying you never talk about that. You absolutely do. However, when it comes to really trying to hook your customer in for something like a webinar or hook them in for a lead magnet, it's less about the thing that you do and more about the transformation they want. Okay. So that was a kind of warmup as a really silly example.

Let's talk about two very real examples. What I'm going to do is take you through the structure and this structure is what I've put in that freebie for you that [00:09:00] you can find at teresaheathwaring.com/376. The first question I want you to think about is what is the product, service or program that you want to sell?

So in this example that I've got, this was a membership aimed at therapists that was there to help them with their business mindset and marketing. So that was the thing that the client wanted to sell was her membership that helps them with their business marketing and their mindset. Question two, which I obviously asked her on this call, what is the biggest problem that your customer has that your product service or program helps them fix?

Your customer is going to have a ton of different problems and you are probably going to fix a ton of different problems, but I want you to think of the biggest. What is the one thing that's on their mind? What is the thing that is the biggest problem that they have? When I asked her, she said that their biggest problem was that they didn't understand how to market themselves or how to use marketing.

So my next question to her, and my next question to [00:10:00] you is why is that important to them? And her response was. Well, if they have no understanding on how to market themselves and they don't want to be visible, then they're not going to be able to reach their ideal client. And I asked her again, and why is that important?

And she said, because they want those clients to engage in therapy services. Now, that's getting to the transformation. We have to dig a bit deeper. And sometimes you have to go, and why? And why? And why? And why does that matter? And why does it care? And one of the things I said to her last night was, actually, they would happily not do any marketing.

If I said to you tomorrow, that you could run a business, make loads of money and never had to do a reel again, or so what show on social media, or do any kind of marketing, you know. Like me who would snap my hand off, right, because that stuff's hard work and it takes a lot of work. So I don't want to do it.

Sometimes [00:11:00] I do, but like people generally don't want to do these things, but they're doing them because it's a means to an end. If I said to people, and I always joke and give the example, if I said to you, instead of doing a webinar, you could stand outside with a sandwich board and it would get you more sales.

We would probably do it. I might need to have a mindset work with you first, but. Ultimately what we're trying to get is sales and ultimately what her customers are trying to get the sales. So that's why when I kind of pushed her and said, and what does that mean? And why is that important? And what's that thing?

And the final question was so that they can, what is it that they're trying to do? So their main problem and the transformation that they were really looking for was they wanted to engage more therapy clients. They wanted more customers because ultimately they want to make some more money in their business and in businesses that often comes down to it.

However, you can't just jump straight to do you want to make more money in your business because that isn't quite hitting the same thing either. So we got to that point where [00:12:00] she kind of confirmed that they were looking for more clients and the marketing was the route to get more clients. So then I asked her, what's the one thing that you can teach or share in your product, service, or program, in her case, it was a membership that is super effective when helping them with.

And that's where you would fill in whatever your kind of transformation was. In her case, it was helping them with getting more clients. That's where we need to look at your product and go, out of all the things that you help them with, out of all the things that you teach, out of all the things that you share, what is one of the most effective things that really helps them get more clients in her case?

So one of the things that she said was niching, is that she teaches niching in her membership and actually that's a really good and useful way for them to get more clients. So I was like, awesome. So what we would do then is we would do a webinar around niching. And we would probably [00:13:00] use some language along the lines of how niching can help you get more clients because their ultimate problem is they want more clients and her thing is that they, she can help by niching.

So I hope that that kind of makes sense from that point of view. We I find out what the product was. We find out what the general reason for buying that product is. And then we kind of hone down and down and down and really got to the crux of it. Then we basically looked at what in that product is the one thing that will help them, that is the most super effective.

Then we've taken that and their transformation and put it together into a webinar. So. I said that the webinar could be something like, you know, how to niche and, or, you know, how niching can get you more clients. So the reason I wanted to give the webinar example or a launch example around this is because I teach that prior to any launch, we need to do pre launch content.

And I really hope you're going to understand [00:14:00] why we do it when I give this next, when I move on to the next question, the next question I asked her. All we talked around was what do they need to know or understand before you can teach them that? I'll just say that again. What do they need to know or understand before you can teach them that?

So let's go back to her example that how niching can get you more clients. Well, they would need to know what is niching, like, let's, we have to assume that your customer knows nothing. Now, I don't want you to go like, so, so, so very basic, but you do need to go probably way more basic than you think you do.

So she could create a post or some content around what is niching. She could create content around how others have niched in that industry and what it's done for them. Then the final question, which is all part of the pre launch content, is what objections might they have about learning [00:15:00] about the thing?

Again, in her case, it was niching. So what objections might they have? First objection might be, do I even need to niche? Why is niching important? Do I have to have a niche? So try and think about what are the objections that People are going to come up with things like, does niching really get me more clients?

So you might want to share content around someone who niched and got clients. Can you see how honing into these things is really helping discover and understand that transformation and then helping you create content to get people ready for. You helping them with that transformation. Okay. I'm going to go to another example.

I really hope that one helped. It's a different example because I wanted to give you some different things to focus on. So example number two is someone in my community who has a course that helps tutors get international students. So let me just [00:16:00] explain that just in case you're not sure, because I wasn't, basically they used to be a teacher, they no longer wanted to teach, they then became a tutor and they're currently teaching people in the same country as them, but they want international students.

That's what she sells. She sells a course on how to attract international students via marketing and that sort of thing. Okay, so if I look at her main or biggest problem, so back to those questions, let me read that question again so you can hear it again. What is the product or service or program you want to sell?

Well, I've just said the course. What is the biggest problem your customer has that your product, service or program helps them fix? So their biggest problem is that they can't get or they don't know how to get international students. So then my next question is, why is this important to them? So why do they want those international students?

They want them because they get to work in the day and not the evening. If...

Align Your Business, Align Your Life: The Power of Wealth Dynamics

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Have you heard of Wealth Dynamics? It’s a personality profiling tool that I’m fascinated by and in this episode, I interview Osmaan Sharif, a Wealth Dynamics profiling specialist. We get right into the various profiles and how business owners can leverage their unique strengths for optimal performance. We talk about the significance of aligning business strategies with personality types to achieve greater success and even better, greater fulfillment. I also share my own journey of understanding my entrepreneurial profile. Ideal for business owners, coaches, and entrepreneurs looking to align their business strategies with their inherent strengths, this is a fascinating episode that I know you are going to love.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

Apple podcasts

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

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Teresa:

Have you ever taken advice from a coach or watched an expert do something and try to replicate it and it just did not work and then you thought you're the problem? This is exactly what happened to me recently. I took some advice, I tried to do something in my business and I didn't like it at all. And therefore, It wasn't as successful as it could have been. And it wasn't until I did the Wealth Dynamics test and spoke to today's guest that I realized why that was the case. If you, like me, are interested in learning more about yourself and how you best work, then today's episode is for you. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast.[00:01:00] I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the. Season of life that you are in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, and I am very grateful to have you join me. I genuinely mean that. I know your time is so very precious. And if you're like me, you are listening to this while doing something else. Normally I'm getting ready in the morning and it's a toss up between listening to a podcast or an audio book. So the fact that you are listening to me. Honestly, I am so grateful because you have lots of options out there and I really [00:02:00] appreciate you being here and I'm not going to waste your time. I try and bring you the best of guests, the most effective strategies and tactics. And today is going to be a really, really good episode because if you're like me, you love a personality test. I love them. I have done Enneagram, Myers Briggs, Human Design, Money Archetypes. I have done so many and I find them all so fascinating. But one of the tests I hadn't done was Wealth Dynamics. Now I met today's guest some time ago, Osmaan Sharif. I met him at an event. We were speaking together and he asked me if I had done the wealth dynamics test. I said, no. And I literally looked at the options and he looked at the option. I'll say he knew the options and he said, you're a star profile. And I read who else was a star profile. And I went, yes, I think I'm a star profile. However, in preparation for this episode, I decided to actually take [00:03:00] the test. I did it through his website. We'll make sure we link up to that in the show notes because it's actually cheaper to do it through his site than it was to do it through the main site. So I did it through his site and I did the test and it was fascinating. However, what was truly fascinating was when Osmaan and I got chatting actually before the episode, but we do talk about it on the episode, I shared with Osmaan that I was really struggling and I shared a story of that I had started something in my business and, and it just wasn't going well. I wasn't enjoying it as much as I could and I kind of dreaded seeing it in my diary. And Osmaan and I had a conversation and he said to me, because he saw a copy of my results because it was done through his site. And he said to me, can I talk you through your results? And I said, yes. And he talked me through what my results were and he said, there's no wonder you don't like the thing that you've set up. Because actually when I look at your wealth dynamics report, it tells me that you would hate that. And he [00:04:00] said, if you and I were going to work together and you would come to me and said, I want to start doing this particular service, he said, I would have told you to avoid it because you would not like it. And it was honestly, within like 15 minutes, I felt a million times better. And I made an immediate change and that change has now come to fruition in the business and I am stopping or reducing massively that thing that I was doing because it just wasn't fitting with me. And this is kind of the point, when I work with people, I ensure I take time to get to know them. And like I said, I tend to get my people, my clients, my membership to do things like Enneagram and Myers Briggs and money archetypes. So I can get an idea of who they are and how they like to work. And if you've done something before, or if you've taken someone's advice and it didn't work, you might be sat there thinking, what is wrong with me? Well, the truth is there's nothing wrong with you. That tactic, that strategy just wasn't for you because not everyone's the same. So therefore not everything is going to work for everyone. [00:05:00] And this is what this episode is all about. Osmaan works with the wealth dynamics profiling, and he uses it to coach his audience and to coach his clients. And in today's episode, We talk through the effect of doing a test like this. And like I said, I share a bit of my story in terms of what's happened to me at the, at the time. And then he talks us through all the different profiles of the wealth dynamics and what it means. And more importantly, how that has an effect on how you want to show up in your business and the things that you want to do in your business. And the truth is, when you find out things like this about yourself, it's really empowering. Because up until that point, you're thinking, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't this work for me? Or why am I not enjoying this? And when you find out that actually this is my personality, and this is the way I like to work, and this is what works for me, you suddenly go, oh, that makes perfect sense. And actually, I think we all just need a bit more empathy for ourselves in business and in life. So that's never a bad thing in my book. If you think [00:06:00] this episode is going to resonate with someone else, I would really appreciate you sharing it with them. Also, when I have a guest on, I love it so much, and I know they do. If you share it on social and tag us in, or DM them, or anything that kind of says that you enjoyed this episode, and Osmaan, I'm sure would love that. So without further ado, here's Osmaan. Welcome to the podcast, the amazing Osmaan Sharif. Osmaan, how are you doing?

Osmaan:

I'm very well. I'm super excited to have a chat with you. I know our chats always are really juicy, so I'm excited to get into today's.

Teresa:

Me too. And truth be known, we've already just talked for about 20 minutes about what we're going to talk about today, so I hope we don't ruin it. We just have to repeat a few things. So, Osmaan, you're a coach, but one of the areas in which you coach specifically around, which is music to my ears because I am a big fan of a personality test, is the wealth dynamics. So could you just start us off by [00:07:00] explaining what that is and how Why you chose to either pick that specifically or something to go along with your coaching.

Osmaan:

Absolutely. So for me, I absolutely am all about people. Okay. So that's kind of rooted into what I started. I started off as a HR manager in the corporate world, thinking that's a role to help people realizing quite quickly it wasn't. I deal with all the fun parts. That's the part that fascinates me, but also frustrates me Teresa, because we know that Not every human being is the same, right? But what I found really quickly was that when I was coaching individuals and I used to do lots of NLP courses and, you know, neuro linguistic programming is, I'd be in the room and it'd be, I could say the same thing to a group of people and some people would go and they would just make it happen and they'd find it really easy, but others would still find it really challenging. They're still following the same process or the same strategies. But it was like they were pushing a boulder up a hill, they were burning out, [00:08:00] or they were kind of starting to have lots of mindset challenges to go, I can't do this. But then when I remembered that thing, that we are all different and going back to my HR days, I've done all tests under the sun, you know, Myers Briggs, DISC and insight and all that. So I was really aware of it. And then one of my peers early in my business, so it was probably about four years after I started my business said to me, have you done the wealth dynamics test? And at that point I was like, I've done them all. I, you know, I know me, blah, blah, blah. And, and she's like, no, no, this one's really for business owners. So I thought, right, being curious, I did it and I came through as a trader profile and I'll go through what that means in a moment. Yeah. And you know, on one hand it was just this like relief. I was going, okay, that sold me. But then on the other hand, I was really frustrated thinking I've been trying to play the wrong game over those previous four years. Thinking that was the right way to do it. So that really then got me intrigued. I [00:09:00] then combined my, my training around NLP. I then went to get trained in wealth dynamics and I've been using that since. Honestly, Teresa, I do not work with a coaching client, or any business owner until I know which of their profiles are, because otherwise. It's so easy to give people the wrong advice. It'd be like going to the doctor and giving them one symptom like, Oh, I want to feel better. And the doctor would say, Hey, take this medication. They don't. They need to know like your, your, like your issues, the symptoms of what does that look like to that? So they can give you a specific prescription. And that's what I see. So even though people could be well intentioned by giving advice or people like me and you or your listeners. I'm sure they listen to podcasts. They go to conferences. Tell me if you've ever experienced this, you know, you go to a conference and you hear something, you go, I should do this. The next speaker comes on and they basically tell you to do the opposite thing, right? Or follow the opposite strategy. And instead of leaving inspired from that conference, you actually walk away more confused to going, what am I doing? Second [00:10:00] guess myself. But if we really know what our Wealth Dynamics profile is, I call it your entrepreneurial superpower. is because it is that superpower. It allows you to go, ah, that's the best things for me to do, or thank you, but no thank you for other things. And it stops that distraction and it keeps you really focused and much more confident in what you do. So that's, that's why I am such a firm believer of it.

Teresa:

Yeah. I love that. And I love, as you, I have done everything and it is so reassuring when you go, ah, of course, of course that makes sense. Yeah. But one thing that is so interesting about this is the fact that I've just come on and spoke to Osmaan and was like, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, struggling a bit at the moment and there's a few things in the business and he literally, cause I just did the test about a few hours back and he literally just looked at it and went, that makes perfect sense. And I said to him, which him and I will experience a lot. When you work with someone or when someone says, you should do this, right? And it comes from a good place, doesn't it? Like it comes from a place of [00:11:00] people who have been successful doing something. And then they think, I want to share this with everybody because this is brilliant. Right? So they, they give you an idea and I took on an idea and it's really unusual for me to do. So I say, Osmaan, I am. Generally tell me something and I'll do the opposite. 'cause I am that petulant, but I took, I took it on and then when it hasn't worked for me because I'm not enjoying it. You kind of think, oh, I'm the problem. And I think that is the problem with most business owners, with most people, when they take someone else's suggestion, and it's not that that was wrong and it's not that it was forced upon me. I took it and went, okay, this sounds great. Try to do it. It's not working for me because you, within a very short space of time, like, if you think I work with Osmaan, I'd go say do it because like literally within the first 15 minutes he speaks to me today, which is brilliant. But help me understand that actually it makes perfect sense why that doesn't suit you. So, so let's go through what the wealth dynamic [00:12:00] profiles are.

Osmaan:

Perfect. So in a nutshell, I'm going to be really big picture here, but you can find out more about this on my website, but there's eight different profiles. And the way I want you to think about this is that that means that there's like eight different games to play or types of business owners or entrepreneurs. So you've got those business owners that have that gravity towards the top of the wealth dynamic square. So you've got those that have lots of what we call dynamo energy. Those are people that are generally are big picture. They're much more innovative. They tend to see things like, you know, and the horizon in terms of this is where I'm going. So you've got the creator who's the classic person, give them a blank sheet of paper and they thrive. They're constantly coming with brand new ideas. They're really innovative and that's what, that's where their magic lies, right? But then the profile next to them is a star profile. And again, I know I'm going to go a bit techie here because I'm a bit grounded, but the difference is between a creator and a star is a star is still [00:13:00] a visionary big picture person, but a star does not need to come up with everything for, you know, from scratch. But they're the best at being able to think and go, how do I translate this? How do I then make this a accessible way for my audience. They love being on a stage or with people. That's where they get their energy and that's where they come alive, right? So they don't create, stars don't always have to create new concepts. Whereas creators love brand new things. They just want to start their own kind of way. So can you see that, that small distinction? Yeah. I've had business people in the past and big picture. But even if they're trying to play the creator game, that's a different game compared to the star. It's like, you know, you're in the same playground, but you're just playing with different apparatus and different kind of, you know, equipment. And then you've got mechanics. So mechanics are also really, really big picture. They're very visionary, but the difference between them is they're really good at seeing What could be better? They're better at optimizing, right? They're [00:14:00] not the best person to have a blank sheet of paper. And that's where they're able to look again, like, oh, this, like, let's say, for example, on a, you know, on a funnel or a launch, they're quite good at being able to go, If we tweak this a little part, let's see how it loads better. Let's see if it makes it more effective. But they're not so in the nitty gritty, but they're really quick at being able to spot that to be improved. That's where your issue is as well. Just in the same way, if you went to car garage, you give them an idea, they may go, Oh, it's your phalange that needs replaced, right? Yeah. And that way. So all I'm trying to emphasize there, there is that those three profiles are all innovative. But they're innovated in different ways and there's different games to play around that. Does that make sense? One quick example of this. I remember years ago I was coaching at a retreat in Bali and there was one lady who was getting some success in her business and she was a copywriter. But her business model and what she was doing was very much more like working with clients, blank sheet of paper, creating all campaigns and everything for them, [00:15:00] like, you know, with her amazing skills. But she came through as a mechanic profile and for her, it was that element of going, Oh, that's why actually, you know, I'm much better at when I'm in with a business owner and they've done something. I'm so much better at looking at how do we improve it, how do we tweak it rather than starting something from scratch. So that one insight to these, I helped her to completely change her business focus and her model to play a game that's just much more in line with her path as well.

Teresa:

I love it. And you're right. They're so. It's interesting that you've got this, and I keep looking to the left because I've got it on screen so I can see it, this kind of dynamo section, but even though they're all...

The Power of Testimonials: Building Trust and Driving Sales

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 01:00:00 +0100

If you are selling online, this episode is a must-listen. I see so many business owners struggle with this and it is literally critical to growth. This episode is all about the importance of social proof, particularly testimonials. Online businesses, course creators, membership owners, and coaches, listen up... In this episode I’m sharing how testimonials, case studies, and 'wins' can really boost buyer confidence and drive sales. I also share detailed strategies for how to collect and effectively use the testimonials you gather.

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Transcript

When buying online, how often do you go and look at the reviews? It's been proven that a product on Amazon with lots of reviews will sell better than the same product with less reviews. We need social proof. We need people to confirm that the thing we want to buy is going to be okay, that when we spend our money we're not taking a massive risk, and social proof and testimonials and case studies do that. They help us have the confidence to make that buying decision, which is why having testimonials, having case studies, and having wins in your marketing is so, so very important. But how do you collect testimonials? What do you ask them for? And where do you put them? That is what we're covering in today's episode of the podcast. And this episode should be one that every business owner should listen to.[00:01:00] An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and motivated. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are doing well. Okay, today we're jumping straight in and we're talking about something that is so important For every business out there, but even more important for online businesses. So course [00:02:00] creators, membership owners, and coaches, if you are selling things online, then this is probably one of the most important things you're going to need to listen to, and you're going to need to act upon. We're going to be talking testimonials. Now. I know that sounds like it's not very dramatic or not very big or not very important. Hopefully, you know, maybe you were sat there hoping that I was giving you some crazy hack that no one ever knew about, but this is something that I see so many business owners struggle with. Whenever I am going through someone's sales page, whenever I'm looking at someone's webinar slides, whenever I'm doing any of those things and helping them to curate them better, the one thing I will say without doubt is you need more testimonials. You need more people saying good things about you and what you do. And it's not just a case of just a straight testimonial. We're going to get into that, but you need to prove that you can do the thing that you're saying you can do. And [00:03:00] we just don't put enough in and I'm going to say we because I include myself in this because this is something that I have also been a little bit rubbish at and I need to improve on this. So this episode is for me as much as it might be for you. There is so much to cover that I'm going to try and break it into sort of areas that make sense, but let's talk about, first off, a testimonial and what is it, because I'm actually going to use three different terms and they are different. So you can have wins that you share, testimonials and case studies. So the main difference between these three, And some are better in different places and some of them you'll use in different places but wins are things like when someone in a Facebook group on social media or messages you and says hey I just did your so and so and I've got this or I've had wins that come in of someone saying, Oh my goodness, I just did my webinar and eight people have bought straight off the bat. Those [00:04:00] are wins. So those are kind of really short snippet things of someone telling you that they've just had a win based on what the, what you've done with them or the work that you're doing with them. And they can be really helpful, especially If you don't have a full test, test, testimonial, gosh, that's going to be hard if I can't say that as this whole episode's about it. If you don't have a full testimonial or if you don't have a case study, so at the very least, those wins are great and ideally those wins are screenshotted and they're still really useful to have even when you've got full testimonial and case studies. It's still great to have some screenshots of wins of little, you know, yay, I did this thing and I got this win. Then testimonials. So testimonials tend to be a quote from a client, someone you've worked with, someone who's bought your course, someone who's in your membership, that is talking about what impact you have had on them. And it could be talking about, I did this thing and I got this result, or I just love being part of this community, or [00:05:00] they're great to work with, but it tends to be a kind of quote. And a case study tends to be a bit more in detail. So a case study will probably go into who they are, what they do, what they did previously, what they did with your help and how they changed their business, their life, their whatever it is. And it gives you more details. And I would use case studies on things like a webinar or part of a launch or something like that, where you can get into the weeds a little bit. You can also have case studies on your website. You can have case studies on sales pages, but it tends to be the kind of real detail. You're going into real detail. So when I talk about testimonials, we could be talking wins. We could be talking case studies. And if I'm specifically talking about one of them, I will mention it. But I just wanted to say straight off the bat that that's the three different things that I see. I see wins, testimonials, and case studies. Okay. The other thing I need to get straight away or that I need to say straight away [00:06:00] is it is 100 percent your responsibility as the business owner to get your own testimonials. I don't mean that as in someone else on your team can't get them. Absolutely. But as the business, we have to get the testimonials. What we can't do is hope and expect that our clients and our customers are just going to want to give you a testimonial. It's so important that we get them and we need to be very considerate. We need to be very kind of, you know, actually make the moves of getting those testimonials, but it's our responsibility. The way I want you to think about it is I want you to think about adding it in as a kind of regular thing that you do. So for instance, if you are sending an email once a week, maybe once a week, you reach out to a client and ask for a testimonial. If you are posting on social media. Like a couple of times a week, maybe as part of that, you, every time you do your social media batching, maybe you do it once a month, you reach out to two or three social [00:07:00] people to ask them for testimonials. Every time you see someone say something nice about you, you screenshot it and put it in a folder, which I always do anyway, because I've talked about this before, but in case you haven't heard me talk about it, I have what's called a love folder. So anybody who says anything nice about me, I screenshot it, put it into a folder on my desktop, and I also have a physical love folder and I have a noteboard where the people send me things, which is lovely. And then when I feel rubbish about myself, or if I have a day when I'm thinking, am I really cut out for this? Am I really any good? Which we all have as business owners. Then that's the day I go and read my love folder. And I remind myself that. I'm good at what I do and people genuinely love working with me and get results. So that's good practice anyway, but also getting into the habit of having them screenshotted so that you can then use them is awesome. So how do you get testimonials, case studies, how'd you get the wins, and what do you do with them, where do you post [00:08:00] them, and where do they come in handy to be used? So we're going to cover all of that. One of the first things that you can do, let's talk about how we get testimonials. And like I said, I want you to treat it as a regular thing that you do in your business, so that you are constantly doing it. Look out for all of those good comments. So right at the beginning, in terms of wins, when you see someone share a win, I want you to almost have it that you then follow up with that person and ask them if you can take that win a bit deeper. So you could use it as a win, as a screenshot, Or you could use it as a testimonial or a case study and you could email them or you could contact them and say, Hey, I saw that you did this post about me or you shared in the group XYZ. Would you mind if we elaborated on that a bit? And if I could then do a testimonial from you or if we could do a bit of a case study. Now you can get all the information for a case study. It doesn't mean you have to use it as a case study, but the [00:09:00] aim would be to get that information from them. So that's one place that you could go and ask for testimonials. Another place is you could just email your list and email anybody that's been a client of yours and ask them, have you done XYZ, whatever it is that you are trying to get from your audience in terms of the transformation. So for instance, for me, it might be, have you had a successful webinar through what I've helped you with? Could you tell me about it? So you could email your list, but like I said, I want you to set up a regular time to reach out and ask these testimonials. If someone is offboarding, maybe that's part of the offboarding. If someone is moving from one product to another, maybe when they move, that's another point to say, Can I have a testimonial? Maybe if you have a course or something that people go through, maybe as they move from one section to another, you can automate something that says, when they finish this lesson, we send out an email saying, can you [00:10:00] have a, you know, can you tell me how you're getting on? And can we have a testimonial and that sort of thing? Okay. So lots of different places that you can ask testimonials that you can think about getting testimonials, but what about the actual testimonial? How do you get it? And What is it that you need to ask them to do? A good thing to bring in here, or this is a good place to talk about it. The whole point of the testimonials and case studies and wins isn't just necessarily about, I liked working with Teresa, she was lovely. The point of them is to show that you can deliver the transformation that you're saying you can deliver. That's the whole point. And I think with the online space, the way it is, and. our customers and prospects being much more discerning, which I actually think is a really good thing. You need to be a bit more direct in terms of what you're actually saying in your testimonials or what is being said in your testimonials. So for instance, [00:11:00] let's say you're doing a webinar or a launch or something, or you're teaching to your prospective audience, and you are teaching them that if they do X, Y, Z, they get the result. XYZ. So for me, let's use the example, I teach webinars or launching. So what if I say, one of the ways in which you can get people to join your webinar live is by sending these emails, by writing these points and by doing things like a workbook and an author and all this other stuff, when I would share that as a key learning point in a webinar or in a bootcamp or in any launch method that I'm doing, or even in an email or on social media. What would be great is if I had some kind of testimonial or case study or win that said I did this and this was the result I got. So if I'm saying, let's just say, I'll just use one point, let's say creating a workbook really helps [00:12:00] people turn up live to a webinar. What I would love, if I'm teaching that, is to then give you proof that that is right. Therefore, a testimonial or a case study of someone that says, I didn't do it and now I do, and this is the difference in my results. Now the results don't have to be absolutely brain blowing, They can be, I had a 10 percent increase on people who turned up, but they need to show a result. And I think that's where people are maybe not going deep enough with their testimonials and their case studies and their wins. They're doing them that says, Hey, it was so cool to work with them, but what I really need to see as a customer is show me that the transformation you're offering can be done. Show me that when you say, if you do this thing, it makes a difference. Show me that it has made a difference. Okay, that's why we need to go a bit deeper on testimonials rather than just the kind of, you know, this is nice, she's lovely to work with. So how do we get those testimonials and what are we looking for? When [00:13:00] you spot someone saying this thing was awesome or however the many ways in which we're going to bring in the testimonials, I would ideally like you to do one of a couple of things. Either get them on a call, a call's really good because you get to hear it in their own voice and sometimes I much prefer to If someone said to me would I get on a video for like 10 minutes and give them a testimonial and they ask me questions, great. That is the quickest and easiest thing for me to do with my time. I don't particularly love writing so therefore I wouldn't want to write them a testimonial because It would take me way too long. I'd rather they just ask me questions. However, some people are going to much prefer answering questions written than actually recording a video. So make sure you have some options. But what you need to do is have some questions laid out that gives you a structure that helps you answer the key things that needs to be included in a testimonial. And those three key things are what the problem was, So you want them to share the problem that they [00:14:00] had. Let's go back to my webinar example. The problem that they had was people weren't turning up to the webinar live, which meant they weren't getting as good conversion rate because there wasn't as many people turning up live. So you want to ask them questions that helps them explain the problem and where they were at. And if it was a bigger problem, like if it was a really massive transformation, then you might want to do a bit of work around. What was it like for them and how did they feel? And some questions around that. The next thing is you want to have them share the solution. Now the solution is in this example, I keep giving you to do a workbook. It's a very simple example. Like this isn't necessarily a testimonial I would do. I'm just trying to give you an example. On the solution bit, it would be, I created a workbook, and basically whatever it is, the thing that you're telling them to do or that you're helping them with. And the last thing we want to make sure we include is the results. And as much as possible, we want some real evidence and some real [00:15:00] factual, factual, get the word right stuff. We want them to be able to say in an ideal world, and not everyone's going to be able to say this, but I flipping love numbers. So I always ask about the numbers. We want them to say, this was what they did before. Then they did this and this was the result they got afterwards. Now it's not always going to be as easy as that. If you're a coach, then it's not numbers. It's, this is how I felt. This is what life was like. This is how I showed up. This was how. I behaved and then I did X, Y, Z, and then this was the result. As you start to gather your testimonials, I want you to make sure that you have somewhere to put them. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but honestly, if you don't have somewhere to put them and organize them, then you're going to lose them because I have done over the years. We use Asana, and I have a kind of board for each type of thing that we sell, and then all the testimonials go in there. The other thing you're going to get when you're gathering your testimonials is you're [00:16:00] going to ask them for an image. Because at the very least, if it's a written testimonial, if it's a written case study, the very least you want is an image of the person. Because we need to make sure that these testimonials look as real as they are. And obviously we're only going to ever use real testimonials. Once you've got them and you are saving them and you're collecting them and it's part of your process, where are you going to put them? Well, the truth is I want them everywhere. I want them on your website. I want them on your social media. You could put them on the bottom of your email signatures. You could put them in your emails. But the place where I see them lacking the most and not just lacking, but also a very tailored testimonial to the point is in launches and on sales pages. I have been guilty of this in the past where I have done a whole sales page and completely forgot to put a testimonial in. Honestly, we're like cobbler's shoes. Like I can tell someone else and I could spot it in a heartbeat with someone else. I'm not [00:17:00] able to spot it on my own. I want to see on those sales pages and in your webinars, on your boot camps, on your trainings, on anything that you're doing to launch, I want to see testimonial, case study, case study, testimonial after like every single point. In a webinar, what I teach is that every point that you share as a point of knowledge, I want you to back that up with a testimonial. I want you to use testimonials where there are objections. If someone has said, or if a common objection for your staff is that it won't work for me, show me a testimonial of someone who thought it wouldn't work for them, but it would, but it did. If someone is saying, I don't have time, show me a testimonial of someone who took half the time that it normally takes to get the results and it still worked for them. Okay, what you might be thinking at this point is what if I don't have all those examples and...

Breaking the Mold: Alternative Strategies for Product Launches

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I interviewed Nicki Krawczyk, CEO and founder of Nicki Kay Media. We discuss alternative launch strategies beyond live launches and evergreen methods. Nicki introduces her 'Circuit Sales System' which offers a hybrid, automated approach that nurtures and sells to potential clients simultaneously, for maximum effectiveness. We dive deep into how this system works, including the importance of the initial activation energy, breaking the cycle of prevalent bad advice, and constantly refining the sales process. Nicki also discusses the use of ads, appropriate price points, and the technology needed to implement such a system.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

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LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Nicki Krawczyk on her

website

Circuit Selling

and

Instagram

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

When it comes to launching, we know that there's two main ways to launch live launching or evergreen. And you might be one of those people that doesn't like live launching, that the idea of doing a live launch is exhausting. It takes a lot of work and it does take a lot of work. But also you might know if you've done evergreen, it's not as easy as maybe it's made out to be. So what if there was something in between, could you find a way of launching that wasn't evergreen and wasn't live launching, and what if that way could massively increase your profits like it has done for my guest today. Today, I'm interviewing Nicki Krawczyk and I think you're going to really enjoy what she's got to say. I made so many notes. Get ready. Hello and really warm welcome to this week's episode of Your Dream Business. My name is Teresa Heath-Wareing and as always, I am your host. I hope you are doing really, really well. Now we've been doing a lot of talking around webinars and launching and I've got some stuff going on at the moment or coming up where I'm talking more about webinars. So the launching stuff is obviously something I really enjoy talking about and I'm absolutely geek if I'm honest, but actually. If you have an online product, if you have [00:02:00] a course, a membership, a group coaching program, then you need to know about launching. This is how people make their money. They do launches of their products. And like I said, I've done lots of content recently around the importance of launching and why we need it and why we can't just go, we've got this thing to sell and help people buy it. I mean, I really wish that was the case, but it's not as easy as that unfortunately. Today's guest, Nicki Krawczyk. Gave me so much to think about because she is talking about a way of launching that isn't live launching. And when I say live launching, I mean, you turn up live to do a webinar, you turn up live to do a challenge or a bootcamp and isn't evergreen. And by evergreen, we mean that it goes on autopilot. You set it and forget it. And you get loads of money coming in, which If that was as easy as that, believe me, we would all be doing it. It takes a bit of work. And I think that's what disappoints people because they think I'm just going to set up a course and sell it evergreen and it doesn't quite go with the way they think. So what if there was something in between? Which obviously I was fascinated [00:03:00] to hear about because I know those two other launch methods really, really well. And I happen to love them as well. So I made so many notes on this episode. I was proper picking her brain. And when she was saying about a strategy, I was like, but how, and what would you do there? And how do you do that? And I always love it. And hopefully you love it too, when there's an episode like that, because when I'm learning as much as you are, it really helps me ask all the right questions. It was awesome. She also talks about the fact of nurturing while selling, which Again, I like it when people sometimes give me differing opinions to ones that I have. I would often talk about not trying to marry someone on the first date and warming them up and nurturing them a bit and she was like, no, you know, I just go straight to sell. So again, it was Such a fascinating conversation. So let me just tell you a bit about Nicki. Nicki is the CEO and founder of Nicki K Media, and she loves to challenge conventional norms of [00:04:00] live launching and traditional evergreen strategies. Her proven methodologies provide course creators with a predictable path to success, freeing them from stress and limitations of outdated approaches. Like I said, it was really fascinating having this conversation with her. In addition to her revolutionary, hard word to say, circuit sales system course, she also offers additional programs through her filthy rich writer and fired up freelance brands for would be copywriters and freelancers alike. It was such a great conversation and I am so excited to share this with you. I think you're going to get so much from this. So without further ado, here is Nicki. Nicki, welcome to the podcast.

Nicki:

Hello, Teresa. Thank you for having me.

Teresa:

My pleasure. Now I am very excited about this episode because we are going to talk things that I geek out on, on a regular basis. Like to say I like launching is like, I watch other people's stuff with intrigue, like if someone's going through a launch, I screenshot everything [00:05:00] and I'm like, Oh, see what they did here. And also if this goes to here, and this is the stuff that like, I love this stuff. So when I went and did my research on you and you were talking about launching that wasn't live launching and wasn't necessarily evergreen, but you 40 Xed, four zero Xed. your business, like, I need to know this. I need to know what this wizardry is. I need you to tell me every detail and we need to get into it. So let's start by talking about why you're not keen on live launching and what you're doing instead.

Nicki:

So, you and I are similar in that I watch other people's live launches too, except I spend that time going. Oh, I'm so glad I'm not doing this. Oh my God. That looks like so much work. Oh my gosh. It's it. You and I were talking before we got started here and, or before we started recording and, and for, for people who love live launching and if it works for you. Awesome. Stick with it. Like [00:06:00] it don't break anything, but that's working stick with it because it absolutely can work. The, the people who, who are in my camp tend to be the people who are like, Oh God, I don't want to do that. That looks like so much work and so much effort. And I just, I don't get me wrong. This is business, right? Like you have to put in effort in business. I'm not going to come on here and be like, no, no, no, just follow my system. It's super easy. There's work to it, but I prefer to, I've heard of front load a lot of the work I prefer to do work behind the scenes so that I can set something up so that it can do the selling. For me, without having me having to be present for it, without me having to be on live and and giving my, my heart and soul to everybody and then passing out for, for a month afterwards because it took so much out of me.

So there's room for all of us.

Teresa:

And I think you're right. And I want, that is one thing I never hide the fact of that doing launches is hard. There's a lot of moving pieces. It takes a lot of energy. And we've all done a launch where. And probably more than I care to think about, where you put your heart and soul, and I do, right, I love what I do, and I literally, like, give, give, give, and then it's tumbleweed, and you're like, I have just literally busted my backside, and it's not worked out. So, one of the things that I see all the time, and, And I'll give you my thoughts on this, but is evergreen, like everyone wants evergreen. Everyone wants to literally just set up the thing, do the thing, done, brilliant, rolling the money. Right. And one thing I advise. [00:08:00] which I'm, I love people challenging me on, on the podcast and giving me new thoughts and ways of thinking. One of the things I advise is before they ever do an evergreen is that they do some live stuff to see what their customers like and what is working, what isn't working, what is happening, like what are they, what sales things they really being attracted to before they hit the evergreen thing, but still evergreen is not as easy and as simple as that. So when I looked at your stuff and I was like, so this isn't kind of evergreen and this isn't live. So first off, I don't understand what it is. And secondly, how could it make me that all that money? I'd like it tomorrow. Thank you.

Nicki:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Great. Sign you up. Yeah. It's, it's, as you know, the, the problem with evergreen, they're really like two kinds of evergreens, right? Now we've covered live launching. Great. But there are two kinds of evergreen. Number one is the, oh my gosh, I'm so sick of live launching. I'm just going to put my, put my course up on my website and people can buy it whenever they want to. It's so, it's so supportive. [00:09:00] People can. The problem is, is that's not how human beings work. We only take, or not only, but, but the vast majority of time, we only take action when we have some kind of deadline. It's, it's, it's just part of how we are created, part of the way our brains operate. So when you take your course and you put it up on your website and you let people buy it, Whenever they want to, they don't. You may, you will probably see a sale trickle in here or there, but it's not going to be enough to, to support your business on, especially if you're moving from live launching to this evergreen live on your site. It's just people don't take action when they could do it. I have right now, I have at least two or three, I mean like 30 tabs open, but I have at least two or three tabs open for courses that are quote unquote evergreen, like I'd like to do that at some point, but you know, it's probably going to happen is my computer is going to force me to [00:10:00] shut it down and I'm going to lose those tabs and they will have lost my, my money. Because I'm not forced to make a decision at some point. So this is one type of evergreen that doesn't work. The other type of evergreen is, is the evergreen funnel. Yes. That's where we're saying, all right, no, no, no, we're solving that problem. I get it. Having it up on your website, that, that doesn't work. So what we're going to do is we're going to create a funnel and we're going to give them the one time opportunity to purchase. And it's going to be so great. And you're going to be set it up and it's, and it's automated.

Teresa (2):

Yeah.

Nicki:

The problem is, well actually there are a couple of problems with it. Number one is, is the method of doing this is generally very poor. There is usually some, some unnecessary, we can talk about nurturing, but some, a lot of unnecessary nurturing first. Nurturing burns up that activation energy when people first get on your list. When people first get on your list, they are the most excited that they will ever be and the most motivated they will ever be. So a lot of people make the mistake of burning up that, that [00:11:00] activation energy with nurturing, and then they try to sell and then it doesn't work. Okay. The method of selling is usually going back to that like, we're gonna teach, teach, teach, just teach. Give away your best stuff and. Unfortunately, the problem is, is learning while very important, but learning is an energy draining activity. So when we take people who are excited and we get them on the list, then we go here, learn a bunch of stuff. They go, this is why we see if we do those multi day challenges, we see a lot of people show up that first day and then it dwindles and then it decreases. And the last day you go, I thought it was going to sell to 600 people. I'm only selling to 50 people or whatever that is. So that's part of the problem is that, that. Trying to, trying to teach people and, and conveying what we have to offer in a way that drains their energy. And then the third part of that is the way that funnels work. They're one way, right? So we get people in the top, we send them through, and if they don't purchase, we go, oh, I got down. That didn't work. We [00:12:00] throw them on our list and they languish there. I mean, maybe we send them our, our weekly emails or whatever, but we put them on our list, they language. Then we go, oh, I guess I have to live launch. I guess that didn't work. The thing is, is that first of all, you have to, you have to improve the system at the beginning to sell to people. Mm-Hmm. . But then after that, you know, if someone is on your list, there is, there's. Always a chance that they will purchase. There was something in them at some point that got them interested in your main offer, which means that unless they unsubscribe or unless they're, you know, they're bots, there's always the opportunity for them to purchase just for whatever reason. Maybe it's the messaging, but maybe it was genuinely the timing, or maybe they just genuinely don't have the money. Cause that does happen. There's always the opportunity to purchase again. If instead of sending them through a mediocre quote unquote evergreen funnel and then letting languish on your list, what if instead, and here's where we're getting into where the circumstance is a little bit different, what if [00:13:00] instead we take that prime activation energy, that moment when they're most excited, and instead of being like, here's an e book, we give them the solution to the problem they have at the same time that we nurture them. So we nurture them and we sell to them at the same time. In a way that establishes your authority and sets you apart from the rest of your competition. But then all of a sudden gives them the best offer, genuinely the best offer. And then gives them, if they don't purchase the best offer, they need a little bit more time, fine. They can purchase it at your regular price. But if for some reason they still weren't ready to purchase then, We don't give up on that. We build it so that they will automatically have additional opportunities to purchase in the future, but it's all automated. It's part of why it's a circuit because it's a closed circuit. The only way people exit is if they are, if they purchase or if they unsubscribe, and certainly you're going to give them all kinds of value as well, as they're on your list. You're not, you're [00:14:00] not just going to sell to them, but you, you. Are selling to them in the most effective way and you're doing it all automated. So you get that you get that excitement of the live launch at the at the beginning and you can Recreate that excitement of the live launch throughout the circuit, but you can do it without having to be live

Teresa:

Okay. All the questions. Right. Done. Brilliant. I know what to do. Okay. So first question, how, when you say you nurture and sell, so let's imagine, okay, how are you, how am I getting on your list first? Am I using traditional lead magnet? So, There's a download. It's going to change my life. I opt in. How do you then nurture me and sell to me at the same time?

Nicki:

Yeah, you are going to opt in for a free workshop. Now, it's a free automated workshop. It's an on demand workshop. So you don't, I'm not going to force you to rearrange your schedule to [00:15:00] watch something because we, I mean, how many times have you signed up for something and been like, I totally want to see that at six o'clock tonight. And then as the day goes on, you go, I cannot make this happen. And unfortunately with live stuff like that, we end up, we, we, whether we pay money or we pay time and energy, we're paying to get people on our list. And when we were like, Oh, if you can't be there, you don't get. You don't get a replay we're, we're penalizing people for having lives, but anyway, so you're going to give them a, a video workshop and it's on demand, but at the same time, you're going to give them a, a specified period of time in which to watch it. So it's usually going to be between three and five days, depending on your price point. And in this period, you are going to give them your, your best offer and your best price. You're going to send multiple emails to encourage them to watch it. You're going to also send additional information, you know, maybe some client stories, all that kind of thing to get them into this, to get them into this workshop, but also you're supplementing it with emails. Now, [00:16:00] what happens in this workshop instead of now from the outside, it could probably be like, well, there are three pillars. You're just teaching me the way that, the way that, you know, the average webinar does but that's not what it is at all, actually. It's the instead of like we're saying the the problem with teaching is that it. It drains that energy when people have to learn. I mean, it's like, when you think back to, you think back to high school or college, like you are not excited to go to class. There's just not like, yeah, get me in another account. Exactly. Like you're excited to have the information, but you're not excited to actually receive the info. And obviously there's a place for learning, but that place for learning is after they are on, after they purchase and we could support them in that. We could be like, okay, great. Log back in. We're going to, you know.

Teresa (2):

Yeah.

Nicki:

On top of the fact, there are kinds of problems with this idea of like, I'm going to give people a little win and then they'll purchase the big win. It's not generally how our brains operate. When we, when we purchase a little win, when we make a purchase, our brains close a loop. So if we give them, [00:17:00] if we give them a little win or if we give them a little purchase, something along those lines, they close the loop. They go, okay, all right, I know this....

The Ultimate Launch Formula: From Idea to Income

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I delve into the critical components for successfully launching online events such as webinars, bootcamps, or courses. Drawing from personal experiences and real data, I discuss setting realistic expectations, the importance of pre-launch and launch phases, and how to create engaging content that transitions into real sales. I discuss the significance of audience warmth, payment options, cart open/close strategies, and effective email marketing. And critically the importance of continually tweaking and tracking to perfect your launch strategies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

Apple podcasts

Spotify

and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Ep 368 (Launch Reality Check: Understanding and Setting Realistic Expectations)

Ep 364 (Has the online course bubble burst? How to adapt to the future of selling knowledge based content.)

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

When it comes to launching online, there are so many moving parts. How do you know which of those parts are important to help you get more people to sign up, join the actual webinar or bootcamp or whatever it is that you're doing, and then actually buy? Which of those things are really useful? Which of them are nice to have? And what is working right now when it comes to launching? That is what you're going to discover in today's episode as I take you through all of the various things that can make a big difference to your launch and to your sales. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of a business and life that you not only love, but one Perfectly aligns with you and the season of life [00:01:00] that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? So. I seem to be talking lots about launching recently, which I'm actually really loving having these conversations. And a few weeks back I did an episode, it was episode 368, we'll link to it in the show notes, called Launch Reality Check, Understanding and Setting Realistic Expectations. And I talked all about What are realistics like figures when you launch something and how many people blocked in and how big your list is and, and really focused on the percentage of things like real numbers. I [00:02:00] used real launches, things that I have personally experienced in and involved with and was able to give you a real clear understanding on actually, this is what you should expect because one of the things that really often come up is people's expectations of what they should achieve in a launch are not really what is standard. And yes, we don't want what is standard. We want way better than that. But what I don't want to see happen is for you to do something and then beat yourself up and think I'm not doing a very good job when that's just not the case. That's actually you're doing a great job. So today I wanted to take that a little bit further and I wanted to share a couple of things. First up, I want to share what will have an effect on your launch. So I'm going to run through a load of different strategies and they will affect your launch and your launch numbers. And then I'm going to talk about what is working well now. And also I'm going to give you an idea of when I talk about some of the things as to what an average [00:03:00] launch might look like. And I say average, because one thing I want to start. As a caveat on this and everything I ever talk about is you should take everything I say with a pinch of salt. And I mean that from a, every business is different. Every industry is different. Every person is different. Every email list is different. And therefore, I am going to give you a kind of base level or a kind of average on what I would expect or see or teach on a launch. However, the key thing in all of this is for you to do something, track what you're doing, Get the results, try it again, tweak it, do it again, tweak it, do it again, tweak it. So I might turn around to you and say one thing in this podcast that's like, you know, this thing's working really well and you might have tried it six times and gone, this isn't working. But this is probably a really good reminder that it's not just a one thing. This isn't just a one and done. This is [00:04:00] a case of you've got to keep doing it. You've got to keep trying it and tracking what you're doing and then making some tweaks and changes and then moving forward and trying again and seeing what result that has is the way to really perfect and hone your launches, your sales, your emails, everything. So it's about rinse and repeat, track it. And how can I improve it? The other thing I want to bring up here is the fact of hopefully this will help you. understand what will make the difference and be more sympathetic to yourself if things haven't quite gone as you hoped. So for instance, if I say to you an average number of emails and you've done less than half of that, then that might be the reason that you haven't got some of the results you wanted. If I say there's a launch window of X amount of weeks and you did a launch within five days, then then maybe that might be another reason. So it's kind of just going, okay, well, that's interesting. I did this, this, this, I [00:05:00] didn't do this, this, this, and this is the result I got. So if I do it again and add in those extra bits, what result will I get? So this is definitely a try it, see how you feel, work out what's working for you. So don't take this as you have to do it this way, because no one has to do anything anyway. It's your business. You get to choose. But what I'm trying to do here is give you practical, real things that are going to help, things that I've seen that have helped, things that I know work, and things that you can try in your business. Before I get started with the main content of this episode, I just want to say a really big thank you for spending some time with me and listening to the podcast. It really does mean the world to me. And also, if I could possibly be so forward as asking you to go and give me a review on your favorite platform, Spotify or Apple would be brilliant. If you would love, be so kind as to put a lovely five star review and write something nice, I would appreciate it so very much. Okay, let's get going. So we're going to start off by looking [00:06:00] at the launch bit. And when I talk about the launch bit, I'm talking about the bit before the launch mechanism. Okay. So we have the pre launch phase, the launch phase, the actual thing that you're doing, i. e. a challenge, a webinar, a live launch, whatever it is. And then the sales phase and that's the bit where you get them to sell. So let's say we were going to do a webinar and I'm going to keep using the term webinar, although it could be a challenge, it could be a bootcamp, it could be anything. Then what I want you to do is think, okay, pre launch phase is before you even mentioned the webinar. Launch phase is when you mentioned the webinar and you're trying to get people on the webinar. Then the launch mechanism is the webinar and then sales phase is after the webinar. When you start selling the thing that you're ultimately trying to sell. So let's talk about the launch bit and the pre launch bit. So some of the things that will make a big, big difference to your launch is the launch runway that you give yourself. [00:07:00] And this is split up into two. It's the pre launch. So it's the getting people ready. So that can make a big difference. If you are creating content that is either meeting and helping with objections, or you're getting content ready for them stepping into the launch, then great. I want to give you an example when I'm going through these different things and I'm going to choose one of my students that I work with who helps children or helps parents with their children who are fussy eaters. So let's say she was going to be selling a course for fussy eaters and She was going to do a webinar. Her pre launch content could be things like, what is fussy eating? It might be a quiz that you work out whether your child is a fussy eater or not. So basically the content that she's going to do Pre, the actual launch would be looking at making sure people understand whether they are the customer or not. So what is it that your [00:08:00] business or what is it that is the kind of prerequisite, the really beginner basic level that your customers need to be self identifying as that helps them move into the next phase, which is then joining a webinar about the thing, which will then lead on to the thing that you're selling. I hope this makes sense. Okay. Okay. So. The pre launch content, like I just discussed, that can have an effect. If you're not warming people up and you're jumping straight into a launch, then you might not get as many people in it. Because if someone, for instance, doesn't even think their child does fussy eating, there's definitely not going to sign up with a webinar to do with fussy eating. However, if you've helped them identify that first, then they are more likely to do it. Okay. The launch runway time that you give to promote this is key. So on an kind of, you know, ordinary level or kind of an average would be a two to three week launch window where you are promoting the webinar. The less time you give it, just the [00:09:00] less opportunity people have to see it and to sign up. And also the other thing, when you're using a window like two weeks to promote something, you are going to use very different strategies during those two weeks. Something might attract one person that something else didn't, you know, so like you might frame it in a way, or you might say it in a way, or you might share a case study, or you might talk about something that makes them suddenly go, Oh, no, this is for me. Whereas the first two, three emails just didn't, didn't resonate. So the longer the window you've got, the more chances you've got to share it in different places, the more chances you got to talk about it, the more chances that people have got to see it, which is why in an ideal world, we want about a two week window when it comes to launching. The other thing that really helps is. How warm that audience is, and that will have a big effect on not only your show up rate, or your engagement rate in your launch mechanism, your challenge, your bootcamp, your webinar, but also then ultimately the people that go on to buy. So if you have a [00:10:00] fairly low, like a really cool audience that have not worked with you for very long or not been on your list for very long. You've got them from ads. The chances are your turn up rates or your engagement rates are going to be a lot lower because you're asking a lot of someone. You're asking a lot of someone to not know who you are, but then to come and spend an hour with you when you do a webinar or come and engage in a challenge. Whereas if it's a warmer audience, then they are more likely to want to invest that time in you, even though there's no cost. So the fact that they are having to invest their time is as considerable of something for them to consider than not. So the, the warmth or the how warm the audience are is a really, really important thing, which also will kind of lead into giving them a reason to show up live. So the whole point of a launch at all is to get people engaged so that you can get an understanding of them, they can get an understanding of you, and ultimately you can help them make a buying decision as to whether this is something they [00:11:00] want. So the idea is you want them to show up live. You want them to engage and to come into the thing as much as possible. So there are a couple of things that you can do that will help you increase that show up live. So you can add bonuses to people who show up live and bonuses to people who stay till the end. So often on a webinar, I will have a something for free that if you stay till the end, you get this bonus, regardless of whether they buy or not. The other thing that makes a difference is when you offer workbooks, a workbook can be really helpful to get them to turn up live. I know it sounds so silly, but something about printing off a workbook, having it there on their desk, reminding them, showing them that they're actually going to be doing something and they're going to get some value from the time they're spending with you can really help with getting them to show up live. The last thing that I've seen happen quite a few times recently in terms of the launch section is that some people aren't offering replays. Now this kind of [00:12:00] leads more into, actually it kind of leads into both, it leads into the sale and into the actual launch, because if you know there's no replay and you really want that content, you are going to make the effort to turn up live. Turn up rate should hopefully be higher. Now whether that then converts into a higher sales, I guess you'll have to see from your own launches. And you might decide that actually it's hard if you don't offer a replay and some people just won't be available. But That is one option. The other option is that you offer a replay, but you bring it down before the cart closes. Let's say that the course that you're selling it, the door is going to close on a Thursday. You might bring the webinar, the replay down on a Tuesday so that you kind of push them into. Having to make, not make the decision, but you're kind of saying if you really do want to do this, if you really want to watch this, you are going to have to make an effort to watch it because we all know if [00:13:00] something is available to us forever, how many times have we bought replays of stuff or how many times have we been given replays of events or conferences and never watched them? Whereas if we did really want to watch it and they said it's going to come down on a certain day, you would make sure that you make the time and that's what we're trying to encourage people to do. Okay, so there's a various different things in there that I've ran through that will make a difference to the people showing up and people engaging and people actually coming to your launch mechanism. Now let's talk about sales and some of the things that are going to make a difference and some of the things that are working right now. One of the things that makes a big difference and always has done is bonuses. Now, I know sometimes this can feel a little bit icky and a little bit kind of, I don't know, just a little bit salesy, but bonuses do really work. And actually the type of bonuses can make a big difference. One of the things that I have seen a couple of times that is working [00:14:00] really, really well is a physical product as a bonus, which is crazy. But I think there's a lot to do with the online world we're in actually giving them something physical, like a workbook. Like I've had a, I've done work with summit in a box when I did my summit and she sends out a physical box with the workbook, a pen and various other things, little things like that. really do go a long way to give someone something a bit different. They feel like there's a different investment. They feel like it just feels different to have something like that given to you rather than an online bonus. So the, the kind of physical stuff as a bonus can be really, really good. Bonuses in general are great. Bonuses that basically make their life easier. Not more courses. Bonuses, like things like swipe documents, like checklists, things that basically make their, make them get the work done quicker is. a much better thing than necessarily just giving them [00:15:00] another course or more content to consume. Also another thing to think about is in person stuff. Is there an in person invite that they get to an event or a discount they get if you were going to do something event wise? Don't add this in just for the sake of adding it in, there's much easier bonuses. But also if you do something like an in person event, then that can be a great way of really Encouraging that sale or a great bonus where they actually go and meet people in person. Okay. Next thing that makes a big difference, the price. Now I know this seems like a crazy, stupid thing to say, because of course the price is going to make a difference, but actually there's some different strategies involved in this than just the price. And we're talking about the Payment options. Normally with a course or something, you might have a full pay. So just pay all in one, or you might have a part pay. [00:16:00] Giving the multiple pay options could be really, really useful. And again, this is something I've seen happening quite a few launches recently where they had say two payment options and then as it was getting closer to the cart close they then added another payment option which brought the cost down even more. Obviously you know what a payment option is about, it's about spreading that payment over X amount of time, which means it's cheaper for you to get it in the first instance. So rather than paying for a thousand pound, a thousand dollar course, you get to pay 200, but five payments of 200 or whatever it works out to be, which I think that's right. My maths is not my forte off the top of my head. So the payment pricing and payment options can really help. And like I said, one of the things that works really well is if you are struggling with the sales then bringing in a lower payment option can also help increase those sales. In that point, I mentioned about a cart close. Obviously, I can't do [00:17:00] this list without mentioning cart and close and cart open. It goes without saying that if something has a deadline date, it means that people are far more likely to make a commitment if...

Four Pointers for Authentic Personal Branding with April Martini

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I talk with April Martini about the distinctions between personal brands and personas. We explore the significance of business owners showing up authentically, and April shares her four-point framework for developing a personal brand. We discuss managing these elements to develop an effective and authentic personal brand that really reflects who you are.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

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april@forthright-people.com

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

Do you have a personal brand or do you have a persona of someone else's personal brand? And what actually is the difference and how would you know? Well, in this week's episode, I am talking to the very lovely April Martin and she is going to explain to us what A personal brand is, and what the difference between a persona and a personal brand. She also has four things that she takes us through that really helps us understand how we're showing up as our personal brand and how we can try and be as authentic as possible. And if you're an online business owner, if you are in business, You are the biggest thing for your business. So actually, the more authentically you can show up, the more you hone your personal brand, the better for your business. And I know what it's like, cause I've done it to look at someone else's personal brand and think, Oh, that's working. I should try and do what they're doing. And that just isn't authentic enough. So this episode is going to be really, really helpful for you to understand what is your [00:01:00] personal brand and are you showing up as it? Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Riz Heath Waring. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated. Gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are doing well. First off, I wanna take a minute just to thank you for spending the [00:02:00] time with me and listening to the podcast. It really does mean the world to me and recently, I've put out a few different episodes. I really, really enjoyed it. Like I say that as if I don't normally put out episodes I enjoy, I do, but like some of the solos and I've had some really good feedback, especially on one that was about the kind of launch stats and the webinars. So yeah, I love, love, love hearing back from you. So I really, really appreciate you listening and I know that our time is super valuable. So I try and always bring to you things that will either make you think or inspire you. or that will give you some just straight up strategies to help your business go further. This week I have an interview with the very lovely April Martin. I was very fortunate to be on April's podcast a while back and we had such a cool conversation about marketing because April has spent her entire career exploring all the ins and outs of agency life. Uh, she's a believer that learning never stops and experiences we amass, the better we're able to solve many of life's challenges. So she has basically got a design and an [00:03:00] MBA in business foundation has spent years working in agencies from branding to design. So she knows lots about marketing. So it was actually really cool when I went on her episode to geek out about marketing, because obviously that is my bag. And on this episode, April brings to us the conversation about personal brand and she sets a really interesting question straight off the bat of what is the difference between a personal brand and a persona and which one do you have? And what we kind of delve into, which you'll get from the episode, is that basically, are we showing up authentically us, or are we showing up in a persona that we think the internet wants to get from us? We talk about the fact of, like, there is only one Gary Vee, but many, many, many people try and take on his persona, because, and it makes perfect sense, and I have such empathy for myself and other people who have done this, because I know I have. You look at someone in your industry, you think this [00:04:00] works for them. Maybe I need to show up doing more of these things or behaving more of this way. So how do we know when it's us or when it's actually a persona? So, and how do we use that authenticity and what even is authenticity? We talked briefly about actually what that looks like and how that can show up and how maybe some of the authenticity isn't what you think it might be. And are you showing up as your authentic self? It's a really cool conversation. I love chatting with April. She's such a lovely lady, and I'm sure you are going to get a lot from this episode. So without further ado, here is the lovely April. April, welcome to the podcast. pril: Thank you so much, Teresa. I'm so happy to be here and can't wait to get into this discussion.

Teresa:

I am really happy to have you on. I came on your podcast a while back, and we loved the conversation. We had a whole conversation before we did the podcast swap, and it was just, it's so lovely connecting with you again. So you just said something, we were chatting before we got on about what we're going to be talking about today, and [00:05:00] I'm going to jump straight in with something you just said. You said that people think they have a personal brand, and what some people have is a persona.

April:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Teresa:

Let's start there. What is the difference? How do I know which one of them I've got?

April:

Yes, we're going to go right at it today. I love it. Yeah, so Anne and I have this philosophy around personal brands and we have a whole structure which I'm sure we'll get into on how to identify yours. But a big reason that we've done so much of this work is because of what you just said. People think that they have a personal brand and They're managing it effectively and authentically, but what they truly have is a persona and a persona is highly contrived. It's something that people create with good intention, right? But they put it out into the world in the way that they want to quote unquote show up. And so it's things like, you know, we always talk about people's Instagram page, right? Life looks so beautiful and [00:06:00] perfect on their Instagram page, yet it might be a shit show behind the scenes, right?

Teresa:

Possibly every time, to be honest.

April:

Yes, yes. So it's things like that, where you're creating what you think is authentic to you, but really what you're doing is creating a way of showing up and it's gotten so much worse because of all the channels that we're on. So then people create different personas based on different channels and platforms. And so then it's, it becomes even less connected to who you are as a human being.

Teresa:

Okay. So there's a couple of things you said straight off the bat there that. And it's making me think. So I want to touch on quickly the different platforms, different personas. I totally hear what you're saying with that. And funnily enough, I've had a conversation on this podcast with someone who's talked about there could be a more fun side of me on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. I'm not going on TikTok, but like, because TikTok is more fun, whereas like the more serious conversations go on LinkedIn. So when you [00:07:00] And this is a very sweeping statement, but are you saying then that we shouldn't be tailoring us to the platforms?

April:

So I think there is a right and a wrong way to do it. So as we talk about personal brand, like the reason that we feel it's so fundamentally important is because people look out at the world, right? And they say, I want that. I want that life. I want that job. I want person. Right. And so then. I think the personas come into play when they're like, okay, well, I don't know how to get there. So I'm going to look around to see who else is there and how people are acting. And then I'm going to model that behavior, kind of the fake it till you make it perspective. And that's where it gets into trouble when you're doing that based on channel instead of doing the work to develop your personal brand and identify it for yourself and then start managing through that. Because actually, I think you should show up different on LinkedIn than you would on TikTok Right? Yeah. Those are totally different audiences, different reasons. People are on there. I mean, we have people on our podcast all the time who are like, [00:08:00] my Instagram is my personal life and my LinkedIn is my professional life. And so come find me on LinkedIn, right? There's all of those wonderful reasons for showing up differently on those platforms. Where it falls apart is when you don't do the hard work to say, who am I truly at my core? And how am I going to put that to work for me instead of I don't know how to get to where I want to go. So who's doing what I want to do? I'm going to go try to be like them.

Teresa:

And that is such a, like you hit the nail right on the head there. That is exactly what people do. That is what I've been guilty of in the past. Like how would they showing up? What are they doing? I need to do something similar. The other thing that you said, which. Like, so this is where I'm like, okay, so this is going to be really interesting to dig into this bit. You are so right. We paint a picture on social media. We paint this beautiful picture of look how amazing our life is and look at the things I get to do and look at all that. And it's not that that isn't real. Okay. So one of the things I shared very [00:09:00] recently was the fact that this year we I've travel is a big thing for me. And this year we've been to Nashville, Tokyo, the Philippines, and Canada.

April:

Amazing.

Teresa:

And like adding it was, they were all phenomenal. So it's not a lie. That is my life. However, how do you, and I, we're obviously going to get into the personal brand bit in more detail, but how, what's the difference between showing up authentically and airing your dirty laundry on social media? Because like, People don't, they think they want to see the messiness and they think they want to see the real life. I don't think, I don't want to share it. And I don't think people do want to see it. I think like getting on and, and I getting on and sobbing on Instagram, but this is the other thing, right? That's not true either. So we were having this conversation with my coach ages ago when she's like, people think authenticity and vulnerability is [00:10:00] crying on social media. No. No one is being authentic if they suddenly are sobbing and go, oh, hang on a minute, let me just get my phone and do my stories. Like, that is not authentic. That is weird and bizarre and strange. But like, how is that balance of showing up as yourself, but showing up because there is a good version of ourselves that we want to show. It's like, how do I know I'm doing it properly? Or how do I know I'm just going, look how amazing my life is, everybody. And like, not really being the real me. This is a big hard question. Sorry.

April:

No, no, no, no. I mean, and it is, it's a great question. I think, well, number one, I don't think, I think people do on the, on the spectrum, they do more on the ends and that's what we see as an authentic, right? So it's like everything is sunshine and roses and perfect. And I have the filters on my pictures and I'm only showing you the best shots and all of that. Then you have the ones that do what I call the bad behavior on social media, which is what you [00:11:00] call it, like the crying and the, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And I think what you said is the truth is that. people are still choosing how they are showing up in those ways, but none of it is actually authentic to what's going on. So the way that I think about it, and because I believe so wholeheartedly in personal brand, I think about when I post, if the people that are in my everyday in my world that see all the facets of my life, truly just as real life, not as good, not as bad, none of that, if they can see my voice showing up on social media. And I work really hard for that. So I, I love actually when your moments pop up, right? Like last year at this time you were last, you know, like my, this is the season for my kid's birthdays. Right. And so I get to see all the past ones and I see all, all of these. Um, But on there like I'm not trying to say like look at my kid. They're perfect. They're the greatest thing ever I try to authentically put the things that we're proud [00:12:00] of and my friends know like we talk about kindness in this house predominantly. So my message out there is about You know we're proud of Nia because she's kind and I want like i'm always using that as my filter like Are people gonna get on there and be like seriously that is nothing like what her life is like Are they gonna get on there and be like those are the bright moments of her life, but they're exactly how their life is Because I'm just as quick to be like, it's also hard, right? And it's all those things. So that, that's more the filter, I think. But you have to do the personal brand work first in order to hit whatever note you're trying to achieve on these platforms.

Teresa:

I think that's a great filter though, because if I think about like my family and, and oddly enough, very recently I've had two family parties. So I happen to see my family fairly often recently, like. you know, they, the, the person I am in front of them is the person I am on stories, is the person I am in on calls when I [00:13:00] am in business. Like, yes, my husband gets to see me without a face and makeup, but no one needs to see that. Not even he wants to see that. Even I don't want to see that. Like, so yes, but like, I will, this isn't like, you know, I don't dress like differently. I don't act differently. I'm, I am the kind of person I am, but like you said, I am showing, you know, a, everybody is showing a curated version, like you said, and I think that is such a good point to make whether it's, I show waltz and all that's still curated or I show perfect that's curated. You are choosing to post something on a platform. None of this is just happening by chance. It's like, so actually. You are choosing to do that. Okay. So how do I know whether I've got a personal brand or whether I've got a persona? Talk me through that whole thing about am I, have I got a personal brand? What is a personal brand? That sort of thing.

April:

Yes. [00:14:00] So this is where I would say our framework comes in. Okay. So we start, so there's, there's four facets of your personal brand that we talk about. Characteristics. I'll go through each one, but characteristics, appearance, behaviors, and actions. Okay. So your characteristics are inherently who you are as a person, right? I'm extremely stubborn. I'm very loyal. I'm extraordinarily direct. I am very outgoing, right? Like those are just things about me that are me as a person. Yeah. My appearance is how those things show up. We cannot change our characteristics. And this is a controversial thing. When Ann and I get into this, people are like, what do you mean I can't change? And I'm like, if you're a very direct person like me, I modulate my directness. I can't not change that about myself. Otherwise, you were talking about before I'm showing up inauthentically then. Okay. So that's characteristics. Appearance is how you show up. The things you can manage are your behaviors and actions. And that's what becomes the practice. So when we talk about putting your [00:15:00] personal brand to work for you, you first have to spend the time. And you know, we have a whole philosophy on this and we have episodes and people can go look at that. This is 30 minutes long winded. So I'll just give you the basics here. So those characteristics, you spend some time doing some exercises to really identify like five to six things that are just inherently me that show up regularly. And so you start to think through like. You know, how do I show up in conversations with my co workers, with my family, with my friends? Like, what are those things people have told me about myself time and again over the years, all the personality tests we take, right? Like, there's lots of indicators of those. But we tell people to nail down to five or six. Okay. And then the work on the other side is how are those going to work for you? So we get really granular and we say, all right, in the past week, identify three times when you showed up how you wanted to and three times when you didn't and then tie it back to that. So like, I'll use the example, right? Like. And this is one of those vivid [00:16:00] memories in my mind of where I just failed. But I said, I'm like really outgoing. So COVID had ended. It was the first video shoot I was going to be on. I was so excited to be around people that I was like the golden retriever puppy. Meanwhile, the six people that I was with are quiet. A little more introverted, a couple of them were super nervous still about COVID, right? So I had a really hard time connecting with them and it was like working against the whole time. Versus when I go in and I...

Mastering the Art of Webinars: A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Online Launches

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I’m diving into the world of webinars and breaking down why they’re such a game-changer for launching and marketing online businesses. I’m busting some common myths and sharing super helpful strategies for crafting killer sales webinars. We’ll cover everything from pre-launch content, to the live session format, and the sales follow-up, giving you a solid roadmap for success. Plus, I’ll chat about the unexpected perks of live webinars—like building personal connections and showcasing your expertise on the spot—that will allow you to really enjoy your online launch. If you’re looking for practical tips on how to engage potential customers and boost your webinar turnout, regardless of list size, this is for you!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Webinars as a powerful marketing tool: Generating leads, building relationships, and driving sales for online businesses.
Compelling webinars require careful planning: From choosing a topic to delivering a captivating presentation, there are several key steps to make sure your webinar is a success.
Live webinars offer unique benefits: The differences between live webinars and pre-recorded content are plentiful, with benefits such as real-time interaction with your audience, building community connections and demonstrating expertise.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Ep 368

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Have webinars had their day? Do they even still work? And maybe you've tried it and thought this didn't work for you. I'm here to dispel the myths around webinars and explain why they are still very effective and why they are a powerful thing to use in your business. In this episode, I share some common mistakes that people make and what to do instead. And I also share with you my launch framework and I break down. What a successful webinar includes. So if you have something to sell online, then webinars could be your secret weapon to your next biggest ever launch. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing, and today I get to geek out on a subject that I love. Lots of things I talk about, I geek out on, but this is a subject that seems to be coming up an awful lot recently and not always for necessarily the right reasons. So we're talking about webinars and the reason I say it comes up a lot and not for the right reasons is because I hear a lot of talk that webinars don't work. They're no longer effective. [00:02:00] People know what webinars are all about and therefore don't want to come to them. And I am here to challenge and dispel all of those thoughts and ideas. Let's kick off by actually talking about what is a webinar because, again, I see lots of things in my business and the people I help. Lots of people think a webinar is a training. Now, I'm not going to say you're wrong because it is, but it's so much more than that. The whole point of a webinar is that someone can come along and learn something from you. But a sales webinar to help convert someone into buying something is a very different structure to how you would normally do a training. So let's take a, if I was speaking somewhere, the Presentation that I would put together for that would be very different to the presentation I put together for a sales webinar. The same as if I was just [00:03:00] teaching in someone else's community, I would probably start off with, this is who I am, just in case you don't know me, because it'd be a new cold audience. And then I would go straight into the content and I would walk them through the content with detail. And that would be kind of it. And I think this is some of the mistakes that people are making when it comes to webinars, that they are thinking it's just a training with an offer at the end. And that's not the case. I'm going to talk you briefly, very briefly through the structure of a webinar later on in this episode, but I just wanted to kind of get that point of what is a webinar and how is it different to Just doing a training. There is a distinct difference. So if you've done webinars and you think they don't work, I want you to ask yourself, is it because you trained and then said, buy my stuff? I don't think you said it that way, but you know what I mean? If you then just did some training and then did an offer at the end, that might be why it's not working. Why do they work and why [00:04:00] are they still working? One of the main benefits of a webinar is that you get to showcase you and what you do. Most people listening to this will be personal brands or lots of you will be personal brands and you will be selling yourself as the service. So selling your brain, selling your thoughts, selling your ideas. And therefore it's really important for your audience to know, like, and trust you If they get to see you and see how you teach, see what you're like, see what your humor's like, see what they resonate with, then they will have a much better idea of whether they want to work with you. And a webinar is a great place to showcase that. Because you are delivering some element of training and you are doing a presentation, They are getting to see firsthand what you're like. And if someone comes to one of my presentations and one of my webinars and thinks this woman's an idiot, then cool, they're not for me. However, if they come to it and think, actually, I resonate with her, I like the [00:05:00] way she talks about things, I think she's credible, authentic, whatever the words are, then great because they are getting to see the real me on a webinar. That's the first one. It's really good at showcasing who you are and what you do because you get to demonstrate that in real time. The next thing that's really good about webinars is there's a real in person connection. Now, when you are doing, if you're doing an evergreen funnel, if you're doing something, the hat is basically people are opting in and going through it themselves. There's no real in person connection. Now, yes, there's lots of things that we can do to try and make that connection as authentic as possible. But at the end of the day, it's pre recorded, it's done. And so I'm talking about live webinars in particular, having you there deliver the live training in all your real life, authentic glory. means that they can connect better with you. But also the thing that I love most is that I can connect better with my audience. The people who come to the [00:06:00] webinar can ask questions. They can let me know whether they resonate with the content that I'm delivering. They can bring new insights to me that maybe I didn't have before. And having that sort of back and forth now. There's one caveat or one thing I want to talk about here. In the past, most webinars have been delivered through a webinar style platform. Let me try and explain myself. You would go to a webinar and you would see the person, the person wouldn't see you, and you wouldn't see the other attendees. You would be having a conversation in the chat or you would be commenting in the chat and that would be the only kind of back and forth. But obviously the speaker, the person doing the webinar can see the chat. I have done my last few webinars as Zoom meetings so that I can see people's faces. I personally love this and I also like, not that actually this happens a lot On a webinar, but I also like people to unmute themselves if they have a question, and I will allow someone to unmute themselves so that they [00:07:00] can ask me a question. 'cause then evidently I have about three questions back to ask them as a minimum. I'm really liking doing webinars this way. I'm really liking seeing people having it as more of a Zoom meeting. However, traditionally it's not done that way. It is done as. You see me as the presenter, but I don't see you. There's no real right and wrong with this. I don't know. Actually, I don't have any hard or fast rules or hard and fast stats that say one is better than the other. I just really like seeing people's faces. And some people will come on and not want to show their face and leave their screen off and that is absolutely fine, but for those who do then. Awesome. I love it. The next reason webinars are really good and they work is a really, it's a fairly low barrier to entry. And what I mean by that is setup, cost, tech, funnel, it's fairly low effort compared to other things. Now, I'm not going to say it's no effort because that is not true. If you want to do a [00:08:00] really good webinar, then there is absolutely effort to put in and work to put in. However, Compared to maybe doing a challenge, compared to doing calls, compared to other things, actually doing a webinar is fairly low barrier. So you don't have to have a whole lot of, like I said, fancy tech or anything like that. The fact that I just said that I've been doing my last few in Zoom meetings means you literally just need a Zoom meeting. And then the last one is it works really well as a launch mechanism. The whole idea of, and I'm going to talk about this when I go through the funnel a little bit, the whole idea of a webinar is to launch something to sell and getting people excited and into the The launch or coming to the webinar is a really good method to then launch your thing that you're selling. It also is a really good indicator that someone is interested in your product, because if you've [00:09:00] targeted your webinar right, if you've planned the right webinar with the right title and the right content, the webinar should be the prerequisite to going into your paid product. So let me give you an example. One of the webinars I've done in the past is a webinar that talks about list building. And I think the title was something along the lines of the five steps you need to build your email list fast or something like that. And basically I was taking them through the main five steps that you need to cover to To launch and build an email list. And then the course I was selling on the back of that was the course that went into detail and showed them how to do all of the five steps. So the webinar was introducing the fact of, do they even want to build an email list and are they interested in knowing the steps it takes. If they're signing up to that webinar, then Obviously they want to build their email list. So it's a perfect prerequisite to then introducing a course that's going to [00:10:00] help them do the same thing. You could do a webinar that talks about engagement and list building and your course could be around how to use chatbots. So again, that's a perfect prerequisite. Someone who's signing up to a webinar to find out about list building and engagement on social media would be the right person who potentially could buy a course on using chatbots for those reasons. Also, it could be a webinar for, I've had people do webinars for nutrition, for sleep, and some of them could be that they introduce a concept of how to help your child sleep, and then the paid thing is they get to work with them one to one, or they get to work with them on a, a kind of Group basis or something like that. So, like I said, it should be the prerequisite to the thing. It should be naturally people signing up to the webinars should be the perfect fit for your actual product that [00:11:00] you're selling. So are they still working? Are webinars still working? Now, I've been around a long time in this game, and. I have watched webinars come into the world and first discovered them and was like, wow, what is this wizardry? And I have seen them be brilliant and then not be so brilliant. And now we're leveling off. When the pandemic hit, webinars were a real thing. Everyone, the webinar signup rate was higher. The show up rate was higher. It was really effective because everyone was online. They had no other choice but to do stuff online. That lasted for about a year and a bit, and then it started to decline and it really dropped. The webinar show up rate on a good webinar would be around 40 to 50%. That would be a really good webinar show up rate. I've seen it drop as low as 20 percent show up rate. And that I think is the kind of downside now of having webinars come along or be around for so long and [00:12:00] also I think that's a lot to do with we did a lot online and we don't want to do as much online, but that doesn't mean they don't work. They do work. They are awesome. You've just got to bear in mind when you're promoting your webinar. When you're trying to get people on it that you are going to have to work a bit harder to get them to show up live. And you do need to give value in that webinar. Obviously you're not going to give them all of the steps. And this is one mistake I see people make is that they just give people way too much content. And therefore they're walking away with a million things to do. They don't need a call, so they don't need the membership or they don't need a one to one call with you. But you do need to give them some value so that they don't feel like they've just been sold out for an hour. Because I have been on a webinar. I was actually on a webinar that was two and a half hours long and it almost got a bit like I couldn't get off the webinar because I was like, when are you actually going to deliver some content? They literally just sold the entire time [00:13:00] and that feels horrible. So you do want to make sure that you're delivering some content. So they come away feeling like, great, I haven't wasted my hour, even if they don't buy. And that's my aim. When I do any webinar, my aim is to give people an awesome session with me so that they have things that they can actually learn and take away. Hopefully though, they actually think I want to take this further and they have the opportunity to do that. The other thing or a couple of other points I wrote down that I wanted to address while I'm talking about webinars is talking about the fact of you hate selling. And I get that. I get that this is one of the things that people really struggle with is to not come across as salesy when doing a webinar. And that's really important to me. But when I take you through the structure of a webinar, you'll see, and I'm only going to give you the headline of it, but you will see that actually the selling takes place throughout the whole thing, but it's done in plain sight. So it's not like a bait and switch where you're like, come and do this thing. And then boom, you're just selling all the [00:14:00] things, do them. The selling should be very conscious and it should almost be throughout the whole thing, but done in a way. And where the way I teach it is it's done in a way that doesn't feel like you're selling or that you're being sleazy or horrible. So if you think to yourself, I hate selling webinars, aren't going to work for me. That's not true. The way I teach webinars is that you can demonstrate value, you can demonstrate that you're good at what you do, and then you can present the offer in a way that doesn't feel horrible. So, if you think you hate selling, then webinars won't work, that's just not true. The other thing I see a lot is, what if my list is small? Well, I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't matter, because it does. I did an episode a few back ago, which was episode 368 that talked about webinar stats and launch stats. And you will know, as some of the stuff I've already said in this one, that the expected turn up rate is between 20 percent and 50 percent if it's not great or really good. And I also give you [00:15:00] examples in that episode and we'll link to it in the show notes of what you can expect from your email list to sign up to your webinar. It doesn't mean though that it's not worth doing a webinar if you've got a small list. It's still a really lovely way for you to interact with that list, for you to meet those people, for you to get on a call with them in a group setting. And actually the beauty of having a small list and having small numbers is that you can get to perfect your webinar style, you can get to practice, you can get to really give it a go before your list gets bigger. And therefore you're doing it in front of more people. One of my very first webinars I ever did, like eight, nine, 10 years ago, whenever it was, I had one person on the webinar. So if you're sat there thinking, Oh man, that would be a nightmare. Yeah, it did suck a bit, but I've done it and I had to start there so that I can have the numbers that I have now. But what was great is I got to perfect my skill. I got to really test out [00:16:00] some of the things that I liked on doing the webinar in front of a very small audience. If you're sat there thinking my list is too small, hopefully that has dispelled that myth and you are going to give it a go. What I want to use our time for the rest of this episode is two things. I want to talk you through the funnel process, just really top level to give you an idea. And then I want to talk you through the breakdown of the webinar, but I won't be going into detail because that is a lot of content, the process for launching. In an ideal world should be pre launch phase. Launch phase, live webinar, sales phase. Let me briefly take you through those phases....

Beyond the Spotlight: The Business of Being a Social Media Influencer

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode we explore the inspiring journey of Georgia Williams, the professional singer and content creator who rose to fame on the BBC's The Voice. Georgia shares her experiences of overcoming public scrutiny and severe online trolling, her tools for building resilience and how she has built an awesome career.

We get into strategies for balancing professionalism and personality on social media, including the benefits of content batching and leveraging of personal passions.

In my opinion there are some real insights for anyone looking to build confidence and create authentic, engaging content online.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Georgia on

Freebies about

create content with more confidence

and

how to batch

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

If you're a personal brand, then you know the importance of putting yourself out there on social media. But one of the things I think lots of people get nervous about is what people are going to say about us and what if people say something mean. Well, today on the podcast, I interviewed the amazing Georgia Williams. Georgia's career started off as a singer and that included going on The Voice and getting mentored by Tom Jones. But unfortunately, while she was taking part in that process, She received a backlash on social media, including getting death threats. Not only did Georgia come through that experience, but she now uses it to help her help others become confident on social media and show up exactly as they are. In this episode, she shares with us how we can use our own passions and things that we love about ourselves to show up. She also helps us get out of that rut of wanting to create some social media and never quite getting around [00:01:00] to it. So if you are not feeling the love for social media at the moment, Or you just need a bit of a confidence boost and a bit of motivation on a Monday morning, then this is the episode for you. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. Each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, a membership owner or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode [00:02:00] of the Your Dream Business podcast. I am your host, as always, Teresa Heath Wareing. We all know that a crucial part of marketing our businesses is social media. And I don't mind admitting that I have lost the love a little bit for it recently, and I'm struggling just a tiny bit. So it's perfect timing that this week's episode is an interview with the awesome Georgia Williams, and we are talking all about social media. We talk about confidence on social media. And Georgia shares a story about how when she was on a national TV program, that she got a really awful backlash on social media, including things like death threats. And I think as business owners, we often fear putting ourselves out there because of what people will say. And the truth is that will probably, luckily never happen to most of us listening to this, but it did happen to G. And [00:03:00] she now uses getting through that as part of her driver to help people with confidence on social media and put themselves out there and do it in a confident way. But also I pick her brain about how do I fall back in love with social media or how do I get myself out of the rut of actually posting because I'd fallen out of this rut and it wasn't that there's no short of content because most of us know we have loads of content, but sometimes we just feel like I don't even know where to start or I can't be bothered or whatever it is. So, G actually takes me through kind of her thoughts in terms of getting started, getting that love back, feeling some motivation, which I think all of us feel like this at some point. So this is going to be really helpful, even if you're not in this position at the moment and you are flying with your social media. I think this is a really helpful thing to listen to. But like I said, the story of G being on this national TV program as a singer and what she went through is. [00:04:00] Really, really, it's a great story. And I took a whole lot away from it. So Georgia Williams is an award nominated content creator with over a decade of experience in social media marketing and Canva design. She's also now a Canvassador. I don't think I've said that right for Canva. She's the host of Content T with G, her popular global podcast, where she delivers a unique blend of creativity, social media content, and Northern charm, inspiring listeners worldwide to embrace their own authenticity and stand out through content creation. Not only is Georgia a full time content creator, she also performs regularly as a professional singer and has been featured in the Mirror, the Daily Mail, the BBC, and others. As a singer, she has entertained crowds up to 7, 000 people, solidifying her status as an international performer. With a unique blend of marketing knowledge and stage performance, Georgia is on a mission to help business owners create social media content with more joy, show up exactly as they are, both off [00:05:00] and online. You are going to love this episode. I love G. If you need a bit of Monday morning waking up, then this is going to give you just what you need. Here's the awesome G. Welcome to the podcast, the lovely G.

Georgia:

Yey. Hello. Hello.

Teresa:

I am so excited to have you here. This is, you are podcast interview number four of seven. And I feel like I couldn't have had it more perfectly timed with you in the middle to kind of, reinvigorate me, wake me up and go for the afternoon. I realized that obviously I call you G because that's what you want to be. That's what you go by, but your name is Georgia. So maybe I should say that so that if people do try and find you, they can find Georgia Williams. Sorry, but obviously I call you G. Not just me personally. That's not like a thing, just that I, just a special name that I have for it. That is what people call it. I mean, this is [00:06:00] such a great, you know, great intro to a podcast. Like, honestly, I am so professional. So I have just scrapped The way I'm doing intros to interviews. So normally I would start with the question, tell me how you got to do the thing you do today. And I'm scrapping that and I'm going straight in with the content. However, you have such a cool backstory that like, This is all I want to talk about, and I know people will want to hear about it. So tell us what you used to do, and then tell us what you do now.

Georgia:

So I used to work in social media for a marketing agency, employed, also being a singer, also being a blogger, like a cat who has nine lives, did a bit of everything, basically a creative person. It's probably the easiest way to sum up all my past lives, I would say.

Teresa:

Love it. And it wasn't just Like, one of the things that we want to talk about because one of the things that you share on social media and helping [00:07:00] people with content and show up on social media is the whole confidence and if you were to go and look at G's social media, so if you were to find Ray of Social, you will see someone who on the surface has bags of confidence, like no end of confidence. And I have no doubt that you would look at it as the listener and go, well, it's all right for G because she has all the confidence in the world. Was it always that way, G?

Georgia:

Absolutely not. It's weird now to see like this present G because when I think about past G, speaking of myself in the past tense there.

Teresa:

I love it.

Georgia:

I'm kind of a completely different person and I would, I wouldn't have ever had the audacity to speak to somebody like yourself or even come on a podcast, like at all, let alone have my own podcast. Like that just wasn't in the mix. Yes, I've been a singer, [00:08:00] but I wasn't actually a public singer for quite a lot of my life. Even though I've grown up as a musical family, it took me a long time, a lot of self work, a lot of therapy, a lot of other good stuff in the background, to be able to be that front face of my brand. And it blows my own mind, never mind people who look at my social because I think, how are you the same person? Are you sure? Because that just, I wouldn't have ever done anything like this.

Teresa:

So you said that you weren't a front facing. One of the things that we're going to talk about and we're bringing up is the fact that you went on a BBC TV program called The Voice, which if you're in other countries, I'm fairly confident they have The Voice in other countries, they do definitely have it in the States. So that wasn't just showing up a bit, that was literally putting yourself on primetime TV, like, so at this point, when you said you weren't front facing singer, had you become a front facing singer by that point when you put yourself on The Voice, or was [00:09:00] that part of getting out there?

Georgia:

I've kind of done a lot of studio work under another alias, and it wasn't, I wasn't the face of that. I was doing a lot of dance music under a completely different name, didn't have my face anywhere. And I'd always grown up singing in church. So whilst I was in the public, like it was like a church public, it wasn't prime time or it wasn't out there on social. It was just kind of in my comfort zone, really.

Teresa:

What made you sign up for The Voice?

Georgia:

The real reason, it's because my sister actually signed up to it and I found out and I was like wait a minute, I'm the singer in the family, like, why are you getting on it?

Teresa:

I love that. Nothing like sibling rivalry.

Georgia:

Really much. I thought, what if she goes on this programme and gets further and I sit there on my sofa watching it every week thinking, why didn't I apply for that because I'm the singer of the family. So she applied for it [00:10:00] and I applied for it in secret and didn't tell her and then I just kept getting through, she didn't get through and it was very awkward. But that's why I applied, just a bit of sibling rivalry basically.

Teresa:

That is hilarious. So not only did you apply, not only did you get on the actual show, but you got picked by the one and only Tom Jones.

Georgia:

Indeed.

Teresa:

How was that?

Georgia:

I actually didn't know he turned. I was completely just in the experience on stage looking at the crowd. The crowd's about 300 people in the audience at that time. That was the biggest audience I've ever sung to in that, in that audition.

Teresa:

You must have been absolutely petrified.

Georgia:

Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, yeah, I was quite scared. Couldn't really breathe. Didn't really know what was going on. I just thought, let's get on the stage. Let's maybe get off, you know, live. And I was just in the element. The audience was reacting to the way that I was singing and I didn't realize that anybody had turned and he turned [00:11:00] right at the last split second. So I thought I was just going home. And then when I looked up, he was looking at me and I was kind of like, I don't know what happens now.

Teresa:

It's Tom Jones. So what was that like to be mentored by someone like Tom Jones?

Georgia:

Do you know, I always say that he reminds me of Aslan. Do you remember the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan? Yes. He just has this presence about him that you can't, help, but he's just immersed in it. He has, and then maybe that's the star quality that people talk about, but when he is with you in that room, it's not a, I'm so scared, you know, he's Aslan. You're just like, oh my gosh, I just want to know everything about him. I want to hear his, his voice. And when he sings, it's like Aslan commanded that room. If anyone's ever seen me like in The Witch in the Wardrobe, you need to go watch it because it has that star quality, but The moment that he sang, he sang a Ray Charles song. That's my favorite singer. [00:12:00] And that's someone that he worked with when Ray Charles was alive. And he sang a song. And I remember just being mesmerized and kind of thinking, like, what is going on in my life right now? You know, this is incredible. So it was amazing to be able to work with somebody like that. And yeah, just an experience I'll always, always remember.

Teresa:

I've read the book, and I've talked about it before on the podcast, and I know I've definitely talked about it with you, The Gap in the Game. And I, I can't remember what I was watching. Like, I was watching some competition type program, which sounds very odd, because I wouldn't really watch that sort of thing. Anyway, I think I was watching something, maybe I was watching the Olympics, I have no idea. But basically, I was talking to my husband about the fact of like, You get through all these rounds, right, and then you end up being the last one of two people, let's say, and you don't win the thing. And that point, you should be so in the game because you have got through [00:13:00] every round to get to that point. So to even get on TV, how many rounds did you have to go through?

Georgia:

I lost count. It was that many. I think it was about a year worth of auditioning, backstage bits and pieces. Yeah, it was, it was a long time before it was shown on television.

Teresa:

And what happens is when people then don't win, or they get voted out in whatever round, the gap must feel humongous. However, like to reframe that to go, no, you look out of all the people that applied, out of the tens of thousands that applied. You got into the last x amount of people, but how, how was that? How was all of it really? Because I know you and I have touched on briefly the fact of like, there's, you know, an element of fame involved in that, and then obviously you get voted off, and then like, Just touch on what that was like.

Georgia:

It had some incredible highs but then [00:14:00] some really dark lows and some places that I went to that I was not prepared for. The show, they do have psychologists and they have people on board to kind of help me through that process and they are there every step of the way to make sure you're not going to lose it, you know. But the public The way the public are, it's just mad! It's crazy how, how strangers can have such an opinion of you and that can really shake you to your core because When you are, so obviously it was on all on Twitter back then and when the episodes came out there was the battle episode which is where you are paired with somebody and you battle against each other to go through to the next round and the person that I was paired with had had like four chair turns, you know, she had a really great story, she was a great person, she had great public support and During the filming process, they, they ask you, obviously backstage, in the VT [00:15:00] section, they ask you questions on repeat because they're trying to just get an answer out of you. They want that, that good TV. So they'll say things like, you know, how do you feel about the competition? And then they'll rephrase it saying, you know, but it's a competition. So how are you feeling about the battle to try and get you to say something juicy? Fortunately, I was at that point where I was thinking like, this is so frustrating. It's a battle. Of course, I want to win. And which part did they show on the TV? The bit where I went, of course, it's a battle. I want to win. Yeah. opened up that public backlash of people saying, Oh, she thinks she's a, you know, she thinks she's going to win. And then when I did win, that wasn't great because they were like, Oh, she thinks she isn't. You know, I had death threats. I had people offering, threatening to pour acid all over my face, like threatening to come and find my family, my house. It was, it went from being, I'm the villain to like, actually, I am seriously in danger here. And it wasn't. you know, it wasn't good. [00:16:00] So when I say dark places, that's the kind of thing. And it, it can shake who you are because you start questioning, like, am I a bad person? Should I have said, it's a battle I want to win? You know, should I be determined to win this, win this competition? Like, and then you kind of back and forth in your own mind, thinking all these things. And it takes a very strong person, which at the time, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't as strong as I am now to be able to go through something like that.

Teresa:

That is something...

Launch Reality Check: Understanding and Setting Realistic Expectations

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 01:00:00 +0100

I’m spilling the beans on product launches – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Drawing from real-life examples, I discuss common misconceptions about product launches and outline realistic expectations for success, breaking down the numbers and letting you know what to expect when you hit that launch button. I also highlight factors that can influence your launch and share tips on how to make it a success, even if it's not a blockbuster. Tune in to learn the truth about product launches and how you can set realistic goals for your online business!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

Apple podcasts

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Denise Duffield-Thomas Launch Debrief Part 1 Denise Duffield-Thomas Launch Debrief Part 2

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Have you ever done a launch and felt really disappointed in the results that you got? And when you look at other people's, they look so successful and have hundreds and thousands of people buying their stuff. Well, what if you could get the details on the stats behind those launches? Actually, would they be as more amazing than yours than you think? I think you'll be surprised. In today's episode, I am going to be taking you through some real life launches and giving you the percentages that you can expect to get in your launch and that others have got in theirs. I'll be sharing with you what numbers you need to track, what is realistic when it comes to those numbers and what things will affect the results of your launches and your sales. If you have an online product that you want to launch, this episode is not to be missed. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? So this week? I've got a really good episode for you because I've really noticed something recently. I, part of what I do is obviously I work with people to launch and to sell their online [00:02:00] products. And one thing I've noticed a lot with people is their expectation of what a launch should look like. They have watched huge people do these amazing massive launches, having Thousands of people going through it and they now think, well, that's what I should expect. But the truth is, they're not taking into account the size of the audience to begin with. So although it looks amazing and awesome that someone might do a webinar and have thousands of people on it, they're not considering, well, what's the size of their audience compared to the size of mine. So what happens is they will come to me very disappointed with the sign up or the turn up or the sales rate. And then I will work out the percentages and I will be saying to them, you've actually done really well. And like I said, I've noticed this a lot. I've noticed this coming up. So I wanted to do an episode all about this, and I am excited. Now, if you've listened to my episodes before, you will know I am a kind of fly by the seat in [00:03:00] my pants girl, and I give myself some rough notes to follow. Otherwise, I just talk ad lib. This one, I have made lots of notes. This one, I've actually done some math and worked out percentages and various things to give you. So you are going to walk away from this episode with so much good information that hopefully it's going to make you feel so much more confident when it comes to what you should expect when launching your digital products or your course, your membership, your group coaching program, whatever it might be. Now I'm going to ask a favor, not only for me, but for your business friends. I want you to share this episode with them. Whether it's personally, whether it's on your stories, because the more people can hear this very realistic discussion about what you should expect from these launches and what actually the percentages turn out to be, the much more happier I guess we will be with the results that we get, but also we won't beat ourselves up and we will start to understand [00:04:00] how we can improve and tweak and move forward from those figures. Like I said, I am super excited for this episode and I think you're going to get a whole lot from it. So buckle in, let's go. Have you ever heard the saying what gets measured gets improved? This is really true because if we don't actually know What we're looking at. And if we don't know what's good and what's not good, then how can we tweak it and improve it? And how can we know whether it's worked or not worked? And is it realistic? What has happened? So, like I said, we will see amazing, amazing results where people do a Awesome launches and get tens of thousands of people into their programs. They earn an absolute shed ton of money as then we, when we start in the online route and we're not getting the same, we think that there's a problem, but the truth is, it's not the full picture. And what I want to do is show you what that full picture looks like. So I'm going to take you through three, three main areas today. I'm going to talk to you [00:05:00] about the numbers you need to measure and what kind of things we can measure, because that's the first thing, what should you even be looking at? And even if it makes not a lot of sense to in the first place, still keeping a track of these in the early days will really help. Number two, we're going to look at what is realistic. Now, this is the bit that is gold because we're going to go through, I'm actually going to walk you through some percentages of real life launches. And I have lots of examples to give you. of real life launches and what you can expect and what that turns into from a money point of view or from a signup point of view. And then the final thing I'm going to be sharing with you is the things that can affect your launch. So these results I'm going to give you, I know behind the launch. So I know all the details of all the launch and therefore, I'm going to help you understand some of the things that made them successful or not so successful, and things that you want to look out for so that when you're looking at yours and you think, mine isn't as good as [00:06:00] that, then there might be reasons behind that. Okay. Let's get going. So let's start with the first thing, the beauty of being in the online space. Now, I have been around in marketing for no joke, 20 years, 10 years in marketing, following doing a degree in marketing, and then 10 years in my own business. So for 20 years, I've been in the marketing space. And the beauty about what we do now is everything is trackable. And it's not even that confusing. All the systems you're using, the emails, the platforms you're selling things on, their whole thing is set up, designed to give you as much information as possible. But even the basic stuff is perfect. It's great. That's the stuff that we're going to be looking at. We're not going to be doing anything too confusing. So this isn't to overwhelm you. This is purely to give you an awareness of what's available, but also kind of what the basics are that you want to get. Okay. Let's start right from the beginning. And when I say the beginning, I'm talking about the [00:07:00] way in which I would come through the process if I was your customer. So the way in which we build these things is very different. But if I was your customer, probably the first thing I'm going to see is a social media post of some sort. Now, Hopefully I don't need to tell you that we can track loads of stuff on social media. So we can track things like the impressions. And impressions, in case you don't know, is the number of people who that post was put in front of. So although it is a bit of a vanity metric, because great that loads of people saw it, but we want them to take action. Obviously it makes perfect sense that the more impressions you get, the more action you get on that post. So impressions is the first thing, then clicks. So how many people have clicked on that post or how many people have taken the action on that post? It might be that they commented a word for a chatbot or something like that. Now I'm going to, I'm not going to focus on these two as much as the other stuff when we get to the examples because these numbers can be quite low and this obviously isn't the only way that people are going to [00:08:00] find you, but I want to include it just because it is an important one to, to look at as well. The next thing you're going to have is landing page views. Now, If you imagine that I've seen your promotion and I'm going to say the word webinar a lot through this and just change webinar for challenge or bootcamp or masterclass or whatever launch methods you want to use and really you should be using a launch method. I feel like I'm getting into the weeds a bit here and I'm trying not to because that is a whole nother podcast on its own and you'll see I do a lot more sort of podcasts coming forward about this. But so if I say webinar, Take it for whatever launch method you're going to use. So I can click from social media to go through to your landing page, i. e. the page that I'm going to sign up to the webinar with, or I could come from an email and go to your landing page. So. Like I said, social media is just one thing. Email is another. There could be others. You could be running ads, but landing page views is a really important one. So how many people viewed your [00:09:00] landing page and then how many people opted in? Two different things. I can come and view your landing page, take a look at the webinar that you're going to be doing and decide that's not for me. Or I can view your landing page and go, yes, I want to opt in. And obviously your aim is to get as many people to opt in on that page. So then you're going to end up with the stats for the number of people who signed up for your webinar. So we've seen how many people came to the page. We've seen potentially where they've come from, and we've seen how many people have signed up, opted into your webinar. The next one we're going to have is the show up rate. Now things like webinars and bootcamps and masterclasses, the more you can get people to show up live, the better. And that's for many different reasons, but mainly the reasons are one, they're going to be engaged. Whereas you know what it's like, you sign up for a webinar, you sign up for a summit or whatever it might be. And you think, Oh, I'll definitely watch that later. And then you don't. So if you can get them to take the action and do the thing live, [00:10:00] great. So. Showing up live is really important. And then the second one is for me anyway, I love to interact with people and that really helps me. So you'll, they'll get to ask me questions. They get to kind of really get the most out of it. So the show up rate's really important. So how many people signed up and then how many people showed up. Then the next thing you're going to look at is your email sort of interactions now. And it said email open rate. Now the open rate is helpful. However, the way that tech is now, you can't rely on the open rate. So the only thing I would do is look at your own open rate against your own open rate. So. If your open rate is going down, if your open rate is going up, if your open rate is staying the same, then that's the only way I would track it. I wouldn't, and like I said, unfortunately, the open rate is affected by external things that we can't control, so I don't always look at that as a kind of solid thing, but I would track it against my own stuff. The next thing on emails is the click. So how many people are opening your email [00:11:00] and clicking to go through to the sales page or go through to the place that you're asking them to either book or pay or whatever it is. The next thing that you should be looking at is your sales page views. So the page that you're asking them to take the action and we'll get to. Some of the different actions you might ask them to take, but it could be book a call. It could be buy on that page. How many people are viewing it? And then how many people are taking the action? So if it's an action to buy, it's then how many people have bought. Like I said, this isn't, I'm trying not to overwhelm you. I know I'm giving you a lot of things to look at here, but actually when you start doing these things, it's not that difficult and it should be pretty easy for you to do on the systems that you're using. So let me just run through those quickly. Again, social media, you can look at impressions and clicks, landing page views, very important. How many people are viewing it and how many people are actually opting in. [00:12:00] From the opt ins, i. e. the signups, how many people are showing up? And then when you start sending out your sales emails, how many people are opening, clicking? How many sales page views you're getting and how many conversions are you getting? You can also break it down to how many people came from the webinar and did they come from the live or the replay? You could also add on how many people watched the replay if there was the replay views to watch as well. Okay, so as you can see from each area, there are lots of things that will go into these figures and there are lots of ways in which you can prove, improve them and which you can tweak them and we will talk about some of those things at the end in point three. And like I said, I'm trying not to overwhelm you, but these are kind of some of the basics. The basics that I ask for when I work with people are landing page views, landing page opt ins, how many people signed up for the actual webinar, how many people showed up for the webinar and how many things they sold. So those are the kind of key things I'm looking for. And those are [00:13:00] probably the percentages I'm going to talk about. Okay, point two. Let's talk about actual real life launches and real life stats. Now, I am one of those people who instead of watching Netflix, I go through people's launches like no one's business. And obviously it's my job. I have watched and helped and supported and coached and consulted lots of people on lots of launches. So the figures that I'm going to go through here are from real businesses. Some are big businesses and some are small teeny tiny businesses. But the thing that I want you to focus on is the percentage. Now this is the thing that lots of people don't take into account. However, This is the thing where you're going to understand the reality of what you can expect. And what I don't want you to do here is I don't want you to get disheartened. Now we talk a lot about the fact that this is a numbers game and it really can be a numbers game, [00:14:00] especially with an online business. And I hate saying it's a numbers game because one thing I really pride myself in is seeing my audience. Having conversations with them knowing who they are. I don't do anything that has thousands of people in it because I just couldn't cope with that. However, when it comes to people buying online, it is a numbers game and it does come down to the percentage. So like I said, these are some real things that I've been involved in and then things that I know about. One of them I'm including in here is Denise Duffield Thomas. Now she does a really good debrief of her launches and I've actually used some of that in order as one of my examples of, I've got like probably about 15 actual real life examples that I'm looking at in front of me. I'm going to actually link to the blog post that she's put in so that you can see her debrief. It's really good. I love it when a big person like that does a debrief because you can really get to see the real extent of how this works for them. [00:15:00] Okay. So the first step we're going to look at is the number of people who sign up to the webinar. And I want to base this percentage on the size of someone's list. Now, when I look at the, the stats in front of me, I'm basically going to give you the lowest percentage and then the highest percentage, and you will be surprised. Which kind of person is getting the lowest and the highest? Because often we'd expect that if you're new to this, you'd be getting the lowest percentage, but that's not always the case. Because sometimes with a really small list, you have a very dedicated audience and with a smaller number of people that you're dealing with, you can actually give them much more attention. Again, this will come to, this will be more, I'll explain better if I can get my words out when we get to step three. Okay. So number of people who sign up to a webinar, roughly between two and 15 percent of your email list will sign up to your webinar. Okay. So [00:16:00] again, the kind of lists that I'm looking at are in the hundreds of thousands, all the way down to a couple of hundred. So I really have got a big mix here. So like I said, roughly between 2 and 15 percent. I am going to use the example of a list that's 5, 000 big. Okay, for my examples to give you the percentages going through, but I'll also give you some other examples. So if you had a list of 5, 000 people and you got 2 percent of them to opt into a webinar, that's a hundred people you're getting on that list. If you had a list of 5, 000 people and you got 15 percent of them to opt in, that's 750 people coming to that webinar. So let me say that again. So your list size is 5, 000, 2 percent of that list is 100 people signing up to your webinar, and 15 percent is 750 people signing up to your webinar. You can see there's quite a difference there, but like I [00:17:00] said, from my stats that I've got, actually, the top was, Yeah, the top was 15 % and the lowest was 2%. Like I said, in the bigger lists, it's 2%. So even though you think, you know, that's, you know, you would expect a smaller list to be the lower amount, actually the bigger lists tend to bring in the lower amount. Okay. Okay. The next stat is the percentage to show up live. Again, This will make a difference as to whether it's a boot camp over several days, whether it's a one hour webinar, whether it's a three hour workshop, whatever it is. But I'm basing it off the examples that I've got in front of me, and most of them were webinars, and yeah, most of them were around the hour, an hour and a half webinar. So let's say that you had 500 people, I'm just kind of going mid range just for ease, 500 people sign up to your webinar. You can expect between 15 percent and 34 percent of the people who [00:18:00] signed up to actually attend the...

The Hidden Persuaders: Unlocking the Secrets of Sales Psychology with Behavioral Economics

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I interview behavioral economist Melina Palmer. We chat about how behavioral economics can enhance sales strategies using techniques like price anchoring and framing.

The episode also tackles ethical considerations and the psychological principles behind decision-making. Melina shares actionable insights to help course creators, membership owners, and coaches improve their business communication and ultimately boost sales.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Melina on

www.thebrainybusiness.com

LinkedIn (Melina)

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Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

What is behavioral economics and why on earth should you care? Well, the short answer is because it helps you communicate better to your customers and ultimately helps you to help them make a buying decision. My guest today is a behavioral economist and she shares the most amazing tools and strategies and just generally super smart stuff that we can do in our businesses, such as things like price anchoring and framing that will help us help our customers make that buying decision. If you need to sell something in your business, which is everybody, then do not miss this episode. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. And I hope you are really, really well. Okay. Today, I've got a great episode for you. I first heard today's guest on someone else's podcast and I listened to the podcast twice. In fact, I think I even gave it a third listen because it was so good. And so much of what she said was just genius and really, I totally geeked out on it. I absolutely loved [00:02:00] it. And if you are trying to sell things in your business, which I hope to goodness you are, then this is definitely going to be an episode you want to listen to. My guest today, Melina Palmer, is a behavioural economist. She is a globally celebrated keynote speaker and author and the CEO of The Brainy Business. Now you might be wondering what on earth is behavioural economics, I've really struggled saying that, got to do with us as business owners. Well, basically it's all around how our customers buy from us and how we can help them with that buying decision. Now, as you will hear in this episode, I get a little bit nervous at the beginning of some of these things, you know, how, like, you know, we all know bro marketing tactics. We all know like real scammy, horrible ways, NLP ways in which people get people to buy. And My worry was, is that what people do with this? And it isn't. And as Melina kind of demonstrates really early on, it's about using it for good. [00:03:00] Like, you know, as if you're a superhero and we'll give you these powers. Now only use it for good. So, so yeah, she talks about so many cool things that, like I said, your brain might hurt a little bit at the end of it, but it'll be a good hurt and you'll be so glad. She talks about things like price anchoring and how having a price anchor can actually help you then sell something else. She talks about things like framing, where how you say something matters more. Sorry. Yeah. How you say something matters more than what you say. She talks about social proof, but in a different way. She talks about it from a herd mentality point of view. And again, some really cool stuff. Basically, I don't want to waste any more of your time. I want you to just jump in, listen to this. This episode is full of super, super smart takeaways, and I know you're going to get a huge amount from it. So I have two tiny favors to ask. First favor. Please tag me and Melina in on [00:04:00] social and let us know what you thought of this episode. It means the absolute world to me when someone does this. I think I've said to you before, I sit in a room in my office recording these to myself, other than my two dogs by my side, but it To then hear your reactions and find out what you think about it is brilliant. And if you're feeling extra generous, then why not go ahead and give me a lovely five star rating over on Apple or wherever you listen to the podcast. Okay, let's get on with the episode. Here's Melina. I am super excited to welcome to the podcast today, Melina Palmer, Melina, how are you doing?

Melina:

I am doing fantastic. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Teresa:

I am very happy for you to be here. It's actually now in the UK while we're recording this, it's about coming up to 6pm. And normally by this point, I'd be like, hanging would be the official term. I'd be like, okay, we're nearly done. But honestly, Out of all the calls I've had [00:05:00] today, you are the one I've been looking forward to the most.

Melina:

Aww, well, thank you. Delighted, honored to hear it. And I know, yeah, end of the day interview too, especially depending on what you've been doing through the day. It's like bringing the energy for the interview is, is a thing. I get it. So.

Teresa:

Yeah. Yeah. Which I somehow managed to have this good, and I guess When you do a job like I do, where you do have to be on camera, when I come off though, I'm great when I'm on, and when I come off it's like, don't speak to me. Don't look at me. Don't have a conversation with me. Like, my husband is like, how? How are you so nice on the calls? And then you are so mean when you get off them. Well, it's just because that's my job. So, yeah, sorry about that. Anyway. We are going to talk about something very smart today. So like, just be ready people to just get thinking because this is going to make you think. And I've heard Melina on another podcast, which I listened to [00:06:00] multiple times, which is unheard of for me. But I was like, this is so good. I feel like I need to write it all down. I feel like I need to listen to it again. So we are going to be talking about Behavioral economics, which doesn't sound the most sexiest subject, but it is, believe me. So what even is that? And why should we care?

Melina:

Yes, other than, you know, a field that needs some rebranding, perhaps, but that's not really the

Teresa:

Maybe.

Melina:

So essentially, I just like to say, you know, if traditional economics and psychology had a baby, you would have behavioral economics. And the reason that the field came about is because traditional economics assumes logical people making rational choices in everything they do all the time. And as we're all human, we know that that's not really the way that it works, right? We have the best of intentions sometimes and still end up, you know, we know we should eat right and exercise and we find ourselves, you know, [00:07:00] binge eating a bag of Cheetos while binge watching Netflix or something.

Teresa:

Were you, were you here last night?

Melina:

I know, right? It's like, not from personal experience, of course.

Teresa:

I've never actually done that, but I've heard people do it.

Melina:

Yes. And so, you know, what you end up with are these models that are built on bad assumptions. And so it's predicting what someone somewhere decided people should do versus what we actually do. And so over time, you had psychologists, economists, neuroscientists start working together, entering into another's fields, trying to do research to see if there are these common threads in the brain that can be used to better predict what people will really do. And thankfully, you know, there are and lots of them and that's where behavioral economics comes into play and my role as an applied behavioral economist is helping people in their businesses to be creating communication that's more brain friendly so [00:08:00] that customers buy and employees buy in.

Teresa:

I love that and I love the way you just said brain friendly because you know what kind of comes to mind sometimes when I think about behavioral and understanding kind of how people buy and what they do is when do we worry that it tips into like a manipulative like I've seen it, you've probably seen it, in the online space it can happen a lot of like NLP type things and just like a few things that you're like, Oh, interesting. I see what you're doing there. Like, how do we, how do we know the difference? And is there even a difference?

Melina:

Well, the thing is, so couple things about our brains and, and some stuff to know before I answer your question directly would be, so one, research shows that we humans make up to 35,000 decisions a day. Each. Just do not. So many things that we're dealing with really are, life [00:09:00] is just a series of micro choices, micro moments all strung together. And if I ask you, you know, how many decisions do you remember making yesterday?

Teresa:

It's barely one. We had peas with dinner as opposed to a cauliflower. Right. I remember making that one.

Melina:

Yeah. Right. But not anywhere near the thousands of choices that we're making throughout the day. And the reason is because our brains are really separated into two systems. I just talk about it as conscious and subconscious because I think it's easiest for people. So, in this way, that subconscious brain is making the bulk of your decisions. Every single day. And it has the rules that it's using to make those decisions. It likes predictability. It likes the status quo. It's using habit to say, if when this happens, probably should do this thing, right? And so those are the rules of behavioral economics, behavioral science. [00:10:00] So. You as a human person, when you're creating the content for your website, when you're doing the sales pitch, when you're writing what you're going to put in the ad, when you're doing the subject line of your email, how you put the information in the email, and everything in between, whether you think about it or not, the way you present information is impacting the decision that someone is going to make. So you are what we would call a choice architect, whether you want to be or not, whether you think about it or not. And so what I say is, well, yeah, people can use any sort of knowledge for evil. I trust that you're all not going to, right? And you're here to, Help people to know what it is that you sell and why it's a good fit for them and to make it easy for people that are saying like, Yeah, that's not for me, right? I'm not in it. That they can find out before they book the call, before they have a conversation and don't want to be a part of it. It's just win wins all around. So, you know, if it is happening, whether you think about it or not, I say [00:11:00] better to be thoughtful about it in advance and make it better for everybody.

Teresa:

Yeah, and I think we've all been in that situation where, and I know I for sure have many times, where someone has been in your world a while, they, you think they know what you do, they like you, they, you know, they consume your content, they follow your stuff, and then you are, I've had a conversation with them, and they've gone and bought from someone over here, and you're like, why? You, like, you follow my Insta, like, why not me? And they're like, didn't, didn't know you did it, or it didn't. And it's like, it's so frustrating that you, I think, the good in us wants, want people to make a conscious decision about the purchase they're making, but we need to help them, and I really truly believe that because otherwise someone somewhere else is helping them make that decision and they're going off and buying someone else's thing and not your thing.

Melina:

Right. You want to make sure you're not getting them all primed and ready to buy someone else's stuff. Right.

Teresa:

And I think [00:12:00] in my personal experience, that has happened because I thought, you know, they haven't bought. I thought, okay, that's fine. It's obviously not right for them or not for, you know, the price or whatever. And then I found out they spent just as much or the same with someone else and I'm like, I don't quite understand why that didn't convert. This is such a hard thing because I just want to go, what do we need to write? What do we write? Tell us what to put on a page. How do we get people to buy from us? Are there some kind of rules or some thoughts or some kind of things we need to bear in mind in order to help that?

Melina:

Yes. And so, of course, you know, I always joke I need a mug or t shirt or something that says it depends on it because. Context really matters. And we need to know, you know, where people are coming from and everything, but, but really, so in my first book, what your customer wants and can't tell you, I have, you know, kind of what I call a recipe of steps of things to, to do and think about as you go through any sort of sales process. And so, you know, first piece here being, you know, What [00:13:00] do you want people to do? First question to answer. And if, if you only get one thing, what is the one thing that matters most? And knowing that you don't, you're not going to go from point A to double Z in a process, right? So we're thinking again in those micro moments, micro decisions, if it's just like this, Email we're going to send, let's say, right? The subject line, like first we need to make sure it lands in their inbox, right? But then we say the subject line, I just need them to open the email. And if that worked, then what's next? And then what's next? And then what's next? And break it down into smaller bits. And know, like, this piece of content has one job. What is it? What are people naturally doing and how are we getting them to like keep moving along in the process? So first, just even knowing that we want to be thinking in those micro moments and know that some moments are more what we would call nudgeable than others. So in behavioral economics, we work in a [00:14:00] space of nudges and nudging. And so, you know, I just like to give the example of if somebody had been using your services and they've canceled. And they're gone. That is a lot, not really a super nudgeable process to bring them back. It's a really hard sell. But there was a moment, something happened, probably multiple somethings, further back in their experience, like, When they used a chat or they sent an angry email that you didn't want to deal with and ignored because it felt scary or they called and were on the phone and said that they were upset about something like those moments were maybe more nudgeable. There was something you could have done there to save it. That that's different, right? So as we're in that, you know, buyer mindset and we're trying to get to the next step, they're like, How likely are we to get them to, to nudge to the next piece or to stay on track is an important piece as you look for what you want to be optimizing on your [00:15:00] language or, or imagery or, or anything else.

Teresa:

So that's a really good point and it really resonates with me. Cause one of the things that I talk about is not trying to get people to marry you on the first date, you know, and it is a nudge thing. However, recently I. I actually interviewed someone recently who talks about, and they're not the first person I've spoken to, about making people, or not making people, getting people to make a purchase as soon as possible. Because they came at it from a point of, they're at their highest intent when they first discover you and they first consume your content, so get them to do something immediately. But of course, one thing that I've always learned, and I have a degree in marketing, and my background's in marketing. So, you know, I've, I've done a lot in marketing. So, but mine was always that nurture process. So is it that one's right and one's wrong, or is it like, because the, the micro moments and the kind of, okay, the next best step and next, the whole dating analogy makes real [00:16:00] sense to me. So, Is it that that is the way to go about it, or is there also a thing where you could just get someone to part with their cash straight away?

Melina:

So, once again, we have the it depends answer for this, and what I would say, looking at it, would be, you know, if you're selling, if you have a small, Like loss leader type of a product that you're trying to get people into. That's the first piece to something larger, or you sell, you know, smaller ticket type of items that that is likely a good way to be going. And I think the question is, you know, Getting them to buy, you know, how are we defining buy, right? So like I said, I use the same principles when it comes to getting employees to buy in because you know Whether you're or not, you are having money exchange hands You're selling someone on an idea that you need them to buy in on, right? And so getting them to buy in [00:17:00] on the idea of you as a thought leader And say yes to you and maybe signing up for your newsletter or other drip campaign or to follow you on social media or to do a little something may have the same value that you need based on what whatever your sales cycle is. And so, you know, if you're selling 20, 30, 50,000 dollar, programs, is someone just like, where's my credit card? Right? Probably. Yeah. It's like,

Teresa:

Hang on a minute. Just go straight in, yeah, and sign it up.

Melina:

Ta da! Right? Like, it's not necessarily the process that someone's going to be going through there, but There may be a

Embracing Rejection: Building Resilience and Visibility with Alice Draper

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode, I delve into the often-dreaded topic of rejection, particularly as it affects women entrepreneurs. I interviewed Alice Draper, founder and chief strategist at Hustle Writers, who shared valuable insights into why rejection feels so daunting and how women are often socially conditioned to avoid it.

We discussed strategies for building resilience to rejection and provided practical tips for crafting effective pitches to increase visibility. We also shared personal stories of rejection to emphasize that it's a common experience, even for seasoned professionals.

Join the conversation to learn how overcoming the fear of rejection can open doors to business success.

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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

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Connect with Alice on

https://hustlingwriters.com/template

Podcast

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

In today's episode of the podcast, we are talking about rejection. Now, I know it's something that you don't want in your life. And in fact, as humans, we avoid it at all costs. But today's guest Alice shares with us some insight as to why that's the case. And also, If you are a female, why it's even more the case that we try and avoid rejection at all costs, which really helped me understand why it's not our fault. Alice also takes us through the six things that you should include in a pitch when you are trying to get on someone else's podcast, which if you know me and you've been following me for a while, you know, this is a big part of the strategy that I teach is about getting you visible. So we not only deal with the very practical sense of this is what you should include, but we also look at the whole rejection piece and how you can strengthen that rejection muscle. So you don't let it stop you in your tracks. I also [00:01:00] share a rejection that I had recently, and she shared one of hers. So if you are thinking this goes away and you don't have to deal with it at certain points in your business, Then believe me, you are exactly in the right place because we are going through it with you. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of your dream business podcast. As always, I'm your host Teresa Heath Wareing. And I really want to thank you for taking the time to join me today. I appreciate you probably like many of us have very busy lives. So I really do appreciate you making the effort to not only listening to the podcast, but also to investing in yourself. This is something that I have done massively through the years in terms of making sure that I am constantly improving my education, constantly working at how can I be better and how can the business be better. In today's episode, I'm interviewing Alice Draper, who is the founder and chief strategist and is on a mission to make publicity easy and accessible for under recognized women entrepreneurs at all stages in their business. When Alice started the business, she knew that publicity in the right places would garner her the authority that she needed to position herself as a high end copywriter. And so she started [00:03:00] pitching magazines like VICE, Refinery 29, HuffPost and Business Insider. This came with an unplanned skill, the art of the pitch, which is how she ended up pivoting her business towards publicity. She has now been running Hustle Writers for over two years. And in this time, she has secured her clients with over 500 podcasts, including countless top one and top 0. 5 percent podcast. A big part of Alice's work is to normalize rejection and how rejection resilience ties into success. Alice and I talk all about rejection and what it's like, and also how we need to get over the fear of being rejected, especially when we put ourselves out there. And I know what it's like. I have had it firsthand experience as well as working with hundreds of entrepreneurs and helping them do the same. It is tough, but if you can master the skill of being rejected, brushing yourself down and starting again, then [00:04:00] believe me, this is how it is going to lead to success for you and your business. So I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. We talk some real practical stuff as well as a bit of mindset stuff. So it's got something for everyone. Okay. Welcome to the podcast. Alice, how are you doing?

Alice:

I'm doing great. How are you doing, Teresa?

Teresa:

I'm really, really good. We've already had a conversation about where you're from. The accent doesn't tie up with where you live, which isn't where you are right now. So that's like messing with everyone's head potentially. So you were saying that you're originally from South Africa.

Alice:

Yes, I'm living in Dubai and I'm zooming in from Norwich. So we're both in the UK right now.

Teresa:

So it's, it's very interesting where you're, you're all over the place. I love it. I love it. So you talk about something that is most people's idea of, well, like hell really, rejection. And you, in your information that you sent over prior to the podcast, you wrote something that I thought was really [00:05:00] interesting. Pitching is tough because rejection is almost guaranteed and us women are not ready. Why? Because society never prepared us. Can we just talk about that for a minute in terms of A, why it's tough full stop, and why, then it might be tough for women.

Alice:

Yeah. Yeah. So rejection is tough full stop because humans are hardwired evolutionarily to avoid rejection. Like if we're, if our ancestors were rejected, they'd be kicked out of the tribe. Like they could have no food and no shelter, no water and die. So like that lizard brain is still there and we're just, We're going to do everything in our power to avoid being rejected from our community because that screams threats and that screams like something very bad will happen. And so, We see that, but then we also see that the more marginalized you are, the more like you will do anything to avoid that rejection. And it's for very valid reasons. So if you take a man, he's had to kind of take [00:06:00] risks his whole life. And he's also seen other men take risks their whole life. So if you take like dating in the heterosexual context, like it's the men who are putting themselves out there and pursuing women, and it's the men who are normalizing and habituating to the fact that they're getting rejected. But then it's also like the men seeing other men around them take risks and be okay. Which kind of like affirms the brain, okay, I'm not going to get kicked out of the tribe, it's going to be all right. Whereas for women, often we kind of grow our whole lives not getting rejected, like you can enter adulthood and not have ever like gone and asked someone on a date and had known. So you see perfectionism coming, kind of being a lot more tied to women. And, and I mean, like there's kind of various studies that would show this. One of the ones that comes to mind is with jobs. Like there's various studies that show that women will only apply for jobs when they meet all and [00:07:00] more of the criteria and men will apply for the jobs when they don't meet the criteria at all. Yeah. And I had a client who used to work in HR and so she used to always say like the men would always negotiate the salaries and it was very, very rare for a woman to negotiate salary. And like working in HR, you just expected people to negotiate salaries. That's what you did. That's what her job was. So yeah. So I think that's the kind of gendered lens. And then. Not learning to kind of build that rejection resilience, not learning to make bold asks is the most costly thing, not just in life, but in business. Like if we can't flex that muscle and stop normalizing rejection, we're not going to kind of pursue the biggest and best things that we want for ourselves. Yeah, sorry.

Teresa:

I was just gonna say, so do you think that's the, that's the key? Do you think it's a case of actually this is just a muscle you've got to build? Or do you think that there are [00:08:00] things that you can do prior to getting rejected to feel better about it or to be prepared for it?

Alice:

That's a great question. I mean, I think that the muscle is going to get built, like it's got to get built regardless. And I think that preparation helps. Like there's a reason you're scared of getting rejected because You don't want to make a fool of yourself. So of course, like with a fear, you're going to do the best thing you can, which is make sure that your offer is in the best position. It could be your pitches, the best picture could be, and like every you're getting kind of everything lined up in the best way possible. And if you know that. And you're putting stuff out. When you get rejected, it will still hurt because you will still kind of spiral. And like, I'm not gonna, such as they do, like, go on a rejection hunt with no strategy, like, of course, if you've sent out like 50 pitches and all of them have been no's, and some of them have been like not so nice [00:09:00] no's, and, or ghosted, and you've never gotten a yes, like, maybe it's time to look at that strategy and see if something could be changed, maybe the offer needs to be tweaked, maybe the pitch needs to be tweaked. Something needs to change. Maybe you can enlist your community to come have a look and give you some advice, but at the same time, you can have all of that down and then not have that muscle and get one rejection and decide that that is determining, like that is a sign that what you're doing is wrong and what you're doing is not working and you should just stop or give up. And I mean, I, I built. It's like I started, I set my first rejection goal like years ago and I, you know, I've been talking about this for ages and my podcast launched last week and so we've been pitching partnerships for the podcast and we had like some amazing partnerships. Someone wrote us for us for like a Vancouver newspaper because she liked what we were doing so much and then I got one really, really rude rejection where I got accused of using AI to create fake authenticity and then the person I concluded with, how [00:10:00] disgusting, full stop.

Teresa:

Oh wow, wow, wow, wow.

Alice:

I felt like my like hot lip to my throat, I just felt like red and ashamed and horrified and immediately I was like, I can't do this anymore. Clearly I'm just gonna make everyone angry by like, pitching them.

Teresa:

Oh my god, that's horrible. I feel sick for you. Like, I just see sometimes I don't understand with like, There's only once I've been slightly rude to and rejected something and that is not me at all. They obviously caught me on a very bad day and basically they pitched someone for my podcast and they, they had said to me, you know, I'm big fan notice. You've never had anyone talking about this particular subject and also notice you've not had this person and I'd love to pitch them. And basically, I had had someone on that subject. In fact, I had had the [00:11:00] person they were pitching and it annoyed me because it was like, Oh, come on. And the worst thing was if they had literally just gone to my podcast page on my site, her face was one of the main faces I showed. Right. So it was like, you didn't even do your homework. So I sent quite a, short, direct message saying I would do your homework in future because not only have I had it, two people talk about this thing. One of them was the person you're pitching. So I was annoyed, but that's the only time I've ever sent anything like that. Ordinarily, I would just go, thank you so much, but unfortunately I'm really busy. I'm whatever it might be. I don't often say no, if I'm honest, but like, I do find it fascinating that someone would be so rude.

Alice:

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I don't even think that your response is rude. I would take that as you're being honest. Like that is helpful information.

Teresa:

She should have done her homework.

Alice:

As the pitcher, you're like, oh, damn, I made a mistake there. But this was like, oof. And you know, like. Yeah. I actually had read the articles. I was like, there is a human [00:12:00] behind. Yeah. There's no AI. It's a human. Like it's getting affected by this rejection. But the thing is, is that. When you get something like that and I've had entrepreneurs tell me that they've had like a really bad rejection early on and like trying to pitch themselves and this could be whether it's publicity or it could be for business and that they are too scared to put themselves out there again because of that and I completely understand I mean like that was my reaction and so one thing that I know and you know it goes with that kind of like what does rejection do it threatens our safety is that community is the like override because if you can enlist your community to kind of champion you and support you in this, it says to that lizard brain, Oh, I'm not getting kicked out of the tribe. I'm actually safe. Actually, everyone's supporting me through this. So, Like I, I went and wrote a LinkedIn post about it and I spoke to like various people on my team. . Sorry, go ahead.

Teresa:

I mean, I just wanna know who said that now, obviously, but this, the, the funny thing is, and the, the cool thing is the fear that we will oust from the community, which like you said, comes from a very old, you know, thing that has been around for a very, very long time that our brain just hasn't caught up on yet. The irony of the whole thing is the more we share the rejection and the vulnerability, the more likely we are to be included in the community because everyone goes through it, right? So this morning, I sent, I'm in the moat, I'm in the middle of a launch at the moment and it's a very high touch launch because it's for a high touch, high cost program. And so this morning what I've done is I've sent out a load of voice messages myself from on Instagram and one of them's come back and basically said, you know, really lovely. I can't afford you. I would love to do the program, but I've signed up with such and such a person. I know who they've signed up with will be not even a 10th of what I [00:14:00] charge. So, you know, that all makes perfect sense, but even that, and I know this person personally, and I love them and she's so sweet to me. And she's like, I love you. And I want to be in your world. I wish I could afford you. And even that makes me go, Oh God, I don't want to send the other messages. Because it hurts so we don't like it, but I think it's super important to share that we all go through it. We all, no matter what stage you're at, no matter how big your audience is, no matter who you're hanging out with, everyone is getting a rejection at some point. And I'd go as far as to say, if you're not, you're probably not putting yourself out there enough.

Alice:

Yeah, precisely. Like, I could quote that and put it in a little clip or a quote, but I, I love the story you just shared. Cause I mean, it's so relatable. I've had that too. And I think that sales holds us back so much, especially as women. I like, I don't know, but I've seen it with various of my clients who are business coaches and I've gone through their [00:15:00] programs and I've like spoken to the people kind of, and it's like, you've got the offer, you've done the market research. You've like ticked all these boxes and now it's just stalled at this, like, get it out there stage. It's a stalled at this, like, start pitching, start talking to business partners, start, like, sharing it with your network, start selling to your network. And selling is just terrifying because you're going to get rejected. Like, there is no ways everyone out there is going to say yes So the offer we're selling is just not how the market works, regardless of how good the product is.

Teresa:

And sometimes the rejection will be nothing to do with you. Like, so one of the things you talk about, one of the things I want to dive into, because it's actually something that I talk about a lot is this getting visible. And for me, the direction I come up from it is my audience They often run a personal brand and therefore they should be trying to become the expert or one of the experts in their field [00:16:00] because the more that they can lift their visibility up, the more they can build their audience, the more people they can serve, the more money they could make. How, what's your take on visibility? What kind of things do you, what's your drive for getting people to become more visible? What's the kind of back bit to it?

Alice:

I mean, everything you just said there, I think it's so much like I, there, there's, you know, cause I do podcast publicity. That's kind of what I do for my clients and what the whole business model is rooted in. And when someone comes and works with us on like a one on one basis, it's usually because they have a very clear strategy, like they're trying to sell more books, they have a book launch and they're just trying to get more books. But the effect is huge of publicity. You know, I. I did actually have someone who'd never been on podcasts and she wanted to come and work with us because she had this very niche, very specific field where she served like this really medical, she was like a marketing officer for like a very medical niche field in America. And so there were not [00:17:00] actually tons of podcasts that she could get onto, but she worked with us for like, a little while and got into like nine or so podcasts. And I mean, she messaged me like a few months later and it was like, I just landed a huge client because someone heard me on her podcast. But in our sales, she explained that talking on podcasts was literally just to have the social proof so that when it shortens the sales cycle, so that when someone Is interested in her, they can go click play on these interviews, which is also more credible for...

Chatbots: Your Secret Weapon for engagement and Business Growth

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In today's episode I chatted with chatbot expert Mel about the ease and accessibility of setting up chat funnels on Instagram and Facebook for small businesses. Mel shares valuable hacks, tips, and strategies for improving engagement, building email lists, and integrating chat funnels into your marketing plan.

The discussion emphasizes the affordability and low barrier to entry for businesses of any size and highlights the importance of personalizing customer journeys via DMs. Tune in to learn how chatbots can enhance your online presence and convert followers into leads.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to

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Website

Instagram

Facebook

, Email: mel@sociallysound.co.uk

Connect with Teresa on

Transcript

Teresa:

If you've ever seen any of the big names in the online industry using chatbots, you know, where they post something and say, comment this or DM me this, and you thought, oh man, that must be really big and complicated and expensive to set up, then you definitely want to listen to this episode today. In today's episode, I chat with the amazing Mel who is a chatbot expert, and she shares with us how easy and accessible it is for small businesses of any size to set up a chat funnel on Instagram or Facebook. She talks about some of the amazing hacks and tips that you can use, and also some genius ways in which you can help improve engagement. And get people on your email list. Like I said, this is not a trend that is just happening and people should jump on. This is a really cool [00:01:00] strategic thing that you can do for your business. So today's episode is not to be missed. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I hope you are good. This week we have a really cool interview. [00:02:00] I have been doing some serious interviewing, batching of interviews. And it's like, you know, when you record a load of interviews and you're like, I just can't wait for them to come out, but they're going to have to take the time to come out, but I'm super glad that we're bringing this one out pretty soon after recording, because I feel like this is something you need to hear. Now, if you know me, you know, I don't jump on the latest thing. I have a long history in marketing and therefore when a platform comes out and loads of people jump on it, I often, I can kind of like behind a little bit because I'm like, let's just really see what it can do for us before it takes time out of my day. And I spend too much time working on something that might not actually do anything for my business. So. I didn't jump on threads. I'm still not on it. I never went on Snapchat. I'm not on TikTok. Like, and I'm not saying that they can't all do amazing things for our businesses. I'm sure they can, but for me, I didn't feel the need to add something else. However, this thing I do want you to jump [00:03:00] on and it's not even that new. Today. We are talking about chatbots and chat funnels and basically how you can comment a word in a DM and or in a cap, comment. And then get an automation sent to you. So we're talking about that today and it's actually not new. I talk about the fact that years and years ago, about eight years ago, I did a speaking thing in America and many chat were there. And then they kind of disappeared for a bit and then they came back again. So it's not that this is a brand new thing to do, but actually I have seen the increase in this massively over the last six months. I've seen some of the really biggest names in the industry using it. And therefore I really think. That you should have a look at it. Also, it's a low barrier to entry from a knowledge point of view and a money point of view. So it's really one of these things that actually, once you learn the basics of it, then it's a rinse and repeat thing. So for me, this is really, really important episode. It's also lovely to have [00:04:00] on the podcast, someone who I'm working with in my accelerator program. Although we don't talk about that at all, because. The aim of having her on is nothing to do with selling my program, but she just happens to be one of my accelerator people, which is awesome. And I'm currently working with her on her launch, which is going really well, which is also awesome. So the lovely Mel is a conversational marketer and a many chat agency partner with a long career spanning B2B publishing, social media, paid ads, and chat funnels. She combines the power of conversation with strategy to help brands get more sales, more leads from their marketing. This stuff is so cool and so smart. And like I said, the barrier to entry is low. So if you are an business owner of any type and you are on social media, Instagram or Facebook, then this is definitely, definitely an episode you're going to want to listen to and something that you're going to want to check out and you're going to want to check Mel out. So without further ado, here is the awesome Mel. [00:05:00] Mel, welcome to the podcast.

Mel:

Thank you for having me.

Teresa:

I'm excited to have this conversation because I think this, I'm such a geek, right? I'm not sure I come across as a geek, but I am an absolute geek around tech, funnels, all of this sort of stuff. And this is the conversation we're having today, which I'm so excited about. So we're going to dive straight in and I'm going to get you just to explain. What is a chat funnel?

Mel:

So a chat funnel is essentially a, a new way of marketing your business that can compliment what you do already. So for a lot of businesses, their marketing will comprise doing their social media posts. They'll be sending people to landing pages. Those landing pages will build their email list. Now, nothing wrong with that, but chat funnels enables brands now to personalize that customer journey and actually get them from the social [00:06:00] channels into the email list through the DMs. And I'm talking specifically here about really Facebook and Instagram. And Instagram is where I love doing most of my work and where a lot of the clients that I work with actually get the traction. And so for chat funnels with regards to Instagram, You are getting them to comment on your post, which is playing into the algorithm for engagement and comments and reach. And you're giving them a keyword that's bringing them into the DMs. You're taking them through a really short marketing journey, which is normally, this is what we've got. The, this is our offer. Would you like it? This is your name. Please give me your name and your email. And that pings it straight into the, the brands CRM email system, which delivers the thing, the PDF, the checklist, what it is they've signed up for. So chat funnels essentially is about personalizing that marketing journey through the DMs. And it's for the consumer, it's one to one. So they are [00:07:00] feeling like it's a one to one journey, but yet still for the brand, because it's automated, it still has that one to many outlook. So they are not, individually talking to everybody that is automated, but the automation is providing that personalization of the customer journey. And it's all really super exciting.

Teresa:

It is. And I was telling Mel that one of the first speaking gigs or the first speaking gig I did out of the country or in the States was for Leadpages, which For those of you who don't know who Leadpages are, they basically do landing pages for list building. And they also owned a company at the time called Drip, which was their CRM on the back end. Anyway, I went out, like I learned about this stuff a really long time ago, and ManyChat, who is the company. So there's obviously the chat funnel, but the company that the system is called ManyChat that most people use in other systems other than ManyChat.

Mel:

There are, there are, yeah, there are other chats, there are other platforms that you can use. [00:08:00] I, a lot of people, myself and a lot of people I know, use ManyChat. Quite simply, from the other ones that I've looked at, is because it's actually quite simple. Once you've learned how to use it, it's a no code interface, so you don't need to have vast amounts of technical knowledge in order to be able to use it. So that, yes, there are other platforms out there, but Many chat, specifically is the one that I use. Yeah. It's one of the biggest ones out there. Yeah.

Teresa:

And, and they were one of the speakers and this was literally like eight years ago and they were like chat funnels, chat bots. This is going to be the next big thing. And it was huge. And I remember like, you know, seeing the stats of open rate and click rates and thinking, this is amazing. And then it disappeared. , and you and I have talked about this as to why it disappeared and changes to the API and all tech stuff that is really beyond me. Yeah. Essentially as well. Yeah. So then it stopped and now it's back and [00:09:00] all the big people are using it.

Mel:

They are. Yeah.

Teresa:

So. Let's just because I touched on that, have you got some stats and I appreciate I am literally just throwing questions at you. So have you got some stats in your head about the kind of conversions that people can expect through this kind of stuff?

Mel:

So essentially from what I see and from the flows that I build for clients and from myself and just in the wider industry as well, you can expect to open rates and click through rates of between 60 to 80%.

Teresa:

I mean, that's wild.

Mel:

But generally, you don't get that on a landing page or an email. It's not to say it's impossible, but generally, it's actually because no one really ignores a message from a brand in their DMs. And if that marketing journey is relatively short, as I believe it should be, and it's personalized, You know that and the ability to bring them straight from that social media channel into the CRM without having to be taken off platform is what gives it that kind of unique [00:10:00] touch in getting those higher open rates and those higher click through rates. So, yes, in essence, that is kind of the stats that we are looking at. They open rates and click through rates are much, much higher.

Teresa:

So, which is amazing because that is the aim of everything we're doing. So one of the things I know about you is that obviously you also do Facebook ads and you started in the ad space. What made you decide to go over into offering this as well?

Mel:

So I essentially, I wanted to add another string to my bow apart from just doing and doing Facebook ads, which I still love, still do that. And my background years and years ago, long time ago now, for your children, is in print publishing. So I've worked in journalism and editing and page design. But essentially, you know, the theme through all of that is, is conversational. It's, you know, editorial, it's about getting the message across through, well back then, through the print media, and I came across ManyChat now four years ago, [00:11:00] I think, and I think it's because I commented on someone's post on Facebook, and then this automation popped up, and I was like, wow, that's amazing, and then, and then I kind of delved a little bit deeper, and then I found ManyChat, and then I just went down this whole rabbit hole for weeks and weeks on end, and it totally played to what I was looking for. In, you know, adding an extra stream to my business that is conversational and it's personalized because it's, it's what I've done for years in my previous career. And the fact that it kind of links into Facebook as well meant it kind of married up very well with what I was doing existingly in Facebook ads as well. So it's, it's kind of, you know, my love of the written language and being able to communicate with people through a chatbot, which is more. It's a much more casual way of talking to people as well. And we use emojis and it's, and it's quick and it's conversational and it's personalized. [00:12:00] And I love it. And so then as soon as I found that, I was like, right, I'll have to go and learn this. And I did. That's exactly what I did do.

Teresa:

But like you said, this is so freaking clever for so many reasons. One, like you said, we all know engagement on posts is key to get anything to actually have any traction. So the fact that you the whole way this starts is by commenting on a post or sending a DM or whatever. But if it's a comment on a post, that action alone is going to start kicking off that algorithm in terms of like showing other people the fact that it's done in app. making it hopefully as seamlessly as possible for the person who's going through it. Because I remember like, I think I must've talked about chatbots a really long time ago, but I remember saying to people like, imagine when you're, you know, saying to someone and before you could put the link in a story or something, [00:13:00] you're going to say to, okay, go to the link in my bio and you click the link in the bio and then they head over to wherever that is and they do the thing. Like there's too many points. And when I talk about a funnel, I talk about at any single point, someone could fall out the funnel. And we've got to make that as seamless and as easy as anything, so that people don't fall out or don't think, oh, this feels a bit disjointed. I don't want to do this. So the fact that this is done seamlessly within it is brilliant. One thing I want to address, because I am guessing If people are listening to this podcast, they've probably seen that like, we can name some big names that have done it. Like Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, Michael Hyatt uses it. Like lots of huge names are using chatbots all the time in their marketing. So instantly people are going to think I can't do it. Right. Like they've got a team, they've got this, the like, how do I get the chatbot to talk to my CRM system? Like, can we just allay some [00:14:00] fears in terms of, is it, well, maybe we won't allay fears. Maybe we'll go, yes, you're right. You can't do it.

Mel:

No, not, it's certainly not just for those who have the huge, the huge accounts. Yes, you do need to have, an engaged, instead of talking specifically about Instagram, an engaged Instagram account. Now people will be seeing possibly at the moment, there is a little bit of concern that people aren't getting comments on posts, but The chat funnels, the, and Manychat can connect into more than just the post. It can also, is the posts, the reels, the stories, the DMs, the Instagram lives, when people mention you in their story, when you use a reveal sticker and someone has to type a word in order to reveal the image, there are various different ways in which you can trigger those conversations. It doesn't just have to be on a post. So, you know, but essentially if you, you know, Think about, do I need to have a big account to use this? No, [00:15:00] you certainly don't, you need an engaged audience and that also, but that also comes down to your organic strategy as well, but, you know, separately to chat funnels, you need to have an Instagram, you know, strategy for putting out, you know, engaging Instagram content that you ordinarily you want people to to watch and engage with regardless of whether you have a chat funnel attached or not. And, and if you've got that by having a chat funnel attached to that to give away your, you know, your freebies, your offers, build your list, whatever you need it for, that will just amplify your existing engagement and your reach. So, you know, by getting to people comment on the posts or to send you into the, send them into the DMS or reply to a story, your content is, is instantly being, being magnified in that way because it is playing to the algorithm. The follower numbers, Well, excuse me, are not important. It's actually more to do with your content and how you're utilizing that content to maximize your reach [00:16:00] and reach your potential followers and customers.

Teresa:

And also taking something off your plate, which is business owners. That is so flipping key that we are able to bring things in that will help engagement and help sales and help conversions without you having to actually do the thing yourself in real time, because that is hard. Okay, so talk to me about the, so I've been in many chats, I've had to look around you, I've done work with you on it, and you're right, it's really lovely to look at and really like, I, things like that matter to me, like it needs to be intuitive and it is, which is great. The thing that I think people are going to get stuck with, so I want you to answer this in kind of two ways. So I think people are going to get stuck with how do I attach it to the thing, my CRM. I want you to talk us through a funnel that doesn't have to attach, right? And then touch on the How hard is it to get it to attach?

Mel:

So, [00:17:00] essentially, in order to, integrate it with your CRM, there are, ManyChat does have native integrations, but what I generally tell clients to do, and what I do for clients, is to set up Zapier. Or the other and another integration kind of platform that provides the bridge between the two. I personally use make, but I tend to use Zapier for clients. And that is quite simple to set up within Zapier. You attach your many chat is the trigger. And then your CRM is obviously the action towards the end. So that is, is actually quite simple. Do you have to send people to your CRM all the time? No, you don't. If you were actually just starting out and you didn't have an email, system at all. ManyChat does have native email, which then keeps them all within the ManyChat platform. So, you wouldn't need to provide that bridge. However, I think you would probably

Has the online course bubble burst? How to adapt to the future of selling knowledge based content.

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Is there still money to be made from selling online courses? A while ago, online business expert Pat Flynn argued that online courses are in decline due to oversaturation, low completion rates, and the availability of free information online. He’s not wrong but in this episode of the podcast I offer my own insights on the future of online courses and strategies for course creators, membership owners, and coaches to adapt to the many changes that are happening in the online business space.

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Are online courses dead? They are oversaturated. People aren't completing them and sales are low. And let's face it, you can get free information anywhere on the internet. And with AI, do we really need to buy another online course? And if you're a course creator, Is it even still a viable business? Today, I discuss all of these things. Pat Flynn did a YouTube video a few months back that talked about why he is stopping selling knowledge based things. And I am going to unpack the things that he said and also give you my opinion on what I think about what he said. Do I think horses are dead or do I think there are some things that we can do to help combat some of the really valid points that he shared? Whether you're a course creator, membership owner, or a coach, this is going to give you a really valuable insight to the online industry and what is happening right now. And some of the things that you can do to help ensure that you maximize your sales and create products and [00:01:00] services that your customers are going to want to engage with. And most importantly, gives them the transformation that they're looking for. This is not an episode to be missed. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of your dream business podcast. [00:02:00] I'm Teresa Heath Wareing, your host, and I'm here to help course creators, membership owners, and coaches grow their online businesses.

Teresa:

We have so many people come into the online space, the space that I've been in for 10 years now, and yet, so few of them seem to grow it to where they replace their done for you and one to one income or give themselves a substantial income that they are hoping for. So my job with this podcast is to help you grow an online business to the level that you want it, be it five figures, six figures, seven figures, or even more. So today's episode is all about online courses. and the possible demise of them. Let me explain. I have become a bit of a YouTube fan. Rather than sitting down and putting the TV on and watching normal TV or binging Netflix, I appear to just be watching YouTube stuff. Now, don't judge me, but my husband and I love a bit of homesteading stuff. So [00:03:00] we watch a lot of that. And if it's just me on my own, I often watch business stuff or personal development stuff. And A couple of months back, I was watching some videos, which surprisingly, it's taken me this long to do a podcast about it, but I think it's really useful to do it. It was a YouTube video from Pat Flynn that was titled stop selling info and do this instead. And basically why he thinks courses are dead. So what I'm going to do in today's episode is I am going to take you through what he said. I'm going to give you my opinion, and I'm also going to give you my thoughts and some of his thoughts around. what you should do instead if courses are dead. And even if you're not currently selling courses or have no plans to, I really think this is still going to be super interesting because it actually talks about the shifts that have happened in the online space and why they may affect different things that we do as online business owners. So one of the first things he talks about is the fact that people aren't buying online courses [00:04:00] anymore. Now I have a saying in the club, which is you don't need another course. So I am almost backing him up with his theory here of you don't need another course, stop buying online courses. I have bought my fair share of online courses. I have sold a fair share of online courses and I have helped Many, many, many, many business owners sell their online courses too. And what Pat was saying and the, the graph he showed was that during the pandemic, his courses hit an all time high in sales. Now I can attest to that, that during the pandemic, the online business space really thrived because. Suddenly the whole world is online and therefore it made perfect sense that we were going to suddenly do a lot more online stuff and this attracted a whole load of new people in to the space and they discovered the online world so during the pandemic I did not at any point put my feet up and furlough myself. I [00:05:00] worked really hard because it was super, super busy. And then what he showed was after the pandemic, his sales dropped dramatically. Now, I also concur to this because not only, and I think this is the key thing, not only is it that the core sales dropped, I think online stuff in general dropped. And there are many reasons for this. One of them is that we had spent the last year or two online and people were tired of doing online stuff. They were tired of Zoom meetings and courses and sitting at their computer 24 hours a day. Although I have to say, interestingly enough, I ran some in person events after the pandemic and they weren't working as well as they were used to either. So honestly, I think the whole industry and business and marketing in general was going through a real change and shift, but basically it has [00:06:00] decreased. People who buy online stuff has decreased, but I don't want you to worry about that for the time being. So let me go on to one of his other points as to why he feels like courses are dead. People don't complete them. And again, this is exactly coming back to my, we don't need another course because people buy courses and, and we're really good at selling them. Okay. People in the online space are very clever. We have some really cool marketing tactics that basically sell an online course, like it's going to be the dream and it's going to fix all your problems. But the truth is, you have to do the work. And I don't just mean go through the course, which it's a thing in itself. I mean, actually then take action on the stuff that you've learned and people aren't doing it. In fact, the stats for people in the online space, completing courses is really low, like three, four or 5%. Like, Not very high at all. Those are the people who [00:07:00] fully complete a course. So if you imagine if someone is selling a course, they sell a hundred places. There is a really small amount of people who are actually doing the work. And the thing is, if you're a course creator, you want people to do the work because if people do the work, then you get testimonials. Then you get to prove your concept and then you get to help sell some more. So those were two of his kind of big points. The other thing he talked about, which is a really fair point, is it's saturated. The information industry is completely saturated. When I started my online business back in, well I don't know what year it was, but it was 10 years ago. I should be able to work that out. Quick maths, 2004. No, 2014. Oh my goodness. 2014. That's right. It's 2024. Hey, listen, you're not here for my math skills. FYI. When I started my business, it was unknown. Like in the UK in particular, this online thing was really like, what is [00:08:00] this? And I actually would say in parts of the UK, It is similar. Like there is still, there is still parts and industries and people in the UK that still don't know about the online business world. However, it is way more saturated than it used to be. But more importantly, it's It's not that the online world is saturated. It's the fact that the knowledge is saturated. As I said at the beginning of this episode, I watch a lot of YouTube. I learn a lot of things on YouTube and that's the truth we have available to us. I mean, it's a wonderful, amazing place we live in where we can literally just YouTube something and find out how to do it or what it is or why it's important. So there is very little information out there that is not available for free. So you can go and like this podcast, I've done 300, what is this? 364 episodes. There is so much content out there. So one, it's completely free and there is so much available to see, but also we have AI [00:09:00] like. this wondrous wizardrous thing that we can just type into AI and say, please tell me this, please give me this, what is this? So the landscape is not the same as it was. And that I agree with, I agree with the landscape has changed. The online course sales were going up, they hit a peak in pandemic. They've been tracking down since I, he proved it with his graph and he's very honest about his results. I get that people don't complete them. I totally unbordered that. And we live in an age of information where we can find out anything. So with all that being said. What did Pat say? And what are my thoughts on what we have to do? Because if that is the case, what is there for us to do? Well, actually the good news is for those of us who really care about our audience and really care about them achieving things and getting results and having the transformation, [00:10:00] which is a hundred percent me. And I'm sure because you listened to this podcast, it's a hundred percent you. The good news is we can still do things in order to help our audience do that. We just need to tweak the way we do them. So we are less likely to be able to make a huge amount of money by just doing evergreen, set it and forget it stuff. Create a course, sell it over and over and over and over again. Now I'm not saying people won't buy it. Absolutely people might buy it, but are they going to complete it? Possibly not. Have I done the same myself? Absolutely. I am really strict now on what I buy and I only buy very specific things that I need and that is something I talk about in the club and in my accelerator programs where they have access to me. I say, unless it is something very specific, we are not creating another course as in I am not giving them another course. I am only delivering content. So for instance, at the time of recording this, we had someone come in and talk about productivity because it's [00:11:00] who I work with and they're amazing. We've got someone coming in to talk about chatbots. In fact, there is an episode very quickly, I think it's next week, in fact, talking about chatbots because it's a really cool strategy and we should be looking at it. We might have someone come in and talk about very specific things where we have a gap of knowledge. I am not just putting out a course in, in my stuff just for the sake of teaching them stuff. So what are we going to do if people can get information? If they're not completing the courses, we need to go back to why are they buying them in the first place? And the truth is they want a transformation. And what Pat calls it is we need to give them implementation. Instead of just straight up giving them access to the information, they don't need information, they need implementation. And what I call it is the transformation. Because they're buying the course to have a transformation, but the problem is they are not implementing what they are given in the course, so they're [00:12:00] not getting the transformation. So what we need to enable people to do is to help them with the transformation, help them achieve the thing that we want them to do. And That is the, that's the key bit really is helping them achieve the thing that they want to do and giving them more help in doing that than just producing a course. So what are some of the things that you can do other than maybe just a course? So I've got a few options for you and some of these I have done, some of them I do. So we have got the live course element because in order to get the transformation, they need a few different things. And this is why I've always been a fan of I have an accelerator program where they get one to one calls with me. I have a membership where you get to get on a coaching call with me. I do one to one work. I do have some courses, but also I do a lot of paid masterclasses and challenge and paid workshops where they get to ask me questions because [00:13:00] one of the things that people are missing when they buy an online course is the ability to individualize the content to their particular case. So just because I would do a process for a lead magnet, okay, that process will work no matter what industry you're in and no matter who your customers are. However, there are certain things that I would do differently based on different industries and different people and different customers. So what they're not able to do with the course, and one of the ways I want you to think about it, is how can you individualize or how can you match the content better to the person consuming it? Because what we want to know always is if someone's got a really good idea, we want to go, but will that work for me? And in able to say, will that work for me? It means You need to understand who I am, what my, who my customers are and what I offer them, and then match the information you have about the [00:14:00] thing against those things and tell me what is going to work best. So they're missing that. They're missing the fact to match it to them and where they are. The other thing that they're missing when they buy an online course is they're missing the accountability aspect. So the fact of Okay, first off, this course is going to work perfectly for you, but this is what I would tweak. And secondly, when are you going to take the action and do the thing? And then the final thing that they could be missing is the review part of it. Because as we know, if you are in the online space, everything is a trial and error and we need to look at it as a trial and error. We need to look at it as, how can I learn from this thing? What can I achieve from doing something, whether it's the result I wanted or not, what have I learned from it? So those three things I think are the things that you can't get when you buy an off the shelf online course with no other bits other than just work through the course yourself. You don't get the individual, [00:15:00] individualization. God, it's so hard for me to say that. to you and your business. You don't get the accountability and the taking action bit and you don't get the reviewing the results to see if it works. So how can you create a course that is going to do those things? So one of the things that you can do is create a live course. Now, this is something I have done a number of times. I had built my list, which was a list building course. And it was over the first time I ran, it was over 10 days. I nearly killed them. It was a lot of work over 10 days. Then I ran it over three weeks. Then I ran it over a bit longer because every time I ran it, I learned. And that's the other thing. If you are sat there thinking you just want to create a course, having never sold it before, and you want to literally just sell it over and over, that's really not the most awesome of ideas because you're going to need to test it. What do people want? What are they resonating with? What aren't they resonating with? What is missing? What questions are they asking that your course is not [00:16:00] doing? So actually running a live course just generally is really good practice, but that is a way that you can hold them accountable. You can personalize the information to them and their business, and you can help them review it. So live courses are really, really good. The other thing a live course does is it gives them an element of community, which is the other thing that they might not get when they buy a course. So if they are buying an off the shelf course, an evergreen thing, where they just purchased it themselves, you have no community in that. And again, one of the things that helps people get results is that accountability, which I said already, but the accountability with their peers, as well as. with you who is helping them run the course. So like I said, live courses that are either over a set period of time or, and this doesn't have to be three weeks, three days, 10 days, whatever. This could be months. This could be a 12 month program. In fact, something I'm working on at the moment will give support over 12 months. [00:17:00] The other thing that you can do, which I have done a few times, quite a few times is one off kind of workshops or masterclasses that are paid. So let's say you're teaching something that is a bit shorter or where you want people to actually take the action and do the thing. Then a workshop or a paid masterclass can be really, really good paid for both. Obviously you're gonna have to bear in mind that, you know, how many hours is it going to be? Are you going to do anything beforehand or after? Are you going to give any individual stuff or is this all group? But it's a really nice way of bringing someone into your world, teaching them something, but also helping them to take action. And again, the most important thing in all of this action taking is that you get testimonials or they get the results. That's the most important thing, they get the transformation, but then you're able to get testimonials from it to say to people, look, I do know what I'm talking about, and I am getting these results for people. And finally, another way is memberships. And. [00:18:00] I am having some interesting thoughts at the moment, which I will put in a podcast at some point soon around memberships and what's working and what isn't. I'm doing some tests and...

How to maintain the human touch when using AI to grow your business

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Can AI really help you grow your business? And can it ever really be used with integrity so that the output sounds like you and feels authentic? These are some of the big questions I ask my latest podcast guest Michelle Thames. She’s a marketing expert and knows all there is to know about AI. In this brand new episode she shares her top tips for saving time and money with AI whilst maintaining a human touch.

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Teresa:

[00:00:00] If you're a business owner, you literally can't go. a couple of posts without someone talking about AI and what it can do for our business. But is it really true? Can using AI save us loads of time, loads of money, and most importantly, without it looking like it's AI? Because that's the thing, isn't it? We don't want AI written stuff and images that look like they've been made with AI. Can it really do that stuff? So today I am talking to the lovely Michelle Thames, who is a marketing expert, who is a passionate fan of AI and what it can do for our businesses. So we get into the weeds of using AI for marketing, what kind of things you can get it to do and how most importantly, you can get it to sound like you and not a robot. Hello, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am Terese Heath- Wareing, your host. And I am so glad you've decided to spend your time listening to me today. I'm guessing you're doing something else while listening. I always do. So in the morning, when I get ready, I always have my phone propped up in my bathroom and I am listening or watching. I'm really into watching YouTube at the moment. I'm learning things to do with the business, to do with [00:02:00] myself. I actually, just as a side note, by the way, I have my human design done. wondering if anyone else has had theirs done, come and DM me if you have. And if you love it, I love all this kind of stuff. Now someone is probably sat there going, what's human design? And I'm going to start to explain it. And you're probably going to go, what really? But you know, I'm into like, you know, I like a bit of woo. I don't mind this stuff. So human design is based on the time, the place and the date in which you were born. That's as much as I can tell you because I'm not an expert, but I'm a projector. Okay. So if you are an expert in human design or you have done your own, just so you know, I'm a projector, come and tell me what you are. So I've been watching a lot of them on YouTube at the moment, explaining to me what it means. Anyway. So I'm guessing as you're listening to this, you are doing something else. So again, why not come and DM me and tell me or comment on one of my posts and tell me where you listen to the podcast. Cause I like to know, cause I'm very naturally nosy, which is good. Because I interview people and that's quite a [00:03:00] helpful skill. Okay. Today we have an interview, which is awesome. Now, a couple of weeks back, we had Holly on talking about AI and it was general AI just talking about, you know, what it does and what it is and, and big AI and fancy AI and all that sort of thing. And today I have the lovely Michelle Thames on. Now, Michelle is a marketing trailblazer, an acclaimed podcast and a trusted monetization strategist with a passion for empowering women entrepreneurs. She has established herself as a dominant voice in the digital marketing space. Michelle also spoke at my summit, so I had her to come and speak at the summit, and she talked about AI at the summit, and that's where I wanted her back on, but she's going to talk about AI in a very different way, she is going to talk about marketing and AI, so we are going to dive much deeper into how is it saving us time, how can it save us money, I have to say, if you've listened for a while, you know, I've been in this space for a very long time. I [00:04:00] did my degree in marketing 20 years ago and have worked in marketing my entire life. And the stuff that AI can do now would have cost thousands years ago, not even that many years ago, like literally two, three years ago, it would have cost so much money. As business owners I think we often kind of go, it's hard and things are hard and it is hard. Boy is some of this stuff easier than it ever was. So I for one, I'm very grateful, but Michelle has basically built her marketing agency and her marketing business on using AI and she uses it for so many things. So in this episode today, we are going to dive into What AI can do for our business, how we can use it for marketing and how we make sure it doesn't always sound like AI. Cause that is one of the downfalls to it, is that sometimes we can spot AI very quickly. So I really think you're going to enjoy this episode. She has some really useful tips. [00:05:00] If you find it useful, I would love to hear it. Please go and check out Michelle as well. We will make sure we hook up to all of the links in the show notes, which you can find them at teresaheathwareing.com/363. Here is the lovely Michelle. Michelle, welcome to the podcast.

Michelle:

I'm so excited to be here. So excited to chat today.

Teresa:

Me too. Me too. So I always thought the podcast the same way and I keep saying I'm going to change it and I will change it, but I haven't got, got round to that. So let's start as I normally do, by you explaining who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today.

Michelle:

Yes. I am Michelle Thames. I'm from Chicago. It is the windy city, but it's beautiful in the summer. I am a marketing strategist and business coach and how I got started is really crazy. I actually have a background in healthcare administration. You know, I went to school, got a job like they say, do, you know, go to school, get a job and worked in healthcare, but it wasn't for me, unfortunately, unfortunately, I was fired from my job in [00:06:00] healthcare and it really pushed me into my passions. And so I was already blogging on the side, doing beauty blogging and really figuring out this digital world. Back in 2008, 2009, we're like, this was all so new to people. And I got the opportunity and was found online because of my blog and everything to work for a beauty brand that was up and coming. And I got to help them build their social media foundation, their digital foundation, everything from email, social, digital, influencer marketing. I got to learn so many different things. And I was like, oh my goodness, I could totally like do this for myself too and do this for more people. And so I started a marketing agency with my husband and that's where I am today. And I also help women build businesses online, whether that's you're a solopreneur, whether you're an author, you are a dentist and you want to create a brand like building a personal brand in today's age, it's like something really amazing that we can do and we can make money being ourselves. So I like to equip people with those skills and say, Hey, you can monetize off your skills and expertise, but you have to be able to market [00:07:00] yourself too. So I do a little bit of everything on a podcast just like you, but that's, that's who I am.

Teresa:

So there's a couple of things I want to pick up on that first off. You and your husband working together. Was that scary? Well, there's a couple of questions I've got like, first off, both of you going into a business and therefore I'm assuming no other income coming into the house. Was that terrifying? And secondly, how do you manage working with your husband?

Michelle:

Yeah, no, I really love working with my husband. He loves social media, just like me. It's really crazy. We're like marketing nerds and it was scary. I'm not even going to lie, but I had asked my husband, could I quit my job? And he told me that I totally could. I was like, you know what? I got a plan. We're going to be fine. I just like, believe that, you know, we're going to have faith. And like, what we're going to put into is going to work. He used to work in education. So he was a teacher and it was just really stressful. And one day he came home. He was like, I don't, I don't think I can do this anymore. And I was like, Quit. We'll figure it out. And we've been figuring it out for the last, he has been home three years, and I've been doing this for [00:08:00] five years full time. So we've been figuring it out. And like, yes, it's scary, but I kind of feel like you have to know that you have something and know that it'll just be fine. Like, everything will be okay. If you really have that mindset, like, I know people say like positivity, but no, really say, okay, I know it's going to work out. I am diligently working towards this and it's going to be fine. Like, I feel like this is what we're supposed to be doing. I really love marketing and he really loves marketing too. And we really help. We really love helping people get their business visible and like helping them get new clients. It's like a high, like that you can't get anywhere else.

Teresa:

I love that. And, and I think there is something about we need to work it out, which means you work it out. I think when it's optional, it feels optional when it's like, I need to pay my mortgage. I am going to make this work. There is no greater motivation. Is there?

Michelle:

None? Because it's like, yeah, I could go back to a nine to five, right? But I don't want to do that. And that is okay. Okay. It's okay. People do that. It is okay. If you're a part [00:09:00] time, but like, this is all that we do have. And so people, yes, it is me and my husband. So yes, it is one income, right? We're all, it's the family business. So it is like a different type of mindset. I'm like going hard every day. Like, well, okay. I've got to reach out to leads. I got to follow up with these people. Make sure I post on social media, make sure I keep up with the clients that I currently have. Putting myself out there speaking, getting on podcasts like this. It is a strategic plan every day. Yes. So there is no other choice.

Teresa:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. We want to talk about, or one of the things that you talk about is AI, and I want to talk about that. However, I want to talk, I just want to ask you something else first. It's kind of like, obviously, you know, and both of us are from a marketing background, we both do marketing. I want to get your take at the moment on social media because you are so passionate about social media. It has worked so successfully for you. I personally, at this point, I have a, I'm having a real like, ugh. Like that noise just describes it like, uh, with social media. [00:10:00] And I am wondering, do you think it's still working? Is it still working? What are people doing wrong? How can they make it work? What just where do you, and I know this wasn't one of the questions I was going to ask you, but now I'm just picking your brains. What are your thoughts on it? Like, am I right to think, Oh God, it's hard or am I just not doing it right?

Michelle:

No, this is good. This is a good question. And no, I think all of us are feeling like, uh, but the truth of the matter is it definitely still works. Here's the thing, me and you, we have taken time to build a community of people. We have followers that's that huge number, right, 400, 000, whatever. None of those 30, 000 people are probably your ideal person or part of your community. So we really focus on building community and really digging deep to the clients and customers that we already have and getting repeat customers, you'll be fine. Because I work with big brands and what we do is we focus on the customers and [00:11:00] clients that are always showing up, that are always buying, that are VIP clients. They're going to always tell more people, but you have to build a community and care about the actual people. A lot of people care about that big follower number, which means nothing because there's influences with 4 million who can't get 20 people to an event. I've sold out of free events. I've sold out of events that cost money. I've had people show up to my, I mean, I have 30, 000 followers. I don't think that's like a huge, massive number considering how long I've been online. But I feel like what I have done is built a community. And so yes. Instagram is like changing. It's like, uh, but I feel like if we just show up and create the content that we want and like stop the oh, it has to be 20 seconds, this whatever, like fit into a mold and just be ourselves. And because I was thinking about a video that I want to post, I'm going to go to a concert. I want to post how I had fun as a millennial because that's who I am, right? I'm building a personal brand. I think. We can take off the, like, it has to be so rigid and just have fun with [00:12:00] it. And like the clients will come if we focus on community. So I feel you girl, like, and everybody's feeling this way. Instagram is like, Oh, but if we don't show up, then it's like, we won't get, we won't build the clients, especially organic. We can always run ads to things, but having that organic foundation, I think. is this. And let's just, you know, think about like why we're doing it. We don't even have to show up every day or feel the pressure to either.

Teresa:

I think, I so love what you just said. I think creating the content you want to create. I love that. I think too many people, and I remember hearing it was an influencer. It was someone talking at an event and they had a ginormous account and they were saying, don't just jump on the latest trend to get followers and to get views because you're going to attract people that aren't your people. And if, and this is the whole point, and I think you're so right where people just get swayed by the numbers. They just think, Oh, I really wish I had that many followers. I really wish. And you know, and [00:13:00] I know we can look at an account that has loads of numbers and their engagement is on the floor for the size of the account. Right? So I think one. Embracing the what do I want to post, I think is really, really helpful to me right now, because I feel this pressure. So I used to have a social media manager and the social media manager stopped doing done for you services. And basically since then I haven't replaced her. So I am technically doing my own social media, which is laughable because that's what I used to do as a service. Like I used to do this. And now when it comes to my own, I'm like, I don't want to do it. And I don't know what to do. And I'm struggling to, like, I can teach this stuff all day long. I can support someone else doing it all day long, doing it for yourself, very different. So I think the whole kind of like, well, actually what do I want to post for starters? Whereas I think probably I've been overthinking of, oh, I need to be doing this type of content and this type of content. And then of course I go and research other people's content and then think, oh, well, they did this. I probably need to do this. And also it's about loving on those [00:14:00] people. And it's about building a community. It's not about, you know, woo, I got X amount of views or X amount of follows off the back of something great. Move on to the next thing is about actually, am I really appreciating the people that are in there? And. And I think this is the beauty of having a smaller account. When someone is starting off, you can do that personal outreach. You can get to know them. You can follow them. You can see their content. You can engage with them. When you, yours must be a really hard account, well, much harder now to manage given the size of the account compared to what it was.

Michelle:

Oh yeah. No, you mean my, my Instagram? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I have 37, 000, but I feel like that's not like super huge where I can't manage it. Like, I get messages every day, but I feel like, number one, like you said, I make connections with those people. Now, one of my clients has 147, 000 on our Instagram account, and yes, like, that's, you know, It takes like a team to manage something like that. So like, yeah, I think if it does get to the size, but you [00:15:00] never want this because of the size of the account of the customer service or like how the brand or how you respond to go down because then if that goes, the whole ship goes down. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it needs to be like, and we have to think about, Oh, don't think about people are DMing me. That person could be DMing you because they're trying to work with you. Like, yes, respond.

Teresa:

I think you're right. I think that's the other thing. Like I actively encourage people to DM me and I actively respond to them. And I, you know, my account's teeny tiny, but you know, I remember watching Jasmine Star years ago and someone, she stood on stage and she was talking about outsourcing and she was saying, I outsource the things I can outsource. So I outsource stuff like admin. I outsource stuff like tech stuff. And, She said, I personally manage my own account and that at the point was like hundreds of thousands and someone asked her a question and they were like, well, the account, you know, my account is really busy. It wasn't as big as, [00:16:00] uh, and I just don't have time to respond to all these people. So can I just get someone else to do it? And she's like, You respond to the people. Yeah, but I get a lot of DMs and she went, you respond to the people. And she was really like, I loved it. Cause it was like, if Jasmine Starr can do it, you can do it. Like, you know, and I think people are a bit like, Oh, DMs, but hang on. If that person, if you had a shot, that would be the equivalent to someone walking through the door. What are you going to be like, Oh God, will you just leave? It's really irritating. So, yeah, I love that. I love that.

Michelle:

And you can use automations too. So, ManyChat, right? If you don't have the time, we're

Five Proven Steps to Achieve a Multi Six-Figure Online Business

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I share five essential steps to grow a successful multi six-figure online business. With over 10 years of experience helping businesses scale, I’m able to share the 5 key steps that all these businesses have taken to achieve their financial goals (and beyond!) I’ll bring in elements of my personal journey and adjustments I’m currently making in my business which will hopefully give you inspiration for your own. Listen now to start implementing the 5 step formula you need to take your online business to the next level. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Demonstrate Expertise: Establish yourself as an authority in your niche by creating high-quality, long-form content.
Build Visibility: Utilize strategic outreach, social media, and networking to increase your visibility and reach your target audience.
Nurture Your Email List: Build a strong email list and nurture relationships with your subscribers to drive conversions.
Craft a Compelling Offer: Create a valuable and irresistible offer that addresses your target audience's needs and desires.
Master Launch Strategies: Develop effective launch strategies to maximize sales and generate buzz around your products or services.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE September 2024 Masterclass Long-Form Content: Your Secret Weapon to grow your business How to become more visible and grow your audience Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

If you are looking to grow your online business, then this episode is for you. If you are a course creator, a membership owner, or a coach, and you have an online business, then I am going to be sharing with you the five proven steps to achieve a multi six figure online business. Over the last 10 years in business I have helped hundreds of business owners grow their online business, not just launch it, but grow it and earn the money that they want to earn from their online business. So they can either stop doing one to one or stop doing done for you work. The five things that I share in this episode are the five things that I see in every successful online business. They have these things. And they are going to be essential in you growing yours. Hello and a really warm welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. And if you are an online business owner, a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are absolutely in the right place. Because in this podcast, I share tricks and tips and tools and strategies all around growing your online business. And what makes me qualified to do so? [00:02:00] Well, I have a degree in marketing. I've spent the last 20 years in marketing, last 10 of them in my own business, running my own online business. I have helped business owners hit multiple six figures in their business, have hugely successful launches and grow their list and their visibility. And that's what I'm here to help you with too. So today I actually feel like, well, I feel like in my business, we're doing a bit of a not a reset as such. We've had a few changes. A few things are being tweaked. I've brought up some new team members. Um, um, some new things are on their way. I'm going to be doing YouTube soon and we're trying out some different things with chatbots and various other things. And like I said, I'm getting some help because I'm getting increasingly busy. So, um, We are having a bit of a review of the business because obviously as I bring on new people, I want to tell them where the business is at and what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve and all that good stuff. And one of the things that I'm doing is reviewing the content I put out there and who I'm putting it out for.[00:03:00] And some of the content I'm creating is actually for a masterclass that I'm doing this week. So if you are listening to this episode in and around the day it comes out, which is the 2nd of September, then luckily you are in time to because on the 5th of September, I am running a masterclass called five proven steps to achieve a multi six figure business online, even if you think you've tried everything before. So in doing the presentation for that and getting that together, I have kind of honed in my content and come up with a framework Because it's so much easier for me to, frameworks are great because it helps me keep focused on my content, but also it helps other people remember that there's five steps to something and therefore what are those key steps and are they doing them? So what I thought I would do in this episode is give you a little sneak peek into what that content is. And obviously, if you join me for the masterclass on Thursday, it's free, it's live, you can ask me questions, then I will be going into more depth. [00:04:00] So what are the five steps that we need to have an online business, a successful growing online business? And I just want to back up a minute because I think I've talked before on the podcast, but I am going to say again about why I am focusing on the growing aspect of an online business. I believe there are lots of people who come into this space who are setting up online businesses with the dream of having an online business, serving lots of people, having a bigger audience, having a one to many. Proposition, which basically means you create one thing and many people buy it rather than one to one, i. e. if you're a one to one coach or a done for you service. So let's say you're a marketer and you currently do people's marketing for them. And instead you would like to transition through to a membership where you teach people or where you coach people to do it. So I see a ton of people coming into this space all the time. And what's [00:05:00] interesting is There are very few that really hit big, big incomes in this space. Now, I want to caveat that with one thing. Not everyone wants to earn a big income in this space, and that's fine. I'm not saying you have to, I'm not saying that that is part of being successful, but there are a lot of people who want to earn more than they are currently earning. One of the things that I hear a lot is I want to earn what I did when I worked. But without having a boss. So often people have come from a, an employee's job or a corporate job, and they want their business to bring them in the money that they used to earn being employed, but without having a boss. And what I'm seeing is lots of people moving into this space of having an online business, but then not many of them succeeding to getting the online business to where they want it to be, i. e. bring in the money they want it to bring in. And like I said, that doesn't have to be, you know, millions and millions, millions that could just be [00:06:00] covering their income. Obviously I'm talking about six figures and beyond because that is a really good way of me showing credibility. Like if I can do that, if you want to earn 50, 000, then I can definitely help you with that. So like I said, that's why I've kind of really focused on, okay, let me help people because that's the bit I'm really good at doing. And I think, again, if you've followed me for a while, you know that I Certified as a coach a few years back. And I talked a lot about mindset, but actually what I think you're going to see going forward is a lot more strategic advice. Now I am forever grateful that I have a certification in coaching and I know all about mindset and I have all these tools and strategies in my toolkit that I can whip out at any point when working with either my accelerator people who are my group program. So there's normally between six and 10 of these people and they get individual calls with me, they get group calls with me. And what's lovely is if I am helping them with a strategy and [00:07:00] suggesting they do something and I see a block coming up, then I'm able to work through that block. Whereas I guess, I guess that's probably one of the things that is my, I don't know, USP, my superpower is that obviously you tend to have strategic people who tell you what to do, or you have mindset people who coach you and work with you, whereas I can put the two together. And you need the two together, FYI, because I am proof of that. I had all the strategic stuff and I still didn't do the stuff I needed to do. Anyway, so my content was very much kind of mindset y content and then some strategy, but I was literally just looking back at all my episodes in 2023 and it was a lot of mindset. And I needed that for those of you who might be new to my world. I spent 2023 getting sober. And I am still sober, thank goodness. And that was a big journey and a big thing for me to do. And I was going through a lot of mindset stuff myself, which I think is why, which makes perfect sense, why I then shared a lot of mindset stuff. However, [00:08:00] like I said, I'm pulling it back to strategy. I'm bringing out the mindset when I need to, but my zone of genius is strategy. I have a degree in marketing. I've spent all these years in marketing. I know what I'm talking about in this space. So what are these five things that you need to do these five steps in order to achieve a multi six figure online business, or just put in a figure that you want, but basically you are not there now and you are trying to get there. There are five key things that I'm going to be sharing in the masterclass on Thursday, the fifth that you need in place in order to help grow your online business. And I want to talk them through really quickly here with you. But like I said, on the masterclass, we'll go into more detail. Okay. Step one, you need to demonstrate your expertise. And what I mean by that is you need content. Now we live in such a different world than, I mean, the online space is like, Nothing like I've known when I first did my [00:09:00] degree or when I first started working in marketing, the online space is very different. And one of the things we have to do is demonstrate our expertise. We have to show that we know what we are talking about. And a couple of episodes back, I will make sure I link up to it in the show notes. I talked about why you need long form content, and this is what I'm talking about. Number one, step one in the five steps is demonstrating expertise. And by doing that, it's creating long form content, long form content, being a podcast or a YouTube video or a blog, something that demonstrates to me that you know what you are talking about. Then You can take short form off it and you can use the long form content to post on social media and do various other things like that. But step one, you must demonstrate expertise. It makes perfect sense. If I'm going to buy something from you, then I need to know that you're good at it. Okay. So you need to show me and give me confidence and build that know, like, and trust by step one, [00:10:00] having that demonstrating expertise, which like I said, the best place you can do that is long form content. Step two. Becoming visible. So with step one, you are hopefully going to attract some people into your world. If you are doing good at SEO, if you are doing a good job of promoting things on social media, maybe you're running ads, then great. That is going to get you a bit of something. And the dream of putting something out there and hoping it goes viral. You know, I've not had it happen. I've not seen it happen for many people. So yes, we are going to track some people by demonstrating our expertise, but what we need to then do is become visible. So step two is becoming visible. I have talked about visibility a few times. We've done an episode on it, so I will make sure we link to that in the show notes. FYI, to see the show notes, they are on the app that you're listening to this. Or if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/362, then you will find the show notes. [00:11:00] So where was I? Okay. Yeah. So becoming visible is super, super important. Like I said, I've done a whole episode on that. We'll link to it. But the visibility piece is so important because otherwise, how do you get people in front of you? How do you get seen by your perfect customers? And FYI, that's kind of a given. You need to understand who your perfect customer is. How do you get in front of them? What are the strategies that you can do? So. When you get visible, you're already demonstrating your expertise because people wouldn't have you on their podcast or on their stage or writing a blog for them if you hadn't already proved that you know what you're talking about. So that demonstrating expertise, that long form content is really going to help when you're becoming visible because people are going to look at you and go, Oh no, they do know what they're talking about. Look at what they've created. FYI, this isn't necessarily the order in which you should do things. I'm not sat here saying, spend two months on demonstrating experts, spend a month on visibility, a month on the next thing, not the case. [00:12:00] So all of these kind of need to be done at the same time, which feels a little bit overwhelming, but. Don't get overwhelmed. So becoming visible, you need to get seen. So we've talked about, like I said, getting on people's podcasts, standing on people's stages, doing guest blogging, making connections with people, doing collaborations. How can you get visible, so other people can start to discover who you are and what you do? And then again, let's say you've stood on a stage and you've talked about something, then hopefully someone will then come to your site or come to your social media and realize that you are an expert because you are demonstrating expertise. Number three is effective list building. So this is almost kind of the, the bridge from the people just knowing who you are to the people potentially buying from you. You need to basically take people from knowing who you are and trusting that you're an expert to then getting on your email list. I can talk about this [00:13:00] all day, every day, you know, for 365 days a year. List building is so, so, so important. You don't own your social media. You don't own the platforms that you're on. You will own your email list. So when you're demonstrating expertise and when you're becoming visible, you should be doing everything to put those people onto your email list. And when I talk about an effective list building strategy, I talk about. What lead magnets have you got? How do they connect to the content that you're doing? Where are you promoting those lead magnets? Where are you sharing that people can get on your list? And it's about being proactive. List building is not something that is just done reactively. It can't be, if you are not proactively pushing your list. I can pretty much promise you now that you are probably not getting many people on your list. So where I have grown my list by a thousand at once or by 2000 at once, I have done something very specific to [00:14:00] grow my list. I have sponsored something. I have created a summit. I have done ads. I have been on someone else's summit. I've spoke on someone else's podcast. I have specifically done something to help really push up my list building activity. Okay, let me go over those three points again. So one, demonstrate your expertise through long form content. Two, become visible, getting yourself out there to other people. Three, effective list building. Make sure that every opportunity you are getting people on your list, make sure you have lead magnets. And under that effective list building is also nurturing the people on your list. So loving them, making sure you're emailing them, making sure you're not just emailing them when you've got something to sell. Step four in my five steps is building a compelling offer. Now this bit is really, really important. And actually this is much harder to do from a, or for me to try and give you the, the key ingredients of it, because often When I'm working with the accelerator [00:15:00] people, when I'm on a call with them and they're talking about their offer, and actually I get them to give me the details of their offer before we even get started. I get them to fill in this big form so that I can really understand who their business is. I also get them to give me answers to some personality tests so I can see how they like to work. I just love a personality test. So the offer thing is a bit tricky because often when I am Discussing with someone, if the offer is right, there are many, many factors to take into consideration. So who is the offer for? What's the transformation you're giving them? What, uh, how are you delivering the offer? i.e., is it, you know, a small group thing? Is it a big group thing? Is it a, you know, do it yourself course thing? what it means to them and what's the cost. So there are so many things that come into building that compelling offer. It's not just as easy as me going courses at this price work really well. That's not the case. It does have to be a conversation. And also what happens [00:16:00] at this point, when people are putting together their offer, they often go to their friends or family and go, would you buy it? Terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Because unless they are your perfect customer, and also they are in the market to buy, then it's very hard to get a completely clear answer from them. And even if they are a perfect customer, and they're in the offer, or in the region to buy,...

Practical ways to use AI to save time and money (and avoid the pitfalls!) with Hollie Whittles

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0100

This episode is an insightful discussion of me and my very lovely guest Hollie Whittles, an award-winning TEDx speaker and director of two digital companies. The conversation explores the impacts of AI on businesses, highlighting practical applications that can save time and money, and provides examples and guidance on how business owners can effectively integrate AI into their operations. We also touch on the ethical considerations and potential biases associated with AI use. Hollie shares her personal career journey from talent management to leading her own companies, and her ongoing voluntary work promoting digital skills and entrepreneurship in schools and small businesses. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

AI is a valuable tool for businesses: AI can automate tasks, improve efficiency, and provide valuable insights, leading to cost savings and increased productivity.
Ethical considerations are crucial: As businesses adopt AI, it's essential to address ethical concerns such as bias, privacy, and transparency.
AI is accessible and adaptable: There are numerous AI tools and platforms available to businesses of all sizes, making it easier than ever to integrate AI into operations.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Hollie on Linkedin, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: AI is everywhere, but what does it really mean for our businesses and can it really save us time and money? And is there anything that we should be looking out for and steering clear of? That is what I'm discussing today with my guest, Hollie Whittles. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, and thank you so much for joining me. Honestly, I appreciate you taking your time out. and hanging out with me. It's really, really awesome. So this week we have an interview and I'm actually interviewing one of my very good friends who I have known for quite some time, and we joke that she's quite a big deal. Hollie Whittles is an award winning TEDx speaker, author and director of two digital companies, Fraggleworks and Purple Frog Systems. Her passion is to educate, entertain, and engage. Spending more than 7, 000 hours speaking to audiences across the UK. She has helped hundreds of business owners to grow their businesses. Hollie is in constant demand. Her charismatic and knowledgeable approach empowers people to get results. They want their adoption of the right technology, strategic planning, and digital marketing. Hollie is also the national policy skills [00:02:00] champion for the Federation of Small Businesses, FSB, and is the vice chair of the CompTIA Community Executive Council. She also sits on the boards for Digital Leaders, Career and Enterprise Company, and the Digital Poverty Alliance. So she has quite a bit of experience in this sector. So Hollie is all about technology and AI. Basically one of the businesses you run, as you will hear, is a is at the forefront of doing some of this stuff. So what I wanted her to do was to come on and talk a bit about AI, maybe demystify it because Hollie isn't a techie person. Her husband who she runs her business with is more techie than she is. And one of the things that she does and one of the things that she speaks about is AI and how we can use it in our business and all of that good stuff. And I don't know about you guys, but at the moment I am seeing everybody talk about AI, I mean I have for a while but I am literally seeing you know, how to run social media using AI, how to do a webinar using AI, how to, [00:03:00] like everything just tags on the end using AI. So I think this is a really good conversation. We give some really practical ways in which we can use AI in our own businesses. I give a couple of examples of how I'm doing it. And hopefully it gives you a little bit to think about from the AI point of view. So without further ado, here is the lovely Hollie. Hollie, welcome to the podcast. Hollie: Hi Teresa. Teresa: I'm very excited to have you on. As I've already said, you are a very dear friend of mine and we've already been laughing because we just stumbled over the first bit, which was. Hollie: No, I forgot how to say hello. Teresa: It's tricky sometimes. It's tricky remembering who we are, what we do, how to say hello. It is tough sometimes. Hollie: Yes. Teresa: Molly, I always start my podcast the same way. One day I might change it. I'm going through a lot of tweaks at the moment, but for the time being, we'll stick with it. Please tell us who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Hollie: So thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So my name's Hollie. I'm from Purple Frog Systems. I'm one of the directors. We set up in 2006, I [00:04:00] think from a place of working for really big corporate where I'd burnt out and we were like, what can we do? My husband was in the same position. So we set up our own company and then we've gone from strength to strength and we do data analytics, machine learning, AI. So very much on the kind of the cutting edge of IT and wouldn't change it. I'm probably unemployable now. Teresa: I think we all are. If you've had your own business, like that's it. No one can ever employ you ever again. So let me go back a bit. First off, corporate, what did you do in corporate world? I feel like I should know these things about you, but I'm not entirely sure that I do. So I'll ask. Hollie: Yeah. So I used to work in talent management. So we ran sort of corporate programs across an entire enterprise level organization. So we had like apprenticeship, programs, we had graduates, we had vice president programs, and I organized some of those and we took people off and out the business and checked them off cliffs to see what would happen. And yeah, so it was all about sort of growing people and people development, but it was a big sort of IT consultancy. So they were all techie [00:05:00] people. Teresa: Okay. And your husband came from tech? Hollie: He did. Yeah. So he was running a gaming systems company. So he was their IT director, but it's a big American company. And they basically ran slot machines for all the casinos from Vegas all around the world. So he was always flying over there. Teresa: Nice. I mean, it's not a bad place to fly to. Hollie: No, exactly. Teresa: So you decided both at the same time to come out of your employed roles and start the business together. Hollie: Yeah, so he, he went first. I stayed an extra two years, but I was still a director of the business and then I, I sort of left my role to join him. So yeah, we, we kind of have, we got married, we bought a house, we went on holiday, we changed jobs, we did everything all around 2006. We just had some sort of midlife crisis. I think. Teresa: It was quite a year or two. Hollie: Yeah. Teresa: What made you go into, explain in very layman's terms, what it is you do for big businesses now? [00:06:00] Hollie: Yeah. So I always use the analogy of someone like Richard Branson or Alan Sugar, and they have very, lots of different arms off their business. So he has like Virgin balloons. He has Virgin Atlantic. He has all the different arms of Virgin. If he's sitting in his office thinking, how is the entire Virgin group doing? You've got all those different organisations and systems that don't talk to each other. So he probably just wants one dashboard that he can look at To view how well his entire organization is doing. He can drill down into which bits he's interested in. So what we do, if we put that reporting layer over enterprise solutions, it doesn't matter where the source systems are, whether they talk to each other or not, it could be SAP, it could be Excel, it could be access, it could be an HR system, it could be anything, it could be a webpage. And we allow people then to make meaningful decisions from that data. And then with the advances in AI, the next thing that we do is we apply machine learning to it as well. So what can we predict for the future using that data? So it's all about [00:07:00] empowering businesses to make better decisions. Teresa: So what made you guys think, oh, that's what we're going to do, like, because you obviously neither one of you had come from that specific thing. You have the tech background, yeah, and obviously tech knowledge. But what made you go, oh, let's have all the tech things, we'll pick this thing and we'll just go with it. Hollie: Yeah. So I think we went with what Alex's brain liked the best, really. So he's really good at sort of architecting systems and very much. It was before the cloud was a thing, really. So he was kind of designing these big data warehouses. So we started the business off doing that and it was called business intelligence then, but actually it's now more referred to as data analytics. So he was very much, that's the technical path. That's my area of expertise. At the time we weren't going to have employees. So we were like, just going to do it with ourselves. And then as we started growing, that's when I joined and we're like, maybe we do need some employees actually. So I bring all the people management, the strategy, the marketing, all the things that you [00:08:00] need to run a business that's non technical, so together we kind of cover all the different roles you need to be successful. Teresa: Yeah. And I think that's the thing, cause people often, especially in the techie industries, they are really good at the tech bit. They don't always necessarily have the other skill sets, but the same with, you know, it's like someone with our skill sets going into the tech, not being able to do that. So it's cool that there's two of you together that kind of bring both of those skill sets. So you were in the business, you have a big part in the business, but you have a whole side arm of things that you do as like, I want to say voluntary and it pretty much is all voluntary what you do, isn't it? So explain that side of what you do. Hollie: Yeah, so for me, while we were growing the business, I was really interested of pathways into that business. So the first kind of thing that I did was I'm going to go and do some talks in schools. So I became an enterprise advisor, which then connected me with the Careers and Enterprise Company. And then to promote the business, you start doing a bit of business [00:09:00] networking and I was approached by the Federation of Small Businesses, who kind of explained to me, as well as them being a membership organization, they also have these additional voluntary roles where you can kind of help them champion other businesses, and also you can get involved in policy. So, they kind of hooked me into that, and I started off being an area lead, so very much promoting stuff in our local region. I then became the regional chair, which was then, very much West Midlands focused, so I was sitting on negotiations about HS2 and digital infrastructure, 5G rollout, all that kind of stuff. And then they were like, actually, we've got another role for you. And it just kept escalating, which was a national role, which was all about skills and apprenticeships. So the next minute I'm chairing MP round tables, popping down to the treasuries, talking to the department of education. So that is all very much ticking my box of connecting people together, helping others, and also attracting young [00:10:00] people into our world, because you can have such an exciting career in digital. So it's just about securing those things. Teresa: That's amazing. Like, amazing that, A, you volunteered to do this stuff, because when you run a business, like, You know, we were just talking about it. We're friends, but we haven't like hung out for ages because we're both so busy. And like, so to then volunteer your time to do something like that. And it sounds like it takes up a chunk of your time. Hollie: It does. Yeah. And it is a cost to the business, but I think it's something that is really meaningful. It gives me my sense of purpose, to be honest. So I feel like I need that and I can, I can feel the difference that I'm making. Teresa: That's really nice. Cause like, You do deal with huge companies in a very tech way. So that probably like the giving back element doesn't feel as strong, whereas doing something that, and it's back to that whole, you have to design how your business looks and what works for you. Cause someone might look at you from the outside and [00:11:00] go, why would you volunteer your time doing this when you are super successful over here with this big business? And. But that doesn't light you up as much or that doesn't give you everything you need. And like you always do. And since I've known you've always gone into schools and done things, I mean, which honestly, I've gone into a couple of schools and done things that scares the living daylights out of me because these teenagers are terrifying. And I have one, so I know, but like, you know, so for you to be like, you know, going out there and having conversations with them. But this is, and this isn't what I brought you on to talk about, but this is really interesting because I've got my daughter at the moment working in my business, which is awesome. And I get her to do all sorts of different things. I'm really trying to encourage her to consider having her own business and to consider the options, not necessarily straight into work or straight into, like, I don't think schools do enough to go, well, one, what different, what different roles are there for starters? Because you are in a world that moves at the speed of [00:12:00] light, literally the speed of light. And so those roles, like when, you know, you and I like have some marketing background and my, when I did my degree, there wasn't even really websites as such. There were websites, but there weren't even that like bigger thing. There was definitely no social media, like the term content creator, like, no. So even in my role or in marketing, it moves at a pace, but like in tech is moving at such pace that roles are being created that were never created for roles that were being done and now being assisted by AI and all that sort of thing. So for you to go into schools and go, Hey, this is a world that you could get into and actually something that they might be interested in. So I've got Bea at the moment, my daughter doing, I say that like, you don't know who she is, but I'm saying it more for the audience in case like you. Who's Bea? That's my daughter. She is doing like a Pinterest course for me. So she's now getting this whole thing. Like she's on Pinterest herself from a personal point of view. And now she's starting to realize, Oh, like there's a business reason people use Pinterest. So, you know, again, trying to give her something that she would have an [00:13:00] idea about or an interest in and then going, let's learn how we can do it. So. I love that. I think it's awesome. Hollie: Yeah. And I think it's really important because like you say with the schools and the curriculum, it takes so long to actually change what the curriculum looks like. We have to then go in there and bring it to life. And what I'm trying to say to students is that you're not necessarily going to go into a role. A, we don't know what it is because it doesn't exist yet. But B, rather than just thinking about English and maths, let's think about entrepreneurship, creativity, problem solving, basic digital skills. Teresa: Resilience. Yeah. Why are you not teaching all those things? Hollie: Yeah. This is what we actually need. It doesn't matter what sector you're in, a carpenter still needs to know how to create an invoice and put himself on Facebook. So, and it's also breaking down those genders. Like I've just said him for carpenter, but I'm trying to sort of communicate. It doesn't matter what gender you are, you can go into any role. But what regardless of the role, we need those work ready skills and it's that [00:14:00] proactive attitdue can do and it's breaking down those barriers and just make it accessible for everyone. Teresa: Yeah. And I, I love that. I mean, I could go down a whole other direction here in saying that I'm currently having a discussion with my daughter's school because I want to take her out of school to where in fact, by the time this podcast comes out, we would been gone and back but we're actually going to Japan and the Philippines, which I am so freaking excited about. And in the Philippines, we're meeting Johanne and her family. Johanne works me. And we're meeting her family, and we're bringing them to us in another part of the Philippines and giving them a holiday. And like, I am like, surely to goodness, and Bea will understand more about what Johanne does in my business and how she lives. And like, surely that is much better than sitting in school for a week, but not necessarily agreeing with me at this point. So I'm arguing the toss with them because it's like, I would much rather give...

Practical ways to use AI to save time and money (and avoid the pitfalls!) with Hollie Whittles

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0100

AI is a valuable tool for businesses: AI can automate tasks, improve efficiency, and provide valuable insights, leading to cost savings and increased productivity.
Ethical considerations are crucial: As businesses adopt AI, it's essential to address ethical concerns such as bias, privacy, and transparency.
AI is accessible and adaptable: There are numerous AI tools and platforms available to businesses of all sizes, making it easier than ever to integrate AI into operations.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Hollie on Linkedin, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Long-Form Content: Your Secret Weapon to grow your business

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I discuss the intrinsic value of long-form content for establishing expertise and building trust with customers. I delve into Alex Hormozi's strategic shift to long-form, unedited content and provide actionable steps for creating effective long-form content. It includes the importance of consistently creating content that addresses customer problems, avoiding content driven by vanity metrics, and leveraging long-form content to generate short-form material. It also sets an actionable challenge for listeners to start producing their own long-form content and reinforces the necessity of this strategy for successful online businesses.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Power of Long-Form Content: Long-form content is essential for establishing expertise, building trust, and ultimately driving conversions. It provides a deeper dive into topics, allowing you to showcase your knowledge and authority.

Shift Focus from Vanity Metrics: Instead of chasing likes, shares, and comments, focus on creating high-quality, in-depth content that genuinely helps your audience and potential customers. Prioritize value over vanity.

Create a Content Ecosystem: Long-form content is the foundation for creating shorter, more digestible content formats like social media posts, blog articles, and email newsletters. This integrated approach maximizes your content's impact.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Think about the last person you bought something from. I am betting that you believed they were an expert and that you had built a level of know, like, and trust. In today's episode, I am going to be talking to you about why long form content is essential for building that know, like, and trust and showing you as an expert. I'm going to be sharing with you what Alex Hormozi had to say about long form content and why he is going all in on non edited long form specific content for his customers. And then I'm going to talk you through the three points that you need in order to start your long form content strategy. Obviously we're going to talk about what long form content is as well. I'm also going to be adding a bit of an accountability and an action taking at the end. So if you are not doing any long form content, [00:01:00] then that is your cue, your sign to get started because all the successful business owners that I know and work with have long form content. And that's why I'm going through this podcast episode with you today to help you do the same. [00:02:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. And as always, I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. If you caught last week's episode. You will know that we talked about podcasting with the awesome Kevin, which was great. And it feels like I'm kind of following on a theme, which I promise you it's not intentional, but it's kind of worked out that way about how can we build that know, like, and trust, and make sure that we are seen as an expert to our potential customers. and why you need a long form content in your business. Two weeks ago, I talked about sending emails over posting on social media. And this week I'm talking about why you need long form and again, potentially more long form and less social media, which again, sounds like I'm very much being anti social media. I promise I'm not. I just think that sometimes we put [00:03:00] our focus in the wrong place and we wonder why our business isn't growing. And in all of the work that I do with the club members and the accelerator members, this is how I get them the most success by them focusing on the things that are important to drive their business forward. That is why today we are talking about long form content. So I'm going to start off by just explaining what long form content is and what I mean. I'm going to talk about Some of my reasons for having this conversation, something that Alex Hormozi has done recently, and what long form might look like. And then I'm going to give you three kind of points, which you can use to help you come up with your long form strategy. First thing then, what do I mean by long form content? Well, long form content is kind of exactly what it says. It's a long form of any content. So social media, reels, YouTube shorts, that's all short form. So it's a [00:04:00] small bite size bit of content. Long form is a YouTube video. It's a podcast. It's maybe going live for a certain length of time. It's writing a blog with substantial words in them. Long form is when you go deeper into that content and you produce something that will take longer to consume. And we need long form content in our business. If you are listening to this, I am going to make the assumption that you have a, a business that you're very good at. But you are trying to offer an online version of this business. So you might have one to one work or done for you work and you would love to include a course or a membership or some group coaching. Maybe that's all you have. Maybe all you have is online business stuff and you don't no longer offer one to one or done for you work. In order to grow an online business. And I would like to [00:05:00] set you a challenge of proving me wrong. I don't know any very successful online business owner who does not produce long form content. So let me remind you again, what I mean, blog, podcast, videos, lives, anything that is longer form. If you, if I think about anybody that jumps to mind, Amy Porterfield had a podcast for a million years. Um, Jenna Kutcher also has a podcast, Jasmine Starr podcast. And I think she does it on YouTube. Alex Hormozi does a lot of stuff on YouTube. Uh, Stu McLaren, I think has a podcast as well. Like they're all of these big people who have hugely successful online businesses have a consistent long form content. And consistent is also a key word here as well. So you can't just write one blog and go, I do long form content. You need to consistently, consistently keep showing up and doing the long form. One of the reasons that you want to do long form content is [00:06:00] It shows you as an expert, so that know, like, and trust, this is it. So if you listen to my podcast every single week, or maybe you've just discovered me, hi, thank you for listening, you will soon get to understand who I am, what I'm like, and what I know. As in, you're going to understand how good my knowledge is and how much of an expert I am in the subjects that I talk about, because how could I come on and do a podcast or how could I come on if I was doing a blog or YouTube and talk consistently about it if I wasn't necessarily an expert in that industry or in that subject. Having consistent long form content proves you are an expert and you know what you're talking about. The second thing that it does is it builds a relationship. Again, as you're listening to this episode, as you listen to other episodes, you get to understand what I'm like, and we start building a relationship. I know that sounds [00:07:00] really strange because obviously I can't talk to you unless you come and find me on social or DM me or get on my email list directly, but. We are starting to develop a relationship. It builds the trust in me. It builds the relationship in me in terms of who I am and, and how I show up and how I like to work. And if you love it, great. And if you don't, that's fine. So the consistent content, the long form content is perfect for that. Now, recently, Alex Hormozi, well I say recently, probably a couple of months back now, did a YouTube video about why he's changing up his content and how he's changing it up. What he basically said was he was going to be doing no more wide content. So what he meant by that was he is going to keep it very specific to the problems that he solves for his customers. Because what he was doing is he was having content on [00:08:00] relationships because he works with his wife in the business. He was doing content on fitness because happens to love fitness, but that isn't what he does for his audience. And what was happening is he was attracting people into his world to watch a video on fitness, and they weren't his ideal customer in there for they would never potentially turn into a customer. So he has decided that he is going to bring his content focus really, really sharp. So he is going to create content that is interesting to his existing, sorry, to his ideal customer with the problems that he fixes. The next thing he's doing is he is stopping doing highly produced content. And what he means by that is because he does YouTube, he's not doing like jump cuts. He's not doing like stock stock videos coming in. He's not doing like crazy graphics. He's literally doing him to screen talking. And the third thing he's focused on with his content was that long [00:09:00] form nature. He actually said that he doesn't want someone who is not willing to sit and listen to a 40 minute youTube video about a subject. He saw that as if you can't invest that time, you're not going to be wanting to invest the work and do the stuff. I'm not saying that that is right or wrong or anything. I'm just saying that was his thought process of this, which I find really interesting. And again, Actually, I don't disagree with. I do think there's a place for everything, but actually for him and what he wants people to do and the changes he wants people to make, I think that's probably pretty key for him. So he's decided to do all of those things, to put those things in place, to basically make sure that he is not doing short form or not a lot of short form. And I'll come back to where the short form fits in with the long form. He's not doing highly produced and he's not doing, uh, wide. He's keeping it very, very niche, [00:10:00] which brings me to the kind of three points that we need to think about when we are creating our own long form content and three things that I want you to take away from this and take away from what Alex has talked about or what I've talked about. Alex has talked about. So the first thing is you need to make content for your perfect customer. What would your perfect customer want to consume? And I know this sounds like a really obvious thing to say, but it was exactly what Alex was saying. He was producing other content around getting fit, having, uh, you know, relationship advice because he worked with his wife. That wasn't what he was helping them fix. I have in the past talked about other content. It's not necessarily content, but you know, being aware of the problems that your customer has that isn't necessarily just what you fix in order to relate to your customer. So that isn't what this is talking about. Let me just clarify that because even I feel confused after I said that. [00:11:00] There's a difference between understanding the problems in your customer's life that don't necessarily relate to the thing that you sell and creating content around it. So. For instance, I could share something on social media that talked about being a mum in business, because I understand that lots of my audience and lots of, and you might be listening to this, and you might be a mum in business and therefore you would relate to it. However, I'm not necessarily going to produce long form content about being a mum in business. Now I can, and I can talk about it if required, but That's not necessarily one of the problems that I fix. What I fix is I help people grow their audience, become more visible and become the go to expert in their industry, create an offer that people are going to buy and launch that offer. That's where my zone of genius is. That's what I do. I do the marketing. Obviously, I have some mindset stuff, so I will occasionally talk about mindset stuff as well. But the key thing [00:12:00] is, the first point is, what content does your customer want to consume? What do they want to watch? What do they want to listen to? What do they want to read? What problems can you help them fix? And that's where your long form content comes in. So what questions do you get asked over and over and over? When it comes to this content thing, then the second point really is, is kind of attached to it. So the second point is it's not about the views and downloads. It's not about the vanity metrics. It's not about getting a podcast with a million downloads. If those million people are not going to be your ideal customer. So it's not about jumping on the latest trend, doing the latest TikTok, doing the latest dance. If that is not what your customer is going to buy from you about, or why they're going to come to you. Because great, you could get, go viral on you doing a dancing TikTok, but that is [00:13:00] not going to convert to customers. That is not going to do anything for your business. So I would much rather have a smaller audience consuming my content who are my perfect customers than a ginormous audience who follows me because they think it's funny that I do stupid dances. I don't, by the way, in case you're new to me and you're thinking, where are these dances? I don't. Um, but They come to me for the right reason. They're not coming to me for something that I'm just trying to jump on a trend and I'm just trying to break the algorithm or I'm just trying to hack to get more downloads or more views or anything like that. So I want you to come away from the idea of it's about the views. It's about the downloads. It's about the, the number of people. And I want you to create your content thinking, will this help someone? Will this get them forward in their life or solve a problem for them that you help fix? Let me go over those two steps again. Step one was creating the content for your perfect customer, stuff that they will want to consume. And step two is not [00:14:00] jumping on a trend and not doing something just for views and downloads, which like I said, goes very, very hand in hand with the whole thing of creating content they want to see. I was listening to something the other day and someone said, which was such a good point, that most people consume content fast, short form content, i. e. reels and TikToks and things, while sat on the toilet. And I don't know about you, but I don't know that I really want someone considering to work one to one with me or joining my membership or accelerator program while sat on the toilet. That is not where I think I'm going to convert them. So that is not necessarily where I want people consuming my content. However, I do personally consume a fair bit of YouTube stuff and I watch it on my TV. I will play a YouTube podcast to myself or I'll watch it while I'm doing some other bits of work. If I'm doing stuff that doesn't require too much brain power, I will make a point of watching that [00:15:00] content rather than scrolling while sat on the toilet. Now, I'm not telling you obviously about my toilet habit. I was just saying what this person said. Okay. So that brings me to the third point, create your short form out of your long form. This is where some people get it in their head that creating long form content is such a massive beast. And I'm not going to lie that especially something like a podcast or a video where you've got some production level in it, it does take a bit of work. However, I can do one podcast and create all my social media posts from it. if I wanted to, I can create emails from it. I can, so my long form is like your core bit of content. Everything else comes off the back of that. So yes, it might take a bit of time to create that long form piece, but once you've got it, it helps quicken up the process for your short form. So if you do have things like short form videos, if you do use things like reels, then [00:16:00] having them as clips to go to your video or go to your podcast or show a bit of your live or creating some content around the latest blog post. So it's not that we're saying, don't do short form at all. It's saying, let's use the short form out of the long form. Let's be trying to send them back to the long form and actually sitting there and paying some attention to that long form bit of content. Now. You might be sat there thinking, but short form's all the rage and everyone's doing short form. I want you to remind you that obviously there are many, many people being very successful, different types of things, and one of those is long form. I listen to the Hubam Lab podcast sometimes, and those episodes, oh, and I listen to, um, Rangan Chatterjee's Podcast as well. And those episodes are like two, three hours long. So yes, even though we really like to consume quick content, we want quick ideas, we [00:17:00] want short form things. Actually, when it comes to some things, we want that long form content. And like Alex Hormozi said, you've got to think about how are people going to buy from you? And are they really going to buy from you after just watching a few reels or after just seeing a few Instagram stories? Or are the people that spend time in your content more likely to buy from you, more likely to want to get on your email list, more likely to trust you and know you and build that with you? I want to give you another action on today's podcast. I want this to be a thing that I start doing more and more because As I say in my club all the time, you don't need another course. And I truly believe unless there is something very specific you need to learn, and even then I still want to question why you need to learn it, but unless there's something very specific you need to learn, you don't need another course. What you need is action. What you need is accountability. And that's why [00:18:00] the Dream Business Club and the Rise Accelerator are all about accountability and action to help you move forward and actually progress. And what I'm going...

Convert Listeners into Customers: How to Grow and Monetize Your Podcast with Kevin Chemidlin

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I interviewed Kevin Chemidlin, a podcast growth coach, about strategies to grow and monetize a podcast. We discussed the importance of audience growth, the misconceptions about podcast charts, and the effectiveness of lead magnets in driving listener action. Kevin emphasizes the significance of building a strong email list and offering valuable products or services to your audience.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Focus on Audience Growth, Not Just Downloads: Instead of solely focusing on download numbers, aim to build a loyal and engaged audience. Understand that the goal is to increase total audience reach over time.
Monetization is About Listener Value, Not Ads: Reframe the question from "How do I monetize my podcast?" to "What do my listeners want to buy?" Monetization comes from offering value to your audience, whether it's a direct product, a sponsored product, or building a business around the podcast.
Leverage Multiple Platforms: A successful podcast-driven business requires a multi-faceted approach. Combine your podcast with short-form content (social media), email marketing, and a compelling offer to maximize your reach and revenue.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Kevin Chemidlin on Instagram, Website, Email Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: Having a podcast for your business is becoming hugely popular with more and more business owners choosing to start and learn how to grow a podcast. But having a weekly podcast, as I well know, is hard work. Is it worth all the effort? that you put in and how do we make it work for our businesses to ensure that it is worth all the effort you put in. In today's episode, I interview the amazing Kevin from Grow the Show and he shares with us how to build and grow your podcast using his podcast ladder. He also talks about monetization and what that looks like for your podcast. He shares with us the four things that you need to do to make money from your podcast. Including how you can sell your own stuff, not just through sponsorship. If you have a podcast, if you're thinking about having a podcast, if you're trying to grow a podcast, then this [00:01:00] episode is going to be absolute gold. I took so much from it and I know you will too. Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa [00:02:00] Heath -Wareing and I hope. You are having a great start to the week. If you're listening at the start, obviously you might be listening this halfway through anyway. Wherever you are in your week, I hope it's going well. This week, I have got an awesome interview for you. Now, I love it when I do interviews where I can pick their brain for me, which sounds really selfish, but actually I find it makes a such a better episode because I'm really making them dive deep into Explaining something or helping me with something. And today's episode is a perfect example of that. I'm interviewing the very lovely and very talented Kevin from Grow the Show. He is talking all about podcasting. Now, obviously. Don't know whether you know, but I have a podcast. This episode is 329, no 359, get it right. And I've had my podcast for a long time and everything is worth reviewing. So I love it. I don't want to change [00:03:00] it or not I don't want to change it. I don't want to not do my podcast, but it's always good to get someone really smart on the podcast to have a conversation about what I can do better, how I can improve it, how I can, increase the money it makes and all that good stuff. And this episode was so good. He not only is lovely to talk to him. We had a really, really awesome conversation, but he's so knowledgeable about this. And it really was like, I just got to pick his brains for an entire 50 minutes or whatever it was. So if you have a podcast, if you are thinking about having a podcast, or if you just want to listen to a really awesome conversation. This is going to be perfect. So without further ado, please welcome the very lovely, Kevin. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Kevin: Teresa, so excited to be here. Teresa: I'm excited, very selfishly, because as I just said to you before we got going, one of my main objectives this year is to kind of re, not reinvigorate the podcast. The podcast is doing fine and lovely and great, [00:04:00] but you can always do more. So the fact that we're going to have you on to talk about. podcast and podcast growth and all that sort of good stuff. And also I know there's so many other people who are starting podcasts. So I'm excited for today's conversation, but I always thought the podcast same way. Maybe this is something you should tell me not to do, but by getting you to introduce yourself and say who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Kevin: Yeah. So happy to do so. And then later I can tell you my thoughts on whether to do that or not, as always happens when I'm on a show, we do tons of meta speak, which is awesome. So yes, my name is Kevin Chemidlin. I am a podcast growth coach. I'm the founder and host of grow the show, grow the show is the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My very brief background is I used to be a software developer at a big health insurance company in the U S. Not super passionate about writing software or health insurance, but I am super passionate about my hometown of Philadelphia. So in 2018, I launched a podcast that tells the success stories of Philadelphians. And I was way better at that [00:05:00] than writing software. So really quickly and probably prematurely. Got quit, gave notice at the full time job, uh, to go all in on being a content creator, which back in 2018, we didn't even say creator, like everybody around me in my life was just very confused. A lot, and a lot of people hadn't even heard of podcasts yet. So I said I was leaving, you know, my six figure job to be a podcaster. I got a lot of funny looks. At first it was a horrible move because while I had launched a show, what I didn't know was that I didn't know how to grow and monetize a show. I thought, oh, you just put out great episodes and the show grows and then you make money, right? Absolutely not. So the first eight months was actually pretty brutal. Eventually, I ran out of savings. My back kind of went up against the wall a little bit. I came this close to going back to the corporate gig. But had made such a big stink to everybody in my life that, that I had, that I'm an entrepreneur now that I just couldn't handle the thought of going back, you know, with my tail between my legs. So I took a pause on publishing the show for six weeks, just full time, studied the top podcasts on the Apple [00:06:00] 100 charts, got in touch with a few, you know, successful podcasters to ask for their advice. What I learned is that growing a podcast and making money from a podcast is a skill and there are activities that you have to perform in order to make that happen. Simply publishing an episode is not enough. So once I learned this, I learned what those skills are, how to do it. Brought the Philly show back. And within a year made about 120, 140, somewhere between there thousand dollars in just a year in monetization, the show had grown past a hundred thousand downloads. And so for that year, I basically was a full time content creator. Although I really worked on the show part time, I did a lot of travel, that sort of thing. And once COVID hit, couldn't travel anymore. I spent, uh, basically three months into quarantine. I had gotten on the phone with like 40 different podcasters who had all seen what I had done with the Philly show and wanted to know like, how did you do this? How can I do this? And by the like 40th or 50th call, I was like, okay, there's, there's a pattern here. There's a lot of people who are struggling with this. Let me see if I can create something to help them. And that was when grow the show was born. That was in 2020. [00:07:00] And we're recording now in 2024. It's almost at the four year anniversary and literally. All I have done, my whole, like, I literally moved away from Philly, I live down in Miami now, away from friends and family. My sole focus the past four years has been growing and monetizing podcasts. Teresa: Love it. So, you know, one thing that I actually really love about this story is I often see people come into. So I started like, well, I've been in marketing a million years, but when I first started my business, I started in social media and I saw lots of people who taught social media because their own social media had been wildly successful. So therefore they went on to teach other people, but the difference between what you just said and them was that your social media, not your social media, your podcast wasn't wildly successful. You had to go and learn how to make it successful. And that's the difference. That's the difference between someone who can teach this stuff on any subject matter, where you've had to [00:08:00] go and learn and work it out and make it work for you. as opposed to if you just happen to put up a podcast and boom, it went wild overnight. And then everyone came to you and said, how did you do it? And then you try teaching that. Like, I love the fact that actually you weren't your own success story necessarily straight away. And you went, okay, How am I going to make this successful? What am I going to do? Kevin: Yeah. And that actually reminds me of like, there's a lot of really big podcasters who like sell podcasting courses and like huge names. And these are people who either were celebrities at first, or, you know, they, they built a really, really massive, huge business and then launched a podcast and they have a personal brand and they, you know, they release a 997 course on how to podcast. And a lot of times when I see that I'll buy the course, see, you know, see if there's anything new that I haven't heard before. And a lot of times it's very basic surface level advice where those people did not have the struggle of building an audience from scratch by themselves. These are folks that, you know, you take the course and they're just like, be consistent. It's like, whoa, that's not, that's not [00:09:00] enough. There's so much more that you need to understand. So it's absolutely true. And like, while it was extremely painful at the time, I'm grateful to have had to just like grind it out and kind of figure it out from scratch. Teresa: And the other thing you said, which. like being a fly on the wall in these kinds of things would be awesome. Where going and looking at those top 100 podcasts, like what are they doing? How are they doing it? Why, you know, why are they in the top 100? Because that's something that's always like blown my mind in terms of how do some get there and some don't and how like, so a few, not a few months ago, when was it? So we're recording this in May and it happened in December last year. My podcast hit number one in the UK charts for marketing. Right. And I was like, bear in mind, I've had my podcast for years, like 350 something episodes, right? Never hit number one before. And people were like, what did you do? What did you do? And I went, nothing, like literally nothing. Right. And also looked at my stats, nothing, no difference. In [00:10:00] fact, my stats, and I think this is a lot to the iOS changes and various things, but they've been not declining, but they're considerably like dropped down as to where they were. And it's like, I have no actual idea how I got that. And therefore I'm not entirely sure how to do that again. Kevin: And, you know, and do you have that thing? Yeah. Sorry. So, yeah, no, no. The, the, the biggest thing that most folks don't know about the Apple podcasting charts is that they are not based on show size. They are based on new follower velocity. So the shows that chart are the ones that are getting the most new followers over the past 24 hours. So there are shows that are smaller but are higher up on the charts because their show is growing faster. So a lot of times when a show will chart, it's because there was maybe some sort of mentioned in, in media somewhere, or maybe you publish an episode with a guest that actually promoted and brought a bunch of new followers your way. But, and then, you know, what'll happen is your, your show will hit the charts. You'll be like, Oh my gosh, what's, what's happening. What's [00:11:00] happening. Yeah. Cause you look at the download numbers and they might not have moved that much. But again, the new follower, like the people who click follow in the Apple podcast app increased for that small period of time. And so Apple shows you in the charts and I've seen it before where a show will chart and then they start falling and they're like, what the heck, my downloads are going up. Why am I falling in the charts? And it's just because the velocity, the amount of new people who are following the show has dropped. So that's the biggest misconception about the charts. And so if you want to engineer being on the charts, it's getting the show in concentrated in front of as many Apple podcasts, new subscribers as you possibly can in a 24 hour period. Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that would make sense as in why I wouldn't have necessarily seen it in my downloads or why I wouldn't have seen it in the something happened particularly crazy that maybe just so happened that I had said on that episode, hit subscribe or, and they hadn't done that before or whatever. So, you know, yeah, but it was like, I was genuinely over the moon obviously, but also like, you know, I'd really like to be able to replicate that [00:12:00] also, and I guess this is what we're going to talk about. It's not just that, don't get me wrong, I will take all day long, right? But it feels a little bit vanity. Is it a vanity metric, do you think? Kevin: It is simply a marketing byline that you can now say that your show is number one in the UK marketing charts. That's it. That's all you get. And so what I recommend is when that happens, take a freaking screenshot because that screenshot is the price. Teresa: Yes. Yeah. And that's exactly what I did. Like screenshotted it, videoed it. Like who else is below me? Like for that one time only, but, and, and it is now in my bio that I am now a number one podcaster. Like I'm taking it all day long. Kevin: You did. Teresa: But of course, as lovely as that is. I mean, in fact, I was about to answer why I think growth is important on a podcast, but I'm going to let you answer that. Why is like having a podcast is lovely, but why is that growth bit so crucial? Kevin: I mean, that's, that's a funny question because it depends on who you are. And like, [00:13:00] I ask you that, right? Why is growth important to you? Because everybody assumes Yes, like the goal is to grow, right? The goal is to get more listeners, get the download numbers to go up as much as possible. But what I say back to that is I'm like, Okay, how does your life change? When you log into your hosting provider and you see a thousand more downloads than you saw last month, people kind of look at, they're like, well, it really doesn't, right? And so I'm like, okay, then why do you want more downloads? Why do you want your show to grow? And usually it's either I want more reach or I want to make more money, which usually more reach translates to more money anyway, because why on earth would you want more reach if not to make more money? So like the answer might surprise you, but I often say like down podcast downloads don't really matter. It's like they are a means to some sort of end. And what's also true about podcast downloads numbers is that they're a little bit of a misnomer because pod podcasters don't have a overall metric of the total number of people through the life of the show who have [00:14:00] ever checked it out, like social media platforms, your follower count. Like if somebody follows you on social media, they find your stuff, they click follow, and a lot of those people eventually will stop seeing your content. But there's still a follower for you. So you look at your social media and you see that number going up and up and up over the years, but it's not like if you have a hundred K followers on Instagram and you make a post and that reaches two to three thousand people, that's baseline, right? Yeah. But you still have that 100 K on the top of your profile. The same thing is true on YouTube. I was just at a conference where a very popular YouTuber was giving a presentation. It was an excellent presentation. And something that I noticed was that she had 800, 000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, and she showed a screenshot of all of her videos over the past couple, you know, her last like eight videos, and they all got between two to 3, 000 views on the video. Now, she was on that stage as a keynote, you know, with 2, 000 people on the edge of their seat listening to what she had to say because she had that big old 800k subscribers. But if you look [00:15:00] again at her videos, Each video was only getting two to three thousand views. Now, imagine if a YouTuber experienced what a podcaster...

Email Over Everything: Why Your Inbox Matters More Than Your Feed

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this episode I discuss the critical importance of prioritising email communication over social media for business owners. It addresses common reasons why business owners neglect emailing their lists and provides actionable strategies to overcome these barriers. I also outline the benefits of a consistent email strategy and offer tips on how to create engaging content for emails. The episode also includes steps to get started with regular emailing and emphasizes the long-term value of maintaining an email list for business success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Overcoming excuses: Addressing common reasons for not emailing (fear of bothering people, lack of content ideas, time constraints, small list size)
Creating an effective email strategy: Deciding on email frequency, format (love letter or newsletter), and content type
Consistency is key: The importance of regular email communication and building a relationship with your audience

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcription

One of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make is choosing to do social media over sending emails. As a business owner, there's a big focus on posting and being consistent on social media. And I get it. I'm not saying you shouldn't. However, the business owners that I work with that are hugely successful are the business owners who are prioritizing their email list. Yes, they are posting on social media, but that is never at the detriment of then not sending an email to their list. In today's podcast, I'm addressing some of the reasons you might not be consistent in sending emails, or you might not be sending emails at all and how we can overcome them. And then the three things that you need to make sure that you are consistently sending emails. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. How are you doing this week? Okay. This week I want to give you a little bit of tough love, but bear with me. It's going to be fine. It will be said with love, but I just want to spend some time this week talking about [00:02:00] sending emails and I can hear the collective groan. I'm sure. And some people are probably like, yes, I send emails. I'm fine. And other people are like, yeah, that's on my list. I keep meaning to do it. But the reason I wanted to talk about it is it's been coming up in my world where I've been having conversations with people. About their marketing and about getting visible and letting them be seen and how they are marketing themselves and their business. And I've had a number of people say to me that they are not consistent on email. They have not been emailing their list and yet they are working really hard to be consistent on social media. And it only occurred to me just the other day that. That is crazy. The fact of why would we be consistent on social media, a platform that we don't control, a platform that does not allow everyone to see our content and is based on an algorithm, and [00:03:00] yet when people have signed up to an email list to say to us, we want to hear more from you, that we don't email them. It just seems absolute madness to me. So that's why I wanted to do today's podcast about emails and why we should be putting as much time into sending emails as we do into posting on social media. And it's funny, I keep saying recently that I feel very anti social media and that is not the case at all. I am going through some stuff myself in terms of social media and what I'm going to do because my team changed and, and now I've been doing my own, which if you have been to my Instagram, you will see there is a lack of social media. And weirdly, it hasn't had any massively effective, massive effect to me. In fact, weirdly, I'm getting more followers, which is very odd because I am not posting anywhere near as much as we used to. However, I am consistent on email and always have been. Every Monday and Thursday now, [00:04:00] you get an email if you're on my list. Monday, I tell you what's coming up on the podcast and Thursday, I give you some value in some other way. So like I said, it really blew my mind that people, you know, and you might be sat there thinking, yeah, I have been posting on social media, but I have not emailed my list. So what I want to look at first is why maybe you're not sending emails. What is stopping you from sending those emails? Because I do think there is a definite brain block when it comes to sending emails more so than posting on social media. I wrote down some reasons why I think you maybe are not sending emails. And I'm going to address each one. So if any of these resonate for you, then brilliant. Hopefully listen to what I have to say, and hopefully this will convince you otherwise. So the first thing is people will say to me, they feel uncomfortable sending emails because they don't want to bother them. Okay, so this is not you force feeding someone something. This is something that someone [00:05:00] has opted into and at any point you welcome them to unsubscribe if it's not for them anymore. So this isn't something that you are like forcing ads at them or your, and this often can come down to, okay, well, what do you think is going to bother them and the content? And we're going to get to that bit. But if you think this is going to bother them, I want to remind you that they opted in for this. You should not have, and I'm sure you didn't just add people to your email list. People have actually opted in. So you're not bothering them. You are doing the thing that they've asked you to do. The other thing that's really important when you think, Oh, I don't want to bother them. I don't want to irritate them. It's as long as you tell them what they can expect and manage their expectations, then don't worry about it. Like. If it's too much, if two emails a week is too much for some people, they will unsubscribe. And I used to send three emails a week and I know, you know, some people send more than that. But if [00:06:00] it's too much, then they will unsubscribe and therefore they're not right for your email list and not right for you. However, as long as you're saying to them, this is what I'm going to do and you hold that commitment, then that's up to them to decide. So you're not going to bother them they have opted in for your email. It's even kind of more. Like you're potentially bothering someone more on social media. Now I know they followed you, but they could be scrolling through looking at dog reels, which is what my husband sends me all the time. And then suddenly they get a reel about something business. And then they might think, oh no, I don't want that. When they're opening your email, they are choosing to open and read your email. They are probably in a position where they open and read emails. So I tend to do mine sat at my desk, or obviously if I look at my phone, I know I'm opting in to do that. So This is not bothering them. This is actually giving them the thing that they've asked for, the first point. The second point, you've no idea what to send in an email, which again, like when I talk about this, if you go blows my mind, [00:07:00] because if you are doing social media content or if you are having conversations with customers, then you will know what to send in an email. All it is, is content in a different format. So if you have done a social media post where you have discussed something in your business or a problem that your customers have, then. Just do that same, but a bit slightly longer version in an email. It doesn't even have to be in a longer version. You could literally just put the same amount of text in an email and have it be a super short email if you want to. So in terms of what do you send them, you're not rewriting the rule book here. You are with however you are creating content. And if you're creating long form content like I am, and in fact, the next solo episode I'm going to do is going to be talking about why everyone should have long form content. If you're doing long form content, then I am spending, I don't know how long this episode will be, potentially 20 minutes long, telling you about something. Well, I could [00:08:00] take a snippet of this and put it in an email, which is exactly what I do on a Monday email. So if you are creating content, all it is, is putting it in a different format. So when you say, I have no idea what to send, then. That is, I think that is a case of you thinking that this has to be something new, something completely different. And in the past I would have done very different emails to my content on social media. Now, not so much. And I'm all right with that because not everyone will read every email and not everyone will see your social media posts. So if you're just duplicating, that is fine. You will get people who prefer to interact on your email and your open rate will be bigger than your algorithm on social media. The next one, it takes too much time. So the way that I do my emails, and I know that some people really struggle to write emails, and I have worked with some people in my accelerator and in my membership where I help them get over this, [00:09:00] but for some reason it takes hours to write an email. Now I have just blocked out some time in my diary for the next couple of days to work out and do some content, and I can write almost a month's worth of emails in a few hours. And I do not say that to be like, check me out. I'm amazing. But I just think it's the fact of. A, I'm batching them, so I'm doing them all together. B, once I get into a kind of stride, then great. And C, if I am planning my content, which I am anyway, then that takes up the majority of the time. Actually writing out what I'm going to say, is the easy bit. So for instance, planning this podcast, I spent a couple of hours yesterday planning this podcast and the next podcast, and it will take me less time to actually record the episode than it will actually what I plan to, you know, in my thoughts of what am I going to say? How am I going to structure it? What am I going to include in it? So, You are doing the content creation bit anyway. [00:10:00] You are doing the coming up with the ideas anyway, if you're posting on social media. The actual writing the email should not take that long. And if you are batching them and doing them together, you should be able to do four emails in an hour or two tops. So it doesn't take that much time. And I promise you any amount of time it is going to take is going to pay you back tenfold because emails are so much more powerful than social media. And then the last one I wrote down in terms of why people tell me they don't email consistently or why they're not emailing at all. My list isn't big enough. Okay. This is not about the numbers. This stuff, number things are vanity. If 10 people have signed up onto your email list, first thing I need to tell you is they don't know that they're only one of 10. Three of them are your family. They have no idea. All they know is that they've signed up to get your emails or they've opted in for something knowing that you are likely to send them emails. So they don't know how many people you have on your list. [00:11:00] So that's the first thing to scrap. Forget that you only have 10, 20, 50, 100. And again, it's all objective. Someone who would go, well, my, my list is only a thousand people. You would give potentially your right arm for a thousand people. And there's someone going, my list is only 5, 000 people. Someone else would give their right arm for 5, 000 people. So it's not about how many it's the fact that you have people on an email list, regardless, you should be emailing them. And the other thing I want to bring back to is the, the kind of vanity conversation. You can still sell to 10 people on a list and one person might buy. So, and I'm not saying, and I want to just make this clear, I'm not saying I only sell in emails because I don't. But you can add value and support someone, even if it's only a few people. And yes, it might feel like I'm doing a lot of effort to just contact 10 people, but again, go and have a look at your last social media post, how many people liked it and interacted with it. And does that even mean they read it? So [00:12:00] it doesn't matter how big your list is. If you have people on an email list, you should be emailing them. And all I'm going to do is get you into the habit of being consistent. And then when your email list is bigger, which is something that we look at in our accelerator program, we look at growing your visibility and your email list fast. So whether they start with 10 people or whether they start with a hundred people, They're emailing them from day one. Okay. So those are the reasons you might not be consistent. And I hope that maybe that has helped. And you've gone, yes, Teresa, that one is one of the reasons I'm not consistent and what you've said helped. So let me talk about the three things that are going to help you Email and email consistently to your list. The first thing is step one is you need to decide when and how often you are going to email. Make a commitment. Now for me in my business and how I work, making commitments is a really useful thing. If I tell people I'm going to do [00:13:00] something, I don't like letting people down and therefore I do it. So when I say to you, I email on a Monday and a Thursday and I get to You know, if I haven't batched and I've fallen behind and I get to a Thursday and think, Oh my God, I haven't written an email. I will make sure I write that email and get it sent because I've made a commitment. And yes, do I think everyone's sat there thinking it's Thursday, Teresa hasn't sent her email. No, I don't think they're doing that. However, in my head, that helps me. So what if you were to email your list today, let's take some action. And I actually want you to come back to me and let me know if you've done this. So, If you have not, if I'm talking to you and you have not emailed your list anytime recently, and you've just had people sat on your email list after they've opted in, you've not done anything with them. I want you to email them and go, Hey, I'm sorry. I'm a little bit rubbish. Use your words. How you would. And I should have been emailing you and I haven't. So I am going to set up a commitment to email you every week, every other week, twice a [00:14:00] week, not once a month. That's way not often enough because that's 12 emails a year. What if I said to you to post 12 times on social media, you'd think I was mad in an entire year. So. You're going to say to them, this is what I'm committing to do. I'm going to email you once a week, every other week, twice a week on whatever particular day, like I said, mine are Mondays and Thursdays. And then I am going to talk about. XYZ. I'm going to give you some value. I'm going to share ideas. I'm going to tell them what you're going to be providing them in the emails. And I kind of say things like, and the occasional funny story. And I also do say, and I will sell to you. I will give you offers when I think there is something good that you might want. So that's the first thing you need to do. Send an email to your current list saying, I'm very sorry. I should have been emailing you. And I'm sorry, I neglected you and I'm going to stop being consistent and I'm going to be consistent by emailing you on a Wednesday, [00:15:00] let's just say once a week. And in that email, I will be sharing with you tips, tricks, jokes, whatever it is that you might be sharing. That's step one. Step two, decide on the content for your email. And step two, when I talk about this, I talk about one of two things, either a love letter or a newsletter. So I tend to write a love letter where I've written it to one person and it has one focus. So I will tell a story that might then lead into a link to go and click. Like for instance, so. On the Monday morning, I will talk about the podcast and that'll have one focus of go and listen to the podcast episode and it'll give you the link to go and listen to it. And then on a Thursday, I might share, I don't know, what will I share? Oh, so for instance, the next one I'm writing or the next one that goes out is about, in fact, at the point of recording this, it would have already gone out, but it's about SponsorFest and how I'm speaking at SponsorFest as Summit. So I will share that. So there's some value there that they can join a [00:16:00] free summit. So think about. Is it going to be a love letter where it has one focus, one call to action, and normally one, one click? It doesn't mean just one link in the email, it just means it's going to one place. Or are you going to do a newsletter style where you focus on various different things? So a newsletter style is, here's a blog I wrote on this, click here to go and have a look. This is something I saw really interesting, click here to go and have a look. Here's my tip of the week. It's broken up. It's kind of what you would see more traditional emails. And in the past would have been more traditional newsletter emails, but it's broken up bits of content. Now, if you're doing that type of thing, then having a list of the type of content you can include on those would be great. But on the love letter, Emails that I send, I just have a one focus rather than going, okay, I need to include a tip. I need to include a blog. I need to include what happened on Instagram. I need to include [00:17:00] someone who's doing something brilliant. I only have one focus per email. Okay. And then the third part is actual content that goes in the email. I've just got some points that I just want to address with you. The first thing is. You do not have to do War and Peace, okay? This doesn't have...

Redefining Self Care with Taylor Morrison: Practical Tips for Business Owners

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this podcast episode, we discuss self care beyond conventional methods. Taylor, founder of Inner Workout and author, shares her unique perspective on self care, offering practical advice and revealing how she turned her insights into an accessible app. We delve into the importance of listening to oneself, breaking down self care myths, and integrating small, impactful practices into daily life. We also explore the impact of technology on self care and strategies to mitigate its effects. This conversation is essential for business owners looking to balance productivity with personal wellbeing.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Self-care is listening inwards and responding with love: It's not a set of tasks, but rather checking in with yourself and understanding your needs. Forget the "all or nothing" mentality and focus on what works for you in the present moment.
Start with cultivating the practice of listening within: This can involve journaling prompts to identify what drains your energy or simply checking in with yourself throughout the day. Learn to listen to your body's cues as well.
Develop a toolkit of self-care responses: This includes proactive activities you enjoy, but also reactive responses for when things go wrong. These can be anything from breathing exercises to calling a friend. Remember, self-care doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Taylor on Website, Inner Workout App Waitlist, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: Self care is a word that is often thrown around a lot. And sometimes we constantly think we must be doing more, especially as business owners. It is also something that I thought I had learned a lot about. However, today's guest talks about self care in a way that is completely different to how I thought about it before.

She offers practical advice on how to bring it into our everyday and really gets you to think what self care looks like for you. We also talk about why she decided to take her knowledge on self care and put it in an app and what it's taken to create that app and get it out into the world.

Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Terese Heath Waring. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, [00:01:00] but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in.

In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business. I hope you're good. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it. And this episode is a really good one. So we're talking self care, which is a word that is like thrown around all the time, and everyone thinks, you know, self care is sitting down with a book or having a bath or having a massage.

Now, and granted, all of those things are self care. And actually, as I record this intro, I have in my diary for later on today, a three hour reflexology and massage, [00:02:00] which honestly is like heaven. However, it's not really about the big self care stuff. It's about smaller things. And today's guest made me think completely different about what self care means and what it looks like, which for me was actually super good timing because I spent most of last year pretty much just doing self care.

Like, I was talking to my therapist the other day and I said that in 2023, I felt like I spent 45 to 50 percent of my brain space and energy on me and looking after me and about 10, 15 percent on the business and this year it's moved, and rightly so and I'm super glad because otherwise I wouldn't have a business if I carried on that way.

And. You know, I spend a big chunk of my time and my energy now on the business, which obviously I love and adore. However, it has meant that my self care has taken a bit of a battering. And I'm trying to find [00:03:00] a middle ground or a way in which I can manage my own self care and make sure I look after myself while still being super productive.

And this conversation was so well timed for it and really helped me think about it and also helped me get over the kind of pressure that we put ourselves under to go, we must do these things and to look at them differently. So today I'm interviewing the lovely Taylor Morrison. Taylor turned being bad at self care into her career.

She is the founder of Inner Workout and the author of the book by the same name, recently named on a Fortune's 10 innovators shaping the future of health. Taylor is tired of aspirational wellness as usual. Instead, she makes wellbeing and personal development more accessible. Taylor can go from facilitating workshops at a fortune 100 company to talking about TikTok and body image with a high school class.

She uses her [00:04:00] coaching, mindfulness and movement training to meet people where they are at and offer actionable steps towards creating a world without burnout. Like I said, it's a great conversation, which I think anybody needs to hear, but also as business owners, this is probably something that should be high up on our agenda.

So enjoy today's episode. Here's Taylor. Taylor, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Taylor: I'm doing so well. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Teresa: I am excited for this conversation because I was looking through your notes prior to your interview. And this subject we're going to talk about is a subject that I'm not very good at.

So I am going to be picking all your brains to, to work out how I get better at this. But before we get started, please tell my lovely audience who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do.

Taylor: Yeah, so I'm Taylor Elyse Morrison. I am the founder of Inner Workout. It's a company that makes wellbeing easier.

I'm also the author of a book [00:05:00] by the same name. So, and how did I come to this work? I, I mean, I chuckled a little bit when you said, this is a topic that you're not really good at because I come to this work. I'm not personally good at this work either. And before I got into this space, I was doing work related to brand strategy.

And I kept burning myself out and I realized that the way I was structuring my life really wasn't sustainable. And so I came to this topic because I kept hitting up against a wall. And as I shared some of my own navigating around self care, people started telling me that they had similar issues and that's how inner workout came to be.

Teresa: So just explain the actual app and how that works and what, what it is.

Taylor: Yeah, so for the inner workout app are the biggest complaint I've heard we inner workout as a company has been around for about five years. The app is just [00:06:00] launching and from back in 2019 what I heard from people is I don't have time for self care.

And I kind of wrote it off because I was like, I can't do anything to help that. But as I've talked with more and more people, what I've heard is, oh, there are ways we can help people have more time for self care. So there's two sides of the app. Part of it is that we've got different practices, meditation, journaling, breath work, these mini courses we call journeys.

Those most of them can be done in 10 minutes or less. So if you can find a little snippet of time in your day, there is something on that app that you can do to support your well being. The other side of things is what seems to get in the way of most people's self care is we're spending so much time on our phones. And so we have this functionality called lock sections that locks you out of distracting apps. You can set it on a schedule or you could do it one off and you can't go on Instagram or you can't go on Tik TOK until your time is up. So it really gets the willpower out of the [00:07:00] way. You don't have to have willpower. The inner workout app can support you.

Teresa: I love that.

And it's funny, right? So anybody who listens to this podcast regularly, one will hear my voice is a bit funny, which is because I've been doing too much. But secondly, they'll think the list you gave of like journaling, meditation, like they are things I do a lot, but yet I said to you, I'm not very good at this.

So there's obviously a disconnect in my brain between doing some of those things and self care and not necessarily seeing them as a self care. Like, is that something that you see that's pretty common? Is it that when people actually do stop and go through, they're like, Oh no, actually I do do some things.

Taylor: Yeah, no, that, that happens a lot. Most of the time people are like, Ooh, self care, I'm not really good at it. There's a couple pieces to that. So first what I'll offer is the way that I define self care, the definition we use at inner workout is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible.

[00:08:00] I really view self care less as a set of tasks. And more is you checking in with yourself in doing what you need in that moment with the resources that you have. And that definition alone opens up so many possibilities for what self care can be. I was leading a workshop yesterday and someone was like, Oh, I guess The bowling league that I do with my dad is a form of self care and she wouldn't have defined it that way before, but it sparked something.

The, the other thing that I will say is in terms of, oh, I do these things, but I don't think of them of self as self care. A lot of times we're so hard on ourselves. We also have these ideas. Self care should be a bath or self care should be a massage. And if I'm doing something, that's not that it's not really self care.

So that idea comes up a lot of times in conversation with people.

Teresa: And that's so interesting because as you started explaining that, that's why I think I didn't and I don't see it as self care because I have put it as [00:09:00] part of my routine and it doesn't feel like I'm doing, you, what was this, what did you just say?

What was your quote? Self care is something that is

Taylor: listening within and responding in the most loving way possible. So it's, and we can get into more of the different types of practices because what you're doing is you're doing a proactive practice. It sounds like. So you've built these into your schedule.

I would guess that you have reasons why you do them. They make you feel grounded or focused or connected to yourself. So. There are these things that you've put proactively on your schedule that it sounds like, and again, tell me where I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're not even fully thinking of it because you've just integrated into your schedule so seamlessly.

Teresa: A hundred percent. And also almost in a way where I could berate myself if I don't do them, or I'll feel frustrated. So I would have, I have a habit tracker. And, and it's funny because actually in the last few years, me [00:10:00] journaling and meditating has been imperative to my health and my self development.

And I spent the last year getting sober and getting sober. Like they had been imperative to that journey. However, it's funny because now. I don't feel the need to have to journal every day. So, which I try and see as a good thing, because it's like, okay, if I don't feel the need to journal, there's obviously nothing really like coming up that I want to journal out.

But because I set it as a task, if I don't journal, I then see it as, oh, I failed. I failed at doing that thing. Like, It's like I've taken a self care thing and, which really was a self care thing. Like I said, it was essential as I was, you know, doing all this personal development, working with my therapist, getting sober.

However, now I've almost turned it into an action. And if I'm not taking the action, I'm beating myself up because I didn't take the action.

Taylor: [00:11:00] Absolutely. And this is, this, this is so common. I'm glad that you're bringing this up because I know people are listening and hearing, Oh yeah, I do that too. So a couple of things that I hear happening, one is there's this cognitive distortion, all or nothing thinking our brain loves to use this as a shortcut where it's like, I am either good or I'm bad.

I, et cetera, et cetera. And that happens so much in self care, especially for many business owners. We tend to be high achievers. We tend to be perfectionist. And so we want to be able to check that box. I did this. And because I did this, that means I'm good. If I don't do this, that means I've fallen short.

I'm bad. I'm a slob. Whatever we do to berate ourselves. So one thing when I hear people in, in that space is try and encourage people to, to find the third option. So it's not so binary that I am good or I'm taking care of, how do I [00:12:00] want to say that? I gave myself a tongue twister. I'm either good or I'm Taking terrible care of myself.

Yes, like opportunities in between. The other thing that I hear, and I talk about this a lot too, is Our self care is supposed to evolve because we are always evolving and our environment is always evolving. So it sounds like what happened really naturally to you is that journaling I'll pull on that one.

Since you mentioned that specifically, you needed that in that time when you were getting sober and now. There are other things that fill your cup and feel more supportive. And so I think that's actually an opportunity to celebrate and to say, wow, I'm so in tune with myself that I realized I don't need this tool in the same way anymore.

And I'm finding other ways to replenish myself. That's actually, again, going back to that definition, that's you listening within and then responding in the most loving way possible. That response used to be journaling. It's [00:13:00] other things now.

Teresa: And that's such a good way to frame it and to see it and to, and like you said, not like to say, and, and I guess be curious about, well, what else could this be?

Like, I don't need, and I think for me, the way I use journaling was very much. If there's a problem in my world, I journal it out like, and that used to be my husband's go to, which was very irritating sometimes when I like, if I was in a bad mood, should you journal that out? And I'm like, I'll journal you out in a minute.

But anyway, like that was my thing and, and working through it through journaling was really, really helpful for me. And like I said, in one way, it's really awesome. But I haven't, I haven't seen it like this, that I don't have to do that every day now. And when I do journal sometimes, I'm like, I'm not even entirely sure what I'm journaling about.

But because that was one of my go to things, it's like, oh, I have to do it. But I think I love the fact of like, actually thinking about what I need right now. I don't need that right now. So I know this is like, And actually this is probably what you were, you alluded to before [00:14:00] about the tactic, like the tactic of doing a thing, because I was about to say to you, so give us some examples of what that might be, which is me wanting to go, where's the list of have a massage, you know, have a

Crafting a Standout Bio: Your Guide to Getting Noticed

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Discover actionable tips for writing a compelling bio that enhances your business visibility. Learn how to structure your bio effectively and choose impactful words with our free downloadable checklist. In this episode, I delve into the essential steps for writing a compelling bio that captures attention and enhances your visibility. Building on the key components discussed in episode 346 about getting on podcasts and stages, I provide actionable advice on structuring your bio, choosing impactful words, and offer a free downloadable checklist to streamline the process. I emphasize the importance of a well-crafted bio for all business owners, not just those seeking to speak publicly, and share examples of successful bios from participants in my program. This episode is packed with practical tips and strategies to help you create a bio that impresses and inspires. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Importance of a Strong Bio A well-crafted bio is essential for any business owner aiming for visibility. It's not just for pitching to podcasts or stages; it's a valuable tool for various business interactions. A strong bio can help you stand out and build credibility.
The Structure of a Great Bio A compelling bio should include: Clear identification: Who you are, what you do, and who you serve. Credibility boosters: Achievements, awards, collaborations, and media features. Storytelling element: A unique personal or professional anecdote that captivates the reader.
Continuous Improvement A bio is a living document. It should evolve as your business grows and your accomplishments increase. Regularly review and update your bio to reflect your latest achievements and offerings.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Grab my PERFECT BIO CHECKLIST Episode 346, Georgina Instagram, Emma Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

In episode 346, I talked to you about pitching and getting on a podcast and increasing your visibility by getting in front of other people's audiences. And one of the key components of that is having a bio that you can send off to people to get them to think, great, I want this person on my podcast or on my stage. But one of the big question is how do you write that bio and how do you make sure that you are selling yourself enough when naturally we probably don't want to do that? What should you include in it? What words should you use? How should you structure it? In today's episode, I am sharing all that with you. I'm also giving you the opportunity to download a checklist so that you will never have a problem writing your perfectly created and amazingly persuasive bio. And if you're thinking to yourself, Teresa, I don't want to go on podcasts or speak on stages. I can pretty much guarantee at some point in your business, you are going to be asked for a bio about who you are and what you [00:01:00] do. So this is a must listen for anyone in business. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. How are you doing this week? So this week I have a short but good episode for you. This is a [00:02:00] super practical one and a very important one. If you are wanting to get visible in your business. If you are a regular listener, you may remember that back in episode 346, we did an episode about pitching to get in front of other people's audiences and on other people's podcasts. And. One of the key things of that strategy, which is really important is having a bio that really sells yourself to the person that you're pitching yourself to. So in today's episode, I want to take a little bit of time to just go through what makes up a great bio. Now, if you're sat there thinking, I don't need a bio. I want you to maybe just listen to this episode anyway, because having a bio that explains who you are and how amazing you are is never a bad thing. Even if you don't want to go on podcasts, even if you don't want to go on stages. Someone at some point in your business will very possibly ask for a bio, and it is [00:03:00] so much better to have a bio written out ready that you write in a non rushed panicked way than not having one at all. So this is definitely one for any online business owner. Anybody wants to get visible, pretty much any business owner. It is super, super useful to have a bio. So let's talk about what goes into a bio. And one of the things that I've done is I've put together a checklist for you. So if you head to teresaheathwareing.com/356, as in the numbers 356, you will find a free download on a perfect bio checklist. So everything I'm going to talk to you about today, I have put on a bio checklist with an example of my bio. And. You can download that and basically have its hand when you are writing your bio. So the very first thing you need to think about is before we even start writing it, the bio is somewhere where you can show off and it should be somewhere where you show off. I should want to read this [00:04:00] thing and think, oh my gosh, they are really impressive. And I think sometimes people think you've got to have loads of. you know, you've got to be an author, you've got to be an international speaker, you've got to be all these other things. And that just isn't the case. You are able to write a good bio without necessarily having those things. But one of the things that having a bio makes you think about is what things do you need to try and achieve to help that bio? And I think, again, that's a really positive thing. So, I don't want you to instantly in your head, and I can hear you thinking, yeah, whatever. I haven't got anything to put in a bio. You absolutely have. And one of the things that I do with my group program, with my Rise Accelerator people is we write their bios and then I read them and then I tell them they're rubbish. And I tell them to write them again. I joke, they're not rubbish, but they're just not very good at like selling themselves. Cause that is a hard thing to do because naturally, And again, especially a lot of the people I work with are women. We're not brilliant at selling ourselves. So [00:05:00] actually one of the benefits of working with me in that situation, I mean, there's obviously lots, but in that situation is that I get to read their bios and I get to go, okay, no, hang on. And then the really cool thing is we talk about their work experience and suddenly I'm like, hang on a minute. You never said that. Like put that thing in there. Don't expect to just write this bio in a wanna and it'd be brilliant and done. I mean, great if you can, but the chances are you're going to have to go and tweak it and basically work on it over time. And mine is, mine is constantly evolving. And every time I do something new and every time I get featured somewhere and every time something different happens, I then tweak my bio and change it. Okay. So the first thing I would do is write down a load of different things. So the first thing you need to understand is in your bio, you've got to explain who you work with and how you help them. Okay. Your bio will tell me what you do and who you do it for. So that's the very first thing to get down who you [00:06:00] are, who you work with, and what you do for them. Then we're going to use paragraph one to do that, we're gonna talk about para like the first paragraph really is you explaining that bit, but I want you to do it succinct, direct, and very like aspirational, inspirational. Those are the words to be thinking about as you're writing that bit. And I'm going to read you my bio in this episode as well, so that you can get an idea of how this science in real life. So like I said, the first basic stuff, if you include nothing else, that is the thing I need. I need to know who you are. What you do and who you do it for, because that's the thing that's going to help sell you full stop. The other thing that I would like you to include is if you have any content. So when I say have any content, I don't mean personal social media. Are you a podcaster? Are you a blogger? Are you a YouTuber? Are you a speaker? Like, what thing do you do that could [00:07:00] actually be a really good thing? So even if you've just started a podcast or just started a blog, saying you are a blogger who talks about X, Y, Z is really good because that just gives you a bit more credibility. So those are kind of the basics. That's the kind of thing that you want in straight off the bat. Just the kind of, you know, this is who you are. This is what you do. The thing that you can write before it. But the reason I didn't say it first is because we need to, this is probably the last thing that comes is some kind of attention grabbing headline. Like, how could I sum up you and your journey in one headline? Can it be done? And if it can, great. If not, don't panic too much. So let me just read you the beginning of my bio so you can hear what I mean. So the attention grabbing headline, which I don't always use because I don't necessarily love it, but sometimes it's helpful is from unemployed single mum to six figure business owner. So that should hopefully go, Oh, okay. That's [00:08:00] interesting. Let's find out more. And then my kind of basic information bit is Teresa Heath Wareing. Make sure you put your full name. Also, this is the other really key point. Make sure you do it in a third person. You don't, you want your bio to be as if someone else is saying it, not I am da da da da. So Teresa Heath Wareing is an online business marketing and mindset strategic coach who works with course creators, membership owners, and coaches from across the globe. helping them to build a business and a life that they love. So that's the first bit, the basics. If you can do an attention grabbing headline, great. But the very basics are who are you, what do you do and who for? Let's talk about the next bit. So the next bit really is where I want you to shine and sell yourself. And this is where people get really stuck. Cause they're like, I don't have enough. I haven't done enough. There's not enough cool things, but what we're trying to do is find anything and everything, and then tweak it and see how that goes. So [00:09:00] where have you been featured? Have you been featured on a podcast? Have you been interviewed on a podcast? Was it a top 10 podcast or is it a top 1 percent podcast? Have you spoke at an event, at a summit, at a, on stage. Where have you spoke? Have you served an international audience or is it just a national audience? Have you guest blogged? So years and years ago when I did social media, I did a guest blog for social media examiner, which was a big thing in the day. So again, that was pretty notable. Any news outlets that you've been featured? So, Think about all the different places. Have you been on a local radio? Have you been interviewed for a local paper? Have you been featured on something? Have you written an article for something? Where might you have been featured? So this is other people's content and you have been featured there. Maybe you've been named in something, maybe you've actually written something or been interviewed, but what kind of things have you got? And again, just make a note of those things because what we're going to do is pull out the biggest and the [00:10:00] best things. The next thing I want you to have a think about is who have you worked with? Is there anybody in there that is notable or any big companies, people or companies? So have you done something for a massive company? Have you teamed up with someone else than being featured somewhere on their stuff? Like, have you done something with someone who is worth talking about? And it doesn't have to be someone that's obviously famous. It can be someone that's well known within your industry and your thing. But is there anybody that you have worked with or any companies that you've worked with that you can say I've worked with them and that can give you some credibility? Now this one should be easier of all these ones I'm talking about because you'll be surprised that like, you know, the people who have had work experience who have worked alongside some really big people or have worked for some really big companies. So who can you talk about that you have worked with that is notable person or A company. Okay. What awards have you [00:11:00] been nominated or won? Now I say nominated because that is just as important. If you have not won any awards, but you have been award nominated, then that's still important. The other thing I want to note here is it doesn't have to be in the last week or the last six months even. All the stuff that you are saying is fact and truth, just because it was maybe a year or two ago, does not mean that you shouldn't mention it. If it was an award for something you do not do now, then yes, probably don't mention it. However, if it is, you know, I won an award for speaking international women's speaking award, and that was like if quite a few years ago now, but I still say I'm an award winning speaker because I am. So, if It doesn't matter that it wasn't yesterday and it doesn't matter that you won as long as you say whether you won or you were nominated, I think that's fine. Like, and again, if you were shortlisted to win such and such award, but you didn't, then that is still worth mentioning if you have not won any awards, if you won the [00:12:00] awards and obviously talk about the awards that you've won. And if you won more than one award, you're multiple award winner, like make sure you put those words in to make me go, Oh, okay. Notable work experiences. So have you done anything that is particularly notable from a work experience point of view? Did you deliver training to over X amount of people? Did you get a client win X amount of money? Like, is there something that you can give me that is like, wow, that is super, super impressive. Then if your reach is important, Include that. And if it's a good reach, if your reach is not important to what you do, then don't bother. But if you can say you have served X amount of thousand people over the globe, or you have, you know, delivered training to hundreds of people, whatever it might be, if the reach is important, then include it. If it's not important, then don't. And then if there's nothing else notable that has come from somewhere else, is there something interesting about your story that you can include? [00:13:00] So is there something that's fun or different or can share that is kind of just a little bit like, Oh, that's super interesting. I want to find out more about that. The headline that I use sometimes the single mum to single unemployed mum to six figure business owner. That is part of my story. My story is obviously I started off without a job as a single mom. And I now have a six figure business. So that is an interesting kind of hook that hopefully some people might go, Oh, okay. That sounds great. So let me read you the rest of my bio before I then come on and give you some useful words to use. Okay. So I'm going to read it from the beginning again. From unemployed single mom to six figure business owner, Teresa Heath Wareing is an online business, marketing, and mindset strategic coach who works with course creators, membership owners, and coaches from across the globe, helping them to build and grow their online business so they can have a business and life they love. An international best selling author, award winning, keynote speaker and TEDx [00:14:00] speaker. Teresa is the host of a number one rated podcast, your dream business podcast, and has interviewed the likes of Denise Duffield Thomas, Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, Michael Hyatt, Jasmine Starr, Stu McLaren, Ryan Dice, and many more. Teresa is recognized alongside some of the world's digital marketing thought leaders and is widely regarded as one of the UK's leading marketing influencers. So that is what I would call my short bio. Like I can give them a longer bio if they want. I mean, that's still three paragraphs. It's probably not as short as some would like it, but also just to note at the end, the Teresa has recognized some of the world digital marketing thought leaders and widely regarded as one of the UK leading marketing influencers. Those were polls and charts that I was nominated in and features that I was given that called me that I didn't just decide that's what I am. But again, some of that was a few years back now, but I still include it because I, that is still fact and that was still the case. So you can hear the fact that I'm really [00:15:00] selling who I am. I have included everything I can that is of any notable. The thing I haven't included, obviously I've put all the names or not all the names,...

Seven-Figure Strategies: Graham Cochrane’s 5-Hour Workweek Strategy

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:00:00 +0100

This week, I sat down with the inspiring Graham Cochrane, a seven-figure business owner who has managed to scale his online business while working just five hours a week. Dive into an engaging conversation where Graham shares his journey, insights on building a successful online business, and actionable strategies for audience growth. Whether you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, this episode is packed with valuable tips to help you streamline your business and achieve your goals. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Building a Scalable Business: The importance of focusing on audience building as the primary asset for long-term success.
Creating Valuable Content: Strategies for creating engaging and valuable content that resonates with your target audience.
Personal and Professional Growth: The significance of aligning your business with your personal values and lifestyle.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Graham on Million Dollar Life Giving Business Formula Training, Podcast, Youtube, Instagram, Rebel book Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: If you got the chance to sit down with a seven figure business owner who only works five hours a week. What would you want to ask them? Well, this is exactly what I got the chance to do. I got the opportunity to sit down and talk to Graham Cochrane, who has a seven figure online business. And like I said, only works Five hours a week. And I got to pick his brain about how he has done it and how he has built his business. He shares the number one skill that he believes that every online business owner should have to build a successful business. And also he has a really fascinating question that we should be asking ourselves while we're building that business to ensure that we are attracting the right people into our world. It really is an insightful conversation, which I think you're going to get so much out of. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, [00:01:00] Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. This week, I have got an amazing guest for you. I'm interviewing the very lovely Graham Cochrane. Now I first met Graham when I went to the Kajabi conference last year, and he was one of the speakers on the VIP [00:02:00] day. And he's just one of those people who is so lovely and seems so nice that you just instantly want to be friends with them. And I spoke to him at the conference. And when I did the summit, I knew I wanted him to speak because at the summit, I got him to talk about his affiliate work that he does with teh Kajabi because he makes a ton of money through Kajabi affiliate. However, today on the podcast, I am picking his brain about completely different stuff. We are talking about how he built his business, how he finds the online world. And I'm asking him questions about what is working right now. What would he be doing if he was just starting out again? And he is a big YouTuber, has a really successful YouTube account. And I might mention to him that I'm thinking about a YouTube channel and I ask him what I should do and how I should get started. So it was an awesome way to [00:03:00] pick his brains about all that good stuff. He is a really lovely guy and very smart on what he does. And I know you are going to get so much value from this episode of this podcast. So. If you've got a friend who you think would also value this podcast, please do go and share it with them. And it would be remiss of me not to ask you while you're at it to give me a review on either Apple or Spotify. A lovely five stars would be amazing. I appreciate it so very much. And I want to remind you, if you have the VIP pass for the summit, then you can watch Graham's session that he did there. It really was excellent. Okay. I will leave you to it. Here's the lovely Graham. Graham, I am so excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing? Graham: Oh, I'm doing great. I'm not as great as you're about to be on your trip, so I can't wait to hear about it when you come back. Teresa: Yeah, it's an exciting time at the point recording this. We've got lots of exciting things coming up, which is awesome. So you spoke at the summit. And people loved your session. [00:04:00] And we had such a lovely conversation that you very kindly agreed to give me your time again and come and be a guest on the podcast. But just in case someone doesn't know who you are, we will start the same, maybe slightly boring way, but I find it helpful to explain who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Graham: Yeah, well, I'm excited to be here. I loved your summit. I love your energy. And when I got to meet you, I think in person at the Kajabi event in 2023, you were just super kind and nice to me. I got off stage and you said some nice things and you're very gracious. So I knew I liked you immediately when I met you. So. It's not a problem to spend time with you. Yeah, I would, I tell people I've been online about 15 years now in the online coaching space, selling courses, communities, masterminds, things like that. Originally in the music recording space, my first company's called the Recording Revolution. I'm a musician by trade. I grew up making songs, writing songs, but then I learned The art of recording and producing and audio engineering [00:05:00] and stumbled into content creation. I thought I was trying to put out some stuff on the internet in 2009 to get leads for a freelance service of recording and producing music. Had no idea that people would just like the content for what it was because they wanted to learn how to do it themselves and they didn't want to hire me as much as they wanted to learn how to do it. And so I became a, an educator and people wanted more content, more content, more YouTube videos, more articles. And I just was like, this is the coolest thing ever, but you don't make any money writing blog posts and making YouTube videos. So if I'm going to keep doing this, how can I make money? And that just opened the door to trying to figure this stuff out. I didn't know that these things existed. I didn't know the Amy Porterfield's of the world. They didn't know there was a world where people were selling courses. And so I stumbled into it, eventually figured out that was the having your own digital product was the best way, in my opinion, to monetize. I've done it all though. Affiliate marketing, brand deals, advertising, [00:06:00] sponsorships, done it all, but stumbled into that, built that business up. And then I would say the last six or seven years, I've been teaching people the business model, how to do what I've done in hobby niches, all kinds of niches. And Now I'm writing books and speaking and, and hanging out with cool people like you. So I just say, like, I like to teach, I like to empower people. I like people to get transformation. And I've discovered I have a gift of taking complex things, making it simple and helping people actually go implement it, which at the end of the day is what makes people have life changes when they actually do something with the information, right? Teresa: Yeah. And I'm so glad you said that because I think In this online space, there is no short of information and, and in terms of people teaching in this online space, there's no short of those people as well. But I think the one thing that people often miss is you actually need to do the work. So learn and find out and follow people and everything is brilliant, but actually You've got to go out there and you've got to do these things [00:07:00] or otherwise it's never going to actually happen and you can't live from the beach and earn money as you sleep. But I mean, it's nice. That would be lovely. But we do actually have to do some work as well. So when we had you on the summit, we talked a lot about you do a lot of affiliate stuff. You do brilliantly well with the affiliate stuff. You built a big audience. You are known for what you do, which is amazing. But actually I'm gonna be a bit selfish and like proper pick your brains on this session. Graham: Sure. Teresa: 'cause because it's my podcast that I can. But. Graham: Do whatever you want. Teresa: I'm also fascinated because you have been in this industry and this space for a long time. What are your thoughts? Because I feel like it's gone through various different things. And I've been in since probably about eight, nine years and I've seen lots of changes. So what changes have you seen and what do you see kind of really like, what do you, what do you project for the future of it or how we need to [00:08:00] show up or what we need to do if we want to be in this space? Graham: Man, that is a great question. Is that a good thing that I'm old enough and been around long enough that like I'm being asked that what have you seen this change? It's so funny. I still feel like I just got into it. Okay, so let's talk about what hasn't changed and then story about what's changed. Teresa: Yeah. Perfect. Graham: 30, 000 foot view. What hasn't changed and will never will change is really the audience is the asset. So you got to build an audience, right? I've, I've always said this and it's, it's proven true. Even though a lot of moving pieces change around, the core tenant is without an audience, nothing is possible, but with an audience, anything is possible. So we're really in the audience building business. And more than ever, you want to own that audience. You know, we're both Kajabi users. Whatever tool you use, you want to have an email list. You want to own the relationship so you can have direct communication with your people. And we're seeing this with platforms like TikTok. They're considering banning it in the United States and it's on the Congress floor. If you've built a business on TikTok, 2 million [00:09:00] followers on TikTok means nothing if it's banned, right? Or even if it's not banned and everyone leaves TikTok for the next TikTok, because that's what's happened, then you have to go rebuild those followers over there. You don't actually own the audience. So, You want to have your own audience, but the reason you want the, the reason the audience is the asset is because you may not know what to sell. You may not even like what you're selling. You may want to change what you're selling. It doesn't matter if they like you and they trust you, then you can monetize in a million different ways and you can even evolve. I've evolved in how I monetize and change, but it's like the people like me and the audience building is the hardest part and it's the part people don't want to do. They want to shortcut the process and let's just run ads or let me just, you know. And there are ways to bypass it a little bit, but what's the point if really the skill that's most necessary to win online is the skill of audience building, you might as well learn it now because then if everything's taken away from you, you can go build another audience. Absolute worst case because you've learned that skill of how do I, it comes down to serving people. Like no one's good. No one's going to follow you for no [00:10:00] reason. They have to have a reason. So that hasn't changed. And interestingly enough, email marketing has not changed, even though email, there's new nuances of like things that work and don't work, but like email marketing still is the number one driver of sales online, which is fascinating to me and everyone wants to kill it, but it's just not dying and maybe it'll die one day, but I, I really think it's, it's, it's going to be around for a long time. So email marketing hasn't changed, audience building hasn't changed. And then just paying attention to what your people want. And really listening. And this is, this is what's harder for people like you and me that are, you know, if you want to call us OGs or whatever. When you're starting out, you're scrappy and you're willing to like, listen and, and pay attention. And then when you get some success, it's very easy to just, let's just do more of what's already been working because now that I've cracked the code, I don't need to think anymore. And then you start to decline because now you're not doing the thing that got you there, which was paying attention to what your people want and being scrappy and innovative and [00:11:00] excited. And so it's very easy to get dogmatic about your own thing that was innovative at one point. And, and that's true for me. Like, well, this is the way I do things and this is the way it's worked. And so I think you always got to stay in that lane of what do my people want? They used to want this or that I used to, My videos used to do well when I did this, but if it doesn't work anymore, be willing to not just change and trend chase. It really is because trends don't matter. What matters is what your audience wants and your audience is different than my audience. They are very unique. And the way you win is by serving the audience. So those are all the things that are 30, 000 foot view, but they're so important. And those haven't changed. A lot has changed. I think there's, it's easier in a way than like the tools are. I mean, if anyone complains about the tech staff or the tools today, I just. I just don't have patience for that. It is so easy to push a button, create a brand and monetize [00:12:00] your knowledge. Yes, it takes work. And this is called a business. It's a business, but it is, this is not hard work guys. This is not hard work. So the easier tools, more creative tools. AI is very interesting. I feel like I'm kind of a late adopter in the sense that I don't, I don't nerd out over the newest thing. So I probably that's to my disadvantage. But even I am not an idiot enough to know that like AI is only going to be a tool to speed up things. Like we're in the creation business. So if it can speed up my content creation, if it can speed up my web design, if it can be a bridge between me and my clients and Whether it's an AI chatbot that helps answer some of their low level questions that so I don't have to or my customer service person. I think those tools are new and those are changing. And if people get uncomfortable with them, it just think about, again, it's just a tool. How can I use this tool to make my business faster, leaner, increase or improve the customer experience. Those things are all in flux. And then here's, here's what I'm thinking about Teresa. [00:13:00] This is interesting because the last, I would say the last six years. I've had a lot of not pushback, but a lot of people asking me, Graham, why aren't you doing a lot of short form content? Why aren't you jumping on, you know, especially the last five years since Tik Tok really started to emerge. Why aren't you on Tik Tok? Why are you doing a ton of reels? Why aren't you doing YouTube shorts? And I mean, I've done a few of these things. And there's been this push and this trend to do that. And then what's fascinating to me is I've, I like doubled down on long form content. I went longer. Everyone got shorter. I went from like 15 minute videos to 30 minutes to 45 minutes. And I don't know if you've been following, you know, Mr. Beast and Alex Hermosi, but even Alex a week or two ago of this recording posted that he's, he's moving away from short form content. He's moving to longer form content, and he's moving away from all of the different random topics that grew his audience and realizing none of those people converted into customers or into the right prospects. So he's like, I'm going to just double down on one [00:14:00] lane for the type of audience that I want to build. One type of content, educational in nature, not entertainment in nature, because people who consume your entertainment content don't want to buy education. They want more entertainment. People who consume your education content want more education. So if you're selling information or education, that's, I'd rather have a smaller audience. That's the right audience....

CEO Mindset: Transforming Your Approach to Business

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this empowering episode I dove into the importance of showing up as the CEO of your business. I share insights on making decisive, confident decisions that align with your vision and goals. Drawing from my personal experiences and recent speaking engagements, I also offer actionable strategies to help business owners take charge and steer their ventures toward success. Whether you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, this episode will inspire you to embrace your role as the leader of your business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Embrace Your Role as CEO: I discuss the mindset shift required to view yourself as the CEO of your business, regardless of its size. Emphasizing the importance of owning your decisions and actions to drive your business forward.
Defining Your Success: It's crucial to define what success looks like for you personally and professionally. I encourage listeners to set their own standards and goals without feeling the need to justify them to others.
Taking Responsibility: Reflect on both your successes and failures by taking full responsibility for your business outcomes. Highlighting the significance of acknowledging your role in every aspect of your business to foster growth and improvement.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

If I was to ask you, if you were showing up as the CEO of your business, what would you think? What would your answer be? Would you think, don't be ridiculous, Teresa, it's just me and my business. I'm hardly a CEO. Or would that immediately make you think of, you know, men in suits running massive businesses? In today's episode, I share with you why you want to show up and become the CEO of your business and what that means when you make decisions in your business. This episode is going to give you a lot to think about, and also it's going to give you the confidence to go out there and get what you want. So get ready. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing this week? Okay, so I feel like. I want to talk about a couple of things and at the moment in my head it feels a bit disjointed so I really hope it all comes together to make a nice, succinct, powerful, impactful episode but there's no promises, that's all I'm saying. So there's a couple of things that have been making me think recently. Firstly, I have been speaking at a ton of events. So in the last few weeks [00:02:00] I spoke at three different conferences. One of them was Atomicon where I ended up doing a three hour workshop and then the next day doing a Normal session and then I came home for a day and then I was up in Newcastle I went down to London and I did a session for Kajabi at their UK conference and then the following week I did a session for a IT Conference in Birmingham. And the reason I bring all this up not to just go how busy if I've been with conferences. They've been like buses, nothing for ages and then three come along at once. But the reason I bring it up is because I've had loads of conversations with people recently about business, themselves, confidence, sabotage, becoming more visible, all different things around business. And, and it's just made me think a whole lot about a few things and a few concepts that I want to bring up to you. And this is also perfect timing because last week in the club, we did a mindset session about becoming the CEO in your [00:03:00] business and what that means. So it's kind of a combination of all of those things that I want to bring together in this episode, but I do think there's got to be some really key messages to take as a business owner and a couple of exercises that I'd like you to think about doing that I got to do with my members. Also now would be a really good time to mention that if you want to work with me, the club is one of the most cost effective ways in which you get to work with me and you get to work with me directly. So the club is a community for business owners that want to drive their business forward. It is made up of various different activities. These activities include mindset sessions, which are so powerful and tend to give The biggest ahas and breakthroughs, they are coaching calls, we do coaching calls every month where you get to come on a group call with me and ask me questions directly and I get to understand your business and find out more about you. You get to do either what I'm calling, which is a [00:04:00] terrible name, T's templates, terrible name. I need to come up with a better one. But basically that's where I take you behind the scenes of my business and I show you how I plan my podcast, what I do in Asana, how I manage my content. How I bring on team members. So basically, how did I build my six figure business. You get to understand that too. We also bring in guest experts and we can do challenges as well. We don't do them every single month, but we choose either a template, a guest expert, or a challenge. Well, the reason we don't do a guest expert or a training every month is because in my head, you don't need more courses. What I think has happened is we all think that there's a course out there that's going to suddenly make us hugely successful or is going to give us the magic trick that we didn't know about and that isn't the case. The case is you've probably got access to all the things that you need and if you're in the club then you definitely have because we have a ton of courses in there already but I actually tell people not to just go off and start working your way through them but to come on a [00:05:00] coaching call with me and I will direct you to the thing that's going to be most useful to you at this point. And that might be a mindset session, or it might be just the coaching call. And then what we also have is implementation. So. One of the things I'm really keen at is accountability and action. So let's make sure that you are actually doing the work because that's what's going to drive your business forward. Not buying another course. That sounds really harsh, but I wanted to mention that. If you do want to work with me, come and take a look at the club. You can actually join the club for an entire year. So that's 12 months of coaching with me in a group setting for only, $2,222. So if you're in the UK, that's about £2,000 probably a little bit less actually. So honestly, the club is an absolute bargain way to work with me, to get some coaching with me, to do some mindset stuff, and also to be part of this such a beautiful community. I really do have the best people in my world. I am very, very lucky. So yeah. So [00:06:00] if you want to work with me and you've been thinking about it and maybe some of the higher touch things have just been a little bit out of the budget at the moment, then the club is definitely the place to come and start. So if you had to teresaheathwareing.com/theclub, you can find that everything there and you can sign up. Okay. So let's talk about today's episode. We're going to be talking about being the CEO of your business. And the very first thing I want to talk about is that phrase. Because sometimes that phrase can conjure up like the weirdest thing for me in terms of like, I'm imagining a man in a suit being the CEO like it just that the CEO of your business kind of doesn't resonate with me sometimes, but it's the example I'm going to use in terms of getting us to think about stepping up in our business. Because even though you may not feel like a CEO, and I don't feel like a CEO lots of times when I'm literally doing the bits and bobs in the business, we are the CEOs of our business, we are the people who are running our business, and we are the ones who are going to be able to drive it forward. [00:07:00] So one of the things that I really hope that I do, and one of my main aims, is to empower business owners to get so clear on what they want, that they almost become bloody minded, right? And I really, I keep using this phrase because this is how I feel this year. I feel absolutely so clear on my direction. I don't feel like I could be swayed in the sense of, I don't feel like shiny object syndrome is going to come and bite me on the backside because we all know that happens. We all know that we have a plan. We think we want this. And then someone says, Oh, you should do something on Tik TOK or you should change your podcast or you should do something else. And we can get sort of pulled in every direction, and that sometimes isn't why we're hitting our goals and why we're reaching our goals, because if we're getting pulled off in every direction, imagine, you know, it's like a plane or a boat being one degree off course and ending up in an entirely [00:08:00] different place compared to where you thought you were going to be. So that's why we need to be so clear. And my job is to not only help business owners get abundantly clear on what it is that they want and what's important to them, but also give them the confidence, the courage and empower them to go after that thing. So this is the kind of concept that I'm trying to talk about today. When I'm talking about the CEO of your business, It's about saying, okay, this is my business and I get to decide what I do in it. And before I go to the exercises, I just want to mention something that actually I did on my Instagram. I went live the other day. I actually also went live showing you my garden, but that's different content altogether. I went live the other day talking about this, but basically the concept of this was you get to choose your definition of success and your business. So you get to choose whether that means working three days a week, [00:09:00] who that means working with, how hard you work, what you do in your business, who you work with in your business and how much money you want to earn. And I say this because I want you to understand that you do not owe an explanation to anybody. And I'm going to say that again, you get to decide 100 percent what you want in your business and how you want it to look. and you do not have to explain yourself to anyone why you want it that way. So this year, after getting sober, I have really big aspirations for myself and my business, more than I've ever had, I think. And I guess the difference is, I guess I've always had those aspirations, but I guess I never believed it as much as I believe it now. Because obviously I was dealing with so much stuff and an addiction and my own self integrity and dealing with myself that I never quite maybe believed that I could have what I wanted, whereas now I am [00:10:00] one million percent head down, focused on it, want to create this, this business that I want. And that actually means money for me. That means there are lots of things to it, but actually one of my massive goals is earning a lot more money this year. And I want to do that and I am not going to apologize for wanting to do that and neither should you. So whether it is you want six or seven figures, and I know there's a whole thing and I've talked about it before about the sleaziness of, you know, six figure launch, seven figure launch. But actually, one of the things that I talked about in that live I did was. When I said some of that stuff, I feel like that said more about me than about the other people. Now, I don't like sleazy selling. I don't like selling the dream where it's necessarily not as easy as they're making out. That I am still very clear on. That I am still very confident about. However, I think in the past where I might have sort of said some things or felt like, you know, I [00:11:00] don't do it that way. And that's, I don't even know that I ever said that's not the way to do it, but. I guess I felt like I had strong opinions on stuff, although I do think that I wasn't very vocal about it, which I'm very grateful for, but me having those strong opinions was actually nothing to do with them. It was everything to do with me. I did not feel happy in myself. I did not feel confident in myself. I did not feel Like, I was doing a great job because I wasn't, because everything was a mess, and therefore, because of that, it was much easier, and one of the things I talk about in the self sabotage training that I've done, and I did literally last week, is one of the ways we self sabotage is joining in and creating drama. So when we're going, oh, you see, so and so, they're doing this, oh, who do they think they are? That is so much about us. That is not about them at all, because it's so much easier to look at other people and be like, who do you think you are or look at you or can't believe they're doing this then actually to stop and [00:12:00] look at ourselves for five minutes and go, are we happy with what we're doing and how we're showing up and what we're achieving? That is so much more of a thing and so much harder to do than it is just to look at someone else and create drama or say stuff about them. I really hope this is helping and I really hope this is, you can take my mistakes and the things that I did and the things that I wasn't good at and you can actually maybe be better than I was than that. And, and the funny thing is I do not feel any shame. I mean, I didn't do anything mean. I wasn't horrible, but I just know in my head I was like, it was so much easier to look at other people and think that they were doing it wrong than actually look at my own stuff. And I don't feel shame about that, I don't feel sorry about that because I was a very unwell person, I was battling with an addiction, I was trying to be so vulnerable and so honest, but deep down knowing I wasn't being either of those things, because the [00:13:00] one biggest thing in my world was I had an addiction and I wasn't honest about it. Not even to myself. So, so I don't, I don't feel angry or annoyed at myself. I feel genuinely sorry and I am so glad I'm out the other side and I am so glad that I can see this now for what it was. That it wasn't me having a problem with someone earning six or seven figures. The problem was how I felt about me and me not earning seven figures. So, I'm kind of coming at it from two parts. The one part is, you get to decide what's important to you and you don't have to justify that or explain that to anybody. And they don't have to agree with you. Someone doesn't have to agree with you. If you say, I want to earn seven figures, someone else can go, well, that's not important to me. And that's absolutely fine. And also, you get to choose, and they get to choose, Whether you still wanna be in someone's life. So since I have made this decision, well, I haven't even made the conscious decision, but this, since I've woken up and I've really started to go, okay, let's do this. I'm ready [00:14:00] to absolutely crush it. That has changed some of the people in my world and that has moved some of the people in my world out. And I didn't want that. And I don't love it, but it's the right thing for them. And they are making the decision that actually, you know. They can step out of my world because that doesn't fit with them anymore or they don't agree not agree, but that's just not a priority to them anymore. And the thing with me is I will never even though I might want to go after something I will never say you have to do that like I said my job is to help you understand what you want and empower you to go and get it. And Like I said to make sure that you are not offering up an explanation to anybody that has a problem with it You don't have to do that. So it's okay for people not to agree with you And some won't, and some won't like the way you're showing up, as they haven't liked, some people haven't liked how I've shown up. And also, getting sober, and it seems ridiculous, why would someone not like the fact that I've got sober and become more ambitious, and want to achieve more? Well, I don't know, and that's a lot down to them and not down to [00:15:00] me. So it's okay if people don't love your decision. As long as you're not going out there to be mean, which I know full well you wouldn't be because you're in my world and you're not that sort of person and neither am I. So I've never done anything to purposely upset or offend or, you know, put people off me. That is the last thing I'd want to do. However, Some people just won't be on board with that because that's not their world and they don't want it and that is absolutely fine. Because you're not doing that for them, you're doing this for you. So if that does happen, we just have to go, it's making space for other people who do align with who we are and how we want to show up in the world. And like I said, some people will not like that you are showing up better. Some people really prefer it when you are messed up and not as successful as you are. And, and like I said, all that is to do with where they are. And on the reverse, I just want to say, and like I said, I can come from real experience on this. But if you are looking at other [00:16:00] people and you are going, I don't know who the hell they think they are, or I can't believe they're doing this, or you are creating drama and you are going to other people and going, look at so and so and what they're doing. Aren't they ridiculous? Then again, we have to go, is that, is that me? Is that a problem with me? Because it absolutely was a problem with me in the past. Maybe we need to step out of our own judgment and view that they're doing the best they can and they're doing the thing that is most important to them. So. It was kind of a weird, this isn't necessarily what I talked about on the, on my mindset session or not in this in detail, but it really does kind of set you up for the kind of task that I did in the mindset session. So one of the things that I talked about, and this is a hard concept for me to be totally on board with, but it is...

From Corporate to Community: Building a Purpose-Driven Community with Megan Tobler

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 01:00:00 +0100

In this inspiring episode, I welcome Megan Tobler, the founder of Self Start Her, a thriving community for women entrepreneurs. Megan shares her journey of leaving the corporate world and creating a mission-driven business aimed at supporting and uplifting female entrepreneurs. Despite being laid off while pregnant, Megan focused on building a strong foundation for her community first before thinking about monetization. Listen in as she discusses her motivations, challenges, and the incredible support system she has built along the way.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Mission Over Money Megan started her business with a strong mission to help others, putting community building and support before monetization. This approach not only set a solid foundation but also created a loyal and engaged audience.
Leveraging Skills and Passion Utilizing her sales and communication skills, Megan successfully launched the Self Start Her podcast, which became a pivotal platform for sharing the stories and insights of female entrepreneurs. This initiative was driven by her passion for connecting and supporting other women in business.
Navigating Challenges with Grace Megan's journey included significant challenges, such as being laid off while pregnant. However, she embraced these obstacles with resilience and grace, focusing on her long-term goals and leveraging the support of her family and community to continue building her dream business.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Megan on Website, Instagram, Linkedin, Podcast, Youtube Connect with Teresa on Website, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: You will know that starting a business is not for the faint hearted. And most of us start understandably so with the intention of, I need to make money. I know that was a hundred percent me and we build everything else around that. So money is the first priority. And then we think about the audience and the websites and the messaging and all that sort of good stuff. But what if that wasn't your first thought? What if you started your business purely with a mission to help others first and then making money was the later thought. That's exactly what today's guest has done. And not only did she do that, but she did it after she was made redundant while pregnant with her first child. So in today's episode, you will learn all about why she created a community first and how she plans to monetize this in the future. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. If you are new to the podcast, welcome. I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. And every week I bring you either amazing guests who have inspiring and awesome stories to tell [00:02:00] And then I mix that up with solo episodes where I give you strategy and tips and tactics and more kind of practical stuff. And today I have an interview for you. Now, Megan is someone I met quite some time ago when I was interviewed on her podcast. And in fact, if I remember rightly, I reached out to her and I found her podcast and said, do you want to guest or would you like me as a guest? And that's how we connected. And we've stayed connected ever since. And I'm so grateful to have her on my podcast now. So Megan Tobler is a trailblazer in the world of woman entrepreneurism. After 10 years in corporate world with a successful career in sales, She became passionate about redefining her definition of success and creating a life that would allow her to have freedom she craved and the ability to make an impact. As the host of the self start her. So it's like stealth self starter, but with her at the end podcast, Megan has created a platform for women entrepreneurs from all over the [00:03:00] globe and all walks of life to share their stories, paths, challenges, and triumphs. It is her goal to inspire more women and follow their hearts, launch their own businesses, and to start living life on their terms. So Megan really truly aligns with me and who I am and the work that I do. But what I love about Megan's story and what you're going to hear is she's kind of gone and done it a different way round to the way lots of people start a business. And the foundation she is building are phenomenal. And this is really coming from a place of passion, a place of wanting to serve. And honestly, you know, when you meet someone and they're just the nicest person. That is Megan. So I know you're not only going to love her, but you're going to be super inspired by what she is creating and building and want to go and follow her and check her out. As always, we link up to everything in the show notes. So you can go to Teresa Heath wearing. com /357 as in the numbers three, five, seven. That's the [00:04:00] number of today's episode. And basically you can find the show notes there and all the links to everything we talk about. So. Please welcome the very lovely Megan Tobler. Megan, I am so happy to have you on the podcast. How you doing? Megan: Teresa, I'm so happy to be here. I'm doing well. How about yourself? Teresa: I'm great. It's been a while since we spoke. When did I come on your podcast? Megan: Oh, goodness. I want to say that we actually touched base about a year ago this time last year. So it was probably March or April ish. Well, I guess we're in May almost, tomorrow. Teresa: Yeah, I think it was because when I spoke to you, you were pregnant. Megan: Yes. Teresa: And it was a very, it was an awesome conversation in terms of like, what you were doing. And I remember immediately being, Oh, I want to work with her. I want, I want to help her. I want to like, she needs to come and work with me in some way. Like I just loved you from the minute we had a conversation, which was awesome. So I always start my podcast same way. I do need to change it up. I will at some point, but we're not there yet. Please [00:05:00] explain to my lovely audience who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Megan: Well, first of all, I have to tell you, Teresa, I think the feeling was absolutely mutual. I was telling you before we hit record today that you said something that really struck home with me a year ago when we connected, and that was to give yourself grace in the season of life. And so for the last year, any single time that I was feeling that I wasn't doing something in the quote unquote right way to really take a step back and just be like, you know what, I'm going to give myself grace right now. I'm going to do a Teresa. So thank you so much for doing that. Teresa: My pleasure. I'm so glad it's that. And I'm so glad you do it because you need to give yourself grace because you're doing a lot of things at once. So yeah, I love it. Megan: And we'll talk all about that. I'm sure about everything that we're doing, but to answer your question, as, as you already mentioned, my name is Megan. I, as from my accent can probably tell that I'm not based in the UK. I am actually across the pond all the way in sunny California. But I am the founder of self start her and self start her [00:06:00] is a growing community of women who really dare to take a chance on themselves and to change their lives. I've created this platform where I have created resources for aspiring and really new entrepreneurs to be able to really learn how to get started and how to grow and sustain a business. So we can definitely dive a little bit further into this, but my story is all about just getting started and taking the right steps and in a direction. Teresa: Love it. So when we spoke, you had either stopped working or you were about to stop working. So tell us what you did prior to starting doing this. Megan: So I spent almost a decade in corporate sales. I was thriving. I was making multiple six figures a year. I was, I was doing great. I thought on paper, I had it all. I had the house, I had the car, I was taking great vacations, but I had absolutely no life. And I knew that that [00:07:00] wasn't something that I wanted to do moving forward once I started a family. And I always had this itch inside of you. I think that you have, some of you have it, some people don't, and that's totally fine. Whatever that is. But I had this like burning itch that there was something that was inside of me that was just craving to, to be unleashed. But I didn't really know what that was. I thought it was more in the corporate world. So I kept climbing that ladder, trying to get the fancier title and the bigger paycheck and all that stuff, but it wasn't doing it for me. So I started dabbling in little side projects, trying to think of, okay, what, what is it that's going to really fulfill that itch? And I didn't know really where to start. So I started, I took a step back and I was like, you know what, what is it that you're good at and what is it that you really like to do? And so I realized, okay, I came from the corporate sales background. I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories and I love helping them. And [00:08:00] also I was good at listening and also good at communicating a message. So I thought, you know what, why don't I start a podcast where I'm interviewing women who are already doing what I want to be doing so that way I can learn from them and at the same time put out that content into the world to be able to make sure that I'm paying it forward. So that way it's really encompassing everything that I was good at and then also everything that I was craving as far as more making more of an impact. So I started with a podcast. And I did that for a few months, and in January, no, March of last year, I was actually laid off after announcing my pregnancy to my company. And I had the choice to either. Teresa: Is that not illegal? Megan: Technically. Teresa: It would be in the UK. Megan: It would technically there, there's workarounds, so they laid off my entire department, so I wasn't singled out. So that's how they get away with it. But I [00:09:00] truly believe I would have been moved into a different department had I not announced my pregnancy to the company. But I think that things happen for you. Yeah. And not to you. Yeah. And so I truly believe that that was meant to happen in order for me to take the leap and just go for this. Teresa: Yeah. Megan: So that's what I did. Teresa: So I want to go back a bit. The the fact that you started a podcast, well, the fact that you went, okay, there's something else here and I want something else and what else could I do? And you then decided to start a podcast. Because anybody who is listening to this and who has had a podcast or thought about doing a podcast, it is a ton of work. Having a podcast is not a like, I don't want to use not easy because it's not that it's not easy. It just, there's lots of moving parts and there's lots of skills that maybe we haven't used before because naturally, you know, Interviewing takes skill and it takes a certain, you know, type of person to be able to do it, getting it out there, [00:10:00] marketing it, getting guests, like there's a lot of moving parts. What made you think, I'm going to do a podcast? And you worked full time, like you had no reason to do something like that. There was no like, I've got to make money from it or whatever. It was just almost a hobby, I guess, at the beginning, was it? Megan: Absolutely. I, it was a curiosity factor. I really wanted to understand how to build my own business. I knew that I wasn't at a place yet to completely make the full transition out of corporate into a life of entrepreneurship. If I didn't really knew, know what, I wanted to do. So I think that's where the podcast started, but I also didn't think about it even being hard. That didn't even cross my mind to be honest with you, Teresa. It was one of those things where I just made the decision and sometimes getting to the decision and make taking the action is the hardest part. So once I just made that choice, I just said, you know, I'm going to go for it. So I actually used my sales skills [00:11:00] and I created a prospect list of every single female entrepreneur that I knew personally. And I started using my sales tactics and I wrote personal emails to each one of these women not only emphasizing what I was doing, but how I could really highlight them and how it could really impact their business because it, it, it wasn't about me. It was about them. And so, and then also the bigger mission. So I made sure to really emphasize like, how, why this is important and why I believed in what I was doing. So I got a resounding yes all across the board, but I was really intentional by who I reached out to first, because when you get started, it truly is the hardest part. So I really wanted to make sure that I started with positivity and that I knew that I would reach out to someone that would give me that yes in order to keep going. So I got someone that I knew would tell a wonderful story, but also someone that would, I don't know how to say [00:12:00] this, but like boost my confidence level and the fact where I could get that yes to keep moving forward. So I started recording in June of 2021, I believe, or is it 2022? All my dates are getting mixed up at this point. But 2022. Yes. Cause we're in 2024. Thank you. And so I started in then then, but I, I just kept recording and recording, but I didn't publish anything. I really wanted to make sure that I had a library of resources built up to make sure that I could keep going. And then I found Kathy Heller's podcasting course and I'd already started everything, but I needed a little bit of a jump or kickstart in the derriere to get me to actually publish it. So I will tell you, I didn't even finish Kathy's course, but what it allowed me to do is to get back into the game, get the confidence to post it and also to surround myself with a community of women who were [00:13:00] also going through the similar process and we all just really linked arms together and we just did it. And so Kathy is a huge reason why I put it out there. And I will tell you, I was a little gutsy. There's something called the pod fade, and I believe it's around seven or eight episodes where if someone starts a podcast, they typically fizzle out. And so I learned about this through Kathy and I decided that at that point I had seven or eight episodes already recorded and I didn't want to be the pod fade. So I reached out to Kathy, I did a personal video and I said, Kathy, I, I just invested in your course. I'm one of your students. I have this many podcast episodes recorded. Will you be my number eight? I didn't get a yes, but I got a really nice response back. But that allowed me to put myself out there and to just announce what I was doing. Because once you announce it, it's real. So here we are. Teresa: There's so much of this that I resonate with so [00:14:00] much. Like the putting yourself out there, the, the, So much of this I have done, whether it was an intentional or not intentional and or something I learned afterwards, but the fact of I am really good when I've told the world I'm doing something and then I do it like sometimes if it's like I am going to do that, I am going to, but I'm not telling anybody. It takes ages to happen. Things like the sending the personal messages out to people. I a hundred percent did that when I got my first few guests. It was very much like, I want you and I will make every effort to make sure I get you. And I think, I mean, it still blows my mind that you were working and you did this as like, you know, a side thing. And I do think, I just want to say, I think there is something about American people that have a very different approach to work to UK people. So one of the things that I have noticed a lot is [00:15:00] I went and did a talk in Nashville a couple of years back now for seven figure business owners. And so many of those seven figure business owners had still had jobs or were just waiting until it had hit another point or a certain point before they left their job. And they were running businesses alongside a full time job. I'm working with someone at the moment who's in one of my group programs Who has two jobs and is creating an online business like you guys work, you are not afraid of putting your, you know, your head down and going, I'm gonna try and make this happen. But, but what's interesting in this story is, correct me if I'm wrong, but there was never a, a money goal immediately in mind. There was never like, I'm doing this because in three weeks time I want to earn this, doing this. Or did you always have a long thing in mind, or it sounds like it was like a self-discovery thing first before it was anything else. Megan: It was absolutely a self discovery thing. So you're completely correct. I had no intentions to monetize it [00:16:00] right away. I started, I put the first episode out in October 2022. And we're going to go back on that.

The two most powerful lead magnets that can help you grow your email list quickly

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode where I reveal the secrets behind the two most powerful lead magnets that can help you grow your email list quickly and effectively. I share personal anecdotes and expert tips on why these lead magnets are so effective and how you can create them for your own business. Whether you are a course creator, membership owner, or coach, this episode provides actionable strategies to enhance your marketing efforts and build your audience.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The Effectiveness of Checklists and Templates I discuss how checklists, templates, and toolkits serve as powerful lead magnets by providing immediate value to potential clients. These resources offer quick wins and practical steps that help establish trust and demonstrate expertise.
The Power of Engaging Quizzes Quizzes are highlighted as another highly effective lead magnet. They captivate attention by offering personalized insights, which tap into people's curiosity about themselves.
- Tips: Ensure your quiz is engaging, fun, and relevant to your audience, while also gathering valuable information that can help improve your marketing efforts.
Simplicity is Key I emphasize the importance of keeping lead magnets simple, concise, and focused on delivering quick wins. Overly complex or extensive materials can overwhelm your audience and reduce the effectiveness of your lead magnet.
- Advice: Create lead magnets that address specific problems your audience faces, making it easy for them to see the immediate value in what you offer.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

How quizzes can increase your email list and sales with Kylie Lang Connect with Teresa on Website, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

One of my very first lead magnets got me 800 opt ins in two weeks with only a spend of about £50. So what made that particular lead magnet so powerful that I was able to build my list that fast? Well, in today's episode, I am sharing with you The two most powerful lead magnets that you can create for your business that will help your email list build fast. I'm sharing with you why they are so powerful and how you can create them for your business. You don't want to miss today's episode. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I've been going through, as you might know, I've been going through a review, a rebrand, a re looking at my audience. What am I helping them with? And some of the things that I've been doing, and also I did a masterclass not so long ago, and some of the things that I've been doing are, Going back and looking at what I did a long time ago. And it's funny because I almost feel like in some cases I'm coming full circle, but in the sense of I'm coming back to the thing that I would call absolutely my zone of genius. My zone of [00:02:00] genius is helping online business owners grow their online business. My zone of genius is everything around lead magnets, funnels, sales pages, like launching, everything to do with that and audience building. So those are the key areas that I am really kind of leaning into. So when I was thinking about today's episode, it was funny. It was kind of inspired by something I did in order to prep for the master class. So when I was prepping for the master class, I was looking for an example of a really good testimonial that I had from years and years ago, because with this particular testimonial, I had presented it at my first ever talk I did in the States, which happened to be an event that lead pages put on and at the time lead pages were like the biggest in the industry in terms of landing page builder, emails and all of the cool funnel stuff. I mean, we're talking like eight years ago, eight, 10 years ago, so [00:03:00] I spoke at that conference. So one of the first conferences in the States I spoke at was theirs and the fact that I got to speak at their conference said a whole lot. In fact, Pat Flynn was on right before me, which was crazy. Anyway, so while I was looking, I had to go back and watch the replay because I have a replay of my tour, but I don't have the presentation. So I've watched the replay and I was looking at the results that I got for this client that I worked with, like I said, literally years ago. And I was like, this is so good. And it kind of, like I said, bought me full circle. And I remember thinking about my very first lead magnet. Now, my very first lead magnet. I got something like, God, I wish I could replicate this now without spending money. I got something like 800 opt ins in the space of about two weeks, which without a big budget is unheard of at this point in time. Now I used, I think I spent like 50 pounds on ads then, but I put together a [00:04:00] really effective lead magnet and. I thought what I would do today is talk you through the two most powerful lead magnets that you can have and, or two themes, the most powerful lead magnets you can have, why they're so powerful. And obviously if you can then do one of these two lead magnets, brilliant, because they are really going to help you grow your audience. Let me just start just in case you were new to me, just briefly telling you what a lead magnet is. And I'm sorry if you know what one is, but just bear with me for 30 seconds. A lead magnet is something that you are giving someone in return for their email address. Now, if you're in the knowledge industry, which I am, and if you have an online business, then you're probably in the knowledge industry too, i. e. you're selling your brain. So, You are selling a service where you help people with the thing that you are really flipping brilliant at. So lead magnets for us are super easy in the sense of we don't have to give our product away. We don't have [00:05:00] to give a discount. We can just say you are struggling with this. I can help you. And that brings me to the next really key point is the lead magnet has to solve a problem. Now, I know lots of us have on our websites, if you want to join my mailing list or my newsletter or my whatever it is, then please put your details in here. But in reality, people aren't really going to do that. Like they might, if they think, actually, I do know you and I want to find out more about you. However, the chances of you building a decent email list through that is Nigh on impossible. So you need to offer them something in order for them to say, yes, please. I want to know that I have that problem that I think you can help me with. And that lead magnet will help me with it. Yes. I will give you my email address. And then the other thing that I really want to quickly say is it needs to be good. Okay. And I know that sounds like a given and actually with the amount of people, one of the things I do in my accelerator program [00:06:00] is I go through people's lead magnets and I look at them as if I am their customer. So I literally go to the opt in page. I opt in, I look at their thank you page. I look at their welcome emails. I look at the lead magnet. And more often than not, they are trying to put way too much into the lead magnet. They're trying to talk war and peace. I know a lot of people are like really focusing on eBooks, which again, it's just a ton of stuff. So the lead magnet has to be good, but by good, I don't mean massive. I mean, give them the quick wins. What we want is a quick win. If I said to you, and I say this all the time, like, if someone could say to me tomorrow, like I could take a pill and lose to stone, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Like, of course you would. If someone said to me, do this one tiny little hack in your business and you can make a million, I would do it. And we would love to imagine that that is the fact that there are things like that out there. We know there absolutely isn't. However, They want a quick win and we want them to have a [00:07:00] quick win, because if they have a quick win, then they're going to look much more favorably on you and think, Oh God, this person's good. So when I say a good lead magnet, I don't mean a massive war and peace lead magnet. I mean, good, give them a quick win. The other thing that people tend to do is they tend to go too complicated. Okay. So we assume that people know as much as we do and they don't. So, and I remember doing this years ago, thinking that like my lead magnet had to be, and my content had to be as good. So that my competitors were like, gosh, she's so smart. I'm not, I'm not, my competitors aren't buying from me. The. My customers are buying from me. So it's really important to make it at the level that your customers will need it. And therefore, like I said, inevitably we make it way too complicated and we give them way too much. So simple, short, sweet, things that you would think Well, that's just crazy. Like no one's going to want that. You'll be [00:08:00] amazed. You would be amazed. The amount of lead magnets I go through for my clients, my students, and go too much, bring it back a bit. Okay. So we know what lead magnet is, why we need a lead magnet. I've said already, but I'll say again, people are not going to suddenly wake up one morning and go, Oh, I wonder if that person that I barely know has got an email list that I can get on. Everyone in the nicest sense of the word is very selfish, myself included. What is in it for me? And that's where a lead magnet comes in. What is in it for your customer or your person that you want on your list? They need a reason to get on your list. And Just in case I need to reconfirm why you need people on your email list, all the other marketing you do pretty much is on borrowed ground. Social media is borrowed ground. It goes down, people get thrown out of their accounts. People get their whole accounts wiped out and they are going to do nothing about it. I literally, I'm in a mastermind and I was speaking to them yesterday and one of the women on the [00:09:00] mastermind had over 10, 000 followers on Instagram account got wiped. contacted them, nothing. Like, account couldn't come back, she had to start from scratch. So, I implore you, everything you do, constantly be thinking, how can I get them on my email list? Okay, so what are the lead magnets that are just gold at the moment? So weirdly, the lead magnet I did all those years ago is still gold now. So the one I did years ago was, I identified that The service I was offering at the time, so I used to do social media management for clients when I had the agency. And I always used to get the whole, you're too expensive. And I started to realize there was a really good reason I was too expensive because we did a lot of proactive stuff way before anybody else did. So what we did is we realized that yes, social media is brilliant. And at the point people were just shoving up posts, right? That was as big and as much as social [00:10:00] media content that people created and the strategy. Whereas because I had come from a marketing background, I knew, and I had a degree in it and all that good stuff. I knew that it took more than just shoving up posts. So I did proactive work. We did a lot of stuff that people weren't doing at the time. So when I started to transition over to the online business, I started targeting social media managers. And God, I wish I'd stayed with that niche, not because I want to work particularly with those people, but imagine how big my business would be now if I stayed with one niche, whereas I have flitted and moved, but all for good reason. And I am where I am today. And it was all for a right reason. Anyway, little unpacking of myself there. So I focused on social media managers. So I created a lead magnet and I can't remember the exact words, but basically it was like how you can charge more and save time because that was the other thing I'd done. Not only did we do proactive work, but having watched one of my team members try and do the proactive work. [00:11:00] She just used to scroll Twitter for ages, looking for things to like. And I was like, this is not effective. We need to find a much better way of doing this. So I'd come up with this plan for us internally. So these two things that I did, the proactive work that people weren't doing, and the structure of the proactive work made me money and saved me time. So that was what I focused on. Make more money, save time. I mean, who doesn't want that generally in their business 24 seven? So first off, I hit two massive pain points. Now I'm not saying that every lead magnet out there should say those two things because that actually, that's not what the, the great thing about that lead magnet was. Although as I've already identified, it needs to answer a problem and fix something for them. The thing that was so powerful about that lead magnet was I made a checklist. Okay. I'm ready for you to be like, is that it? Is that all you're telling me? Yeah, I made a checklist. So the reason checklists and templates and toolkits are so, [00:12:00] so powerful as lead magnets is because The next best thing than a magic trick that basically tells me how to do something perfectly or gets me to lose two stone tomorrow is a tool or a list or a something that I can follow. You are taking, do the work for me. If I get outsourced, like loads of the hard stuff I have to do, then God, I would do it in a heartbeat. So. If you are doing some of the hard work for me, so not only did I explain why doing these things was so powerful, but I literally gave them the checklist that we use where we used to write the client's name, the date or the week or whatever it was. And we would tick as we did these various things. And I know it sounds so incredibly simple. However, checklists, toolkits, templates, anything that saves me a bit of time and tells me what to do is [00:13:00] Gold. Okay. So one of the things I talk about when people first start creating lead magnets with me is we talk simple. So we talk like a PDF, that's all it needs to be a PDF checklist. There's the one I did on a little while ago. I did a podcast episode, which we'll link in the show notes. That was all about the how to get on other people's podcasts, and I did a checklist with that. So. It, you know, it wasn't a rocket science thing. It wasn't like this big Warren PC book. It was literally a one sheet checklist. But what it did was it took everything that I said in a podcast and went, there's the list. Do those things. So that is gold because like I said, we want the done for you. If we could outsource this, we would, but the people you're probably talking to are not at the point to outsource at this point. So if you can help them in any way, that is the way to do it. Checklists, templates, toolkit type things, depending on how big the toolkit is, then you probably want to charge for it. Okay. So that's the first lead magnet that is absolute gold in terms of giving out. [00:14:00] And that is easy. Okay. I'm thinking about doing a session soon. In fact, By the time this goes out, I might have already planned it about how to create workbooks and lead magnets using Adobe Express, which basically you will be able to follow me along and we'll do like a workshop thing, but that I promise you is easy. And once you've got one, you can just replicate it and do another. Okay. So the next thing, so there's, there's two main things that I'm thinking. So the next and final thing that is gold from a lead magnet point of view is a quiz. The reason quizzes are so flipping powerful is. The thing that we want is to give away work we don't want, i. e. checklist template done for you, or to know more about us. We are so interested in ourselves, understandably. Who doesn't love a quiz? Who doesn't love a, tell me more about myself. Tell me how I can work better. Tell me what thing is more designed for me. Tell me what clothes I should wear. Tell me what color eyeshadow [00:15:00] is good for me. Tell me how I'll age. Tell me like all the things we are obsessed with finding out about ourselves. So Quizzes are a brilliant, brilliant lead magnet. Now I am not going to go loads into quizzes because they are a beast. Okay. But I didn't want to do this where this podcast episode without including it, because in terms of lead magnets, they are the gold quizzes and checklist slash templates are golds. They are the ones that are going to get you the most opt ins on your list. So I wanted to make sure we include quizzes. The key thing about quizzes is. What am I going to learn about myself? And make it an element of fun. So make sure there is an element of why am I going to do this or what am I going to get out the end of it? I'm not going to do a quiz to help you better market me. Now, if you're smart, that will do both things. It'll better market you and it will also be fun for the [00:16:00] person doing it. So, if you came to the Rise Above Summit and you have the All Access Pass, then please go and watch Kylie Lang's session that she did on quizzes. You can go and follow Kylie Lang. She's great. And she does, she talks a lot about quizzes. She's also done an episode on the podcast. So we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And you can go and listen to that one. So, those are the two things, checklist, template, toolkit, all under one bracket, i.e. you are doing the hard work for them or some of the hard work for them, or something along the lines of a quiz that tells them more about themselves. But out of the two, the quizzes are a lot more intensive and a lot more to do. A lot more involved tech gets a bit harder, gets a bit more expensive. Whereas that one at the beginning is so easy. A checklist is so flipping easy, but you've got to make sure that it's something they want help with. And it is something that they're going to go, Oh no, I need that. Okay. So I really hope this has been...

From List Building to Lucrative Launches: Krista Miller’s Summit Secrets

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Krista Miller where she discusses the evolution of summits from list builders to comprehensive launch tools, detailing how they can drive successful, engaging, and non-salesy launches. I also share my own experiences with summits, the challenges faced, and the lessons learned. Emphasis on the need for adequate planning and the benefits of following proven strategies. At Summit in a Box®️, Krista helps online business owners replace slow-growth and costly marketing strategies with high-converting virtual summits that lead to record-breaking course, membership, and group program launches.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Launching Through Summits Krista Miller discusses innovative strategies for launching online courses and memberships through virtual summits. She emphasizes that summits can be more than just list builders; they can be a powerful method for successful, non-salesy launches that feel good for both the host and participants.
Importance of Niching A critical takeaway is the importance of niching down for summits. Krista explains how targeting a specific audience with a clear, focused topic can significantly increase engagement, speaker interest, and attendee conversion rates. This specificity helps in creating summits that resonate deeply with the audience, making them more effective.
Membership Launch Strategies The podcast delves into advanced strategies for launching memberships through summits. Krista shares how offering trials and integrating the membership seamlessly into the summit experience can lead to high conversion rates. She provides examples of clients who added hundreds of members to their memberships using these techniques, demonstrating the effectiveness of a well-planned summit.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

How to run a successful online summit with Krista Miller Behind the scenes of my Rise Above Summit 3-day virtual summit Membership Momentum presented by Summit in a Box® Connect with Krista on Website, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: As an online business owner, launching is an integral part of having a successful online business. But what if you could launch without feeling like you're launching and without that sometimes sleazy and salesy feeling that launching can have? Today, I am talking to Krista Miller, and she is talking about how to launch using summits. In the past, summits have just been seen as a list builder, but what if they could be the way for you to have a successful launch that feels good for you, your customers, and the speakers. We talk through some of the pros and cons of launching in different ways, and then Krista shares with us one of the most genius strategies for launching a membership through a summit that I've ever heard. You do not want to miss this episode Welcome to the your dream business podcast. I'm your host Teresa Heath Waring, an international best selling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, [00:01:00] and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode Episode I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing this week? This week I have a brilliant. Brilliant interview for you. I am very excited. And as an online business owner, you should be excited too, because there's some great stuff in this episode. This week, I am interviewing for the second time, Krista Miller. Krista is the founder of Summit in a [00:02:00] Box that helps business owners replace slow growth and costly marketing strategies with high converting virtual summits that lead to record breaking course membership and group program launches. Now, as I've already said, she's already been on the podcast, but I needed to get her back because as you well know, if you listen to this podcast, I did my own summit at the beginning of this year of 2024. And I did it with the help of Krista and her accelerator program. And I am a massive, massive fan of her and what she does. And I don't just say that from You know, she's amazing. I went through her accelerator program. I was part of her or I'm part of her world and she delivers absolute flipping genius stuff. She is so smart and the stuff she talks about, the stuff she shares is just phenomenal. So I know that you're going to love her too. And you're going to love this episode. Also, if you have a friend that has an online business, you do not want them to miss out on this [00:03:00] episode. Like I said, so much good stuff. Other reason this is such a cool episode is because You will hear a very honest account from me of all the things I messed up when I did the summit and all the things that Krista said, you need to do it this way. And I didn't do it that way. So it really is a kind of behind the scenes, not only look at my stuff, but then she shares genius strategies going forward about how you can launch using a summit. And the stuff around membership launches, boom, they are another level stuff. The other reason I'm really excited to have her on is that one, she was a sponsor of my summit, which is always kind of good news. If someone who creates summits wants to sponsor yours, that makes you feel very good. And two, I am going to be speaking at a summit that she's putting on called membership momentum. I'm going to make sure that all the links are in the show notes. So if you head to teresaheathwareing.com/351, as in the numbers three, five, one. Also follow me on social, check my emails. I'll be sharing it all around there, but I am doing a [00:04:00] session at her summit on how hosting an open house for your membership is the key to easy non salesy sales. Not only am I speaking, but there's some other phenomenal speakers, especially in the world of membership, like Mike from the membership geeks and the amazing Lizzie Goddard who spoke at my summit as well. So it's a hell of a lineup and I'm super honored to be involved. Anyway, without further ado, I will let you get on with today's episode. Here's the amazing Krista. Krista, I am so pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Krista Miller. Krista, how are you doing? Krista: I am so great. I'm so excited to chat again. It's always a pleasure. I know this is going to be awesome. Teresa: Me too. And I always like, you know, what's funny having a podcast for such a long time, there are now people that I'm like, Oh no, you definitely need to come back. Like, but you're the kind of start of people coming back. Cause it's like, It's such a lot. I can't even remember when we did the podcast first time, but it was years ago, like literally years ago. And now of course, my lovely listeners will know that [00:05:00] I have a completely different perspective on the conversation we have because I have done a summit, but very quickly, because I do want to jump straight into all the good stuff we want to talk about. Just tell people who you are and what you do today. Krista: Yeah. So I'm Krista. I run a company called Summit in a Box. I teach people how to run virtual summits in a way that are more accessible than how you're used to them being taught. I want anyone who has a business that is doing something awesome to have what they need and know they have what they need to go out and host a really incredible summit that makes them money, grows their email list impacts their people, all that good stuff. We've branched into teaching people how to launch through summits, how to launch through challenges. I just want to help people get their amazing offers out there. Teresa: I love it. I love it. And like I said, I now have a completely different perspective, not only from doing my own summits, but also working with you and your team in the sense of how you go about doing summits. Because Anybody who's been on the receiving end of being a speaker for a [00:06:00] summit would have had some real varying degrees of how summits have run. But just in case someone is listening and they're like, what do you mean a summit? What is a summit? Just explain to people like roughly what it is. Krista: Yeah. So if you, if you don't know what it is, I'm sure you've seen one before. So usually it's one person hosting, sometimes more than one, usually one person hosting, and they have a group of speakers can be as little as 10, as many as 30, I've seen as many as a hundred. It's a terrible idea, but I've seen it. So they have a group of speakers that are all coming to give a presentation on one specific topic. So it's going to be the goal of. This is a terrible example, but like grow your business. So I don't know, I'm hosting a summit for membership site owners. So maybe it's like, add a hundred people to your membership through X, Y, Z, and you bring in people who can speak to that. Summits are free to attend. There are several ways built in to make money, but they're free to attend. So it's a really great way to grow your audience with leads that you then, you know, have other things to do with, but you just give them a great experience. It brings them into your world, gets them excited, gets them some quick wins [00:07:00] and making progress, and it's just a really powerful strategy. Teresa: And I rebelled from this strategy for some time for various reasons. One of them being, man, this is going to be a lot of work. And I'm not going to lie. It was a lot of work. However, the amount of work I put into that, I've put into other things and have not seen the return that I had from a summit. So that was cool. The other thing that put me off and like, you know, this is one of the things, and actually I'm just going to touch on this. It was, was being experiencing being a summit speaker and how some summits are run. And one of the things I love about how you teach and what you do is that it's not forced upon your speakers to basically make your summit happen. And that, you know, one of the things that is the most interesting because I've done four summits since my own summit, and I worked out Like I worked so hard to promote [00:08:00] my own summit and I worked so hard to create a summit that my speakers would want to be part of and want to promote that now I'm really seeing when I'm part of a summit that some of them do nothing and that blows my mind. Like, and I think that was where I wanted to get away from, and that's why summits weren't something that I thought was for me, or are my bad impression of them, because how some people teach how to do summits, not you, is that. Krista: It's bad. Like, it gives. I know so many people who have just a horrible view on summits because of that. I've had several people come into our programs being like, I never thought I'd host a summit. I don't even want to call this thing a summit. I don't like summits, but I think this is what I have to do. And like, they try to be all crafty and disguise the fact that it's a summit, but then afterwards they're like, Oh, this is actually really great. And you taught me how to do it the right way in a way that's not. Like it doesn't need to be gross and sleazy and pushy and slimy and those summits are out there and there are people who [00:09:00] teach those strategies, like teach like your speakers have to have a list of 5, 000 and they're not even worth it. They have to promote this many times or kick them out. I've gotten myself kicked out kicked out of summits as a speaker before cause I just don't stand for it. I'm like, I am not going to do that if, if that's the requirement, I guess like, like have fun with that presentation. You can't use now. I'm not like, I'm not going to be a part of this. Yeah. Like. But that's how people are being taught. And a lot of times it's not the host's fault. Like, they don't know better. It's what someone is telling them to do. And when their eyes are open, they're like, Oh, dang, you know, but they need to be taught the right way. Teresa: And I think that's the thing. I think, so if you're listening to this thinking, I'm not sure I ever want to do a summit. I think, and like I said, that was me a few years back. I thought, no, it's not going to happen. And there was a million reasons, like I said, a couple that I've already said, ones of like, no one's going to speak at it. Like no one will say yes, like, and I had the best fricking lineup in the world. Like, I'm not even kidding. Krista: You're laughing, your lineup was fire. Teresa: I had such a good lineup, but that was one of the things that is like, it would [00:10:00] be a concern of what if people didn't want to do it, what if people didn't sign up, like there's all the concerns, but actually one of the things, the way in which you teach and the way, and I am like, And you guys are going to hear this in this episode, like I flip in love what Krista does, like love it. Like I wouldn't be having it back on. I wouldn't be promoting her stuff. I wouldn't be speaking at her. So I wouldn't be doing any of this. I wouldn't have asked to speak at mine. I swear to goodness, her accelerator program that I was in, and I didn't think I'd go down this route quite so quick, but with it was like the flipping best thing I've ever been in. And I have paid for some seriously expensive stuff, like ridiculously expensive stuff. And yet the support, the help, the guidance, the, the done for you aspect, it was so good. But I gave her a difficult task at the very beginning, because there was a couple of things that you talk about. that I just basically did the opposite. Right. So [00:11:00] one of the things that Krista says, and she is so right, is she talked about the specific nature of the summit. So just touch on like why it needs to be as niche as it can possibly be. Krista: Yeah, so I, I always say that niching is like one of those things that can make it or break it. You can have the most well run summit out there, but if the niche is it right, no one's going to show up. And like an example I can give, I'm sorry, I'm going to give this example. The example I'm going to give, because I always give it, is a summit for online business owners to help you grow your business. It's hard to catch people's attention. Teresa: Yeah, what did I do? Krista: It's hard. It's hard to get people's attention with that versus a summit to help wedding planners book out their client schedule with Instagram. Yeah, that's going to catch people's attention, right? That they're like, this is made for me. Yes. I want to do that. Yes. I have to sign up for this. It's getting specific and niching down is what lets you get speak, get the right speakers, makes them want to promote, makes people want to sign up, makes people want to buy, get you the right kind of people. [00:12:00] It benefits you every step of the way, even though it's really uncomfortable and difficult at first, like I host summits. Not very frequently. And the reason for that is because the positioning is hard for someone who has a business that's positioned very broadly like ours, it's hard to figure out how do I niche this down in a way that's going to. And just makes sense, you know, but it's important. Teresa: And the funny thing was, you had said that, and I was like, oh yeah, that's basically my subject, right? But she had said it before you had even spoke to me. I watched something you did, and your example was exactly that example, and I was like, yeah, damn it. And then like you, it was like on this training that I watched before we started speaking and got signed up and things, It was like, I, You did a laundry list of don't do this on your first summit. Don't do this. Don't do this. Make sure you do this. And it was like, Oh yeah, I basically have done the opposite of everything you've said. And there is so many things that like, you know, Krista is right. Like when she said, do it this way, even though I'd already [00:13:00] started doing it the other way and couldn't really change it the next time I will do it the way she says, like, because there is a really good reason that she teaches the way she teaches because she knows a ton about this. So one other place that I kind of, I'm not even going to say messed up because it wasn't messed up. It was just a second thought for me. And, and, and the other thing is we'd come in really quick. Like, so the timing that I wanted to do it on, I was already like way behind where...

Five Years of Running my Membership: Mistakes, Lessons Learned, and Key Takeaways

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode where I share an honest and insightful look into the highs and lows of running an online membership for the past five years. From strategic shifts to personal growth, I reveal what worked, what didn’t, and how my mindset and experiences have influenced my business. Whether you’re a course creator, membership owner, or coach, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and actionable strategies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Importance of Niching Down Initially, I aimed to serve everyone, which diluted my focus and messaging. Over time, I learned the importance of clearly defining my target audience and tailoring my offerings to meet their specific needs.
Value of Continuous Adaptation The membership evolved significantly over the years, from strategic marketing content to incorporating mindset and personal development aspects. This flexibility allowed me to better serve my members as my own skills and understanding grew.
Strategic Pricing and Value Perception I experimented with different pricing tiers and eventually raised the membership fee to reflect the high value provided. I also learned that having lower-priced options could sometimes devalue the overall perception of the membership.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Membership Momentum Dream Business Club Losing Part Of Me Podcast Connect with Teresa on Website, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

After five years of having my membership, I'm taking you behind the scenes to share what has worked over those five years and what didn't. Also, how has that membership changed over that time. I share all the mistakes I made and what I would do differently if I was to do it all again. I also share with you what the future looks like for my membership and what things I might be doing differently now. And one of the things I think you'll find surprising is how my own mindset and my own life experiences had an impact on what my membership looked like and what I offered. This is a very honest look into having an online business and running a membership. Hello and welcome to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. How are you doing this week? Isn't it funny how sometimes things just line up without you even trying or realising? And this is exactly what's happened for the episode this week. Now, I decided I was going to talk about my membership and memberships in general, because of two reasons. One, I am speaking at Membership Momentum. Which is an amazing summit put on by Krista Miller, who also is speaking next week. She's doing an interview next week and the membership momentum is going to run from June 24th until the 26th. And I am doing a session for it all about how launching, I probably should know the title of my session off by heart, but I don't, how I use open houses to basically launch my membership or to sell my membership without feeling sleazy and salesy. And I'm really excited about the talks. I've never done this talk before. It's a brand new one. So I'm really excited to be able to bring that to Krista and her audience. And also it's got an amazing lineup. So I do want you to go and check that out. There will be a link in the show notes. If you had to teresaheathwareing.com/350, then you will find links to the membership momentum event. Also, if you check out my socials and if you're on my email list, then I will be sharing it all over that place. So yes, that's one of the reasons I want to focus on membership. And then like I said, next week, Krista is on the podcast as well, where we'll be talking about more stuff, which is awesome. Okay. So weirdly, this is where the weird date thing comes in. I go to start to plan as to what I'm going to talk about. Yes. Sometimes I plan what I'm talking about, although it may not feel like it sometimes. And I looked at how long I've had my membership for. And this episode comes out on the 10th of June and at this point I have had my membership for five years. I started my membership June 2019. So how weirdly awesome is that, that I wanted to write memberships and then when I looked it was the fifth year anniversary of having my membership. So I thought what I would do on today's episode is talk you through some of the changes, some of the things, the good, the not so good of having a membership, some of the things that have gone really well, some things that I haven't done so brilliantly, and where my membership is today. And then hopefully if you've got a membership, this is going to give you some ideas and thoughts in terms of things that maybe you can try or things that maybe you shouldn't try because I did and they didn't work. Or if you're thinking about a membership, then great. This is going to give you lots and lots of information in order to take forward with your own. If you are not thinking of a membership and have no plans or whatever to have a membership, then this is going to be a really fun look behind the scenes at my business. So hopefully there's lots for all of you. Let's get cracking. So I want to start off by talking about what the membership started as, because this is one of the things I guess has been most surprising is the progression of the membership over the years and how much it's changed and tweaked and moved and just not the same thing. I started my membership, like I said, June, 2019. And it was initially the Marketing That Converts Academy. That's what I called it. And I had a very clear idea from day one, what I wanted the membership to be. And I wanted it to be so that the name Marketing That Converts came from the fact, and actually this just isn't an insight into the membership. It's kind of an insight into the journey my business has gone on. And actually how my personal life and what I've gone through has affected my business. So this really is like a bit of a warts and all. So I started the membership from a point of view of at this point in my life, I was doing a lot of work for online businesses and I was launching online businesses and I was helping online businesses and I was coming from a very strategic marketing point of view. If you are new to me, if you've not heard me say this before, I actually have a degree in marketing and I spent 10 years in marketing prior to starting my own business and then I started as a marketing consultant. So when I say I know marketing, I really know marketing. Like it has literally been what I eat, sleep, breathe since 20 years ago now. And I'm 45, I think. like since I was 25. So the whole point of the membership was people who were trying to grow their online businesses and start their online businesses. And I started it with the premise of this kind of thing of get seen, get emails, get customers, or get sales, and then get fans. That was the last one. So I had these four very clear things of which they would go through or they would work on and they would get successful online business. And then I launched it in a way that wasn't clear enough. In my head, that was how I wanted it to be, but I did the typical thing of, I want to serve everybody. So even though those are my key areas, and actually a lot of what I talked about was online stuff and building an email list and lead magnets and funnels and emails and sales pages and all that awesome stuff, I just kind of opened the doors and when everybody come in, like whether you're a marketer, whether you're a business owner, whether you're this, whether you're that. And within a very short space of time, I'd lost that niche altogether. Right. Not only had I lost it from a content point of view, but from a marketing point of view, I just made a terrible mistake of basically going, Hey, it's amazing club to come and learn marketing for your business. So I started with this brilliant intention. And I remember. planning this out, right? I remember we were sat in San Diego. My husband was there with me. I can even remember the restaurant we were at, the table we were sat at. If you've been to San Diego to the conference, you will know there's a corner restaurant that's French right over the road from the exhibition place. If you, if you know, it's something that you're like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear it now. And we sat in that restaurant on one of the high tables in the sun and I planned out. I think, was Biz Paul with me? I think Biz Paul might have been with me, my friend. Anyway, planned it out, got it all sorted and then obviously ignored all of that and just went and offered it to anybody and everybody. So that was my first mistake, that basically, I just wanted to be kind and let people into my world and have people who I loved hanging around with and let them join the membership. Which is fine, but there was no clear, this is who it's for. Okay, so what is probably a good idea to talk about now is the price when I opened. So I opened my membership at $29 a month, $290 a year. This is pretty typical if you have a membership or thinking about a membership, you would ordinarily give a discounted price for an annual place and that normally is two months free. So just the price times 10. So I did this fine and I opened the doors and I got like 30 something members, which obviously I thought was amazing and is amazing. So if you're starting with 30 something members, well done, you go brilliant. Right. And bearing in mind, I had a bit of an audience, but not a ginormous audience by any stretch of the imagination. Okay. So that's where it started. I, basically did masterclasses every month. I did coaching every month, but even though I called it coaching, I wasn't a coach, but I call, like I did call it a coaching call, but basically it was a come and pick my brains call. I did, what else did I do in the early days? I must've done more stuff, but I can't remember at this point. Oh yeah. We used to do like social media stuff. I think I had, Ann, who used to work for me, come in and do content as well. So we did like a few different things, but all very strategic and practical marketing stuff. So as the membership started to build, and when I say build, I don't necessarily mean numbers, although it did, I mean content. So when you first start a membership, the content that you put in from day one is obviously nothing compared to the content that's in five years later, I can assure you. So, As the content builds, I started putting the price up. Now I want to try and address the price separately, which I might do now actually. Yeah. Okay. Let's, let's look at the price thing now. So I started to put the price up as, and obviously you always start a membership at like a beta price or as a first, you know, with the intention of this is not going to be the price. This is, dirt cheap to get people through the door. So that's what I did. So within a fairly short space of time, probably a couple of months, I upped it to $39 a month. So already it was feeling pretty expensive for a membership, if I'm honest, because a lot of the memberships that I had seen and been in were like 20 pounds, $20 a month. Then I upped it to $49 a month. Then, and I can't remember the timescales. I'm sure I could find that if I wanted to spend that much time, but then I upped it to $59. Bearing in mind, like I said, I've had this membership five years. Then a couple of years ago, I upped it to $97 a month. And now it's $222 a month, right? Which you might be sat there going, holy moly, man, like 29 to $222. Like what on earth are you giving in this membership? How much content is in there for me to justify that lift? Okay. So let me tell you one other thing on the pricing. So. I made a decision and this might feel like this episode's going all over the shop, but like I said, I'm trying to keep it to a kind of light format. When I put the price up to 222, the reason I put the price up is because the membership changed completely, right? In terms of what I offered, how I was doing it, my own level of. What I could bring to the party. I was no longer just doing marketing. I was no longer just doing one particular thing. And actually I had really upped my game in terms of what I knew, how effective I was, what I could do for people's business. So the pricing actually didn't bother me too much. The fact that I put it up, I had been in other memberships at that price by this point, in fact, more expensive, like $300. And they gave nothing in comparison to what I gave. In fact, I'd been in a couple of memberships at that point at that price. And I started to realize that actually I was bending over backwards for my members and I could charge more for that because. And again, I'll get to kind of the membership and the members in a bit as to how it is now, but I know my members really, really flippin well. So I realized that actually the service I was providing was above and beyond where I was at. And also by this point, I had been in my business like six, seven, eight, and now 10 years. So my knowledge was so much bigger than it was when I first started. I made a decision in 2023. So obviously remember what normally happens in memberships is when you bring someone, when you start a membership at a certain price, you grandfather them in, which basically means if you join at that price, you stay at that price. So all of these price increases, the people who joined to $29. continue to pay $29. Like if they left and came back, they would have to pay whatever the price was at that point. So at the point I put the price up to $222, which I am very confident and happy that my level of what you get from me and the club is absolutely worth every single penny. So I didn't have a problem with charging that amount because, and again, there was a big strategy behind why I charged that amount. What I had a problem with or what I was concerned about is I had people in there paying $29 and now I'm attracting people who are paying $222. And there is something, and I'm trying to say this in a really kind way and in a, so it doesn't come across sounding judgmental or anything. 'cause I promise you it's not, there is something very different from someone who is in a business that is giving them the income that they can pay $220 a month or scrap that all together. There's something very different about someone who is willing to pay $222 a month or $2, 220 a year. So that, that didn't sit right with me. I didn't feel right having people in there, the lower costs while I was asking people to come in. So I remember speaking to the membership geeks who are good friends of mine and I spoke to Callie at the time and I said to her, I'm thinking of removing the lower levels, like, as in, the lower cost points, and I said, but that's not the dumb thing. People, grandfather people in, they get to stay on that price. And she said, it's your membership. Do what the F you want. And I thought, okay, I'm going to do that. So I made a decision in 2023, which was probably a terrible timing of for it. Because as you will know, if you've listened to the podcast, 2023 was not a good year for me from a business point of view, because it stood still while I got sober. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then please go back. I will link to the episode where I talk about it briefly. And actually I have a whole nother podcast about me getting sober called losing part of me. So do go check that out if you're interested. Anyway, 2023, I decided that I was going to approach everyone in the club and basically say to them, if you are paying less than $97 I am putting your price up. Now, when I did this, because I do know my members really flipping well, I actually had a list of all of the people who were paying less than 97 and I knew them personally and I had already written down next to each one of them whether I thought they would stay or go for various reasons. Okay. It's not they couldn't necessarily afford it. Some people couldn't afford it and that was fine. Some people wouldn't have put the investment into that. Some people wouldn't have wanted to pay that. There was so many reasons, but I'm basically made a decision based on knowledge of will these people stay or will they go? And I knew they would go. And they did. So I basically maybe halved, if not more than that, my membership overnight. Now, the money obviously didn't half because They were paying a lesser amount, but it was still a massive decision to make, and it did have a financial impact, and it did hurt me a bit that year. But I felt that it was the right thing to do for the long term space of the membership. Obviously what I didn't expect to happen is, I did that at the beginning of 2023, I didn't expect them to sit and do nothing for the rest of 2023. And although I've done a little bit of stuff at the membership in 2024, actually As part of my big business review, the membership is being reviewed. And as you will hear from this episode, when I get to it, there is lots of things that need to change and tweak and be improved. Okay. So that was a big decision to make. Let me talk about some of the changes of the membership and some of the things that really didn't, didn't work. So. I was doing content every single month, masterclasses, man, it was a ton of work, a ton of work. Cause I wasn't just like going on for an hour and teaching something in an hour zoom. I was actually creating a mini course every single time. And it was too much work. I was constantly creating content for them. And in truth, if you have a membership, go and look at how many people have done all the things in your membership. Cause I can assure you, it is teeny tiny in comparison to the amount of stuff that's in there. And actually that's a really good point for me to say that is exactly what a membership needs to be, right? No one should ever come into a membership thinking, right, I'm going to get through all these courses. I'm going to do all this content. That is not what the membership is about. And that is very much how I market my membership now. It is definitely not about coming in and doing all the courses. No way. For me in the membership as it sits, it's about having conversations with me and then me telling you what courses are available that would work or help at that point. So there came a point, probably, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute, but there came a

How to Write and Self-Publish a Book for Business Success with Jyotsna Ramachandran

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 01:00:00 +0100

This week on the podcast, I'm interviewing the awesome Jyotsna Ramachandran from Happy Self Publishing, and we are talking all about what a book could do for your business, and how to know if it is the right choice for you.

So if you have ever been curious about becoming an author of a book or if you want to know more about exactly what it would involve, then today's podcast episode is definitely for you!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

How you can write a book, even if writing is not your superpower
Self publishing versus having a publicist and what's better
The costs involved in writing and publishing a book

Jyotsna is a bestselling author, book publisher, TEDx speaker, and is an international Author Success Coach who helps, coaches, trainers, speakers, and experts to build a super profitable author funnel with the help of their book. She is on a mission to elevate the consciousness of humanity one book at a time by helping visionary leaders convert their messages into bestselling books in the easiest possible way. So far, Jyotsna has helped over 1000 authors from 35 different countries through her global publishing agency, Happy Self Publishing. While Jyotsna isn’t working, this mom of 2 kids also loves to dance, cycle, plan her next family staycation and is a passionate advocate for educational rights. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Follow Happy Self Publishing on Instagram Take the Author Archetype Quiz Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever dreamed about writing a book, or maybe you fantasized about being an Amazon bestseller? Maybe you wonder what a book could do for you and your business. Well, in this week's podcast, I'm interviewing JR from Happy Self Publishing, and we are going to be talking about how you can become a bestselling author, even if writing isn't your superpower. We get into what it actually takes to write a book, both time and money investment, and is it really better to have a publisher than to self publish the book yourself. We get into all that on this episode and more. Welcome back to another episode of your dream business podcast. How are we doing this week? Have you ever dreamed of writing a book? Now, it's crossed my mind a number of times, but most of the time I go, I'm not good enough to write a book, or I'm not very good at writing, so can't write a book. Now, some of you might know or remember that I was a co author of a book that hit number one in some of the Amazon charts. So I can technically call myself a bestselling author of a book. However, it wasn't my book. It was a co author book where each author had a chapter and writing one chapter felt like a fairly easy thing to do compared to writing an entire book. And. I've had the questions I'm sure loads of you have had. What the hell would I write about? Why would anybody want to listen to me? Is it really going to do that much for my business? What is the process? I wouldn't even know where to start. That's why I am really glad to have JR on the podcast today. JR is the CEO and founder of Happy Self Publishing. She's a best selling author, book publisher, TEDx speaker, international author, success coach. And for the past eight years, she has been helping purpose driven authors share their message. grow their business and reach millions of people by publishing a book. Now, if you're sat here thinking, I don't think this episode's for me, Teresa, I don't want to write a book. I really want to urge you to listen, because like I said, I thought books were not really something that I was going to do. I didn't really understand what it did for your business. I didn't want to self publish because I wanted a publisher, because that sounds like a real credible thing to do. And this conversation really did open my eyes to the whole thing. Not only about what it can do for my business and my credibility, what it can do for the funnel within my business, and also how can I write a book if I don't think I'm a particularly good writer. And that's something that JR and I talk about and how we get over those things. She also shares with us the investment in money and time that you might need to put into it. And I'm kind of glad to say that she didn't say I could write a book in like 30 days or something because I just know there's no way that is something I could do. So she gives us a realistic view of what it looks like to write a book, but also kind of gets me really fired up and excited about the thought of what it could do for my business. So like I said, whether you've ever thought of writing book, whether you dream about it daily, this is a really cool episode to listen to, not only for the book thing, but also her story is really interesting. So definitely, definitely don't skip this one. It's going to be a good one. Now, if you know someone who is thinking about writing a book or is in the process of starting to write one, then you definitely, definitely, definitely want to point them in the direction of this episode, Because like I said, she taught me lots and has given me loads of information to go on in terms of how I would even get started, where you put your time and effort in, how you market it. There was so much good stuff in it. So do please share this with someone who you think it could help. Also. I just want to mention, if you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, please go ahead and do that. And it will make sure that it tells you every time I do an episode, which is every single Monday. So please go ahead and do that. And thank you so much for spending this time with me. I promise you it's going to be worth every minute. Here is JR. So welcome to the podcast. JR, how are you doing? Jyotsna: I'm doing great, Teresa. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Teresa: My pleasure. And I think this is the first time, I think this is the first time I've ever interviewed someone who is in India. I think. So this is a first. Congratulations. And the thing that you're talking about, is probably a first as well. So this is awesome. I love bringing new things to not only myself, but also to the amazing audience. So let's start by you explain to us what you do and how you got to do the thing that you do. Jyotsna: Yeah, sure. So I run a publishing agency called Happy Self Publishing where we help Passionate entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers, anybody who has a strong, compelling message to share with the world, we help them to package their idea, their story into a best selling book, irrespective of whether they are a great writer or not. So that's what we do at Happy Self Publishing. And it all began after my daughter was born, I wanted to run a business that will let me work from home. And I was looking at different options and this idea of book publishing kept coming back to me in the podcast I was listening to, in the blogs that I was reading. So it kind of was like a divine message. So I learned the whole process of how this whole publishing world, especially in the self publishing side, works. And as a result, it actually inspired me to write my first book called Job Escape Plan. After that book got published, I was a part of an author community in the US and authors over there reached out to me saying, Hey, your book looks pretty professional. Could you help me get the cover design done? Could you refer me to your editor? Could you just project manage this whole thing for me? So I thought, wow, there are so many authors out there who needed that professional support to take them from their book idea to the finished published book. So I just put my team together and I started Happy Self Publishing. That's how it happened. Teresa: That's awesome. I love that. And you know what I love even more is that you said they don't have to be a good writer, which is really fascinating because I would guess the one thing that puts most people off writing a book is the fact that they've got to write it and their own view of whether they're a good writer or not. So we'll come to that. Also, I love the, the message that you were getting over and over and over. Had your previous career or previous kind of experience had anything to do with books, publishing, writing, anything? Jyotsna: Nothing. I don't come from this literary world or editing background. None of that. I was running a staff recruitment agency when my first daughter was born, and that was great because that was my first business. But it made me, you know, attend meetings all day. I had to be on phone calls all day. And that wasn't, that was not the lifestyle I wanted. The reason I quit my job to become an entrepreneur was so that I can have the kind of lifestyle I wanted. It was fine when I didn't have a kid, but when this newborn needed all my time and attention, that business did not serve me. And that's why I started looking for other options where I can have. Well, control over the time and the place where I worked from. Teresa: That's amazing. And I think especially I'm always in awe of people who go into something that they have no experience in because it kind of, you know, what was going through your head at that point? Not only were you, you know, you'd got a young child, you were starting a business, but starting a business in an industry that, you know, nothing about? Like, was it that you just had faith in it and you just decided to trust in, in the messages that you received? Was it a case of, do you know what? I can work these things out. Was it just, I'm going to go for it. Jyotsna: It was a mix of everything. Firstly, I wanted that lifestyle where my business could be completely online. And I saw that this business had the potential. There was one step which I forgot to mention, which actually served me. So after I decided that publishing has a lot of potential, I did not straight away write a job escape plan because I had zero confidence in my own writing skills. But I knew that books that were published on Amazon were selling a lot. So I would just every single week I would find the hot topics which were trending. I would find a ghostwriter from a freelance website, pay them a few hundred dollars and make them write a short ebook. And then I would get a cover designer and an editor and a formatter to put together and I would publish the book under different pen names. That's how I began. So I did about 50, 50 of those books in six months. So those are the tiny little eBooks and back then they were actually selling and people were buying them just for these like 1 or 2 and yeah, that kind of gave me a lot of side income as royalties. And that also gave me the confidence as to how this whole self publishing thing works. Then I felt that though I was doing this as a way to earn money, I was not feeling 100 percent fulfilled because I had no idea about these topics. For example, you know, just because how do you use AI to grow your LinkedIn is a hot topic today. I have no idea about it, but I find a writer who also doesn't know anything about it. They just rely on articles that are published online to put a book together. It does serve the purpose of having everything in one place for the reader, but I felt that I'm not an authority in any of this. That has been, I felt that maybe if I share my own message with the world, I will feel good about it. That's why I wrote job escape plan to talk about how I managed to quit my job and stop this and how others can also start an online business. I interviewed other famous people in the online space. Seven of them agreed and I interviewed them. So I loved that whole experience. So then that book got published and I got featured. My book got featured as one of the top 10 start your business books of 2015. That gave me a lot of confidence that I don't have to necessarily be fantastic to be a good author, in terms of writing. And because of that visibility, podcasters started interviewing me and that's how other authors noticed my work and they reached out to me. And that I felt was, you know, a divine signal because I did not have the plan to start happy self publishing. I was kind of Just going with that ghost written books, but, but because these real authors reached out to me, I felt that when I published job escape plan, I felt amazing because it was my real authentic story. So I felt I would feel better publishing real stories by real authors rather than these ghost written books. So I just stopped that side of the business and I started focusing on helping authors who came to me for the publishing support. Teresa: Gosh, who even knew that that's a, that's a business. This is what blows my mind about what, you know, being in my business and speaking to different people is like, I would never have even thought my brain doesn't work like that to think, Hey, I know this could be a business like that just blows my mind. So let's talk about Your business as it is today, is it just supporting other authors to self publish or are you publishing it for them? Jyotsna: Yeah, so this is a great question and there is a difference between the two. So we are not a traditional publishing house. A traditional publishing house would decide which book they want to publish based on the marketability of the book, based on the potential the book has to make money. And they would reject the manuscripts that they don't like. And they would not charge any money to the author for publishing, but they would take away almost of the royalties. The author barely makes 5 to 7 percent as their royalty. So that's the traditional publishing model. Whereas I am a huge advocate of self publishing because it has served me well. So what we do is we make sure that the whole process is done well. The author doesn't have to try and design their cover on their own using Canva. They can rely on my team to do all of the heavy lifting for them. They can come to us at any stage. If they come to us at the ideation stage, we get on a 90 minute call with them and help them get the confidence if their book idea will work or not, give them the method to create an outline and all of that. And then they can write the book and then come back to us or they can come to us right at the beginning. I was just telling that you don't need to be a fantastic writer, right? So if they feel that they don't want to be writing the book themselves for various reasons, either they're too busy or maybe English is not their first language or writing is not their superpower. In that case, we would either, we would give them an angel writer. So this is very different from the ghostwriting I used to do in the past. An angel writer is more like a podcast host. They would ask the right questions chapter by chapter to make sure the author shares everything that's there inside of them. And the angel writer would go back, listen to the recorded interviews and write the book on behalf of the author without losing their voice and tonality. So that's how angel writing works. The other option is where an author wants to write on their own, but they feel lost. They feel stuck. They want that motivation, guidance, accountability for them. We provided an author coach. An author coaches like a business coach who would get on calls with them every week to see the progress they have made and provide the guidance. And then the final step is where book is already written. And then some people come to us just for the publishing support. So this is where we do the cover design, the editing, the formatting, distribution on Amazon, editing the audio version of the book, putting it, putting it in multiple formats and even running promotions in Amazon. So we do all of this and we charge for these services, but then we publish the book using the author's Amazon account. So Amazon has a platform called KDP which stands for Kindle direct publishing. So we Teach them how to create an account inside KDP and we publish the book inside of that. And then the author has complete access, which means the author gets to change the pricing whenever they want. They can publish the next edition of the book whenever they want. They don't have to rely on anybody's permission to do any of these changes and they get to retain the complete rights and royalties to the book. So that's how self publishing works. So we are basically assisting them to self publish their book. Teresa: Love it. So, okay, this might be a common misconception and maybe it's a common misconception that I have that I am now bringing to this podcast, but I always thought that if you had a publisher, it was more credible. What are your thoughts on that? Is it a misconception? Is it more credible? What's the two sides of that story? Jyotsna: Yeah, that's such a great question. So in the past, I would say 10 years ago, people still felt that getting that stamp of approval from a publisher adds more credibility to their brand. Yeah. And I've seen authors who've published their first couple of books with a traditional publishing house. Now they have offers, they have proposals and deals from these publishers, but they don't want to take it up and they want to traditionally, or they want to self publish their book now because they feel that any which way they are, Putting all their effort and money in marketing it themselves. So why give away the rights and royalties to a traditional publisher? And also traditional publishing is a, again, that industry is huge. There are too many players there. My suggestion to somebody would be if you're getting a deal from one of the big five publishing houses. like the Harper Collins or Penguin, people like that, then you might want to at least read the contract and see if it will work for you. But if it is some publishing house that you've never heard of, then that's definitely not going to add any value to your personal brand. So you might as well go ahead and self publish it. Teresa: This is really interesting and it's really changing my mind on this because like I said, I had this thing that, you know, if it wasn't a pub and when I think of a publisher, I think...

3 Things You Can Do Today To Build Your Confidence

Mon, 27 May 2024 01:00:00 +0100

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode where I am sharing with you the 3 easy things that you can do today to boost your confidence.

These steps will help you stop doubting yourself, go after big opportunities, and make your dream life and business a reality.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The importance of self-integrity in confidence
How to build confidence through small steps and self-compassion
Practical actions to take to become more confident

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Join me at my Atomicon 'Build Your Confidence and Become Unstoppable' workshop Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

Transcript

What would you do and how would your business look if you had buckets of confidence? If you could go into every task, every launch, every promotion, every anything, speaking on stages, doing podcast interviews, putting yourself forward, with the utmost of confidence, how could your life change? In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you exactly how to do that, how you can build your confidence muscle. So that you are no longer held back by self doubt and you don't let those things get in your way. I'm going to be sharing with you three things that you can start to do today to build your self confidence. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? If you are new to the podcast, thank you so much for listening. And if you are a returning listener, thank you so much for coming back. Today I want to talk to you about confidence. It's something that I'm actually doing a presentation on very soon. I'm doing a bit of a workshop on it, and it's something that comes up a lot in everything we do. You see, when I started my business, I knew how to do marketing. That was my thing. I had been to university. I've got a degree in it. I had worked in lots of businesses. I had marketed almost every possible type of industry you can imagine. And then I started helping small business owners. And I really quickly realized that without some of the mindset tools in place and one of them being confidence. We could have the best strategies in the world. And at the point I'm recording this, I'm actually doing this for me as much as you lot, because there are points in my business and things that I do where I need more confidence. And you might look at that and think, that seems crazy. You have loads of confidence. You do things that take a lot of confidence, like speaking on stages, putting the podcast out. putting yourself out there, but it doesn't mean that it's always fine and I'm always confident. But when we have confidence, it is honestly the game changer, because when we let not having confidence stop us, we've got nowhere to go with that. And if we can just have a bit of confidence to go out and do a thing, We can achieve amazing things. We can earn more money. We can launch the service that we want or the business that we want. We will be more successful. There's no doubt about it. We will put ourselves out there and we can honestly achieve amazing things. If you want to be more confident, or maybe, you know, one of your business friends that actually would benefit from listening to this, I think I would love you to go and share it with them. Obviously listen first, but make sure you share this episode with them after you've listened, because I think we could all do with some more confidence in our life. So let's talk about confidence. What even is confidence? Confidence often comes down to believing in ourselves, believing that we can do something. And I think a lot of us think that we should just have it, or it should just come, or maybe it's something you're born with and You're just either confident or you're not. And that is not the case at all. Confidence, like most mindset things, is a muscle that you need to work on and that you need to improve over time. Confidence can often come down to keeping promises that we make with ourselves and self integrity, which might feel like, okay, you've gone on a bit of a curve ball there, Teresa, but seriously, imagine if you are making some promises to yourself and you say, I'm going to do this today, or I'm going to show up this way and you don't. That can remove your own self confidence because having the confidence to do something that you set yourself or something that you want to do should be a given. But when we're not doing that and lots of us don't do it and I don't do it, you know, that that self integrity piece Every bit of mindset thing that I do, so many times it comes back to the self integrity, so many times it comes back to, if we can't make and keep promises to ourself, then we're kind of really messing up other things. So for me, confidence, one part of confidence is Do we keep the promises that we make to ourselves and do we have a level of self integrity? So that's the first thing I want you to think about. When did you last make a promise to yourself and break it? Or when did you last make a promise to yourself and keep it? And I think I just wanted to kind of slot this in as a bit of a side because although it is connected to confidence, it's not the main area I want to focus on. However, the self integrity piece is so important. Also the other thing that comes in to this whole confidence conversation is the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. If you don't believe you can change, if you don't believe that you can improve something, i. e. your confidence, then your brain is going to prove you right. So if you sit there and think, I'll never be confident at this, you will never be confident at it. So that's another thing I want you to think about just as we get into this confidence conversation, how much are you telling yourself and your brain, I can't do this, I'll never have that confidence, I will never be confident enough to do this. Because the more you keep telling yourself, the more your brain will keep proving you right. So you really need to think about on the very kind of base level of, how can I start to believe that I can be confident or become more confident? Okay, so you might sit there and think, this is easy for you to say, Teresa, you are super confident and everything you probably do now, you don't get nervous about. That is not the case at all. So first off, I was never like this, like, as I started my business, this was not something that I did. For those of you who know my story, how I started my business, I was very much back up against a wall, had to make some money and I started my business. So it wasn't, there was confidence wasn't even in it at that point. It was literally a case of, I needed to earn money and survive. However, as I started to put myself out there, that's when the confidence thing started to really play a role in my business and who I was. So just to make you feel a bit happier, if you're sat here thinking, I don't have confidence, or I don't have the confidence you have, Teresa, I want to tell you of a couple of instances when I first started my business. I remember going to a networking event. It was an all female networking event, and we had to do the 60 second thing. We had to go round the tables. And I, remember sitting there feeling physically sick at the thought of what I was going to say. And actually, I don't know why I'm laughing because it wasn't funny at the time, but I ended up saying something really stupid and didn't come across very well because I was so scared. Then my very first speaking gig in the States, I was over in Minneapolis. I spoke for Leadpages and there's Speaker before me who was Pat Flynn. And I used to get this thing every time I had something big and important in my world, like a speaking gig, I'd get a sore throat really random. And I'll, you know, could talk about that separately on another time, but I used to get a sore throat. So I'm running up to doing the speaking gig. I was out there a couple of nights before, and I started getting a sore throat and my throat was really, like my voice didn't sound great. And the morning of the speaking gig. And I'd prepared and I'd worked really hard at it and I'd spoken other places, but nothing as big as this, the morning of the speaking gig, I do a call with my husband on FaceTime or whatever. And also with my assistant who was back in the UK and both of them separately were freaking out on my behalf because I was freaking out. Like. They genuinely thought it was going to be a disaster. They actually thought I would fall apart or not even get on the stage or it would just go terribly because I was absolutely freaking out. Like, I don't think I've ever been so scared, ever been so nervous, ever thought I was going to mess something up so royally. Now, just to let you know, up until the point of getting on stage, I genuinely thought I was going to pee my pants. I actually said to, we had a concierge that looked after us, which was amazing. It was an amazing event. And I actually said to the guy who was looking after me, what if I get on stage and I pee my pants? Like, this is when you're so nervous, just any old rubbish is coming out of your mouth. And he was really sweet, and he was like, well, I guess that's never been done before. And we just kind of laughed about it. But I genuinely thought I was gonna get on stage and die because it was so terrifying. There was no confidence in there whatsoever. So, when I sit and talk to you about this stuff, this is not coming from a place of, I've got it all sussed, I know what I'm doing, I'm super confident. I have had to work at this as much as anyone else has had to work at it. And over time, it has increased. And yes, I don't feel like that now. I still get nervous when I speak on stage. And I am very grateful of that because I know I care about it. If I didn't get nervous, if I was so confident that I would just get on stage and it'd be amazing and I don't have to try and I don't have to be nervous, then that falls into arrogance and I don't ever want to be like that. I still want to be nervous. I still want an element of, I want to do a good job. However, I am confident that I will do my best at doing a good job. So even though the confidence is different, it's not that I'm, don't have confidence. I do have confidence that I'm a good speaker and will do a good job. However, I'm still nervous that I want to do a good job. Okay. So how do we build this confidence? How do you, if you're sat there listening to this going, yes, Teresa, but I want to start that thing and I'm terrified to do it. I want to, Apply for something. And I'm really scared. How do we actually go ahead and do it? So one of the first things that we need to not do before we get into the steps of what we can do is we can't rely on others to build our confidence for us. So often this comes a lot when we talk about how successful you think you are, or how good at something you think you are, this often can come down to when someone buys from you, when someone says you're good, when someone does something, you then feel good about it, you then feel confident, you then feel I've got a good product because someone else has said it, or I'm really good at what I do because someone else has said it. We can't rely on that. Not at all. Because as you well know, if you've been in business for a while, you are not for everyone. And I am not for everyone. And that is okay. So someone is going to look at you and what you do and go, no, I don't like it. And I think you're terrible. They probably need to do some work on themselves if they're going to say that. But. You can't control what other people are going to say and do. So if you are relying on others for your self confidence, for you to be able to put yourself out there, that is not a great place to start. So this has got to be something we do inside. This is something we've got to have internally that is not affected by external stuff. Now don't get me wrong. I flipping love it when people tell me they liked my talk or they thought the training I did was brilliant, or they love the podcast. Please come and tell me you love the podcast because I do genuinely love it. And when you're sat in your office, just talking to yourself, sometimes, you know, it can feel like you're talking to a void. So we love that. And that's awesome. However, if no one came and did that, am I confident that I still do a good job? Yes, I am. If someone came to me and said, I thought your podcast is awful. Would that then make me lose my confidence? No, it wouldn't. Because all I would think is you're not for me and I'm not for you. And that's okay. There's lots of other podcasts out there. So it's very much about having that confidence internally that, you know, no matter what anybody else says, that actually you will still be fine and still carry on, whether that thing is a good thing or a bad thing. Okay. So how are we going to become more confident? First thing I want you to try and make 1 percent changes. Often when we do something, we think it needs to be radical. We think that, you know, becoming confident means going from zero to a hundred. And that might not be possible. Now, if it is brilliant, do it. Let's give it a go. However, for lots of us and for lots of people, that is not possible. You can't just go, I've got no confidence. I'm going to do it. So where can we make the1 percent changes? And if you've been a listener to the podcast, you know, I talk about 1 percent changes a lot with everything. Because Often, when we set ourselves a goal, either to be more confident, to have more integrity, to sell more, to get more people on our email list, and we say, okay, we're at zero today and I want to be at a hundred tomorrow. Sometimes that is really hard to get. And sometimes that isn't always down to us. Sometimes, you know, that's not always something that we can control, especially when it's a goal or something like that. But what we can control is the 1 percent shifts. And often what happens is. If we set ourself a massive task, so let's say, and this is always such a really good, easy example, but it is a bit flippant, but the whole diet thing is such a great example because it's like day zero, you're terrible. And you're eating the worst of the worst and your diet's dreadful. And you say, tomorrow, I'm going to be perfect. And tomorrow you try and be perfect. and it's impossible, and your jump from zero to a hundred, and therefore you don't do it, and therefore you beat yourself up and think, well, I can't do it, and I'm rubbish, and I'm awful. Which sets you back even further than you've started already. So, it almost takes you to like minus ten, and then the next time you try and do it, you might, you know, Push yourself back even further. I hope all this is making sense. So taking 1 percent shifts is a really good way to strengthen any muscle. So if you want to become more confident about doing something, if you want to speak on a big stage, a 1 percent shift might be to See if you can do a training with a few of your friends or a 1 percent shift might be doing that 60 seconds at a networking event and doing it until you feel good and not like you're going to vomit on the table. The 1 percent shifts are easy because they're smaller things for you to do. And what happens is when you set that 1 percent and you do it. Your brain goes, look at that, we did it. We're ace. It doesn't matter that it was only 1%. It's just cheering the fact of, well done, you did it. It doesn't know really the difference, and I'm just making this bit up. I don't have any science to prove it, but it doesn't really know the difference between like this massive goal and the little goal. You either achieve it or you don't. So if you don't achieve it, you end up sometimes beating yourself up. And if you do achieve it, high five yourself. So those 1 percent shifts are really, really important. And that brings me to two other things that are attached to that. So the first thing is, you need to practice self compassion. So this is kind of like, if that was, you know, tip one, this is tip 1.A. Okay. So you need to practice that self compassion because What happens is, like I said, when you try and do something and you don't do it, or it doesn't happen the way you want it to happen, you can beat yourself up. And I've said before on the podcast many times about being the scientist, not the judge. So often when we try and do something and we fall on our face, because we will lots of times, and if we're not doing it, we're probably not trying hard enough, then If you do that and you fall on your face and it doesn't work and the judge comes out and goes, well I knew it wouldn't work because you are rubbish and no one wants to buy your thing because you're terrible and it's not going to happen and that dream of you having XYZ is just merely dream and it's never going to come to fruition and you're going to embarrass yourself and it's going to be terrible. Our brain is so very cruel. So when we let the judge kick in and say those things to us, what does that do for our confidence and our self confidence? literally puts it on the floor. When we practice self compassion, when we practice being kind to ourselves, which honestly, again, there are certain themes that run through everything mindset that I talk about, self integrity and self compassion are so important. But when we practice that self compassion and we become a scientist and not the judge, so the scientist would go, Okay, that was interesting. And sometimes I say, in fact, I was talking to Louise, who helps me stay accountable. And she basically keeps me on track and make sure I get to get all my work done. She, I was talking to her and I was saying something, I was like, Hmm, that's interesting. And she's like, I know you don't feel what you're saying. And I'm like, no, I don't always, sometimes I do feel like, Oh, that's so annoying. However, turning the, that's so frustrating, so annoying into that's interesting, really helps because then you start questioning and going, okay, well, that was interesting that that happened. Why might that be? And then you can have some self compassion for yourself. Okay. Well, you've never done that thing before. That was the first time. So who says you were going to be perfect at it? And actually. Yeah. You know, maybe it wasn't the right time or...

Why You Shouldn’t Charge Your Worth and What You Should Do Instead

Mon, 20 May 2024 01:00:00 +0100

If you offer a one to one service or are thinking about it, you are going to love today's episode.

Janine Coombes, and I talk all about marketing for one to one services, discussing why maybe you shouldn't niche straight away in your business, and how you can price with confidence. We also chat about why Janine doesn't buy into the philosophy of charge what you're worth, and how she advises to price with confidence at the level you want.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Janine's 'Reverse Niching Principle' explained
How to confidently price high-value services
Top tips for selling one to one services, focussing on risk removal and social proof

Janine Coombes is a marketing and sales strategist specialising in service offer positioning, pricing and sales for ambitious coaches and consultants. She’s a dynamic and engaging speaker who has shared the stage with Deborah Meaden and regularly appears on internationally renowned stages such as Atomicon, MarketEd Live and You Are The Media. With over 20 years of experience she has an extensive background in business and marketing having worked with big brands like EE, Orange and Europcar as well as hundreds of entrepreneurs and service based business owners. Her sweet spot is helping coaches and consultants to earn drastically more from their 1:1 services without slogging their guts out or moving to a more complicated business model. She has a business degree, a post-graduate marketing diploma (CIM Dip). She’s a skilled writer and one of the most creative content creators out there having garnered international attention with her sketch style show The Secret Marketing Show. If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to iTunes and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Download Janine's '6 steps to charging more with 100% confidence' workbook Download Janine's 'Coaching Sales JetPack' Connect with Janine on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: If you offer one to one services or are thinking about it, you are going to love today's episode. My guest and I talk around niching, pricing, and marketing your one to one offer. She shares why you shouldn't niche when you first start, and we discuss how pricing with confidence is key and why she doesn't buy into the charge what you are worth philosophy. We also look at how you can more one to one clients. And how to successfully get testimonials from those clients you've been working with. Hello and welcome to this latest episode of Your Dream Business. Thank you so much for taking the time out to listen to learn and to grow, which is something that as business owners, we should be doing all the time. But I really appreciate that you have chose my podcast. And I know there are a ton of podcasts you can listen to, So I really do appreciate you being here and thank you so much for tuning in. So today we are going to be talking with the lovely Janine Coombes, all about Marketing your one to one service. Now you might be thinking, but Teresa, I don't have a one to one service. Is this episode not for me? No, not at all. This episode covers so many good key foundations that actually, regardless of the services that you have, I think It's gonna really help lots of you out there. So we talk about pricing with confidence. We talk about niching, we talk about how to get more clients, and also things like how to get testimonials from people, which can be tricky and what to do if you don't have any testimonials. So there is so much good advice in this podcast that you are not going to want to miss out in. I would even go as far as to say that you should probably share this episode with one of your friends, business buddies, whoever it might be that has a business. And if they are offering one to one services like coaching, then boy, this is for them more than ever. So please do go ahead and share this with someone who you think it might be useful for. My lovely guest today is Janine Coombes. She is a marketing and sales strategist specializing in service offering, positioning, pricing, and sales for ambitious coaches and consultants. Her dynamic, engaging speaking has meant that she shared the stage with people like Deborah Meaden and regularly appears on internationally renowned stages such as Atomicon, Marketed Live, and You Are The Media. With over 20 years experience, she has extensive background in business and marketing, having worked with big brands like EE, Orange, and EuropaCar, as well as hundreds of entrepreneurs and service based business owners. Her sweet spot is helping coaches, consultants, earn drastically more money from their one to one services without slogging out their guts or moving to a complicated business model. So there is so much good stuff that you're going to get from today. I really hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, here's Janine. Janine, welcome to the podcast. Janine: Thanks for having me. Teresa: My pleasure. I realized that when I just said that I almost have like a podcast voice. Like I say things a certain way when I start the podcast. It's very odd, but this is how I talk. It's just, I just noticed how I said that. I was like, Oh, I always say it like that. Anyway, just a little insight for you and the lovely listeners. So Janine, let's start as I always do, which one day I might change this up, but we'll keep with it for now by explaining to my lovely listeners who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Janine: Right. How? Oh, gosh. I mean, I could talk half an hour on that, but I'll try and keep it short and sweet. Hello, everyone. I'm Janine Coombes, and I help coach shaped people earn more from their one to one work without slogging their guts out. And it came to me, this, this mission of mine, over years. Over the many years of my marketing experience, my marketing career, and then working with service based business owners, like, it revealed itself over the years, and I realized that that's who I was working with. I was trying to appeal to a broader market, but actually, when I drilled down in it, it's what I did and what I needed for my own business was to get clear on my offerings, my pricing, my positioning, and then do the sales and marketing. And that's what I love helping my clients with. And they do tend to be coach shaped people. Teresa: Okay. Awesome. So you have a marketing background. Janine: Yes. Teresa: And how long have you had your business? Janine: Just over seven years. Teresa: So what were you doing before you did your business? Janine: So my, my original career was in house marketing for service based businesses like was telecoms mainly and broadband. So EE, Orange, spot of national renter car and Europe car. Yeah. And then I took a break to look after my kids or have my kids and look after them. Yep. And I didn't know whether I'd go back to my marketing career, because I kind of fell out of love with it to an extent, but I just couldn't keep my nose out. So I had some friends who were starting up businesses. I was like, we don't want to be doing that. I think, you know, like Janine. Go away. Teresa: I, that is me all over. I literally, this is why I have to be so careful with the services that I offer and how much time I give people because I can't help but go, Oh, I'll tell you what you should do. You should try. Because when you've been in marketing for such a long time, like, It's, it's in you, it's bred in you. So that's cool. I like that you came from a marketing background. How did you find, I'm only asking this because this is something I struggled with. How did you find marketing yourself as opposed to marketing a service? Janine: Well, funny you should ask because I thought, well, I'll set up my own business, you know, and at least the marketing will be easy. Teresa: Yeah. Good luck with that. Janine: Marketing yourself will be really, really easy. Teresa: It's a nightmare. Janine: I think it's been the most painful for me, nailing my own messaging. following through on the advice I give clients is hideous. I thought, you know, it took me a while because I thought I had to know all the answers. I mean, this is another little knot I got myself into. I thought I had to know all the answers and be faultless. And, People would expect me to be on all the social media platforms, but I held myself up to such a high bar. I think I thought I was a big corporate and I knew my brand didn't need to be on point. I had to have a perfect website and I needed to be on all the platforms and it was just ridiculous looking back. Absolutely ridiculous. Teresa: That, you know, it's so funny because you do think, you know, this is the thing I'm an expert at. This is the thing I do with ease. So surely it's just a matter of just doing it for myself. And it was the hardest thing and still is one of the hardest things like, you know, both you and I are in positions where we work with other people and we help them do their marketing. And yet you and I still need someone else to help us with our stuff because even though we know what to do, it's still not easy doing it. Janine: Yeah, absolutely. Teresa: There was like a million things I could talk about with you as, as you guys probably know, listening, when I ask people, either when I asked them to come on or they applied to come on, I get them to fill in a form that gives me like, where can we go with this? What kind of conversation can we have? And there are like so many options for Janine that I'm like, I almost don't want to pick one. And I want to kind of scoot into each one of them. Cause I think it will, it will help. So let's start with you sharing your reverse niching principle. What do we mean by that? And, and the reason I'm asking this is because selfishly, which actually most of the podcast questions I ask are quite selfish because I like to know for my own business, which surely is one of the perks of having a podcast. But selfishly, I am currently going through a new, I'm going through a business review and I'm about to do a rebrand and I'm just working on my customer profile questions for myself now and I'm debating moving down the niche type route. So I'm interested to hear your thoughts on niching. So what do you mean by reverse niching principle? Janine: What I mean by it, so the context, let's start with the context. I think there's so much about niching or niching and the riches are in the niches and people talking about it and I think And people who are just starting out in business, how on earth can you niche? Like, how can you, how can you niche? Like, I can only think of a few people that I've come across who, who have a, like an obvious niche where they obviously should go sharper with their messaging from the get go. And even after years, like I found my niche pretty much it was last year after like six years. And it was, it was a gradual thing. And what really helped me was thinking about it less about the niching of your whole business. So like top down, but actually thinking about being clear on who you were targeting with each offer, which is why I call reverse, call it reverse niching. Cause you're not thinking about, okay, Who is my ideal client for my whole business? You're saying, okay, I've got a series of offers. I've got one or two main offers or however many offers you've got could be like 50 courses, but each of those individual offers have an ideal client for each. So that is more important question. I think is for each of your offers, are you clear on who's going to buy it and why they would buy it? And for each of those offers, The target market or niche, if you wanna call it that. It could be very wide or it could be very small and it doesn't matter. And for me, it was much easier to think, okay, for each of my offers and for a lot of my clients as well, who is your ideal client for each of the offers? And then what's the theme there? Is there a theme? And then that can be your niche and it's almost bottom up. So you're looking at your offers, and then you're looking upwards and saying, oh, okay, actually my brand as a whole is appealing to these people. Teresa: So there's a couple of things I want to pick up on that you said there. The first one is very few people can niche the minute they start. I wholeheartedly agree with that, because at this point, and I've got someone actually in my world that is just starting in the coaching world. So she has a full time job and she's starting the coaching on the side. And the ultimate aim is to move fully into the coaching and stop the job. And she came on a call the other day and was like, I'm not sure I should niche. I'm not sure how I should do this. I'm not sure what my branding should be targeting. I'm not sure this. And I'm like, at the moment, I just don't think you can because you haven't had enough experience in it. You don't know what you like. You don't know what you don't like. And like I said, the reason I was selfishly asking this question is because 10 years in, I'm still questioning, should I be niching more? Should I not be niching more? So that was the first thing that I want to say that is brilliant. So if you are listening to this and you are early days in your business, do not be freaking out that you haven't got a niche, because actually I think you need to try so many different things like, and work with that person and go, Oh, I hate that. Don't want to work with those businesses again, work with that person and go, Oh, I love that business in that industry that, and actually I work really easily in that industry. So I think that is first awesome thing to think about. Also, I love the idea of, and again, selfishly, this is a really good exercise for me to do is am I clear on the different products? Now, being in business for 10 years means I have a ton of stuff, right? A ton of stuff. And yes, I have some core products that I sell, like the membership and the exec club and the group coaching program. However, like I have a ton of stuff and I'm constantly going, I really should do more with that. I have a whole course on how to build an email list. I barely talk about it. Like I have a whole thing, this, this, this, but actually, Looking at those products individually and going, who would be the perfect customer for that? Because I think I've got an idea for the overall arching customer. However, there is a disconnect and this is why I'm looking at it. There's a disconnect between who I want my perfect customers to be and the products and services I offer. So actually, starting the other way around and going, what are these aimed at? Then I can, it's just a different way of looking at it. So I loved that. I really, really loved that. So when you decided on a niche, how do you then get clear on saying, this is how I'm going to go after these people. And I want you to answer the question as well, in terms of like people often fear me included doing a niche because I don't want to put people off. And I don't want to, because I work with such a wide range of people. I love it. I don't want to suddenly go, Oh no, I can't work with you anymore because that you're not my niche. So what, give me your thoughts on those two very different questions that I've given you once. Janine: So how do you go after the, but I think that's the easier question. How do you lump it to that niche? I think If you do take this iterative approach and you're like, okay, I like working with these people. I like working with these people less. You kind of get a feel for where they are and where they're hanging out and how to speak to them. And you know, whether do your book podcast or a blog or whatever. And I mean, a lot of come, a lot of that comes from your own personality and skill set and likes and dislikes. So I'm of the opinion that it should fit you as much, if not more than the client. Like, you know, you could be, there's a florist who does really, really well on LinkedIn, you know, people, a marketing consultant would tell her to be on Instagram. Yeah. Why, why are you focusing all your time on LinkedIn? She's doing brilliantly there because she likes it. She knows the lay of the land. She knows how it works and because she enjoys it, she does it more. So. Teresa: Yeah. And I think that's really important as well to say around You've got to want to do the thing that you're, you know, so if, like you said, Instagram isn't your thing, but LinkedIn is, or the other way around. If you don't want to do a podcast, but you love speaking on stage or you like writing, then it's still got to be in line with you. You can't just go, well, customers would love this in this niche. So I really must go down that route. And actually, I guess for her, she is a big player in a small pond of florist on LinkedIn. Janine: Yeah. So it's the only person I know. The only florist that, yeah. Teresa: Yeah. 'cause I would go to Instagram. So the other thing, my brain keeps coming and going. I've got so many questions. I keep writing things down and like I'm not focusing very well 'cause there's so much to talk about. So the one thing I wanted to say was, and the reason I'm looking at my niche, and again I just wanna get your thoughts on this, is when I interviewed Amy Porterfield for the summit, one of the things that Amy said. Which I thought, I don't have that, is Amy is known for online courses, right? You want to go to Amy? You want an online course? You go to Amy. Like, she has done the same thing for like 15 years, taught the same stuff, showed up in the same places, has completely got her niche that like, like you said, you know, If someone thinks online courses, you think Amy Porterfield, if you're in that world. And I just didn't have that thing, right? I don't have a thing. And I was talking to Katie Caldwell, who's redoing my brand. And in our preliminary conversation, we're going to have a proper one soon. But I said it, I said it jokingly, but I kind of like, I am fairly serious. And I

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1. Focus on One Offer

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7. Build Intentional Relationships

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Key Take-away

Trigger 1: Reciprocity

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Trigger 4: Social Proof

Trigger 5: Price Anchoring

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How to Choose the Right Launch Strategy for Your Offer

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🛠 Practical Actions I Will Take (And You Should Too)

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