Online Coaching

How to write a coach's business plan that helps your practice thrive

A business plan is crucial for a coaching business as it provides a clear vision, strategy, and financial planning. It helps in understanding the market, mitigating risks, and developing effective marketing and operational strategies. Moreover, a business plan aids in tracking progress. Overall, it serves as a roadmap for achieving success and managing the business effectively.

In this episode, we talk about:

Episode links:

Hourly Rate Calculator: https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/coachingratescalculator

Niching Article to help you find a profitable niche

Discovery Call Script-Writing

How to Start a Coaching Business with the Resources You Have

Podcast Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Check out our blog about marketing for coaches and building an online coaching business: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/

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About the Show

In the Profitable Online Coaching podcast, Stephanie and her expert guests answer the most common online coaching and coach marketing questions to help you unravel the facts and take the right next step for your coaching business.

On solo episodes and with guests, she talks about popular topics such as marketing for coaches, blogging, digital marketing strategies, pricing, mindset, and how coaches build successful businesses.

Stephanie is an experienced SEO Content Marketing Strategist as well as a Marketing Coach for Coaches. She talks about online marketing strategies, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing tools, books, and much more.

She learned programming as a fresh graduate and has worked as a trainer, programmer, and web consultant for over 15 years before becoming an online coach. For the last 6 years, she has offered 1:1 coaching and Online Programmes designed for coaches, therapists, and online service providers. She also offers Content strategy sessions and SEO Content Consultancy services to 6, 7 & 8 figure coaches. Contact her on hello@stephaniefiteni.com or visit www.stephaniefiteni.com

How to write a comprehensive coaching contract/agreement

A coaching agreement can help you pre-empt trouble and make sure that your clients are well-introduced to what they are about to experience with your coaching.

It's important to include information that not only protects you in case a client turns sour but especially to help the coaching clients understand the nature of the client-coach relationship.

In this episode we talk about:

Episode links:

The article mentioned with a coaching agreement template inside it

Podcast Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Check out our blog about marketing for coaches and building an online coaching business: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/

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Whether you put prices on your website or not can effect the future of your business. If you pick the wrong option for your specific situation, you may be rigging your business. There are specific reasons and considerations to put your pricing on your coach website and there are reasons not to as well.

Listen to this episode to be armed with the knowledge to make this decision for yourself.

In this episode we talk about:

- Introduction: Should I put my prices on my coach website?

- Exploring the importance of price as a selling point for your ideal client

- Considering the possibility of offering lower prices for higher-quality products

- The need to clearly demonstrate the value of your program or service

- When it might be advisable to include prices on your website

- Challenges in explaining customization and individualized offerings on a website

- Difficulties in conveying the unique aspects of high-ticket programs on a sales page

- The personal interpretation of what constitutes a high ticket price

- Strategies to explain pricing and customize the experience for clients

- Not putting prices on the website to avoid potentially alienating potential clients based on price alone

- Tips for encouraging potential clients to engage in discovery calls

- Emphasizing the importance of showcasing testimonials and high-quality content to instil confidence in your abilities

Episode Links:

Podcast Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Get support with your pricing: www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

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Creating your course is the easy part - you know your stuff right? But creating it and selling it is another game. There are many key considerations - pricing tops them all.

In this episode, we talk about:

1. The Evergreen Value of Digital Mini Courses

2. Maximizing Your Mini Course: Duration and Content Considerations

3. Selling Your Online Course: Email Launches, FB Ads, and More

4. Breaking Down the $47 Challenge Trend

5. Creating Passive Income with Your Online Course

6. Moving Beyond $47: Offering Substantial Programs for Real Change

7. Navigating the Different Pricing Tiers for E-Courses

8. Tools and Solutions for Building Successful Online Programs

9. Understanding the Market: A Deep Dive into Online Course Pricing

Episode Links:

Podcast Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Get support with your course launch and pricing: www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

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How can you turn your 1:1 Coaching Programs into an eCourse that sells?

If you've spent many years doing only 1:1 caching, it can be hard to step back and take a bird's eye view of what you deliver in order to package it into a scalable online course.

However it's worth the trouble because it can really grow your business and your income without putting more time pressure on you.

Listen in to understand how...

In this episode we talk about:

Episode links:

www.canva.com

www.mangools.com/keywordfinder

www.teachable.com

www.thinkific.com

Podcast Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Check out our blog about marketing for coaches and building an online coaching business: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/

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This podcast episode is an adapted version of the Live Webinar I ran a few weeks ago.

You can find the full video webinar below and download all the functions from the links provided below too.

A.I. is here to stay. You only have 2 options, embrace it as an ally or study it like an enemy.

In this episode we talk about:

Various A.I. tools and what they're for

How things are likely to change

How to use A.I. to create faster / better content

How to not get penalized for using A.I. in your marketing

Episode links:

Webinar Video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZsti7zt8AcWMYseaYz6S2Q

Video Transcript: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/content-marketing/content-marketing-for-coaches/a-i-content-for-coaches/

Commands to copy and paste: http://my.stephaniefiteni.com/ai-content_commands

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In this podcast episode, I speak with Glen Oliveiro, Founder & CEO of CoachVantage.

CoachVantage is an all-in-one coaching platform that helps coaches deliver exceptional results for their business and their clients.

Glen created CoachVantage after speaking with hundreds of coaches to understand the biggest pain points of running a coaching business. Coaches who were just starting out struggled with marketing and getting clients consistently. More established coaches felt overwhelmed by managing admin tasks single-handedly, including things like sharing documents with clients, scheduling appointments, and keeping track of client sessions.

To try and solve the problem, they used different tools and ‘freebies’ like Calendly, Google Docs, Evernote, Excel, and PayPal to manage various aspects of their business.

However, their data and client information was scattered in so many different places that there was no coherent view. As a result, it was counter-productive - they felt even more disorganized and unproductive.

What they desired was a solution that would help them stay organized by automating their workflows and having everything in one place.

In this episode we talk about:

How coaches can stay organized and productive and have more time to create value for their business.

How CoachVantage helps coaches to manage their practice seamlessly, deliver a professional client experience and coach more effectively. It’s like the ‘swiss army knife' for coaches, allowing you to:

- Sell coaching programs online

- Invoice clients

- Sign e-contracts

- Schedule sessions online

- CRM to manage client information

- Upload files and documents

- Secure client portal to manage the end-to-end coaching journey

- Track coaching hours automatically

Episode links:

Main website: www.coachvantage.com

Article Mentioned:https://www.coachvantage.com/blog/coaching-platform

Podcast Website:https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/online-coaching/

Check out our blog about marketing for coaches and the online coaching business: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/

Not everyone has money to invest when they start their coaching business.

It is possible to make it no matter how little money you have to start with. You just need to be realistic and plan accordingly.

I actually started off my coaching business with zero budget.

In this episode, we talk about how to start your coaching business now, with the resources you have:

1. Find a tool that would allow you to receive money, so people can pay you for your

delivery. You can begin by using PayPal or a similar tool.

2. Find a tool to deliver your service with. Say you're an online coach. In that case, you

can use Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, or the like to interact with your clients. To share

files, you can use Google Drive or similar tools. You don’t really need anything more.

3. Marketing.

● Choose organic forms of marketing that will help you gain the visibility you

need to sell your packages. You can start with blogging, spending time making

valuable interactions on social media, and getting to know your community.

● Offer something for free. Freebies, free coaching sessions, live training for

people in your group, etc. will help you get more traffic. Your first goal is to get

on as many discovery calls as possible.

● My favorite marketing tip is SEO. 98% of my traffic and leads still come from

search engine optimization and blogging.

For more information go to www.stephaniefiteni.com

Creating a content plan can feel hard when you overanalyze your business and audience and get yourself into an overwhelmed state. Sometimes you might also experience idea blocks.

When you create a content plan the RIGHT way, both these issues are not a problem. 

I dislike the airy fairy way in which some so-called content experts will also you to think of your pillars and create your content plan based on that.

It might be enough if you’re looking to do a little bit of social, but if you want to create a content plan that actually generates leads and turns them into clients, then you need to go a little bit deeper.

You need to find topic ideas that your ideal clients are already out there looking for. You need to have proof - not just base your content plan on assumptions.

In this Episode, we talk about…

-Focusing on producing less content at higher quality

As a coach, your content needs to generate leads but also build your authority. So don’t skimp on quality.

- Create your titles from keywords

Learn how to research your ideal clients and how to use keyword research tools (ideally multiple ones) so that you know for sure what people want.

- Convey your values

Make sure that people who come across your content know your values 

- Add testimonials and case studies

Pepper your content with client success stories only people who believe you can deliver what you promise will buy.

- Create a doable repurposing strategy

Repurposing is key to amplify your visibility but the idea is to do as much as possible with the resources you have not to overwhelm yourself or dream bigger than your resources allow.

More information atwww.stephaniefiteni.com

Branding is key for any business even solopreneurs. A Brand is what makes you memorable, what makes you different. This is what sets you apart from others, and it is important in order to stand out and be chosen by prospective customers.

The most successful coaches have great brands - personal brands. As a coach you are chosen not just for your qualifications and track record but also for being you.

Prospective clients will get to know you to understand if they are an energetic match - coaching and coachees spend a lot of time in intimate conversation so it is important for your prospects to see you s someone they can potentially connect to. And that’s a matter of chemistry.

This is why your Brand needs to have all the elements that make up your chemistry - who you are. So that your prospects can take an informed decision. A brand should repel those you don’t want to work with and attract those you love to work with.

In this episode we talked about :

- Building your personal Brand

The 4 steps to building a strong personal brand for your coaching business.

- Your Personality and why it matters for Personal Branding

Your personality is the core of your brand when you’re building a coaching practice.

- Define your Core Values to define your Brand

What values do you live by? What values do you manage your business by?

- Find your Band Story

Look for the stories in your brand. Your own and those of your clients.

- Define your Messaging

Be clear about who you’re for and who you’re not for.

- Briefing your designer and photographer

Getting clear about your Brand will help you give clear instructions to your logo designer and photographer.

For more information go to www.stephaniefiteni.com

I come across a lot of coaches that have been spinning their wheels for a very long time and still haven't managed to get their businesses off the ground. This can be really frustrating and some get so demotivated that they go back to their day job.

But coaching is a vocation, for most, and if you go back to your day job you would be doing your future clients a disservice. Coaches change lives - that's what we do. But you need to stay in business in order to change lives.

In this episode we talked about:

> The pitfalls to avoid as a new coach.

> Why you should neveravoid niching

> Picking the right marketing strategy for your business stag

>Don’t ignore your personality, passions and your dreams

> Don’t hire gurus that are not actively doing what they teach (even if they have 20 years' experience!)

> Don’t underestimate the power of showing up (even to crickets at first) in a way you enjoy

> Don’t overgive or coach in your content

> Don’t use marketing techniques that ruin your reputation

Episode Links:

www.stephaniefiteni.com/reviews

www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

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In the last couple of years, we have seen a difficult business environment. The Covid pandemic, low interest rates, high inflation, and now war in Europe compounding all of these.

We have seen many business disappear, some had been around for decades and yet they were not stable enough to withstand the knocks.

This episode helps you see your coaching business with different eyes. Anyone can create a coaching practice in booming times. But what about when times are hard? will your business withstand that? or can you even start a business in hard times?

The answer is yes, I co-founded my brick-and-mortar advertising agency in the recession of 2008. And that taught me a lot about the basics that make a strong business, not because I got it right, but precisely because I made al the mistakes and corrected course to do better.

The coaching business has been growing exponenetially. A lot of new people are jumping on the bandwagon. Partly because of the freedom it promises, partly because the demand is also increasing. It is a strong industry that is expanding.

The sad thing, however, is that only about 3% of coaches actually earn enough to leave their day job. And very fewer make 6 figures plus.

Listen to this episode if you want to understand how to create a business that not only survives the hard times but thrives.

In this episode we talked about:

> Getting your basics right.

> Build a strong brand

> Building a stream of new daily visitors to your website a.k.a traffic

> The role of your email list

> How to listen to what people want and evolve your business in that direction

Episode Links:

www.stephaniefiteni.com/reviews

www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

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Achieving six figures in sales in your coaching business is easier than you think. Actually, it's way easier when you keep it simple.

In episode 50 of the Profitable Online Coaching Podcast, we discuss the coaches' two-step, six-figure sales funnel.

But before we get into the details…

Do you know what a funnel is?

>>A funnel is made up of the little steps a person takes towards becoming your client. These steps can be downloading a freebie or registering for a webinar - there can be many windows into your coach funnel. The goal is to keep them moving forward to the following steps till they're ready to work with you.

>> The two-step six-figure sales funnel is the simplest, and it will take you from starting a coaching business to reaching six figures with one funnel and one lead generation strategy.

The more complex your funnel is, the longer your funnel is going to take to convert.

we also talked about...

●   The sales funnel, in reality, is made up of the steps that your coaching clients take before they decide to buy from you. We call it the customer journey. It's something you need to become familiar with.

●   It's important that the first step is very well attuned to your target audience. It's got to show your expertise, help your prospect understand why they need what you're selling, and how they will make it happen.

●   Content should come easy. It should be the format that you enjoy. If you don't enjoy being on Facebook, do not stay on Facebook - it just won't work for you. You can create any other content and then reformat it for social media.

●   It is recommended to have core content because that core content is going to go somewhere where people are going to keep finding it indefinitely. This is why you need core content.

●   The second step is so simple. The important thing is just to have your call to action.

Building a successful coaching business is almost entirely about marketing.

And marketing is all about the quality of your core content…

In episode 49 of the Profitable Online Coaching Podcast, I'm breaking down the most efficient and proven marketing strategies for coaches to grow their business from $0 to $100k (or more) in about 12-18 months. 

But before we get into the details… Do you know what's common in every successful coach's understanding of marketing?

Two things:

>> Marketing for coaches isn't just about getting people to see what you're selling. It's also about building authority and trust.

>> Marketing for coaches is as much about planning as it is about ideating. Listen, measure, look, plan and oversee your marketing. 

If you think social media is the best way to market your coaching business, you're in for a surprise. Because the best marketing asset you can build is probably also the most underrated: your blog, for example.

In this Episode we talked about:

>> The best way to go about your marketing is to measure and listen to what's happening in your own marketing. Multiply the marketing effort that is giving the most reward.

>> Blogging is a perfect way for coaches to advertise themselves. Because it does the advertising without explicitly showing they're advertising. Blogging is a way of proving your authority and placing your content high up in Google search rankings.

>> How to start a blog if you're a non-writer? Start a podcast! Turn your audio content into pieces of writing or hire professional writers to do the writing for you.

>> Do you need 1000's of visitors to get your blog to support your business? Absolutely not. Even if you just have a few hundred people visiting your website, you will start selling if you’ve built your content plan correctly and are attracting the right people.

>> Wait until you're fully booked for a while before offering paid resources or courses. It will help you broaden your outreach instead of narrowing it down.

>> Make sure your content is designed specifically for the kind of people that need you.  And focus on the conversion rate.

Episode Links and Mentions

Book a Call: http://www.stephaniefiteni.com/call

Website: https://www.stephaniefiteni.com

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Need new ways to generate leads and get your online marketing in ship shape?

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My guest today is Tiffanie Kellog, Tiffanie entered the entrepreneurial world in 2003 and since then, she has spent her time traveling across the globe helping thousands of entrepreneurs create amazing businesses and improve their networking and referral skills through keynote presentations, workshops, online programs, and more!

Whether sharing her expertise on referral marketing, networking or maximizing your time, Tiffanie will knock the socks off the audience with her fun and entertaining style.

Tiffanie shares, “My goal is to help people achieve their dreams by giving them the tools needed to make more money in less time so they can have more fun!”

She is the author of 4 books including 4 ½ Networking Mistakes.

We talked about…

>> Simple steps to improve your referrals

>> Creating a network of referrers

>> Identifying where your network is

>> Referral mistakes to avoid

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Stephanie's Client Attraction Content Plan Training

https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/moreclients

(it's free but seats are limited - grab yours asap)

>> More Referrals: Double Your Referrals in 30 Minutes a Week - https://bit.ly/TKmoreref

>>https://tiffaniekellog.com/

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In this episode, we talk about inbound marketing strategy. This is the fourt of a series of 4 episodes covering the topics of Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing, and Referrals/Affiliate Sales.

Lead generation is the lifeblood of every business, but it doesn't have to be hard. Getting leads can be easy.

In this episode you will learn:

What is inbound marketingWhy it saves you time and moneyHow to pick the right strategies for you

Episode links

https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/lead-generation-for-coaches/

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In this episode, we talk about outbound marketing strategy. This is the third of a series of 4 episodes covering the topics of Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing, and Referrals/Affiliate Sales.

Lead generation is the lifeblood of every business, but it doesn't have to be hard. Getting leads can be easy.

In this episode you will learn:

What to expect from outbound marketingHow the conversion rates workHow to start

Episode links

Emailing Tool

Follow the Profitable Online Coaching Podcast by Email

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In this episode, we talk about referral strategy. This is the second of a series of 4 episodes covering the topics of Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing and Referrals/Affiliate Sales.

Lead generation is the lifeblood of every business, but it doesn't have to be hard. Getting leads can be easy.

In this episode you will learn:

The 3 main types of referralsHow to turn a trickle into a consistent stream of leadsUplevelling with affiliate programs

Episode links

Drop your referral questions here

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In this episode, we talk about lead generation. This is the first of a series of 4 episodes covering the topics of Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing and Referrals/Affiliate Sales. Lead generation is the lifeblood of every business, but it doesn't have to be hard. Getting automatic leads from your website should be easy. In this episode you will learn:

The 3 main types of lead gen for coaches How to pick the right one for you The importance of aligning more than one form of lead gen for business resilience

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In this episode, we talk about procrastination and getting things done. It's such a common problem that makes you spin your wheels instead of moving forward.

Procrastination is common, but learning how to get unstuck especially as a solopreneur coach can make or break your business.

In this episode you will learn:

The 3 things that make you procrastinateHow to plan for consistent actionHow to write better to-do lists that help you get unstuckBooks that can help you with project planning and mindset

Links

Getting Thing Done by David Allen

Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield Thomas

10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

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In this episode about creating simple onboarding systems for solopreneur coaches, we talk about the essentials and how to simplify every step of the process. Time is precious and admin is not a nice way to spend it!

These tips will help you minimize your onboarding and client admin processing.

>> Contracts - when you really need them

>> Feedback and Onboarding Forms

>> Google Drive or DropBox

>> B2B Coaches

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> DropBox

>> Google Drive

>> CoachVantage

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Full Transcript:

Hey, welcome today we're gonna talk about administration. So basically how to do as little admin as possible in your online coaching. Now you've probably heard before that you need to do at least 50% marketing and 50% coaching. So break down your time, you know, half of it for coaching and half of it for marketing, this is something that has been going around the coaching grapevine for a while.

But of course, it makes you wonder... where do I squeeze in my admin? Now of course automation is key. Absolutely. I love to do as little admin as possible, but there are some things that you need to have in place in order to save yourself a lot of time. Now I have been in this industry for a while. I've had businesses before and I'm a big, big systems lover.

So what I'm going to share with you today is actually probably a little bit of pre. As to my love for simplicity. I love simplicity - there are many great tools out there. I still have not found one that really suits my systems to a T. So I really haven't found one that can really see my processes through from beginning to.

And I'm going to describe to you what I've done, and I'm going to give you a few tips that will really help you save time because there are some things that you think you have to do. But when you think about it, logically, maybe they are not so necessary. For example, let's start with point number one, and tip number one is actually something that I've started doing based on.

So one thing I do is I don't send out contracts to people who haven't paid me yet. So basically what I do is people pay me first. They decide what plan they want, whether they want the payment plan or the full payment. And then only those that pick the payment plan are going to be sent a contract. And the reason is this, you know, if somebody has actually paid you in for.

They, are the ones holding the risk. You're not the one holding the risk. They're the one's sort of sticking their neck out and trusting you. And of course, you know, you're, you're a great coach, you know, you're going to deliver, you know, everything's going to be fine, but of course, They are the ones holding the risk because they don't know that yet, but because they have paid you in full, you're not really running an asterisk, so you really don't have any need to send a contract.

So what this does is it actually saves you quite a lot of time, because let's say, for instance, approximately 70% of my clients pay in full. This means that out of every 10 clients, I'm actually saving. The time it takes to get the contract signed and everything, everything in order for the contracts, I'm saving all that time for 70% of my class.

The clients that do the payment plan of course are going to require a little bit more admin. And, but this is a service that you need to offer, you know, to close sales for some people. But there is absolutely no reason why you'd need to have a contract for absolutely every client. In reality. When you think about it, if people don't want to break a contract, They can, they can, and they do.

And usually, especially when you're dealing internationally and you're in different countries, it's not going to be so easy for people to hold you accountable or for you to hold them accountable. So you have to calculate your risks and make sure that you're taking us to as possible. And then you kind of take the legal side with a pinch of salt.

You also need to remember that in order to get somebody to sign a contract, you have to have. So if you send that to us, the first thing you're going to be toing and froing with emails or forms to collect their information. So the way I do this is once somebody pays, then they go to a form, which is the onboarding form, where I collect all the information I need for the first session to happen, where I map all the content of their coaching sessions, because I customize my one-to-one coaching to the clients.

So to make sure that they achieve theirs. But basically, this form also contains all the legal stuff. So name, surname, business name, you know, VAT, number, everything you need for the financial and the contractual side. So when they pay, they are automatically taking them going to this form. They're going to give me the information, which is going to stop me from to-ing and fro-ing emails when it comes to getting information for the contract.

So what have I done? I have basically as the first step, sent them the payment link once they have paid, I know that they are serious. So this is the point at which I am happily going to give some admin time before they've actually paid is just relationship building, but I'm not going to stay processing paperwork before any of this is for sure.

And set in stone was if paid for me, this is committed. It's a set. They have received the form. They put in the data, people who don't pay the full amount, then we go and take the data from the actual form, which they filled in the onboarding form. And that information goes into the contract and the contract goes out for that client.

In the onboarding form, the client will also find two other things. They will find some information about how to prepare for the first call with me, which is usually the mapping call. So I get to know them better and I can customize the pro. And then they will also find the link to book the first school.

So they actually book themselves in for the first mapping call. I don't have to do anything. I have days in my calendar that are dedicated to this. They can go in and just book themselves. So, so far, if you track it back, what have I done? So all I have done is I've done the discovery call. I've maybe emailed the client once or twice.

If the call if they didn't decide to buy on the call, once they've done the payments, they got the onboarding core onboarding form in this onboarding form. Then they gave me all the details for the contract so that I can send the contract. And then they also find information to prepare for the mapping.

And then link to book the mapping code. So they have booked themselves in. We have practically started the first step of the coaching and I have burly how to do anything when it comes to admin. Now, what happens on the call? Again? The call is designed to get to know the clients. Get to know them really well, and make sure that the program is customized so that they can reach their goals.

We make sure we have enough time for everything they wanted from the program. And we also make sure that they've picked sort of the right duration and that, you know, take a look at what they have, where they come with. Do they have a website? Are they going to change it? Are they blogging? You know, all that stuff to get a very clear picture.

I also would like to get to know my clients from a different perspective, you know, how they work with their clients. How do you collect testimonials and sort of, we also take a good look at all the business? And this takes, you know, the mapping call, which is about 90 minutes during, which were my pout, all the goals that we're going to achieve during the coaching that they do with me.

But like I mentioned, this call can also be used to save you abdomen time. And the way I do it is very simple. At the end of the call, we will go in and we will decide which day of the week and time of that day, they're going to have the subsequent sessions. So if they picked a six-session coaching my six-week program, that we will then go in, we will say, okay, so for the next six weeks, we're going to meet on Thursdays at 5:30 PM.

That's as confirmed by both of us on the call, I put it into zoom, create the event, and then it's ready for the next step, which is to actually create the main documents, the master document that is going to contain everything that we do together in our sessions. Now you can do this by using Dropbox or Google drive.

I use Google drive. I basically have a folder for the client where I share every swipe file, every template, every checklist that I share with them during the coaching. We also sometimes create copy for their packages for their pages. So, you know, there's usually quite a few documents there, but apart from having a folder, they also have an index.

So they will have a master document that links everything. All the notes, everything they had in each session, and then also a link to the replay now. Offering replays is a little bit time-consuming in the sense that you have to wait for zoom to restaurants, the file, you have to upload it to YouTube.

You have to then link it in the document. But for me, this is an important part of the service because the kind of stuff that I teach is stuff that people are going to want to go back and watch again, sometimes we talk about, you know, SEO things that you can. As a second or third step stuff that you need to do to review your content plan after the first six months.

So these are things that my clients I know are going to do off to some time when they've stopped working with me. So they are going to need to go back and watch them. Now, of course, human may not need to give your clients recordings, but if you do, and they are important, then it's very important to how the links in a main document or in a folder somewhere for.

To be able to access it if they don't need it so badly, you can simply allow them to record the session during your session and then allow them to organize it. In my case, I find they are an important part of the service because it's very important that they can access them in the long run. So usually there is nothing left then apart from actually delivering all the sessions, making sure all the content is organized, making sure a nice follow-up email goes out every week, reminding the clients that their actions for the week, the recording and their swipe files have been uploaded to their folders so they can check everything.

And then from the known words, it's a matter of, you know, coming to the end of. The coaching and sending out the form, the feedback form a feedback form is an important part of the process. You can share it with your clients on the last day, or you can simply send them an email. I like to send an email cause I also have some packages which have special rates only for people who have worked with me.

You know, I don't really. Do one-off one hour bookings or even sort of monthly bookings with people who come straight out onto my website and ask me. But I do allow people who have been through my program to book two sessions at a time just to catch up with me or to also book monthly calls on a, on a different of course client only.

But this form. So the form where you're collecting feedback can be very important. So the way you format, this can actually help you get testimonials. It can help you understand whether the client wants to work further with you, and this can also help you understand how to improve what you're doing. So make sure that you ask the right questions.

I'm sure this is a great topic for another episode, and I'm going to jot this down because I will definitely do on about this. And maybe I live in share my forms with you. But for today, the point of the matter is that you actually have to send the form and, you know, invite them to work with you further to upsell or downsell.

And then of course, put your clients on a list where you keep in touch with them in the long-term. So ideally get yourself a CRM or a very simple Excel sheet. Or Google sheets document, which is actually what I use. Now. This process is going to help you a lot. If you are doing one-to-one, if you are selling online, you're going straight from one thing to the other things can be very simple.

And it's also allows you to scale up a little bit in the sense that you have a very predetermined. System and process. And if you decided to take on more clients and the admin becomes a little bit demanding, you can actually hire a virtual assistant for just a few hours to help you with maybe uploading the videos and preparing the main documents and maybe just you know preparing the calls on zoom and things like that.

It's not a lot of work. It really doesn't take very much time. It's literally takes a few minutes per person, but when you're scaling, of course, there's a little bit of support goes along. If you work with B2B businesses and you're a coach that works with large companies where maybe their employees can book you at different times, then this system is not going to work for you so well, but there are coaching platforms out there like coach Vontage is one of them.

There are quite a few more that will actually allow you to streamline this process in a different way. And in fact we will have an episode about these tools in the future. I am actually recording one in the next couple of weeks, so do hang on in there. But for you, you know, if you're going to scale if you're going to hire coaches, then of course this process will break.

If you have more coaches working with you, this is just for people where it is themselves and maybe their virtual assistant. And, you know, you have a kind of incoming. A flow of discovery calls from your website, and you need to process them as fast as possible because of course you don't want to get stuck in, in the onboarding process.

So this is basically my system. The idea came from a client who actually asked me about this last week and she really enjoyed the fact that it's a very simple system. It's a system that has taken quite a few years to create. But my goal has always been. Whenever I do a change. I simplify, simplify and simplify further.

And this has actually been one of the principles that has really helped me grow and improve my business over time. So if I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be to simplify and whenever you see a chance to simplify all over. That's all I had for you today. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next week.

In this episode about List Building for Coaches, we talk about '3 Ways to Grow Your Email List Faster and Cheaper'.

These 3 tips will help you get better quality leads onto your list more affordably.

Topics this episode...

>> Qualifying Your Leads

>> Segmenting Your List

>> Creating a Quiz as a Lead Magnet

>> Creating a Mini-Course as a Lead Magnet

>> Boosting Results with Lead Ads from Facebook/IG

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Interact Quiz Builder

>> Lead Ads

>>10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

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Full Transcript

Hello, thank you very much for joining me today. We are going to talk about how to grow your email list. And it's not just about how to grow your email list. It is very specifically for coaches and we're going to talk about the three fastest ways you can build your email list, but not all email subscribers are built the same, not all email subscribers are.

The same. So today we're going to talk very specifically about those things that are going to help us find really high-quality people to get on our email list. One of the biggest problems a lot of people have been experiencing lately is that Facebook ads have become more expensive. And as you probably already know, Facebook ads have been one of the ways in which a lot of people are boosting their freebies.

To put their content in front of people to grow their email list. Now this has become more expensive and a lot of people have turned to lead ads or simpler ways of reaching more people, which unfortunately has been creating a place where we're getting much lower quality leads on our emails. But today's episode is going to help you resolve the problem because by creating the right freebie and putting it in front of the right people, you can resolve this problem.

You can still keep your costs low. And again, you don't necessarily have to use Facebook ads. We're going to talk about this towards the end of the episode. But most of all, if you have the right kind of content, you are going to get the right kind of leads. That's. By your coaching that will buy your programs, that's will register for your group programs, participate in your challenges when you're launching, they are going to be the right kind of.

So let's dive right in and talk about the first one. Now the first type of freebie, which I absolutely love. I have, in fact, very recently launched my very own after working with clients who are launching their own and had fantastic results. And this is the quiz.

It allows you to really ask quite a few questions to your prospects and you know, of course, you've got to make them fun because they have to enjoy it, but it really allows you to. I get quite a lot of information about this prospect about this person that is interested in your topic. So automatically you are dealing with people who are interested in what you do, and you're going to be able to segment them.

So you're going to be able to put them based on their answers. You're going to be able to put them in the right place on your email list so you can send them more relevant content because of course, that is extremely important for conversion. And you're also going to be able to, filter them in a way that allows you to qualify a lead.

Now, if you haven't heard this term before qualifying a lead means simply sort of ticking those boxes that make this person a good prospective client. So let's take an example. For instance, if you are a sales coach that works with. Your ideal client will probably be a coach. It would be someone who doesn't have enough sales.

It would be someone who is maybe in their first two to three years of business, you know? So you have all these things that describe your ideal client. So you, what you can do with a quiz is you can actually. Use these questions in your actual quiz. So you can ask them how long they've been in business.

You can ask them whether they like selling or not. You can ask them, you know, whether they're being successful with their sales, you can ask them what they have. For instance, if they're using any particular sales tools, so you can really profile your clients quite well. And you can take those boxes that make them a qualified lead.

And then especially if you use interact, which is the tool that I have found recently, I've used it with my clients and I found it really, really good. I will actually link it in the show notes. If you use the right tool, you can actually connect it to your email list and put people in the different groups in your email list based on their own.

So this is really, really valuable. So what this does is it really sort of takes away the heavy lifting from the advert, because let's say I have an ad again, I'm a sales coach for coaches, so I'm running my ads to coaches and maybe similar service providers, but it is actually my quiz that is doing the filtering for.

Which puts me in a fantastic position. So this of course is going to allow you to maybe run lead ads and get a cheaper cost per lead. But it's also going to allow you to then further look at your leads and definitely put aside and segment those that are really strong leads and are perhaps ready to come.

The other leads that I may be a bit cold and not ready to convert. You can be very clear with them. What kind of content you're going to send them? If they don't like that, they'd probably unregistered right away. The ones that do stay on your list, you can then send them your weekly information. And you can slowly maybe get them to register for your podcast or follow your blog every week.

And you can keep nurturing them every single week with additional new content. So that will allow you to then warm them up and an invite them to your next free training, or maybe your next webinar, where you sell your one-on-one coaching and you can keep them alive and keep them warming up within your orbit.

The second one. So that was the. The second one. And it's something that has been around for a long, long time is the free mini-course. Now every mini-course is, has a big promise. It promises quality. It promises a lot of different things. So as a person creating a free training for your ideal clients, also puts you in a great business.

Because if you know your ideal client well, and in fact, I do not recommend this kind of freebie if you don't know your ideal client. Well, because it does take quite a lot of work. So you do want to kind of try to start off with something that takes a little bit less work. If you have multiple ideas, start off with checklists of PDFs and then move to the free mini-course later, when you have validated the kind of content that your audience is looking.

But the mini-course. So this is what he can do. So you can actually take this approach is the simplest one. You have one of two options. The simplest one is promise the same thing. That's your coaching promises. So if you're getting promises to make people happier, your mini course should be happiness goals or you know how to find happiness or how to understand why you're not happy.

It can do one of two things. It can either make exactly the same promise as. Or potentially it could also teach them well, they need to know in order to be ready to buy from you say you're a marketing strategist. You're teaching people. Like in my case, inbound marketing people would ideally have a website before they start working with me.

So one of my mini courses might be teaching people how to actually build their way. Another way of doing this as well is, you know, sometimes maybe you have people, especially with life coaching, maybe your audience, it's not that they don't understand what you did. So they are kind of ready to buy, but maybe they don't yet have the belief that they can do what you're going to help them do.

So maybe, you know, maybe they want to lose weight. Maybe they will improve their life. Maybe they want a divorce, but they've been procrastinating. What's going to happen. What's going to happen is that you are going in this mini course. You're going to kind of make them the same promise that you're coaching the livers.

And then you're going to work on convincing them that they can do this with your. So very often, it's a matter of getting people where they are teaching them that little bit extra information that they need to come closer to buying your program, to really convince them that it's the right thing for them.

And of course, you also want to add things that are going to weed out the ones that are not a good match for your program, because you don't want to convince everybody. You only want to convince the right. Because of course, it just sort of becomes a whole cycle. You want to work with people who are going to get good results.

It's going to be a feel good for you. There's going to be a feel good for them. It's going to be good for your business because you're going to get testimonials. So you always want to make sure that there is a certain level of transparency and authenticity. Although that word is really overused, but there is a certain level of transparency where, you know, you mean well, and you're really giving them this information because you want to help them.

So the next step and take the right decision with the right information. And of course, you also want to give them the confidence that they can do this. This is extremely important because without the confidence that they can do this, they're not going to buy. So working on your prospect's confidence is going to help them.

Then, you know, take that little step of maybe booking the discovery call with you. And it's extremely important that you ask sell your mini course should not just be. I mean, it goes, it also needs to have your call to action. It needs to have a description of what they can do next, or they should do next, whether your help or perhaps even without your help, but you know, how are they going to go to the next level?

And of course, that is where again, you're going to do a little bit more filtering and filter the ones that are ready to talk to you and jump with you on it. Discovery. So once again, it's an important part of your funnel and you should definitely make sure that you close it in the end last, but not least.

It has potentially more of a way of kind of strategy than actually a way of building your email list. But very often this is something that a lot of new coaches do not understand. And this is why I'm a big believer that new coaches should not be building their email list. It should not be their main focus.

It should be their secondary focus and by secondary focus, I mean that you should be using things like blog and social media distribution to build your reputation on your authority to become. And to get to book your discovery. Cause, and then as kind of a side goal, you could also have maybe a popup on your sites that appears for all those people who are leaving your site.

So those who have already booked your session, great. Those who haven't might actually jump on your freebie, but you don't want to make that the main thing because you end up putting people on your email list and then you're sent on booking or discovery calls. So if you're starting out booking your discovery, Is going to be the main goal, but once you're ready to add another strategy for actually building your email list and you have a little bit of spare money, even if it's just, you know, two or 300 years a month to start building your email list, then you can definitely start looking at these two options that we have looked at, which is the quiz and the mini course.

But. You've probably noticed if you have tried this before, it's very hard to actually grow your list at any particular speed. If you're using only organic mediums, because you're assuming, going to run out of people in your Orbis and in other people's Facebook groups who actually want to join your list.

So using Facebook ads, or maybe any other type of social ads, really, because you can use Pinterest ads, you can use Twitter ads, you know, there's different kinds of. I mainly talk about Facebook and Instagram ads because they're the ones I've used the most, but you can actually also use Google ads, which is something that I'm actually experimenting with at the moment.

So you will be hearing more about this in the future. When you talk about Facebook ads, we know that prices have gone up tracking has become a little bit difficult since they've added the iOS update. It has become trickier. But you still can have lead ads and I will actually link a place if you don't know what lead ads are.

I will actually add a link so that you can find out more, but they're basically ads that allow people to register for your freebie without actually leaving Facebook. And this is a great option. You also have the option of, let's say, if you have a quiz, you can turn it into a nice post and then you can boost it.

Of course you would need to create your audience before. So that you have, you know, your audience ready there to quickly just add to your boost. And then, you know, you can show your ads to whoever you want, but of course it really helps when your freebie or, you know, your, a free course or your quiz are actually doing the heavy lifting for.

To really warm up your audience in terms of the mini course and in terms of the quiz to really filter. So in fact, you can also combine the strengths of the two and actually filter people through the quiz and then send them the mini course later. So you really filtering people to see, to get the warmest of leads, and then you're sending them this mini course, which is going to warm them up even further.

So that's definitely something that you should think. But in terms of Facebook ads, like I mentioned, it's important to understand that it's going to be inevitable. So if growing your email list is something you want to do, and again, why would you want to do it as a coach? You want to grow your email list for two main reasons.

Either you want to sell more one-to-one or you want to get people. To actually join your group program may be you're going to launch a group program. So-and-so obviously you're going to need more people. And this is the main reason why coaches actually build email lists. They need to have more people.

They need to have more volume in order to book their group coaching programs. But it's not as easy as that because even just need to put them on your list, you need to warm them up and he needs to make sure that they're the right. One thing that a lot of people don't actually tell you is that people who join your email list are much more likely to convert in the first few weeks when they have joined your list.

So, one thing you want to make sure of is that before you actually start building your email list, you work on an email sequence that gets people to do what you want them. This is something I work on with my clients very often because they are looking to book to go to group programs in the future.

So one of the things you need to do is make sure that once, if they'll know, did your freebie, you are guiding them. They're either going to go to your one-to-one and you can start off directly from the thank-you page. And then those that don't book from the thank-you page, and you can actually warm them up further before masking.

Alternatively, you can go to the free training and the free training can be a mini course, or it can be actually something like a challenge or a webinar. So you can then get the people on your email list to get to know you a little bit better and you can offer them one-to-one or you can actually launch your group programs like that.

But one thing you cannot do is ghost your email list. It's already, statistically does not convert very well. If they have been on your list for a long time. Yeah. So what you want to do is you want to keep your email list, always fresh with new people coming in, and you want to keep doing quite a lot of things, especially if you're launching, if you don't have a lot of resources and you're just dipping your toes in the water and you're just starting out, but you do want to have group programs.

You can use actually a strategy, which I use. I am not very big on email marketing. At this particular stage, it's not something that is one of the main priorities in my business, but it is something that is works very well combined with launching your group programs. So you could decide to launch a group program two or three times a year and use this boost, the budget of your group program to actually.

Build your email lists and it kind of works naturally because you're going to have some free training with your launch. Usually you're going to have maybe some webinars. You may also want to boost your freebies just before all this activity starts. So that's, so you can actually combine everything, but you don't do it, you know, 24 7 all year round, you do it in two or three sprints a year.

So you're grabbing your list, but you're also doing it. Okay. Like I mentioned before, like a little bit of a secondary, it's a bit of a secondary goal. It's not exactly the main thing. Cause if you're launching, of course your main goal is going to be to get people, to come to your free trading and to buy your program.

So it's going to be a secondary goal, which is going to work just. Okay. So I hope you found this useful. I'm pretty sure that you have a lot of questions after listening to this episode. I know that it's very difficult to cover something like this and in just one episode, and I'm sure there will be more episodes about this in the future.

If you have a specific question and you want to hear something very specific about this topic, feel free to email me on info [at] Stephaniefiteni.com. Or you can go to Stephanie fatina.com/podcast, check out the show...

In this episode about content ideas for coaches, we talk about 'How to never run out of content ideas again!'.

We also talk about how to find content ideas that people are already looking for. Because not all content is created equal. And if you're going to invest time and money into creating content you want to make sure it generates leads for your business.

Topics this episode...

>> How not to come up with content ideas

>> Keyword research for coaches

>> Other resources to give you more ideas

>> How to pick the right ideas

>> What to do next

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

>> GET ON MY LIST HERE (to hear about my next free keyword research training)

>> www.answerthepublic.com

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Full Transcript

Hello, thank you for joining me. You're listening to the profitable online coaching podcast, the place where we talk about everything, online coaching, including marketing, business models, tools, and mindset.

Hello, thank you very much for joining me today. Where are you going to talk about content ideas most specifically about how to never run out of content ideas? We want to create content that people are actually looking for. So we're going to take a little bit of a different angle today. We're not going to talk about the usual, oh, find the five pillars of your business and write down the alphabet and think of an idea for each, or, you know, take a look at your competition.

We're not going to talk about these usual run of the mill ideas. We're going to talk about keyword research and which, if you know anything about me, you will know that I am really quite keen. So why am I so keen on keyword research? I am very keen on it because it's giving me a real picture of the real world.

It's not something that I have made up. There is no guessing. There is no making up ideas. There is no copying your competition, which is a big mistake because your competition, especially for. They are never going to be exactly the same kind of people that you want to attract, even if you are offering exactly the same thing, a perfect match client for you is not going to be the same perfect match client for your competitors.

So by copying their strategy, what you're really doing is attracting potentially the wrong kind of. So the system I'm going to teach you today is actually a small part of the blueprint that I used, the profitable contact method at some small part of the blueprint that I use with my clients. And it is the most important.

And, you know, you're going to find a lot of training out there about keyword research, which is the key to finding contents that people are looking for. However, keyword research can be done in a lots of different ways for coaches. It needs to be done in a very human way, which means. That the research over your ideal client and the way you connect that to your keyword research is absolutely key to your long-term success.

I was actually talking to a client yesterday and I was telling them how you don't need a lot of traffic. A lot of my clients, even myself, my website doesn't have thousands and thousands of visitors a month. I get around. 500, 600 visitors a month unique visitors. And that is more than enough to keep my one-to-one sessions.

Superbugs up, even my waiting list. Yeah. In fact, my next step is going to be to actually channel the people that come from a CEO into my group program because I cannot keep turning people away because you know, it's, I have too many leads coming from my websites. And the conversion rate is super close to a hundred percent because I have done my research when it comes to the idea of class.

I have also done my research when it comes to the keywords and I have put the two together and I have a solid content plan, which I follow every week. I blog twice a week. I do try. Hit three per week when I can. But most of the time I actually prefer to focus on the quality and that works absolutely fine.

So how do we do keyword research and how are we going to get it right for our coaching business and how is it going to give us content? Now, again, as a podcast, it's a little bit hard to not do this visually. In fact, in the show notes, I'm going to link, I have a blog post that actually shows how to do the keyword research with, with screenshots.

I also encourage you to download the freebies from my website. I will actually link it to the podcast as well to the podcast show notes, because I encourage you to jump on my email list because a couple of times a year, I actually run F. Keyword research training. It's actually a client attraction training, but one of the key topics that we tackle is actually keyword research.

So if you want to learn how to do this properly, I highly recommend that you download one of my freebies and jump on my email list so that you're there when I open the free training, but getting back to the content. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that the. You know your ideal client.

Well, you should not start your keyword research before, you know, your ideal client. Well, now I can already hear some of you say, oh, maybe I'm too much in the beginning of my business. I haven't worked with so many people. Maybe I've worked with people that are so diverse. I'm still not sure who's going to be my ideal.

So the first thing you got to do is pick, pick, think of the ideal situation. The kind of people you'd want to work with if money was no object, if money was not a problem and getting clients was not a problem, which of these clients would you pick? Which ones you feel are a natural connection are, have a natural match with you, and then start defining this ideal clients.

So you would want to think of. What they do, what their life is like, what their family background is like, what their business looks like, what they want to do in life. If they don't have a business, of course, the kind of pain points that you're resolving and helping them with. So you need to build a really nice, detailed picture of this ideal client.

And once you've done that, you should have a list of all the struggles that they're dealing with small and. And I say small and big because I see a lot of people focusing on the big problems, like being stuck, going through a divorce, but what really makes keyword research powerful is focusing on the little, on the small struggle.

Like for instance, instead of focusing on, you know, dealing with a divorce, you know, if I go to keyword research tool, which again, I'll, I'll link you to my favorite keyword research tool in the show notes, because it's one of the few tools that actually allows you to keep really nice track of your keyword research by saving it to.

So basically what you want to do is you want to go to the micro struggles. So let's say if you're a divorce coach, you might be looking at keywords around divorce, but when you look at sort of more specific things, like for instance, how to find the right attorney or how to find a particular form, maybe they're looking for a particular form that they need to fill in to process something in the court.

So whatever is a daily, small struggle, even things, maybe how to discuss with your husband about, you know, your children's arrangements after divorce, anything that is a smaller struggle, anything that is real every day. Anything that they're going to need to really tackle is. I fantastic keyword. So by going more niche, and this is something I know you have heard ad nauseam, you have heard it.

Oh my goodness. All the time from everybody. But the truth is that when you niche down, so if you become as specific as possible, it's going to be really easy for you to understand what the specific problems are. Now, if you're creating content like, uh, videos on YouTube or blog posts on your website, This is something you don't need to worry about too much, because you can actually align to different ideal clients and have different content for them because people are going to find you through search.

So you don't need to worry about confusing people. You know, you need to worry about that. On social media, you cannot talk to more than one different person on social media, but when it comes to SEO and also when it comes to, making, making videos and putting them on YouTube, these are found by searches.

So you can actually have more than one ideal client and they're going to find your content and they're going to. To your, in your orbit, they're going to come into your universe through this little window, which has that keyword, which is defining the struggle that. So this kind of makes it very easy as well for new coaches.

So if you're a new coach and you don't really know what your keywords might be, you don't really know who you're going to specialize in yet. You don't know how you're going to niche. What do you need to do is you need to think of all the struggles that you, your particular coaching and your services are going to resolve.

And then what you do is you go to a keyword research tool and start trying to find. All the different struggles that you resolve and what people are punching into Google and other search engines connected to these topics. This will give you amazing insight into how the people who have these particular problems are actually thinking and it's could really actually set you up for creating some fantastic content, because you will be able to see the kind of questions they asking the kind of.

You know, the kind of topics that they're putting in the longer, the phrases, usually the more the information they're going to give you now let's get down to the technical side. So what you want to do is you want to find a tool. The, the tool I use is called keyword. Find. I know it's like, if you type that into Google, there's no way you're going to find that because it's their old keyword finders.

But I am going to put a link in my show notes for this particular episode. So, and then yet, you know, Once you've got the tool you'll again. And usually you can pick whether you want to find keywords, research traffic for your particular area or internationally. Of course, if you're working online, you know, borders are usually not a problem.

So you can go for internet. And then what you want to do is you want to punch in your keyword. You can even start with a broad topic, ideally not super broad, so not like one word, you know, you want to have at least two words. So for instance, let's save your life. Uh, and you help people get unstuck. You know, you, you would say gets on stuck in life or get on stuck at work or, uh, whatever, whatever your clients has, that kind of struggle.

So you can be pretty specific and still be quite broad. And then what you'll find is that the tool itself is going to give you not only. The traffic, if the keyword has any traffic of that particular keyword, but it's also going to give you, all these other recommended keywords with their traffic.

And this is where the gold is because this is where all your ideas can come from. You can literally type in a particular topic and see so many different. And the cool thing is that you can actually see the traffic. So you'll be able to see which ones are being searched more, which ones, you know, are not being searched so much, maybe different ways of actually expressing the same thing.

Sometimes, you know, this happens in every industry. Very often the words we use are not the same words our clients are using. So that is a very important thing because the keywords will actually show us what words our clients are. So, what you want to do is you want to take, make a big list of these keywords.

And I can assure keyword research is a big rabbit hole. It's, it's a really difficult to come out of. So give yourself a time limit or a keyword. So say you want to find 50 ideas, 50 keywords, you know, give yourself an hour and make sure that he kept it because it's really easy to spend half your day and like have hundreds of keywords.

And then you won't know where to start, where to begin to actually start sorting them. So keep a lid on it because it is a lot of fun actually. It can drive you crazy if you find too many, so make sure you don't have too many, any. The great thing about using this keyword research approach to find ideas is that you can pick the ones that already have traffic and perhaps start off with the ones that don't have a lot of competition, because they can be hard to rank for.

And then you already know that your blog posts and your videos, aren't going to be, you know, optimize the people that are already going to be looking for those particular. Of course, it takes a lot more than just finding the keyword to optimize your blog posts and optimize your YouTube videos for search and, you know, to be found.

You can do that with our podcasts as well. And any other medium that you use it? However, of course this is an enough's topic and we won't be covering it on this particular podcast. but you know, stay tuned because I'm sure it's something we would cover in the future. but one of the things you want to keep in mind is that there is already traffic out there.

So you are going to be. Sort of relax and you can rest assured that there is traffic out there and people are going to respond. And of course you can also then share these blog posts and share this content on social media. And it's going to attract people more because these are the natural struggles.

These are the natural words. These are the natural topics that people out there are looking for now, especially if you want to have content, that is question. There are other tools you can use out there, like answer the public. The only problem is that these sites don't actually give you an idea of which ones are more popular, which ones are being searched.

So what you can do, you can actually use something like the. if you Google it, go to or go to answer the public.com, you will find this website, you can put in a topic and you'll get a lot of questions. I will link that in the show notes as well. And you can then after that, maybe take them into your keyword tool, and find out if they have traffic.

So that's just another alternative for you. If maybe you are out of ideas and you don't really know your ideal client. I hope that this has helped you. It will definitely if you follow this, step-by-step, it will definitely mean that you never ever run out of content ideas again. And it's not just regular content it's content that already has an audience.

So it's a real no-brainer, you're going to feel so much better about sitting down and creating this content because you don't have to wonder whether it's going to hit home with your audience. The only thing left will be to optimize it. And it's a bit later, but until then, good luck with your content ideas. And I hope you'll join me again for next week's episode.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone who you think is going to find this useful.

My guest today is Megan Huber, a Business & Leadership Mentor for established women entrepreneurs, helping them move from being overwhelmed and overworked to leading their lives and businesses from a soul first, strategy second approach.

Megan combines her experience as a high school teacher, competitive athlete and sports coach, and running multiple 7-figure coaching programs to help business owners optimize their already successful businesses with an emphasis on simplicity, sustainability and structured freedom.

We talked about...

>> Building trust

>> Facebook group marketing

>> Upselling and Renewing Clients

>> Getting to 6 Figures in your first year/s

>> Onboarding systems and exit interviews

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/tribeoflegendswithmegan

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

YOUR NEXT STEP?

Do you want to create a Marketing System in your business that generates more discovery calls and leads on automatic from organic search engine traffic?

Then let's talk...

Book your free call here

In this episode about SEO for coaches, we talk about 'How to Optimize Your Website'. 4 tips that will help you optimize your website structure and tech so that your content flies.

Topics this episode...

>> Organizing your website in logical content groups or categories (with one top keyword)

>> Optimize the pages of your sales pages

>> Create category landing pages

>> Add blog entry points all over - homepage, footer etc.

>> Hide pages from search engines

Episode Links and Mentions:

>>10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

NEXT STEP?

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

Need help getting your online coaching business set up and your marketing in ship shape?

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Full Transcript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for coaches. Today's episode is a continuation of this. The SEO for coaches series, which I am running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about writing for search engines. And this week we're going to talk about how to optimize your web.

Now, of course, not all websites are created equal, but of course, optimizing for search engines is possible for practically every platform out there. There are some platforms that are not so great. Maybe they may not have all the features, so you're going to need them. Programming and extra plugins or extra features to do it.

But generally, if you have a website that is built-in WordPress or a website that has built, you know, in the most common platforms where you have actually access to all the features from your dashboard, or specifically has some kind of SEO features, then you can do this. We're not going to go into super technical.

SCO, we're going to go through just a few tips that I have tried over the years, and I know work for specifically coach websites. Now you might think. What makes a coach website different? Well, what makes a coach website actually a little different from other types of websites is you're probably right. I'm not selling a lot of products.

 And if you are, I recommend you don't. But that's a topic for another episode. But definitely, you know, it's not like e-commerce, you're not selling a lot of things. You are actually. Selling just a few packages. What you're explaining tends to be a little bit abstract. So, you know, search engines can have a bit more difficulty understanding you.

 We also will not have million pages because it's not that kind of site. You don't have a lot of different topics to go into. You just have a handful. So coach websites tend to be. Very similar to, you know, typical sort of service-based small businesses, like we're talking about therapists, consultants, this kind of thing.

So when I say coach websites, I'm specifically referring to the kind of site that probably has five or six, maybe seven menu items at the top, and then a blog or a podcast. And then, you know, like that serve as content. So, what do you need to do in order to make sure that it is well optimized? The first thing you want to worry about is your organization.

Now I know not everybody is naturally organized, but when it comes to websites, you really cannot skimp on this. So a little bit of thought and a little bit of support, especially when it comes to organizing your categories and your blog pages is going to be super important. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that you pick just a few categories.

Usually, about three or four and you collect all your content within these three or four categories. Again, these categories need to be keyword-based. So it's important that you pick the right keywords. They don't have to be super easy to rank for keywords because these are your categories. They're going to get a lot of strength in the long run, but you want to make sure that.

They kind of explain to people and to search engines, what you're really about. So this is probably the trickiest spot. You want someone to come in, take one, look at your categories and know exactly what you're about because part of optimization is actually using your whole website and the way you organize it.

So actually tells such engines who they should be giving your content to, who they should be showing your content to serve. So, this is very important. It's probably the one thing that's going to make the biggest difference in your search engine optimization. So get this right. If you can't do it yourself, get the help of a consultant.

You can even get in touch with me if you want, but it's very important that you get this right from the. The second thing you want to make sure you do is to optimize also your sales pages. Now your sales pages would not naturally be categorized as the pages where you have your packages. Maybe you run a program once or twice a year selling a course.

So any page that is designed to. Is, of course, going to be harder to optimize when it comes to copy, especially if you've hired a nice, good high-quality copywriter for your sales page, or maybe you've trained yourself and you've written some nice sales. You don't really want to kind of compromise that for full keywords.

You don't want to just add keywords and kind of ruin the whole flow of things, because of course, that is a page that is written for people, not for search engines, but there are ways in which you can optimize this. And it's very important that you have at least your keyword in your URL. So in your web address and you have sort of the keyword peppered through it a little bit, he just wants to sort of optimize lightly without.

Butchering if that is a word but I could use copywriters would often use this word of, for SEO people. You know, there are, especially when the SEO person does not really know copywriting, they tend to be able to disrespect the copy. So, you know, SEO writers can sometimes really butcher a piece of copy, especially if it's highly fine-tuned sales.

So don't go overboard obviously puts the sales pitch first because you want to make sure that the people who do Lander are going to buy, and that is more important. Conversion rates come first. And what is going to happen with your sales pages is that your blog is going to make these pages more relevant.

To the actual keyword that you're using. So even if it's not super well optimized, just because the site is optimized for that particular keyword here's has pages that start ranking. Again, most people are not going to go directly from Google to your sales page because they are looking for something different.

So what's going to happen is they're going to go to your blog posts and then they're going to navigate to the work with me section or the services section, just to check out what you're selling. So most of the time, this is going to be step two. They're not actually going to enter the website through your specific Cinespace.

So keep that. But it does really help to optimize them a little bit. The next thing you want to do is make sure you have category landing pages. A lot of people skimp on is because it does not come as a natural part of most templates when it comes to websites and not even WordPress, which is the most commonly used one for people who really want to take a CEO seriously.

So what. First of all, let's explain where these pages are found. So let's say you have a blog, it's got category, a category B category C. We are referring to the page that you see when you actually click on the category names. So let's say you click on category a and insight. It normally let's say if you're using any theme, actually, normally if you click on that category, you're going to see a page that has all the blog posts that are in that particular case.

Now, what you want is you want to have space for text here. You want to have some nice menus. You want to sort of make it a nice buzzing page where it really explains its validity on your website. Why it's there the kind of content you're sharing? You know, you want to imagine that. People are coming kind of into, into a place where you themed it with this particular category.

So of course it is going to serve mostly search engines because most people are going to come to your website through a search result directly to your blog posts and directly to your book, a call link. So they're going to book the discovery call directly. They're not probably going to even see these categories.

At full search engines is a very, very important because you need to have all these elements that tell a search engine, what this category is really about. And with coaches, this is so important. There are websites out there that's ranked without it. But I really feel that for coaches is a super important because coaches can have, you know, vague topics and also they can also have very similar topics to each other, but then have very different ways of achieving.

So, you know, if you're a life coach and you help people, for instance, who are in an unhappy marriage to, to get out, you know, you'd promising happiness, you promising a better life, but you're still kind of making the same promises as somebody who is maybe helping people who are stuck in an unhappy career, whatever the kind of person you're targeting.

You're kind of gonna have the same keyword as. It's still going to be around happiness. So what can you do? So this is why the category pages really important. The category page allows you to use all the different keywords. When you have space for texts over. So it's going to allow you to really tell search engines how you're tackling this topic and who it's really for one way.

I love to also make it more clear. What my category is about is, you know, I would get a couple of articles that actually mentioned my target audience in the title. And also link them in that copy. So you don't need to have a lot of copy and not, you don't need to have a lot of words in your category page, but you do need to have, I don't know, a 300, 400, 500 word description.

Some SEO people would actually tell you to have a lot more. I don't feel that you need that because all the summaries of your blog, they kind of add up to the wording of the actual. Another thing that really, really helps now this, again, maybe not such a search engine tip but it really helps conversion.

So one thing you want to do as well, you want to have your pinned post. So if you're a site can do that. My WordPress is sorry. My website is a word for a site and it can do this automatically. So my cats agree then has a pinned post, which is a post that always appears the time. And it's important that you pick the right article, because let's say let's take my websites.

As an example. If you go into Google and you type in digital marketing for coaches, you're going to find my website. And what happens is you're going to find a category page to actually ranks for that keyword. That category page has a description there out a few links, but then it's also has a pinned post.

This bent post is there to help your convert. So you want to pick an article that would really appeal to someone who searched the keywords that is taking people to this page. Now, of course, you're going to do this in in the beginning. So you can only do it in retrospect, once you know, which keywords are actually guiding people to that particular page.

And it's probably going to be exactly the same keyword as the category. Then you can just pick which post is going to sort of answer the query to help people stay on the page, because that is very important. If people don't stay on the page, you will not stay. And it's off position in Google, even if you have managed to get there.

So very important point. So the next thing you want to do is add blog entry points all over your website and by blog entry points. I mean, you know, like. Blog summaries and the homepage, you know, you have these like the three latest blogs. You can have links in your footer, in your sidebar or any other place that your website allows you to add all these different links.

The reason why we do this is because we want to make sure that. No matter which pages on our website gets indexed gets crawled. You know, Google can actually find new content and new links to the new blogs on your website. So very, very favorable. If you use links that simply take you to the latest blog posts, because they're always going to find a different blog, which makes it really search engine friendly and really helps you climb the ranks.

Mark. And the last thing you want to definitely not forget again, this is something you don't hear a lot of. In search engine optimization, but it really makes a big difference if you've ever had problems, ranking a website that has a lot of pages about similar topics or, you know, different angles. If you've ever had difficulty ranking something, you learn this, you learn this the hard way.

So w the last thing you need to do and very important is to strategically hide certain pages from being. You weren't going to have some pages in your website that are perhaps too generic or maybe too personal. You know, some people like storytelling and you can have blog posts, that have personal stories that are maybe not so great to optimize for search engines.

And they might actually confuse search engines as to what your website is. A. So if you have a number of pages that are about a topic that maybe your audience loves, but it's just not relevant from a sort of robotic logical point of view for boats, just leave them on your page, share them on social media, allow your clients to find them there because they love them and they can relate, but do not include them in your search engine.

Make sure that you use either a plugin or a tool for your particular platform to hide these from search engines it's easily done. It's not something very complicated, you know, just Google your own platform. Let's say go to WordPress, how to hide pages from Google and you will find the answer how to do that.

Okay. So we've reached the end of the episode. That's all I had for you today. If you're interested in getting more leads and traffic from your websites, I am going to add a PDF guide, which takes you through the 10 steps to help you get more leads from your website and blog. It's going to be in the show notes.

In this episode about SEO for coaches, we talk about 'How to Write for Search Engines'. 4 tips that will help you create blog posts that rank on the first page of Google.

Topics this episode...

>> Writing foe Search Engines

>> Optimizing your articles for Search Engines

>> On-site linking

>> Meta Description

>> Alt Tags

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

>> Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

NEXT STEP?

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

And need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp' https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

Full Transcript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for COVID. Today's episode is a continuation of the series, the SEO for coaches series, which I'm running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about the four steps you have to follow to create your SEO strategy.

And this week we're going to talk about writing for search engines. This is one thing I get so many questions about, and it's actually one of the things I really go deep with in my training programs with my clients and also in my one-to -one sessions. So my advice on writing for search engines is don't. Yeah, just don't write for search engines.

I mean, you can optimize for search engines and it's perfectly fine, but we do not write for search engines. I often come across people who say. That they are search engine, and writers or SEO writers or, and this just completely rubs me up the wrong way. And I'll tell you why. I mean, I always teach my clients.

We write for people. We do not write for search engines. Although of course we are going to do keyword research and we are going to weave those keywords into the article. We still do not write for search engines. So what we do is the first thing is to just write for people. So the first thing you need to do is, you know, your title, your title has to be based on your keyword.

And it has to be based on the right topic that allows you to then optimize the article for that particular keyword. But it does not need to be written specifically for that. So once you have your title and you know, your title is kind of going to take you in the right direction so that you cover that key.

Then you forget the keyword. So you sit down and you write an article and you think of your ideal client. If you think of what they want, you think of how you can possibly give them as much value as possible. And also how you can find ways of maybe getting them to engage or take some action after reading your blog post.

Once you're happy with that, then you can go into the optimization. When it comes to optimization. My first tip for you is to use one keyword. You've probably heard that, you know, with Google getting more complex and modern a CEO and you know, some people are using two keywords or maybe even three to optimize one blog post.

And I can understand that kind of approach, but there are two problems with it. The first thing is it's going to be really difficult for you to track what you've used as a main keyword and sub keywords. Over time, you can have so much overlap. It just becomes really overwhelm. So, what do you do instead?

You just use one keyword and this one keyword you keep track of. Now, Google is still going to decide which keywords are going to rank you for. So you could choose a keyword like marketing for coaches, and then Google decides to rank you for coach marketing instead. So in reality, Google is smart enough to optimize, look at your article and still rank it for different keywords, although you are not using those different keywords.

So I think this is a little bit of an old fashioned idea. Google gets smarter and smarter. And we really don't need to spoonfeed very much, especially if our website is structured in the right way. And all the other content of our website is going to tell Google what we're really about. So then, you know, Google can take decisions about what your article

should be served for. So, you know, what other keywords your articles should be saved for? So definitely stick to one keyword because that makes it easier. Now, there is sometimes going to be a problem that you have a very long keyword can be a whole sentence sometimes, and it becomes really difficult to optimize for a whole sentence.

You know, how many times can you use it? So what we do is you can actually, in that case, take a look at synonyms. Phrases. That means the same thing and use a mixture of those. So that in that case it works perfectly fine. But as a long-term strategy, I prefer, and it works very effectively to just use one keyword.

The next. Tip for writing for search engines is to use internal and external links. Now, when you're writing, keep in mind all the other topics that your website is about, especially the ones in the same category that you're writing for and in a way it's going to happen naturally. But also, if you think of your article in the context of the category, it's going to be published and then this is going to be so much easier for you to optimize later.

So definitely think about what internal links you can have. So how you can find words in your article and link them to other articles on your website. And also two articles outside your website. Once your links are sorted, you will want to think about my next tip for you, which is the meta-description the meta-description sometimes referred to as the meta description.

They are one in the same thing. It actually does not appear on your page. But it has a very important role for search engines. In fact, when you go and punch a keyword into Google, you will see that you get a search results. The search results would normally have a title. It will have a date at the bottom of your blog is dated.

It will also have a short description. And the short description is your meta description. Most of the time, I'm say most of the time, because sometimes if you don't have one or if you don't have one that Google likes, maybe it's too long or too short, they might just pick at random and take a piece of your art.

But generally we want to do a good job of our meta-description because this is going to tell Google what our keyword is. So we definitely want to have our keyword in there. So this is going to tell Google what it's about, but it's also a very important part of the whole SEO strategy, because this is the part that people will see.

And apart from the title, which is of course extremely important to have a clickable. But your meta-description is the second most important because that's what people read before they actually. Your search out as the one they want to click on. And the more people click, of course, the higher your searches all goes.

If you are in the first search results, if you are in the first page, then you're going to rise to the top. As long as people click on your result, you will stay at the time. So, this is extremely important. I also like to add a call to action, and this is a little trick that a lot of SEOs use. So you can use a call to action.

You can describe what your article is about, and then you can write click here or read more. Or, you know, see more or just more with three dots on it, whatever you do. It's important to have a call to action because call to actions will increase the amount of people that actually click on your search results.

A lot of search results will not have your call to action. So you will have a little advantage there. So why is the meta-description so important? The meta-description actually in the old days, there used to be just. And this one method description used to describe the whole size, but today you can have a meta description for every page and for every blog post on your website.

And this is a very good way of kind of summarizing to Google. What your article is about. So this might be a little bit tricky. It can't be very long. You can only have about 25 words in it because of course it's also important that it shows properly on mobile. So 25 words to actually appeal to people to click.

And also to explain to Google what your page is all about. So meta-description put the work in it. Shouldn't take you too long, but definitely make sure that you have one. Now, since this does not normally show you usually need an SEO tool on your website to use this. So if you using WordPress, then this should be a plugin called Yoast.

And there are other sites like WIX that have their own sort of embedded features. And there are unfortunately also platforms that don't allow you to do this. And this is why you will hear that some platforms are better than others for SEO with WordPress, probably being the most popular and then other tools that's appeared more recently on the block that are perhaps not as well optimized.

It's really allow you to you know, make too many changes and put a meta tag for all your different. Okay, so to finish off, I have one last bonus tip for you. You've probably heard this a lot, but for those of you that haven't as just a little reminder that the old tag, which is the alternative tag, or actually the tag that is hidden behind your images can also make a big difference.

So Google will also look and other search engines, they will look behind your images to try and understand what your website is about. And the old days search engines used to take a look at them because people used to put descriptions for people who are actually blind or need to use something.

Tool in order to access a website. So that's where the Altecs came from. They were actually for people with special needs mostly with visual impairment who needed to use a third-party screen readers in order to to actually. Understand what the site is about because perhaps they couldn't see the images.

This is actually where my experience with SEO started all those years ago. I used to program websites for people with special needs. What happens is that. When you put keywords on your old tags it really helps Google understand the whole principle of sort of all the topics that you're covering on your, on your article.

And it's basically another source of information for them to find out what your article is really about. So do write short descriptions or long descriptions, use your keyword behind the images. Very. Especially your featured image. You want that to have your main keyword? And this is like, it's going to give Google a really clear loud signal as to what the keyword you're optimizing for is they will still take their own decisions as to whether you are the best choice for that particular keyword.

But at least you can tell them the keyword that you're trying to optimize for. So that makes it really, really loud. So that's all I had for you today. If you'd like to see the show notes and take a look at the tools and the tips that I mentioned today, go to Stephanie fatina.com/ 37. And find this podcast.

See you next week.

Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone you think is going to find this useful. If you'd like to give me some feedback, leave a review on iTunes or a comment on the YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, whatever you do make.

Don't miss the next episode because we have more juicy content coming your way. See you in the next.

This is the second episode about SEO for coaches. Today we talked about How to create an SEO Strategy for coaches. The essential 4 steps to creating an effective strategy.

Topics this episode...

>> Getting the basics right

>> Keyword research (and tools)

>> Implementing what you find

>> Creating the SEO-ed Content Plan

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

NEXT STEP?

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

And need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp' https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

Full Trasncript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for coaches. Today's episode is a continuation of the. The SEO for coaches series, which I am running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about building your audience and getting clients. And this week we're going to talk about the four steps to creating your SEO strategy, like any good and respectable marketing strategy.

It's all in the basics. So even with SEO, the first thing you need to do is take a good look at your ideal client. Now you've probably heard me say this so many times. If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook, or maybe you're on my email list or in my Facebook group, I say this a lot. I really focus on the ideal client.

Even when I run my, my challenges or my free training. That's something I really work on with Mike. Because knowing your ideal client is key. If you don't know your ideal client, well, then you might have some problems. You also need to work through some misconceptions about your ideal client. For instance, I actually had a new client this week who said, well, I really don't know my ideal clients.

I don't know how old they are. I don't know where they're from. I don't know how many kids they have and I don't know what kind of handbag they'd like to buy. I don't know what kind of car they drive. And, you know, I kind of giggled a little bit and I'll tell you why, because this is a different kind of ideal clients to kind of ideal clients.

Somebody would create for you when you create a social media strategy. And for inbound marketing, when we create our core content lead bridge needs to be a little bit. Social media tends to be very visual and very superficial. Whereas when we're talking about SEO and analyzing our ideal client for SEO, we got to go deep on those little struggles on those micro thoughts that are going through their heads.

On those little steps that they take from feeling like they need something to really understanding what the solution is and how you might be the best person to work with. So it takes a little bit of a disciplined journey. And in fact, analyzing this ideal client really well is really important because you need to build the customer.

You need to know all the steps that they go through in their head, especially you need to know all the little motivations, all the little pain points they have that are gonna make them go to Google and punch in a question that's related to what you sell. So as a coach, you want to be found by these people, and this is why you need to know your ideal clients really.

So the first thing I would say, if you don't know them, make sure that you survey your audience, you send a few emails, you talk to your clients, and if you don't have any clients yet find the kind of people you want to work with and coached them for free, make sure that they give you testimonials and exchange and make sure that you offer them the right questions so that you can build your ideal client persona.

Once you've got your ideal client persona in place, you want to make sure that. Both your ideal client and your marketing strategy are aligned with your offer. So the next step is going to be to take a good look at your offer and to make sure that this is aligned with the kind of people you want to.

And also with your whole marketing strategy. So more on that in a minute, but one of the main things needs to be that, first of all, you are happy with your offer. You cannot sell an offer that you wouldn't buy and that you're not happy selling, so it needs to be profitable and you need to get it as close as possible to a November.

A no brainer in the sense that it's such an easy decision for your client to go with it, because if they have the kind of pain points you resolve, then you have created the perfect offer to resolve that. And again, it all ties in with knowing your ideal client, knowing their pain points. And of course, knowing the various ways in which these can be resolved and positioning yours as the main.

The main solution to this problem, of course, you may need to do some work. If you're in the beginning of your business, you need to make sure that you are effective. You need to build your confidence. You know, you need to spend time with your clients, ask them what they want, ask them what the biggest problem is, especially very important question, ask them what they thought their problem was before they met.

Because very often they thought and named the problem in a different way than you would. So it's very important to also look for the words the way they say. About your particular coaching and those struggles that you resolve once you have double-checked and you're happy with your offense. So you're good with your pricing.

You know, you're offering value for that price and the client is getting a good deal because they're getting exactly what they want. And yeah. Then you can be sure that you have the basics in place. Once you have these basics in place. The next step is going to be to go through your keyword research and your keyword research is going to draw on your ideal client and also your offer in order to find words.

And keywords out there. You know, they can be phrases, you know, 2, 3, 4 word phrases. You can have what we call a long tail keywords. You can have questions. Keywords can come in many different forms. Now you're going to need a keyword tool. I use. A tool called keyword finder. I will. The name is very common.

I'm sure that that's what you're thinking. Yes. You're going to find many cured finders out there. I will add the link to the show notes and you can go ahead to Stephanie britannia.com/podcast and find the link in the show notes, but how are you going to use this tool? So the first thing you're going to do is get ideas.

You can go to places like Quora, answer the public again. I will add all of these. You can also just check out your own Facebook group, other people's Facebook groups for the kind of questions your audience asks, and then start from there, go and put them in your keyword tool and the keyword finder. And you will find out if they have traffic.

Now, one very important thing. I come across a lot of people who say, oh, I heard I'm already using the main keywords for my. Make sure that you use a keyword tool to check that they have traffic. Sometimes we think that like the main keyword for that we use, you know, these words that we use about our business.

We think other people are using them too, but that is not necessarily the case. I can actually confirm most of the time. It's probably not the case at all. So do go to your keyword research tool, use different words. And find out which ones actually have traffic. The tool will help you because it will give you suggestions of similar words, similar questions and similar phrases that's actually do have traffic.

So definitely worth your while. So what do we do once we have the keywords? Once you have the keywords, you are going to have to use these keywords to organize the content of your. Now, the first thing is you've got to turn these keywords into content. So turn them into titles for your podcast titles, for your blog titles, for your YouTube videos.

And of course, learn a little bit about how to optimize these on your website and on the platforms that you use on. So once you've got all of this in the form of a content plan, you're going to need to take a decision about how to organize this content on your website. And this is very, very important in order for Google and other search engines to understand what your website is about and who to serve the content.

You need to make sure that your content is organized in a way that reflects what is most important in your business. Once you do this, you can be sure that Google. Rank your posts, especially if you pick the right keywords. That probably actually requires an episode all for itself. I do run a free keyword research training once or twice a year.

So if you were interested in this, just stay in my orbit and you would come across it. Right. So once you have finished organizing your keywords and organizing everything on your website, in order to become more relevant to your own topics, then you're going to need to take some big decisions. And this is the final and fifth step.

So it's like your bonus day. And the big decisions are usually about frequency and funnels. You will need to decide how often you're going to blog, how often you're going to publish a video, how often you're going to podcast. Of course, this is going to depend entirely on the medium you pick and also on your goals and how quickly you want to get to your.

You also need to think about your funnels. The kind of funnels that you pick, you know, you have to have different funnels for different mediums. For instance, podcast is great for warming up an existing audience. Blogging is great for getting new people into your orbit from search engine searches. You know, people who would not know you otherwise.

You know, you can have YouTube videos that can serve different purposes. They can be part of a launch. They can serve as kind of webinars. They can also serve to, you know, warm up your audience, or also as an entry point. So the way you work out your plans and your funnels and your frequency and your goals is then a very important part of how everything comes to.

And finally, after you have taken all these all important decisions, you want to think about your assistance because content and SEO are two things that you need to do in order to keep growing your audience. And it does have an amazing cumulative effect. But you have to be committed and then you have to do it for the long term and in all the, to stick to your good habits, good content habits.

In the long term, you are going to need systems. So this kind of encompasses the whole four steps plus the last bonus step, because you do need to take all those decisions. Once you have come this far, you have your SEO strategy. Ready? You have your systems ready, and all you have left is to just dive in and start.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Do keep following the series. There was one before this and there are another two coming. So if you want to go a little bit deeper on SEO for coaches, keep following, because of course, for your online coaching business, it's just so amazing to get people from search engine searches will just come to your website and book your a discovery course.

And that is exactly what SEO will do. All right. So I hope you enjoy today's episode as I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the profitable content marketing show. Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone you think is going to find this useful. If you'd like to give me some feedback or a question, leave a review on iTunes or a comment on YouTube.

Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, whatever you do, make sure you don't miss the next episode because we have more juicy content coming your way. See you in the next episode.

Why do coaches use SEO and does SEO for Coaches work?

SEO is a great option for coaches who are already creating content. All content can be SEO-ed. Once you SEO a piece of content like a blog, a video, a transcript, podcast show notes etc. you'll get recurring ROI (Return On Investment) for the long term.

This means that the more content you SEO the more results you'll see because the results accumulate over time.

In this episode...

We talk about all the aspects of SEO that make it ideal for coaches to use as a strategy. Whether you're starting from scratch as a newly qualified coach or are an experienced coach looking to align a new form of lead generation, you're gonna find this episode and the remaining 3 episodes in this 4-part series very interesting and useful.

We talked about…

- Why coaches should use SEO

- How SEO benefits coaching businesses

- How it builds Authority and Credibility

- How SEO helps coaches get more leads , discovery calls and clients

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Free Guide: 10 Steps to Get More Leads from Your Website and Blog

https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/10-steps-more-leadspodcst

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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NEXT STEP

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

Need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp'https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

OR

Are you already set up and want help booking more discovery calls and marketing your coaching services? Let's talk -Book a Free Call atmeetme.so/stephaniefiteni

Marketing your coaching business when you hate social media feels like constantly swimming upstream.

It feels hard and unnatural and although you may manage it some of the time, you can't seem to do it consistently because it doesn't come natural to you.

Fear not your business will not fail because you don't spend all your time on social media. There are other ways that can help you book clients - ways that don't require an advertising budget.

In this episode...

We talk about why social media could be taking the joy out of marketing your business, and what to do instead. (without spending a fortune on Facebook Ads)

We talked about…

>> Social Media and why it feels so hard/leads to burnout

>> Social Media Automation

>> The difference between real automation and scheduling tools

>> How to use SEO to get clients

>> How to use SEO to build your authority as a coach

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Free Guide: 10 Steps to Get More Leads from Your Website and Blog

https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/10-steps-more-leadspodcst

NEXT STEP

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

Need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp'https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

My guest today is Erin Alphonso, a very experienced VA and Pinterest Expert, as well as the first certified Profitable Content VA. Erin is a passionate online marketer who believes in working smartly. Her services focus on digital activities that produce measurable results.

Truth and value are the core of who she is as a consultant.

Available services are Pinterest Management & Marketing, Website Development & SEO/Content Optimization.

Since the certification, Erin has been running her Design, SEO, and Pinterest consulting company online. Erin is from Toronto, Canada, and over the years she has strived to create services that help clients make more confident decisions in their branding and marketing.

We talked about…

>> Pinterest strategies

>> Pinterest SEO and keyword research

>> How to start on Pinterst

>> Pinterest Ads

>> How to combine Pinterest with other marketing strategies

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Pinterest planner for beginners

>> Erin's website erinalphonso.com

>> The Profitable Content Program - details and booking page for pre-enrollment chat

>> The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp: https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

>> The Free Client Attraction Training

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Discovery calls - what are they and why have them?

A discovery call (also called a breakthrough call or sometimes a free consult) is the first call a prospect books to meet you and learn about what you do. This call is your opportunity to get to know the potential client and understand if you're a good match for each other.

Discovery calls can be hard. You jump on a call with a stranger and you've got to figure out if there's any chemistry between you, if you can help them, and if they are willing to work with you.

What to do on a discovery call

You have to explain what you do clearly, state your prices and offer a payment plan - which means discussing money! and that feels yukky.

But you don't want to sound pushy or worse desperate! you want to come across as professional and relaxed but you also want to gain a new client. Finding that balance can be hard.

Discovery calls also give you the chance to ask questions about your prospects' needs and goals, which helps you get to know your ideal client persona better - so you should do as many as possible especially early on in your coaching career.

In this episode...

In this episode, we talk about the feared 'salesy' discovery call, how that's not the right way to approach a sales call for a coach. Because hey, we also have a responsibility as coaches and therapists that other salespeople don't have to carry.

We cannot do sleasy 'ram down your throat' sales - this is why learning how to really work with the prospect to find out if you're aligned is important. In this solo episode we also discuss the steps to take and how to close the sale and run to the finish line when there are no red flags.

Enjoy the episode and have a great time closing your sleazeless discovery calls!

We talked about…

>> Sleazy discovery call interviews

>> What to do on a discovery call with a coaching prospect

>> What questions to ask on a discovery call

>> How to NOT manipulate your prospect

>> Why you need to speak your prospect's language

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Free Guide: 10 Steps to Get More Leads from Your Website and Blog

https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/10-steps-to-more-leads-hm

>> The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp:https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

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My guest today is Sigrun Gudjonsdottir. She is the leading business mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe, TEDx speaker, and host of the Sigrun Show podcast. Sigrun is on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship.

Originally from Reykjavik, Iceland, she has spent more than half her life outside her home country; in Germany, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Since she was a young girl she’s always been drawn to leadership roles, so despite having zero business background nor the education, she made a life-changing phone call and asked to become the CEO of a software company shortly after finishing her master’s degree in architecture – and she got the job!

Ten years, another three master’s degrees, and several CEO roles later, Sigrun found herself in Switzerland with her newfound love but sick and unemployable. Her dream was to be location independent so she could split her time between Iceland and Switzerland, travel the world, and take care of her health. So in 2014, Sigrun started her online business and quickly built a multiple 7 figure coaching business. With a membership, coaching programs and masterminds she helps women from all over the world start, build, and scale their online businesses to 6 and 7 figures. In 2020 she founded a real estate company around two properties and also started her first fund. Her next big project is an international conference in Reykjavik, Iceland; Selfmade Summit in June 2022.

We talked about…

>> How to scale your business and stop charging by the hour with course

>> How to get people to buy

>> How to launch your course with no audience

Episode Links and Mentions:

>>The Sigrun Show

>> www.sigrun.com/stephanie

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In this episode, we talked about how to build a writing habit that suits your lifestyle, routine and personality, so you can stick to it for the long term.

We talked about…

>> Exploring a variety of writing habit schedules

>> Exploring different times of day for writing

>> Understanding your own rhythms

>> Matching your routine to your personality so that it feels easy

Episode Links and Mentions:

The Profitable Content Marketing Group Program is opening soon

>> get more info here

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

In this episode, I talk to Tommi Murshed-Parish he is an audiovisual expert specializing in testimonial videos. He has worked in the industry for over a decade and recently moved his business online. He supports his clients by shooting and editing great video testimonials.

We talked about:

How to get good testimonialsWhat to avoid when shooting testimonialsTestimonials as a lead conversion tool

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> conversionsforcoaches.com

>> vouch4mevideos.com

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This week’s guest is Kicki Westerberg. Kicki is a business coach servicing the Swedish market. She started her online business as a traditional business coach but realized that she built the wrong business for herself. Then she started to work with other coaches and also started to incorporate spirituality together with NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). Today she teaches coaches to grow in her program unstoppable so that they can go out and do the same for their clients.

We talked about…

>> Setting goals in line with your purpose (and how to find it)

>> Balancing masculine and female energy in our business

>> How to start listening to yourself more and find out what your ideal business looks like

>> How to pivot towards your ideal business

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Hal Elrod's Miracle Morning

>> Kicki's Instagram @kicki_westerberg

>> Kicki's Website

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In this episode, I talk about the elements you need to have on your website so that it generated traffic and converts them into leads and clients.

We talked about…

>> Testimonials

>> Picking your core content

>> CTAs

>> SEO

Episode Links and Mentions:

The Profitable Content Group Programm

>> http://my.stephaniefiteni.com/profitable-content-2021

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

In this episode, I interview Nathalie Doremieux.

Nathalie helps heart-centered women turn their expertise and influence into recurring income by helping them create and grow online programs that impact millions.

Born in France, Nathalie and her family have lived what we call "the American dream."

After finishing school with her boyfriend (and now husband Olivier), they decided to pack their bags and get on a summer trip to the US to try and find a job. They landed in San Francisco in the Silicon Valley and both found a job and decided to stay.

After 10 years of living a fun but too crazy life, they decided to sell everything, pack their bags and move back to France with their 3 kids, 2 dogs, and a cat, to stop the craziness of working the corporate and build a new life on their terms.

After lots of trials and many learning experiences, they found their purpose and are now a thriving multiple 6-figure business that helps entrepreneurs build online communities and create life-changing E-Learning experiences through membership sites.

We talked about…

>> membership site content

>> different business models

>> how to pick the right membership model for you

>> how much support should you give?

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> newsoftwaremarketing.com

>> nathaliedoremeiux.com

>> Get Inspired with these 7 Membership Models [Free Download]

>> Thinking of starting a membership site? Book a clarity call with Nathalie, and you get a special gift if you say you're a listener of the Profitable Content Show

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In this episode, we talked about how to build your online reputation. I share the 2 key elements and decisions to take and the smart way to build your audience

We talked about…

>> Where to start

>> SEO

>> Repurposing

>> Automation

Episode Links and Mentions:

The Facebook Group

>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogTrafficAndSEO

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

This week’s guest is Matthew Kimberley, Matthew is the Head of Book Yourself Solid Worldwide. He's also the author of Get A F*cking Grip, creator of Delightful Emails and the School for Selling, and host of the Marketing For Coaches podcast. He lives in Malta with two boys, one wife, and one dog and pre-Covid traveled the world speaking on stages from Singapore to San Diego. He mostly likes good Scotch and better conversation.

We talked about…

>> niching

>> getting your first client as a new coach

>> how to prepare for marketing

Episode Links and Mentions:

>>singlemaltmastermind.com

>> https://www.marketingforcoaches.com

>> https://www.bookyourselfsolid.com/

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This week’s guest is Terra Bohlmann. Terra is a business strategist and breakthrough coach who helps fast-track women business owners with priceless Business Maps™. As the creator of "The Business Map Method™, she has crafted over 160 custom business models for clients who have gone on to build six and seven-figure businesses. 

We talked about…

>> how far do you niche down?

>> how to price your coaching offers

>> how many coaching offers should you have?

>> how do you raise your prices?

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> https://www.terrabohlmann.com/workbook - Terra's 5-Year Business Plan Workbook

>> https://www.terrabohlmann.com/

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In this episode, we talked about how to attract clients that are willing and able to pay your prices. I share 4 tips that will help you attract well-matched clients

We talked about…

>> how to identify your best clients

>> your website and funnel

>> mapping calls and your clients' words

>> create content they want and sprinkle with what tey need to know too be ready to work with you

Episode Links and Mentions:

The Profitable Content Coaching Programme (enrolment is open)

>> https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/profitable-content-2021

The Facebook Group

>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogTrafficAndSEO

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

In this episode, we talked about how to get your first coaching clients. We delve into the 3 reasons why a lot of coaches find it so hard to get their business off the ground snd what they should do to succeed.

We talked about…

>> Overwhelm

>> Clarity from taking action

>> Being everywhere on social

>> A simple marketing system that revolves around one great piece of content

Episode Links and Mentions:

Free Training: Create Your Client Attraction Content Plan

>> my.stephaniefiteni.com/freetraining

The Group where the free training community gathers

>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogTrafficAndSEO

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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This week’s guest is Bob Gentle. Bob has worked in the field of digital marketing for nearly twenty years, for most of that time running his own consultancy. Latterly he built and ran one of Scotland's largest dedicated digital agencies.

Currently, alongside working with a handful of corporate clients, he focuses on helping digital entrepreneurs, microbusiness and small businesses fine-tune their product or business model, then find and build an audience online and compete against larger businesses with deeper pockets.

He does this through his speaking, consulting and workshops as well as group-based or one-on-one programs of hybrid coaching, consulting and training.

Bob lives in the North East of Scotland with his wife, is a keen surfer and snowboarder, former search and rescue officer and army reservist.

We talked about…

>> how to find your place in the vast worldwide web

>> how to model others to get similar success

>> family support and its impact on your success

>> content creation

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> https://amplifyme.agency/traffic-conversion-idea-prompt-list/

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In this episode, we talk about how to get more leads from your coaching websiteusing blogging, social media, funnels and SEO.

We talked about…

>> Blogging to generate traffic

>> How to harvest leads

>> All the things your site needs

>> Call-to-Actions

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> FREE GUIDE: 10 Steps to Generate More Leads from Your Website

>> Blogging Tips on my website

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Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Prefer to Read?

(00:25): Drive Leads to your website

Welcome. Today. We talk about one of my favourite topics. Getting more leads from your website is one of the things I really love to focus on. It's one of the things that are really important for my clients, and I love to help them with this because it's one of those things that give you results right away. So let's dive right in and start from the first thing you need to have.

A lot of people think that blogging might be a thing of the past, but unless you have a blog on your website, it's going to be really hard for you to actually generate the traffic that you need, the volume that you need so that you get leads directly from your site, no matter what your lead looks like. So whether it's someone jumping on our email list, or somebody booking a discovery call with you, or maybe a free consultancy call, no matter where this lead looks like to you, you need to make sure that you have the tools on your site.

(01:27): How SEO and gets leads from websites

And also the marketing strategy to turn this lead into a contact and your contact into a client. So the first thing I mentioned in a blog and the main reason why you need the blogs because you need to have consistent signals. This is part of SEO search engine optimisation, and you need to have optimised content that is giving Google and other search engines, consistent signals that you have new content on your website. Now, most search engines understand text better than any other format for now.

However, you can have any format and then turn it into text, if writing blogs is not your thing. So you could start for our podcast and have show notes. You can start from a YouTube video and then transcribe it, or maybe use the script and turn that into an article. Or you can start from the blog post.

(02:22):Blogging results and well-matched leads

Now, of course, if you start from a blog post, your blog post is going to be stronger and is going to convert better. Just to give you an idea. Every time I post a blog post on social media, I get at least, my first two to three leads from that particular post and by leads. I mean, in my case, I measure that through discovery calls booked, once you actually start ranking those posts.

So once the post salts ranking on Google, you will see that certain posts on your site are generating leads regularly. There was a time when I actually had an SEO mini-course on my website and my goal at the time was different. My goal at the time was to get people to jump on my email list and about one out of every three people who visited my site used to actually download this training and jump on my email list.

(03:16): Nurturing website leads

At the time I had an email sequence because of course, you cannot just help people jump on your list. You also have to nurture them into becoming a client. If you're giving just something away for free, like a freebie a mini-course, an e-book or something of the sort. So apart from, of course, having the content to generate the traffic and that little funnel that turns them into a contact that you can get in touch with.

You also need to sort of build sort of, you have to zoom out a little bit and have a bit of a good look at the bigger picture. So the first thing you want to see is what is the most perf persuasive content you create? Are you more persuasive when you write? I mean, I can definitely say that for myself, that my blogs actually convert better than my videos.

(04:09): Website conversions

My webinars have a pretty good conversion rate too. But I do not consider those my evergreen content because I only run those live at this particular stage. And perhaps that is the reason why they convert well, I would actually consider blogging my core content. So I would start with that. And of course, repurposing is extremely important because the content doesn't just go on your website, it's also feeding your social media.

It feeds your marketing in terms of, , if you're running Google ads, if you're running Facebook ads, it's going to feed all your marketing, , promoting a blog post having then maybe a pop up on that blog post to get people on your email list. So there are a lot of different funnels you can create, but before you go into creating funnels, the first thing you need to do is have a goal.

(05:00): Discovery calls booked from your website 

And one thing I always recommend to my clients, which works really well, especially with SEO. So generating traffic through search engines so that you can grow your list or get discovery calls literally while you're asleep. That's what I love most about it. It's kind of the lazy way of doing it. , you don't have to spend a lot of time in Facebook groups and you don't have to network and all that.

You can just write, write about stuff that you really love, , and, and still generate traffic and get those discovery calls booked. It's really quite something quite wonderful, I think. But the first thing then you need to think about is to really set your goal. It's really hard. I think for most marketers, especially when it's your own business. So when you're a coach or a consultant, or it's a small business, it becomes really hard because we think my goodness, there are so many people out there and we want to catch every single person that we can work with, but this tends to backfire.

(06:00): Setting lead generation goals for your website

So I always try to get my clients to stick to one goal. So I would like your website to have just one goal. If the most important thing for your business right now is to grow your email list, put a really strong freebie on your homepage, put a really strong freebie as the call to action to most of your blog posts.

If right now you're at the beginning of your business. And the most important thing is to have consistent cash flow you want to stay in touch with your clients. You want to learn from your clients so you can grow your business. The goal should be for everyone that comes to your site to actually book a call with you. So your blog, your pages your home, Paige, everything, even your top slider, everything has to be geared towards getting people on that call with you.

And of course, maybe it doesn't have to be so direct. You can have different types. So for instance, if you're good on video, you could have a video and then sort of direct people to booking book a call with you. And, if you're generating traffic through search engine optimisation, or maybe you're writing blogs and then sharing them on social media, you can also have videos.

If you feel you're strong on video and embed these videos on the same blog with the same topic, and then make sure that, you also have the call to action in the actual video so that you push people to do the action that you want them to do on your website. So in reality, it's all about getting everything you've got, especially the things, your strongest stat, and making sure that they're all pushing towards this one most important goal.

I know it's going to be really hard because, sometimes we want to grow our email list, but we also want the discovery call. And we also want people to join our group program because we're doing so much, but it becomes really difficult to kind of focus on your website in this case. And what happens is that when you have too many calls to actions, none of the calls-to-action is going to work, but there are ways of sort of working out different funnels on the same site so that maybe they don't get in each other's way.

So one way would be for instance to make sure that, Oh, you have certain blog posts say in a particular category where the call to action for those, that people who read, who come across that kind of article in Google because they have put in the keyword to find it, that people that find this category are going to be really ready to buy from you.

(08:33): Calls to action (Book a Call) on your website 

Then you want to make sure that they jump on a call. The call to action is to jump on a call. You may have maybe another section of your blog where, people who find that kind of content may be are still dipping their toe in, in your topic, and they're not really ready to buy. And you could then maybe have a different call to action to get them to jump on your email list. Alternatively, you could do it the way I do it.

Whenever I can, I will put my call to actions for people to actually book a goal. And the main reason is I really liked doing discovery calls. I love getting to know people. I think that really feeds into my marketing. I don't just do one to one. I also run a group program a couple of times a year.

And what I find is that the more people I talk to, first of all, the more people I work with and the more people I talk to, the more I get to know my audience, the more I get to know what they want and what they're looking for. And it has a really, a really nice effect on the copy of my program. When I launch it, it really has, it feeds into my business and it really helps my marketing.

So for me, that is a very important part to actually get, to get face time with my audience. So that's an important side of things. So for me, that's, that's key then, , if, if it's not such a big priority for you or maybe it is, let's say, let's say you do want people to, to actually talk to and jump on a discovery call or a consultancy call, or maybe you have free laser sessions.

You can also have paid ones, by the way, people do buy, one hour sessions, especially if they're not terribly expensive. , if you're just going for $200 or $300 people will buy it off your site. But what I like to do then maybe if you also want to grow your list, and maybe you can have a very discreet pop-up, when people are kind of leaving the site, you can have these pop-ups that just work they can detect when the person is moving the mouse away from your site to go to the back button or to go to the top of the bar.

And at that stage, they pop up this message and you can put a registration from your freebie there. So you could actually have a form where people can fill in and get your freebie.

(10:51): Pop-ups to get website leads

You allow them to focus on the call to action, the main call to action that you have chosen across your site, but then maybe you have a different one in the pop-up once they have decided to leave. And I know some of you might think, Oh my goodness, I find pop-ups so annoying. I do too. I really do. But the statistics are clear.

That's a popup actually does work. And of course, if you have great content on our website and you don't tell them that you're going to send them more of that, if they jump on your email list, they're going to be more than happy to join. You want to also make it clear, of course, that you do sell stuff, so you will promote it to them. And this is something that I do in the first few emails where, , once they jump on the email list, I send them the freebie.

And then, after a few emails, they get to know me, get to know what I do. And then I would add an email that asked them to jump on a call. And then, I make it clear, as I mentioned, that I kind of sell programs because I don't want people on my list to say, yeah, this is where I get free content. And they don't sell anything because there are people who still think that way.

It's untenable, in the sense that every company or every individual, almost every individual that creates content is doing it because they are selling something. Of course, it doesn't mean that we don't enjoy doing it. It's another way of helping people who cannot afford to work with me. So I do like to post quite a lot of value in, what I write and that doesn't stop people from working with me.

(12:36): Helping people with your content will generate leads

So, you can really see content as something that helps you reach more people if helping people and helping them move their business forward is something you're passionate about. Okay. So one other very important point that I wanted to mention that is really important for you to get more leads from your website is to make sure that you have your website set up in a way that you can show search engines, the priority and the topics you talk about.

And okay, this might sound like something really vague because it's something that's sort of, it's a little bit deep to explain, but one of the things you would need to do is you would need to ideally work with someone professionally, get your keywords researched in your industry, and then pick those keywords. Those that are the best ones for your particular audience and make sure that your website is structured in a way and uses these keywords and categories and pages in a way that Google has absolutely no doubt.

(13:40): Google is on your side 

You and Google are on the same page, Google wants to serve your audience, your content. They want them to find you because they are looking for you.

So you need to make sure that, the whole structure and the way you organise your content is helping. It's helping search engines, not confusing them. So this is something quite a lot of people don't realise that it's not just about optimising the blog post. It's not just about embedding that video and making sure that there is enough text for search engines to understand what it's about, but it's also the way you structure a new organise content.

That is also very important. Social media is also important. One thing that's a lot of search engine optimisation people, SEO, people fail to mention is that social media actually does have an impact on SEO.

(14:33): Social Media helps lead gen too 

, social media is going to give you a reputation or reputation that search engines can detect. They can also detect the engagement on your social media platforms, the frequency, they also detect the kind of companies and the kind of people that share your content.

And also the, of people, the kind of content you're posting and how it links back to your site. So these are all things that can actually help you generate more traffic, which in turn is going to generate more leads. Of course, it's really important to repurpose every piece of content that you put on your website.

You don't want to put it only on social media. You don't want to put it only on your website. You want to make sure that you reach as many places as possible because you're going to get organic marketing and organic leads also from your social media, also from the different platforms.

And this combined with the traffic that you get on your sites is going to convert. You could have fresh leads that come from social media specifically because they were interested in that topic that you posted. And then they go to your site and they join your email list or they both at discovery call.

So the more you spread your content, you can also use ads if you want to if you really want to speed things up, once you have proven organically that the content is actually generating discovery calls and, which of the blog posts they are. And trust me, you will know because when people jump on a discovery call with you because they were reading a blog post, that is the first thing they will tell you about. I was reading this blog post, and you said this, this and this.

(16:14): Boosting lead generation from your site with ads

And then I thought I have to book a call with this person because I need to find out if they can help me with this problem. That is something I hear practically every day when I have discovery calls. And it's one of those things people will tell you. So you will actually know really easily, which blog posts are giving you the leads and working hard at lead generation.

And then of course, what you can do is once you have even just a small budget, of, I don't know, $20 a week, you can actually just get a blog post and share it as a post on say, Facebook or on Instagram. And then you can put a budget to reach more people with that article. And what you will see is that you will get more discovery calls right away. Of course, you need to have sort of all your ducks in order, as they say, everything in its right place and everything, connected and, and clear and optimised, but it is absolutely possible.

(17:08):

And it's not that hard. I mean, it might science sound like it's a science, but it's one of those things that are as easy to replicate. Okay. So those were most of the tips that I had. There are some technical tips that I could go into, but I don't want to make this an hour-long episode. So what I have done is I have prepared a PDF. I have a freebie for you which is actually called how to get more leads from your website and blog. And in it, I go through the tips of all the tools you need to have on your website and also the optimisation from the technical side. Again, it's, you don't have to be a techie to do these.

They're just little observations, simple things that you can do on your website to make it much easier for Google and other search engines to actually find your content and serve it to the right people so that you can, of course, get more leads from your website and blogs.

(18:09):Optimise your website for lead generation

So go to the show notes, go to,

This week's guest is Helen Maffini. Helen is a Canadian/British international educational consultant. She is the author of two books and the Fly It Quiet travel and educational packs. She is also a successful online course creator and a seasoned summit organiser and host. She is the woman behind the Global Mindfulness Summit which reaches thousands of people in 23 countries every year

We talked about…

>> how Helen runs her online courses business

>> how she created her successful online summits reaching more than 23 different countries

>> the art of upselling

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Online Summit Kit - superchargeyoursummitroadmap.com

>> https://helenmaffini.com/

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In this episode, we talk about the tweaks and changes you need to make to successfully pivot from your face-to-face service-based business to selling and servicing clients online.

We talked about…

>> Pricing your services (and packages)

>> Common pitfalls to watch out for

>> Pivoting from offline business to online business

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Mini-Course about online business tools (with discount)

>> Episode with Phil Jones

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

(00:23): Move your business online

The first thing you need to do, if you want to move your business completely online is definitely have a good look at the business you have offline and what is working really well for you there now? Not all the things you're doing offline are going to work online, and some things are going to need quite a few changes, but it's all in hand. And I'm going to walk you through the process of looking at your business.

So the first thing you need to do is look at your audience, your audience, being your clients, people who are already buying from you, people who are interested, perhaps people who follow you online. These are all people that can help you kickstart your online business, especially if it's closely connected to the business you have offline. Now I know that's a lot of consultants and coaches come across problems when moving their business offline to online.

(01:18): How to price your coaching program or service packages

The first problem I hear a lot about is usually pricing. Local pricing may be lower due to perceptions. So a lot of people feel like they cannot really put their prices up to international levels or, you know, sort of average online levels because the people that are already in their orbits that are already their audience that are already their clients are going to have a problem with this. And this is perfectly understandable.

This is something I went through. I think a lot of people who come from countries where perhaps the standard of living and the wages are not as high as they are in the U S or in the UK, or, you know larger countries. Then we, of course, we have a little bit of a disconnect and we may not be very sure about how to price and how to do this transition.

(02:05):

The way I did it was very simple. I started off by putting up my prices to what I thought was, you know, the bare minimum to be taken seriously. This is something we really need to keep in mind. So you need to have a look at what people are charging online and make sure that you are at least charging average prices. Because when people see that you are charging too little, they're going to find it hard to take you seriously.

And also to believe that you can deliver what you say you're offering, and this is going to make it harder for you to kickstart your business. So the first thing you need to do is make sure that when you speak to somebody online, you make sure that your prices are in line with your competitors. Now this might, you know, maybe jeopardize your current relationships.

(02:56):

And this is a worry I hear a lot about. Now, what you can do is in the transition phase, there's always going to be a pivot a place where you still have your offline clients and you still have people coming to your business offline. You also have people coming to your business online. And in this case, what you do is very simple. Keep your prices off your website, make sure that local people get local prices.

People who are already your client, and then slowly put your prices up to be in line with your international and the prices. It probably took me about two years, maybe a little less, maybe about 18 months to bring my local prices up in line with my international prices. So the first thing you need to do is make sure that when you speak to somebody online, you make sure that your prices are in line with your competitors, but then again, picking your pricing begs for more questions.

(03:56): Pricing vs Ideal Target Audience

So like we said, the first thing is going to be to analyze your audience. You do need to be competitive with your prices and you do need to make sure that you're not cheap, that people think what's the catch here, but you also need to make sure that you are servicing a part of your audience online that is profitable.

So a way to do this could be to look at your offline clients and see which ones are more profitable. And of course, which ones you're giving more value to. Let me give you an example, for instance, if I help, okay. I help people get more leads from their blog. Of course. If I'm dealing with, let's say coaches that are just starting out and maybe just have one hour or two hour packages, and they're just beginning to literally train up. Of course, you know, 10 leads might be worth 2000 euros to them or $2,000.

(04:53):

However, if I I'm working with coaches who are already established and have, you know, they're three, four, five K packages, then you know, there's 10 leads hours, potentially even $50,000. So obviously there's a very big difference to what it's worth to your clients. When you're pivoting. It's important to think like this, because you want to pivot to the most profitable part of your business, because this will allow you to make it more sustainable, more enjoyable.

And of course in the beginning, meaning when you're going to need more leads, because you're still learning how to close that business and how to, you know, land these clients, you still kind of can make ends meet because when you do land a project, it's going to be a high value project. So after we've analyzed your audience to actually understand which ones are giving more value to them, so which ones would be very happy to pay, you know, your new prices.

(05:49):

You also have to look at the potential niches that are within this kind of pool people. So you're going to find that maybe is a pattern here. Maybe the people that are more profitable to you or a particular type of clients, maybe they come from a specific industry, maybe they're of a particular age. You know, maybe if you're a coach and you deal with women in general, you might find that people who are 45 plus, they tend to buy your longterm packages. And, you know, they're, they're willing to pay more because it's worth more to them.

So have a bit of a think. This also counts for people who sell services like design or VA's, you know, think of those clients where they have money, but they don't really have the time. So you need to design a package that is really valuable for them because of course their time is priceless.

(06:41):

So you need to make sure that you're designing a service, you're designing a package that really allows you to, you know, maybe get set up quickly to prove your worth to start allowing them to actually see the benefits really quickly, and then maybe, you know, go also for long-term packages. You know, this is one thing. When I moved online, I was still doing agency work. I still do a little bit of that.

So, you know, for the VIP clients these days, I don't do one, two or three month packages. It's only six or 12 months and actually mostly 12 month packages, because what this does is it puts me in a position to really prove myself. I can give so much value in 12 months and it makes it worth a good five figure package. So, you know, thing this way, and you'll also need fewer clients to actually grow your business and we in a position to shift it and be flexible.

(07:36):

The next thing you need to do after you have picked your niche based on, you know, all these little things you found out about your clients, the next thing is to research online. You want to research online, and this is something that maybe a bit counter intuitive, but what you're going to come across is that you're going to find competitors. And the first thing that's going to bring up is a feeling of dread, Oh my goodness, there are so many people doing with this. And there are already people out there that have, you know, really nicely set up websites and packages. And you know, they're really doing a good job of it already, but don't worry. The fact that he find people and competitors in the niche means that there is actually money in it and it's really worth pursuing. So don't let it put you off.

(08:23):

So it's one thing. If you have a hundred competitors now picking an industry with a hundred competitors that are really strong in your niche is not going to be a good idea, but I've never seen this happen. So if there are one or two strong competitors in a niche, that's perfectly fine. That's healthy competition. There are other people trying the niche and it's perfectly fine. Another another interesting idea which I believe came from the ask method, that's right from Ryan Laveck he says, go to YouTube and Google your niche and make sure that you find a lot of content and a lot of results about it. Because if a lot of people are creating content for it, then the risk at the month for it. So, you know, that's another way of checking. Once you really know what the next best step is, or maybe you have a list of what the next best steps might be.

(09:17):

Maybe you want to try different packages. That's perfectly fine. You know, experimenting and testing is going to be a very important part of online business. So once you have all these options in front of you and you know, more or less how you want to niche, you need to have a good look at your site and you need to realign your website or create another one. And so what I mean is you need to kind of focus it in. So if you've picked a niche, let's say you are a designer, and now you are specifically going to focus only on doing logo identities for online entrepreneurs or female entrepreneurs. So now you have to go to your website and you have to remove anything that is not connected with that one thing. Now, of course, you might come across the problem that you still have flying clients, and we're doing a lot of other stuff for them.

(10:10): Pivoting your business

In that case, you may want to just create another website and slowly transition from taking traffic to one, to focusing on the other. Now, of course, if you want to build an online business, what I suggest is that you leave the old one static and start putting effort and creating content for the new one. The next thing is to think of your promotions. So what you want to do is you want to start promoting only your online services in order to start pivoting, you have to kind of abandon the old business and start working on the new. And when it comes to market, especially online, you can really confuse your audience. So you got to make sure that you have one message and this one message is going to promote your new online service. The great thing is that it's actually quite difficult to kill an offline business is working so people will keep referring.

(11:02):

You, you will keep getting offline business, and maybe there are other ways like networking events and you know, other things you can attend as your old business to keep business coming in while you transition it in the online. But also you want to make sure that there is only one message on your social media platforms that you take them to your new website. So your new online services, everything is going to be directed to them. And that you also have one call to action, which is probably going to be to book calls with you. 

If you sell a service, it's always better in the beginning to get people, to book a call with you because you want to listen, listen to them. You want to hear what their objections might be to buy your service. You want to kind of understand how they're evaluating your service and going from offline to online means going from people whose around you really know because you know, you, you live in that are meant to actually get people, but from all over the world.

(12:02): Tools you need to sell services and coaching online

So getting people from lots of different, you know, cultures and time zones, so you really need to start understanding what the commonalities are and what are the things that they expect from you, how they are perceiving the website, how they're perceiving your offering. And these are all things that are going to help you really improve step by step. 

The next thing you're going to need is then to have everything in hand for these calls, you need to have your priceless. You need to have a way of getting paid, which is going to be your payment links, whether you use PayPal or Stripe, or maybe something a little bit fancier, don't have to be super clear about the on-boarding process. Just sort of know the main steps, because then of course, once you get your first online clients, you can explain to them what's going to happen.

(12:51):

And then you go and sort of go into the nitty-gritty details. Once it actually happens. You'll also need to sort of work out the logistics of what happens when they don't buy. What follow-up emails do you send? How do you follow up? Do you connect with them on WhatsApp? Do you just send an email to connect with them on Facebook, perhaps? 

You know, so have a listen, think about these things and make sure you're all set up to deal with them. And then of course, if you want to build your online business, it's important that you start focusing on social media, but also on search engine traffic. These two types of traffic are very important. So the first thing you need to do is once you have your website, you start creating valuable content, whether it's video first and then blog or blog first.

(13:37): Online lead generation

And then, you know, you want to just do a video later on. It's perfectly fine. As long as you have the written word so far, it's the best thing to get organic traffic from search engines. And what's going to happen is you're going to start getting leads from search engines, by keeping a low blog, going, putting content there consistently. And this is how people start actually finding you online. This is how you start getting your first leads. You also start getting your first leads by then sharing these blog posts on social media, maybe breaking them down into, you know, breaking one blog post into different social media posts and getting attention and getting people to DMU. You know, so they're going to be the first waves so long run. What you will see is that search engine traffic will increase social media traffic will increase.

(

This week's guest, Phil M Jones has written 8 best-selling books, produced two original programmes for Audible and delivered over 2,500 presentations in 57 countries across five continents.

Phil entered the world of business at the tender age of 14. With nothing more than a bucket and sponge, he went from singlehandedly washing cars at weekends to hiring a fleet of friends working on his behalf, resulting in him earning more than his teachers by the time he was 15.

Since then, Phil has made it his life’s work to completely demystify the sales process and bring both simplicity and integrity to a world that is often full of big egos and even bigger lies.

Phil’s unique philosophy of using specific word choices to teach people “Exactly What To Say” in order to influence, persuade and drive outcomes, has made Phil one of the most practical and in-demand business experts in the world.

We talked about…

>> How to sell coaching online

>> Closing sales and confidence

>>Questions to ask on a discovery call

>> Selling High-ticket

>> Great pieces of content that grow your personal brand

Episode Links and Mentions:

Phil's website: https://www.philmjones.com/

Instagram & Twitter Handle: @philmjonesuk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philmjones/

Phil's Books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phil-M-Jones/e/B0097DKWP4?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1613472429&sr=8-1

Exactly what to say on Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Exactly-What-to-Say-Audiobook/B077Z8S58Y

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

Phil M Jones (0:00):

A pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Stephanie Fiteni (01:07):

Well, I am very intrigued and I was, I was reading information about you and your website. I've heard you talk about this before, and I just really wanted to know how you started at 14.

Phil M Jones (01:22):

How did I start at 14 years of age in business - I guess it probably started a little bit before that is it. My parents did a wonderful job getting me into a great school and the school that I got into meant the lots of the kids had different things than what I had in terms of trainers, sneakers, the bag that they would carry, you know, the sports equipment that they have on the sports field, et cetera. And I'd always go to my parents and be like, Hey, can I have, can I have, can I have one? I got the recurring answer of no. So I started to get this idea of, of how do I go about being able to make money for myself and have this sort of entrepreneurial gene that when everything from me selling the homemade sandwiches that my mum had made for me in my pack lunch through to then me starting a little car cleaning business at the age of 14, and that had me just knocking on the doors of my neighbours, asking them if they'd like their cars washed. And by the age of 15, that little carpooling business was making me more money than most of my school teachers, as what I'd done is I'd built out quite a comprehensive round of customers have kids in the year below that were helping to service those customers. And we had a legitimate business that I didn't even realize was as such until much later in life, but that's where it all started.

Stephanie Fiteni (02:37):

That's so amazing because you know, so many of us just, you know, we kind of take a while to realize the power of actually asking for the sale and, you know, making things happen. So it's just so amazing.

Phil M Jones (02:52):

Being helpful as well as a mistake that many people make is that they think that they ask is one-sided. So if you think back, even to that early business of mine is, is the reason that we had success in that car cleaning business is that there were literally hundreds of local people had a car sat on their driveway. They needed cleaning, but they couldn't be bothered to clean themselves or to take it somewhere that required cleaning. So somebody interrupted their day for long enough and said, Hey, let me take care of that for you for a reasonable fee. Then there was a truckload of people that wanted to say yes, and the same is true with every other profession. People aren't sitting at home thinking what's wishing was missing from my life today is X, but there are people sat at home today with the problem that your business solves, that if you just show up and say, Hey, I'm prepared to help support a difference in progressive you getting better in that given area, then you'll find enough people say yes if you've, the right thing,

Stephanie Fiteni (03:46):

Indeed, absolutely. That this is something I, I talk about with my clients a lot, because you know, obviously content is very closely tied to SEO. So we're always talking about, you know, what problems are people typing into Google, right? And of course, a lot of the people that I work with tend to be people who think that Google is going to do the selling for them. So then we always come to the problem that, of course, if come to the site, you've done everything right. You've done your blog post, right? They've clicked on the call to action button. I never booked a call with you and now you have to close the sale. So, I mean, sometimes that comes a bit of a wake-up call in the sense that, you know, you're, you still have to help your clients decide whether you're the best option.

Phil M Jones (04:35):

There's a lot of fear around that, that language of closing the sale like that, that, that amps the pressure on the person that's needing to make the phone call or make the outreach towards the other person is like, Oh, dang, like this is all on me right now is my job to be able to close this sale. And if I mess it up, I waste the opportunity, et cetera. And that in my head is just a wrong mindset to have towards that kind of lead generation. Instead, we should stop trying to close the conversation and by alternative close, the sale, instead of step continue the conversation. That's what we're looking to do is to continue the conversation with some exploration around, is there a fit? That's what we're looking for. Is there a fit here? And I think if you give yourself permission to explore the possibilities and find out if there's a fit, then what naturally happens is you agree with the terms if there is a fit and also if there isn't a fit, you can move away with no loss of momentum. You can continue on with your day without thinking, darn I lost that sale. There wasn't a sale to be made. You're the wrong fit. And that's okay to be able to then move on.

Stephanie Fiteni (05:41):

That's right. I think it's, it's more the emotional charge that we give it's then, you know, probably the fact that we don't actually close it,

Phil M Jones (05:51):

It's both, it's both. It is having trained over 2 million sales professionals around the world is we think the whole, the common thought process between most people looking to be able to sell is they think it's about them. And it's never about you and your ability to be able to sell it's your ability to be able to understand the other person's circumstances. And if you take your content marketing strategies and you say, well, actually, I'm looking to get inside the head of people. When I'm looking to be able to understand what problems they might need solving, and I'm going to produce content towards that. Well, all your sales conversations are that follow on behind that are a natural progression in conversation to explore more detail about their current circumstances, because they've shown an indication that they have an interest. If you can then understand their circumstances, right. And care about their problem, more than what they'll do is trust you with a solution. But you have to take the time to be able to help explore their reality before they're going to grant you that permission. Because otherwise, you sound like you care about your solution, where instead you should care about their problem.

Stephanie Fiteni (06:56):

Absolutely. I couldn't have it better. So, so what you're suggesting is that there is no mindset change here.

Phil M Jones (07::06):

There's a big mindset change where you're just going to move to help that's, it is fueled with curiosity, explore a conversation further and find out if there is a fit for you to be able to help them move from where they are right now, to where they want to be. And it is that simple, but you have to interrupt their day. See more often than not particularly with online leads because they were flirting. It's the equivalent of them making eyes at somebody across the room. They weren't necessarily saying let's go on a date. But they were saying, if you asked me on a date, I'd probably say yes. So you still have to make that, that next step. They made as a, you, you got to walk towards them and say, can I buy you a drink in some way? Which means that you've got to pick up the phone and you've got to reach out with an email. You got to respond on a messenger. But what you want to respond with is a question and a single question, because questions create conversations, conversations, lead to relationships, relationships, create opportunities and any opportunities to become sales. So every response should be a question. Not here's the barrage of ways in which I can help you, which is the mistake that the majority of people make inquiry comes in, download of information, follows in the other direction, they overwhelmed or confused the other person into inaction. And people think that no is the enemy of the essence sales. It's not, maybe it's the enemy. Indecision is the enemy. People stuck in maybe is what's preventing the progress from the majority of people, not 'no'. We can learn from those. We can move on from those we can adjust from, but, but indecision is the real end.

Stephanie Fiteni (08:44):

So how can we help them make decisions more?

Phil M Jones (08:56):

I think to stop presenting packages for starters and start exploring other people's situations. And, you know, yes, you might need packages on a web page to help somebody understand where they're at. With most coaches and consultants is what people want is they want a custom solution from them, not a cookie-cutter package. Now you might need a series of coo-ie cutter packages for you to be able to align the right package for the right person at the right time. But the person on the other end thinks that their situation is truly unique. Therefore it needs a truly unique set of circumstances on the other side. So give me some real context. Let's play something out at a granular level. If somebody creates a lead, how for what purpose and what do they want to provide, let's, let's set up a set of circumstances and we'll talk through a conversation that would work.

Phil M Jones (09:45):

Okay. So somebody has received a booking from the website and then to they need to jump on a booking for a discovery call, which is, which of course a lot of people will do it different ways discovery call and you know, they want to basically see if they're a good fit. Now, most people do not collect enough information between you know, from the, from the form of the discovery calls. So I think sometimes the main problem is that you go into the call with maybe too little information. So how, how do you go into the cooler with too little information and provide it? And you understand that the purpose of the call is to collect the information, right? So there's not necessarily a right and a wrong way of doing it. There was just an order of events that you need to work through before you get to be able to make recommendations. And that the simple way to think about this is that prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. So the medical term, but it relates usually towards the world of salesmanship as well, is that you shouldn't ever suggest to somebody that this is what they need. Unless you can say these words in the word, you should look to say first to the words. So they booked this and they've scheduled it at a time, right? So it was happening at 10:30 AM on Tuesday. Should we just use this? So there you are on zoom on the call, wherever it might be at 10:30 AM on Tuesday, the first thing I'm going to lean into is I'm going to go back in time.

Phil M Jones (11:36):

So I'm going to go back in time and say something along the lines of is what is it about me and my work that makes you think that there might be an opportunity for us to be able to work together? Because I want them to tell me how they found out about me, but I don't want to say, how did you find out about me? And they say Google search, Facebook ads, et cetera, boom, the conversation is over, what is it about me and my work that makes you think that might be a good fit? They say, well, you work with three of my friends and they were delighted by the results. That's a different conversation than somebody saying, well, I saw a Facebook ad that interrupted my day and I completed the form. And now here we are right. Completely different setup. So what is it about me and my work that makes you think I'm a good fit?

Phil M Jones (12:12):

Cool. Then the second preface is so helped me understand where you're at. So help me understand your current situation. Then the next frame would be something along the lines of, so how long has this been going on for right. People think that there's a problem. And then they jump straight to the solution. I want a problem at scale. So tell me about where you're currently at. They tell me where they're currently at and how long has this been going on. So how long has this been going on, and then I need to know what are the consequences of that? Nope. You know, what, what is the actual real outcome of this current set of circumstances? What's this costing you is what I'm really looking to get. Okay. So I then might even ask on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being it's like essential and one being 'meh'. How important is it that you make progress towards fixing this? Right? They might say, well, it's like a 9.6. I say, great. Well, I only work with people who aren't going above.

Stephanie Fiteni (13:14):

Okay. Excellent. That, that was going to be

Phil M Jones (13:18):

Qualified themselves in.

Stephanie Fiteni (13:20):

Okay. So the level of urgency you're gauging the level of urgency as well.

Phil M Jones (13:25):

No urgency importance, importance. Okay.

Stephanie Fiteni (13:30):

Very interesting. You know, is, is there, do you feel that the conversation needs to be different? This is something I get a lot of questions about sometimes. Is, does the company for the sensation need to be different if you have a high ticket coaching package or you have a regular coaching package?

Phil M Jones (13:48):

Okay. Where's the, where's the line between regular and high ticket. I'd love it. If somebody could explain that to me.

Stephanie Fiteni (13:54):

Well, it usually actually depends on the person because for someone, you know, 2 grand is high-ticket and for somebody else, you know, 200 grand is high-ticket. You know, it's all about perception

Phil M Jones (14:05):

Using the language high ticket. I think it's an internet marketing internal term that has no relevance or bearing on any given customer at any period of time because I've seen people struggle to spend $20. And I've seen people write checks out effortlessly for 20,000. So like high-ticket is your perception, not theirs. Yeah. What we should be looking to be able to do is to explore the conversation, to say, is it worth it for them? See, people think that they have to add value to their package to make it worth a high ticket price. They don't. What makes something high ticket is your ability to solve a high ticket problem. That's what it comes down to.

Stephanie Fiteni (14:49):

That's right.

Phil M Jones (14:53):

Tens of thousands of dollars for 60 minutes of my time in a consultation or et cetera. If I'm going to help a company make millions like that's a no brainer, but I could take, like people would say to me like my speech is worth X, right. And do a lot of work in professional speaking. No, your speech is worth nothing. Your speech to a given audience to achieve a particular outcome is what's worth the money. So my ability to entertain 1500 people for 90 minutes from the stage at a conference that allows them to be able to have increased productivity and efficiency in the sales process to the tune of around a thousand conversations a year that's worth big money, same speech to 1500 people, in Kansas, when they're there for a Sunday, barbecue, it's not worth it.

Stephanie Fiteni (15:42):

That's right. Different context.

Phil M Jones (15:45):

Yeah. Correct. So, so the process doesn't change. The exploration of the questions may well change. You know, if what you're looking to be able to do is to help somebody to make a decision over purchasing a $300 course, then you might go to get to the conclusion that it's worth it. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. If you're looking to get somebody to invest in a 12-month long-term one-on-one coaching relationship to this tens of thousands of dollars, the exploration might be more detailed. Why? Because on both sides of the thing, you want to have certainty that it's worth it, both sides and your ability to coach or consult does not provide you certainty your ability to coach or consult that individual is what provides you certainty, which means you have to understand their current circumstances, their ability to bring their side of the work, your relationship in terms of ability to collaborate over that period of time. And without certainty on that, you are selling a package and your package won't get results. Your relationship with the individual will drive the results. And if you focus your efforts on results for your client, you help a client fix a hundred thousand dollars problem. You can charge 10 grand for that. And that's how I often help people work out their pricing. Your pricing should be circa 10% of the value of the problem that you sell.

Stephanie Fiteni (17:08):

Interesting. Why just 10%?

Phil M Jones (17:11):

Well, because there has to be enough skin in the game, right. In terms of the fact, it might not work at a hundred per cent. Yeah. Of course. Like 50% in it. Okay, great. Not only that, is there other factors that then talk towards this problem? So you're probably not the only solution that somebody is working on. So be able to help make progress in that given area. I could be working on other things too. The, that they need to invest in to be able to help them get the outcome. You're only one of the solutions. You're not the solution quite often. That's important to be able to consider. The other part of, of what, like they have to be the hero of the journey. If you're the hero you missed the point. So if you take 55% of the value of the problem that you solve, where you come out, the hero of the journey, it benefited you more than it benefited them. Well, it's unsustainable is what it is. And you know, I've, I've had 20 years in the, in the personal brand business and I've seen a lot of people come quickly, make...

This week’s guest, Jeanet Bathoorn, is a bestselling author of 6 books, international speaker and trainer and a no-nonsense business coach. She is a certified NLP Master Coach and a Certified Sacred Money Archetype Coach.

She started the Freedom Entrepreneur Movement a couple of years ago after having dealt with a total lack of freedom in her business and private. In 2020 she started her own podcast show in which she recorded 100 episodes in 100 days.

She is a multiple six-figure entrepreneur since 2005 and has coached thousands of entrepreneurs finding their own unique path to freedom. She also runs several mastermind groups.

We talked about…

>> Changing plans from freedom entrepreneur running cruises to focus on the dutch market again

>> Launching a podcast with 100 episodes in 100 days

>> The importance of having fun with your content

>> Writing your first book shifting to author

>> Keeping things simple to avoid confusing your clients

Episode Links and Mentions:

English Website: http://jeanetbathoorn.com/

Assessment: https://jeanetbathoorn.com/money-archetype-assessment/

Ebook: https://jeanetbathoorn.com/ebook-7-steps-to-become-a-freedom-entrepreneur/

LinkedIn Link: Jeanet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanetbathoorn/

LinkedIn Link: Stephanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniefiteni/

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

Stephanie:

Hello, Jeanet, how are you? Hi, Stephanie. I'm fine. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for joining us today. I'm really happy to have you on, would you like to start by introducing yourself and letting us know what you do? And we do it for? Okay. So my name is Janet - I work for the Dutch market, so all my content, everything is in Dutch. I call myself the freedom entrepreneur and I guide/mentor self-employed entrepreneurs to break through their own limiting beliefs, like the beliefs that they created in themselves. And I do that by running mastermind groups. And by putting out a lot of content, I know we're going to talk about content, but I put out a lot of content. Yeah, excellent. Yes, we're in the right place to talk about content. So, what does that content look like?

Jeanet:

So I am, I'm in the habit of writing books. I love to write books. And in fact, this year I will publish two books. My first book is about running a mastermind group. So what do you need to run a mastermind group? And what does it take to run a group? And the next book I wrote that my publisher asked me to write it. That will be published in November. And it's about online business models because of the whole COVID-19 situation.

Stephanie:

Oh, wow. Yes, definitely the right topic and especially the right topic for you. . Excellent. So that would be book number 10 in all, because you've already written eight books, right?

Jeanet:

Yeah. That's that if it's like books that I wrote his book number eight, but I wrote also like chapters for other books, so that, that would bring it to like books and co-writing books.

Stephanie:

Wow. was it all in dutch? For the Dutch market then, which is a pretty big market. Really.

Jeanet:

It's interesting, yeah, it's interesting, it's not so big. I mean, it's not English speaking or German-speaking, but it's a very active market. People are really eager to learn more and to develop themselves.

Stephanie:

That's really good. That's a very good one to be in then, especially if you're in the online space. So speaking of content, I know you've done something a little bit special In the last few months with the launch of your podcast in the middle of this a virus outbreak, which has caused so many people to rethink what they were doing. And I know that's, you know, what you were doing before, which is, what I got to know you for the cruise lady, everybody calls you the cruise lady. Cause that's used to do business mentoring cruises, right?

Jeanet:

Yes. Trans Atlantic cruise this year. That's right.

Stephanie:

So tell us how everything changed and you know, how the podcast came.

Jeanet:

Yeah. So last year, 2019, I took on a big project. So I organize my first international cruise before that it was only Dutch and I wanted to take as a lot of entrepreneurs with me. And before that I had groups of six and my, my biggest group was like 10 people, like very small intimate groups just because for me, it was just for the fun part of my business model. I, it was, it was an extra I used to run groups like since 2015, 2016 mastermind groups and things like that.

Then the cruise came along and I had this crazy ambition to bring more people with me and to do it for the English speaking markets. So in fact for like a lot of people and then doing that last year, because we left in November, the virus was not known by then, but doing it and being on the ship with all these people, I realized that it is not really the business model for me. It didn't make me happy to travel with so many people. And there was a big, big realization, like, who am I doing this for? Why would I do it this way?

So when I, yeah, when I left the ship, it was December. And then I already started to think, well, I want to cross the oceans. I love it. And I love to take people with me, but not so many and not so intensive and not long and not so like, not as a travel. So when I came back in the Netherlands, it was like in the winter, I started to rethink my home business model in January. And I was like, no, I'm going to go back to the Dutch markets. That's where I'm known. And I had to claim a position in the English market. It's easier. So one of the decisions as I'm going back to the Dutch market and let's see what will happen with the cruise, I didn't make my mind up about it. I didn't decide to do it. Yes or no. But then Corona came COVID-19 came, we had a complete lockdown.

And one of the first things I did was making a phone call to the CRO cruise company and told them that I want to cancel next year's cruise. And then I put the phone down and I was so relieved. I was like, who am I fooling? Why would I do it? If I don't like it? If it's like a burden on my shoulders.

Stephanie:

So it was a good thing for you because you really didn't want to do it.

Jeanet:

Not in, in the way that I shaped it. Yeah. So I do want to do cruises again, but only with small intimate groups. And most of the time, the people that join me are already in one of my mastermind groups. So I already knew them. We already had a connection, but now I had strangers on board. I'm like, it's not my usual fun. It didn't make me happy. It's a very important lesson.

Stephanie:

Yes. A very important lesson. Sometimes we make decisions and we do something. And then because it took so much work and so much investment, we kind of feel like we have to take it forward, even though maybe we're not enjoying it so much. So yes, it's definitely, I've made that mistake before. And it's, it's really nice to hear that, you know, you kind of did it once and you felt it wasn't right. And then you took that away. It takes a lot of, I think, clarity and self-awareness too, to be able to backtrack so quickly and say, no.

Jeanet:

Yeah. So, I mean, I was forced to cancel it because of this whole COVID-19 situation. And I was also very happy to cancel it. And I was like, okay, that's a good sign. So I cleared out my whole calendar, all the retreats, all life events, everything got cancelled or I cancelled them. And that was the point where you were referring to like all of a sudden it was February. I had loads and loads and loads of time to plan my business and to make a plan for reclaiming my position in the Dutch market. That's where my crazy podcast plan came. Yeah.

Stephanie:

Yes. That's truly crazy. Gosh, how many episodes are you on already?

Stephanie:

Started on March the fourth. And initially, I did, I said, okay, I'm going to create a hundred podcasts in a hundred days. And that's a very easy sentence to pronounce. It's very easy to say it. But looking back, it was, it was a lot of work and it was, I really loved it because I clear my calendar. I took my losses like also financially or like, okay, let's make a plan so that I can finish 2020 in a different way. That makes me happy and money flowing in again. And it worked, I mean, we're now six, seven months ahead. Or we are six, seven months from March. So I did a hundred and a hundred days that it was in the middle of June. And then I switched to a frequency of twice per week, two podcasts per week. So we are now at 134, I think. Yeah. It's one of the lists I'm like, okay, did I do that? Yeah.

Stephanie:

Yeah. I'm super curious. How did you manage a hundred episodes in a hundred days? What did your content creation schedule look like? Because it's more than batching. Isn't it? It's like a full-time job.

Jeanet:

Hold on. Thing. It's, it's almost a full-time job. And so I created this whole Excel sheet. And before I add one podcast, I already had three episodes on my digital shelf. I already had some episodes. I created them two years ago, but I never aired them. Yeah. So I wanted to start a podcast before I decided to go to the English market. I'm like, why would I start a Dutch podcast if I go to the English market, but okay.

Going back to the Dutch market. Okay. I have these podcasts like I have three episodes. And then the first thing that I did was created an Excel sheet with topics to talk about, but also what could be your call to action after that podcast show? And then I did a whole inventory. Is that the word like, I made a search in my own content. Like I had some digital online training. I had the most video, well, why not create audio?

There were some interviews that I already had, well, why not create them into a podcast episode? I took one of my books. I have a book about money mindset, and I just literally read some of the chapters in the book from the book. And I say that to them, like, I'm going to read this chapter for you because it's a useful chapter. So it just to get going.

Stephanie:

Excellent. So did you have a pattern? Did you have you know, was every episode different or, you know cause you know, some people go for a solo episode. Some people go for interviews. Some people like myself, I do alternate one solo and then one interview. Sometimes I mix them up. Cause I have more guests. So how did you do it? What did you, did you have a format?

Jeanet:

I, of course, thought about that and I listened to like the famous podcast is out of Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas and people like that. And they all have a format and they all have a plan and I'm like, no, I want the podcast to be my playground. I want it to, to be a project. It has to be fun because it doesn't pay the bills, creating a podcast costs money and time. So I decided everything that I like is suitable for a podcast. So it can be a 10-minute episode with like a short, short mantra thing or like a short trip.

But it can also be a two-hour episode in which I have like a long interview or training. And I just decided I want it to be a representation of the work that I do and the person that I am. So there's no format. That's the thing. So I had, I did have this theme month. I, so like in may I thought about, I want to talk to entrepreneurs. Self-Employed entrepreneurs who wrote a book author, but also the non-fiction authors.

And I like to talk about them, talk about their book, like the content of the book, but also about becoming an author like this whole journey of changing your identity into becoming an author. And that was like an instant hit because I put some posts out on Facebook and on LinkedIn like I want to talk to authors who wrote a non-fiction book. Can you recommend people? And before I knew it, I had like 70 or 80 people on my list.

Stephanie:

Oh, fantastic. Wow.

Jeanet:

That was so easy. And that's yeah, that's really great because I got to really enlarge my network. I learned a lot because of receiving books, reading books. So they'd people telling me about their book and it was fun to do like one interview every day, like one interview out every day. There were days that I did three interviews and it was a max.

Stephanie:

Wow. Okay. That's good. Wow. I'm, I'm very interested in what you said and you know, you said it has to be fun. It doesn't have to have a particular set format task to be fun. And I completely subscribe to that idea because I think with content. What most people struggle with is motivation, the motivation to keep doing it. And yeah, unless you pick the right thing, that's really gonna make it an experience in itself for you that you want to do it.

You don't want to do it because it's good for your business because it goes out there because people will engage with it because people will find you want to do it because you enjoy doing it. And that is so, so important with content. Sometimes I have to dig really deep to find what really lights people up about their business because once you find that, then creating content is not difficult.

Jeanet:

I think. Yeah. I think that's, it's really important that you have fun in what you do, because it's what you say. If you have to write a blog every week, but you hate writing or don't start a blog, start a podcast or do videos or whatever.

Stephanie:

That's right and then there's always repurposing. It's like you said, you've got your book, you turned it into a podcast episode. You can do the same thing. You can get a podcast episode and turn that into a blog post. You know, it's, it's all about at least keeping your content exciting because repurposing, you know it can be automated to some extent outsourced later, it's something you can manage. Yeah.

Jeanet:

I discovered that I really liked it and I'm really, I'm like a really curious person. So I loved to interview people and ask them the questions that some people are afraid to ask. I just ask them.

Stephanie:

I liked the sound of that. I love talking to people as well because I'm very curious, but what is the kind of question for instance, that people wouldn't ask?

Stephanie:

What is the kind of question? So I had people in my podcast show that were really, really skilled, really experienced entrepreneurs and they get into feud a lot. So like I have, for example, I had one in my show, I think you wrote about 80 books already and he's like 65, 67. Yeah.

He's like productive and he's well known, but he's, he's like so used to getting interviewed by the press, et cetera. And I could tell that because if I ask a question, he just had an answer within microseconds. And then I, I asked him to go back to the person he was before publishing his first book.

Like, because that's the whole identity shift. If you are an author with 80 books it's very hard to remember the struggle, maybe when you didn't have 80 books when the first book was still not published. So I asked him to go back to that period and to describe what kind of person he was back then. And then that's the first time that he fell silent.

Like, Oh, I have to think about that. And then he said, well, good question. Yeah. I try to find insights in people that have got to do with them, like this whole identity shift that they have gone through. That's I think that's really interesting for people listening to my podcast because we all have started at zero. Every one of them started at zero.

Stephanie:

That's right. And I think every little success kind of does cause a bit of an identity shift in your beliefs as well, which I know is a topic you, you work with a lot.

Jeanet:

Yeah. But it has to, I mean, and the only way to gain these, these identity shifts, like in a positive way is to do the right things and to have the habits that support you. Like, if you want to be an author, you just have to write a book. It will not be written itself. I mean, you have to do the work, but you have to do the good things and yeah. Only shouting, like you have to do like take massive action. That's what Tony Robbins says. You have to take massive actions. I agree with that.

But as an entrepreneur, especially when you do a lot yourself, you have to know if I do this, why would I do it in order to get that goal? Is it, is it clear? Is it, is it, is it connected? Because very often, I mean, people write a book and then I asked her about that book. I said, is it your profit book? Like, do you have online training about it? Or would you like to run a mastermind group about it? Or no. I just wanted this book to be written. I'm like, okay. You just wasted six months of your life probably, but

Stephanie:

Oh, that sounds painful.

Jeanet:

Yeah. Well, I say it in a loving way, but if you don't have a plan, it's, it's a lot of work and everything is a lot of work.

Stephanie:

Yes, indeed. So you need to do it with, you need to have the goal first. First, and you need to, as you mentioned before now, It's going to take you in a direction you want to go. Excellent. Wow. Okay. So what made you write your first. So maybe your next book, maybe if it's easier. No,

Jeanet:

I can remember really well because I started to blog in 2008. Okay. Because someone told me that it's going to be the next big thing blogging. I'm like, okay, I'll start a blog. And I wrote about social media, but then a lot about LinkedIn. And I think I wrote already like 40 or 50 blog articles in two and a half years, two years. And all of a sudden I wasn't, I was on Twitter and Twitter was really new back then.

And it was like this lovely, wonderful village in which you knew people and people knew each other. And we could talk to the minister and famous people, et cetera. So I was surrounded by authors, by people who wrote books, but people who already achieved what I wanted to achieve. So one day I put it out on Twitter. Well, I would love to write a book and someone else responded to that.

Stephanie:

Her name was Suzanne. She already published two books and she said, well, it's, Hey, you should write a book. And here are the details of my publisher. So she sent me a direct message with the details of a publisher, why I reached out to the publisher, they checked my blog articles and they were like, yeah, let's write a book. Here's the book deal. So I never had to write a book first and go to a publisher. They just said, okay, this topic, social media is okay, great. When are you going to deliver? When is the manuscript ready? And that was the story of my first book. And it took me one initiative. Yeah.

Stephanie:

Well, that's like in, in social media years, that's a century. Yeah.

Jeanet:

But still, it was one...

In this episode, we talk about strategies, tools and platforms that promise new and known opportunities in 2021. We talk about what worked really well in 2020, what still works now and what new platforms and changes are coming up in 2021.

We talked about...

>> Google's Newest Significant Algorithm Changes scheduled for May 2021

>> Social Shopping

>> The new popular kid on the block: Clubhouse

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> www.stephaniefiteni.com/podcast

>> fiverr.com

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

Google releases about 3000 updates a year to its algorithm, but every now and then it has an algorithm that actually carries a name like probably the most popular was Panda and then hummingbird. And there is going to be another big update in 2021. We don't know what it's going to be called yet, but it is going to be released in May 2021.

And we already know why it is going to be important and how things are going to change. So coming back to the one thing I always talk about, and you know, the reason why Google exists is to serve the best results to people who punch in keywords and sentences and questions into Google.

So you don't really need to fear because you are in Google are on the same side. However, Google, since probably the major algorithm released in 2010 has been working on trying to, push people who create websites and businesses to create a faster experience. So they want to speed up the internet and the algorithm release in May, 2021 is going to focus specifically on this. They've called it the user experience release. So they want to really focus on improving the way users are using your website.

So Google is going to now start looking at a number of elements on your site that it believes improve the experience of people or maybe more precisely yeah. Are elements that Google thinks are showing signs of a better positive experience.

Google has created what it's calling the core web vitals, which are, you know, three elements of measurements that it's going to use to decide whether your site has a nice user experience are not the first element Google will measure is how quickly the measurements above the fold actually load above the fold means that's part of the website that you can see in your screen right away without scrolling. So Google will be measuring how quickly it loads and also how quickly people can actually click on it because sometimes sites can load, but you know, you can't quite click on them right away.

It's like they need to do a little bit of extra loading and then you can finally interact with them. The third element is how long it takes for the picture to become visually stable. So for the whole layout to become visually stable, you know, sometimes you see a website that takes a little bit of time to load and sort of you see things falling around and, you know, the layout changes. So Google is going to take into consideration how quickly it takes to stabilise and settle down all these elements. According to Google, make for a good user experience. It has picked these three things to measure how the user is going to interact with your website in a positive way. But of course, it's going to give a lot more importance to mobile this time around than it does to the desktop. There are still many sites on the internet that don't quite perform as well on mobile.

In spite of having a very pretty mobile site, some websites are not great. I say most still have some very small elements to click on when it comes to the mobile experience. And there are certain things that Google thinks need to be actually even faster than desktop on mobile. There are, of course also some other very interesting developments which we have seen. When I say we, I mean, SEO people who work on the SEO of their websites on their clients and, you know, can see the changes in the algorithm. There have been some very exciting changes this year, especially for people who like me love and specialize in content. So what can you do to make sure that you're making the most of the changes that Google is going to throw our way this year? So here's what you need to do, make sure that your website is as light and as simple as possible.

So make sure that your images are as small as they can be. Make sure that your website loads quickly and if need to be shortened the length of your pages so that they load more quickly. If you use a WordPress site, check your template, make sure it doesn't take too long to load because it has a lot of extra code that you don't actually need. So if you have a site that maybe looks simple, but still takes a long time to load and it's WordPress.

You may want to hire somebody to actually clean out the code for you and make it faster. You can find developers on Fiverr and similar websites. And of course, always work with someone who is ideally referred and can prove that he has done the work well for other people as well. But it shouldn't be hard to find someone who can wake, make your website faster.

The second thing, which is really exciting, actually for all types of coaches is that niching is actually a great SEO strategy. This is something that I have tried in the last 18 months and it's worked wonders for the traffic of my website. It has, I think, quadrupled in the last six to eight months. And this has happened because I have gone deeper into niche silos. So when you niche, Google finds it really, really easy to understand what you're about. It also finds it really easy to know who to serve your content to. So you're doing Google a favour and you're doing your audience a favour. Now, when you create it's a website that also has a blog. So you are, let's say you're a coach and you work in a specific niche of life coaching. Let's say you do nutrition or weight loss or something of the sort.

If you're a blog has very specifically a lot of content about this particular topic. And then you niche down further too, for instance, weight loss for mums weightless for menopause. So you get your niche and you even create kind of siloed content by siloed. I mean that you have subcategories and subcategories, which are very, very specific and very, very relevant. What this does is it creates clarity, clarity for your audience to navigate your site and clarity for Google, to understand what you're about and who to serve your website to this creates a win-win situation because Google is going to find it really easy to serve you to the people that you're trying to find.

And another important thing, which Google is really giving a lot of emphasis on the value that you provide. This is a very important part of the user experience because if they come to your website and they do not find enough value, they're going to leave and Google traces, this Google knows how long people spend on your site before going to Google and punching that keyword back into the search.

So Google knows how much value they found on your site. It's very important, and this should be absolutely our main focus to keep your reader reading. Once they have landed on your website to maybe create a video so that they click on it and they can immediately understand what you're about. But the user experience is not just about that one piece of valuable content and that one piece of video, it's also about giving them an experience, leading them onto the next thing, having the right call to action on the right blog, post, having the right next action instruction on your video, and maybe, you know, connecting everything in a way that your audience really knows where to find the next step after they read.

And, you know, they get excited about what you're doing. So that's sort of like Google, in a nutshell, that's more or less what's going to happen in 2021, of course, stay tuned because there's going to be so much more that they're going to release during this year before the big year, the big moments, the big release in may when they finally release the updates, but let's now move on to the next digital marketing channel.

And the next one obvious and already actually rolled out feature. That seems to be taking social media by storm is the new e-commerce or rather shoppable posts on social media. Now you have had a lot of shopping carts already on Facebook. And the new feature actually rolled out to Instagram has already shown that about 46% of Instagram users purchased one or more products using the shopping feature on IgG posts.

The statistics are amazing. 46% is really, really high and seem to be very promising in the coming year. The reels are becoming more and more popular. It has given people the opportunity to reuse tectonics or maybe start playing around and getting the confidence to do tech talks. So all in all, I think Instagram is going to have a fantastic year. And if like a lot of businesses, you are calling your social media platforms this year, perhaps Instagram is one of those platforms to keep the next platform is LinkedIn.

And of course, they have rolled out a lot of new features this year. They are becoming more social as a platform. And I think they've been pretty successful this year. We're not on LinkedIn live yet. You should definitely try to get there a good way of doing this is to start producing videos regularly on LinkedIn. So just post recorded ones before you apply for the live button. Once you apply for the live button, then you have a much higher chance of getting it. And of course, LinkedIn, for those of you who targets, especially business to business is going to be a great place to market this year. And of course, finally, there is also the new kid on the block clubhouse, who is looking really, really promising in spite of being only available for iPhone so far and being only open to invite, which is a fantastic way of getting everybody to talk about it by giving limited accessibility.

It's promising, it's really promising. I like it. So for those of you who don't have clubhouse yet clubhouse is an audio platform. So, you know, it's like doing lives. There are rooms people organise rooms and there are speakers there. So there can be two or three or maybe even more people having like a panel discussion about a topic. And then there is the audience, and of course, they can invite the audience to join in and ask questions and engage.

So I think this is a really nice step forward. I have been in a few clubhouse rooms already and I have, you know, engaged a little bit and I have found some really interesting information. There are a lot of influences on there already. People are sharing information really freely and they're having very honest discussions. I think the fact that it's audio-only gives people the freedom to really jump on and off really quickly.

So, you know, you don't have to be made up. You don't have to prepare, you can just jump in and, you know, as long as you're not in a noisy room, you can just join into a conversation. So I think clubhouse is onto a good thing. Of course, I think podcasters are going to benefit a lot from this because people who podcasts are going to find clubhouse easy because they're used to just talking. And actually, the fact that you're not just talking to a microphone, but you're also talking to other people, makes it actually a lot easier than podcasting. I like it in a way. If you are accustomed to listening to podcasts, you're going to absolutely love this. You're going to love it. I am the kind of person that really does not like radio because, you know, it's, it's like you can't pick there's people talking and sometimes they annoy you.

And I really don't like listening to radio talk shows and things like that. I don't listen to the radio at all, but clubhouse is, is a different thing. So in spite of the fact that it might sort of feel like the same thing, it's very different because it's on-demand.

So people invite you to the rooms, you know what the topics are. You can follow topics, you can follow people, you can follow rooms. And, you know, I think it's really good because it gives you that choice. And you know, it's got a little button that says you can leave quietly so you can leave the room without showing up too much. My only concern about this platform is that once there are lots of people on it, it can become really quite overwhelming. I think they keep it in control. And you know, maybe the design of the app is going to have a lot to do with it if they keep it streamlined as it is.

And don't go too crazy. Like the other platforms, I think this is going to be a real, real nice one. I have really loved listening to some influencers like Laura Belgray and Kimra Luna. And you know, they have been really awesome having really authentic conversations as opposed to pre-planned webinars on lives, on this sort of thing. I really like the fact that it's unofficial it kind of feels more relaxed and people really relaxed people really are really honest. So it really feels almost like you're listening in on a conversation and then you're like, wow, I can actually jump in and speak to these people who are so, so up there when it comes to other social media platforms because they have such a large following. So I think clubhouse is going to change a few things. I'm really looking forward to seeing where it goes.

And 2021 is definitely going to be it's. Yeah. And last but not pleased definitely deserves a mention is SEO for voice search. Now SEO for voice search is like a sort of regular SEO, but it's one thing that we shouldn't forget. A lot of people have Alexa or Google Homedevices in their home now. And it's very important that we keep in mind that these are increasing more and more and people are using them for search. So if growing the traffic to your website if you blog, if you put cast, if you put media on your website for your roadies to find voice search is something that you really want to make sure you think about, if you do your own keyword research, you're going to notice this. You're going to notice that there are certain keywords that look like commands. And you know, these are the ones to look out for because they come from audio searches.

Now it's going to be very interesting to see how these sort of the most recent audio media is going to mix with this voice search and where the devices to create, you know, a richer experience. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how this pans out as the technology becomes smarter and smarter. 2021 is promising to be a very exciting year when it comes to content and social media and everything, digital marketing. And I'm really, really excited to see how things develop. Thank you very much for tuning in today. And I really hope you find these developments exciting as much as I did.

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This week's guest, Clare Josa, is the UK's leading authority on Imposter Syndrome, having spent the past fifteen years working with business leaders to help them to overcome it, as well as leading the landmark 2019 Imposter Syndrome Research Study and publishing her new book: Ditching Imposter Syndrome.

An expert in the neuroscience and psychology of performance, her original training as an engineer, specialising in Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, means her inspirational approach is grounded in practical common sense, creating breakthroughs, not burnout.

She is the author of eight books and has been interviewed by the likes of The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and Radio 4, amongst others. Clare speaks internationally on how to change the world by changing yourself. We talked about...

>> Getting speaking gigs as a coach (even during lockdown)

>> Imposter Syndrome and how to identify it in yourself

>> How to overcome your imposter syndrome

>>When content comes from the heart

>>Creating a movement

Episode Links and Mentions:

Clare's Book: http://www.ditchingimpostersyndrome.com/book/

Become an imposter syndrome Mentor: https://ditchingimpostersyndrome.com/imposter-syndrome-mentor-training/

Clare's Speaking Page: http://www.clarejosa.com/book-clare-josa-to-speak/

Clare's Free Guide: http://www.clarejosa.com/profitable/

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Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

Clare Josa

Thank you for being with us. Thank you, Stephanie. It's lovely to spend time with you today. Claire, I know that you have done so much as a coach and you've come so far. You've got your book, you've got your certification program. You do amazing speaking ex now also virtually, and you also have your one-to-one and other programs. So, you know, I'm sure all the coaches and consultants listening are thinking, wow, how did she manage to do all this, but really love to hear more about your journey. Of course. Well, I started off as an engineer, as you do my training, I've got a master's degree in mechanical engineering and German, and I spent 10 years in engineering and specialised in six Sigma and lean manufacturing. After about 10 years, I realized actually I wanted to change a scene. There was a lot of me too in engineering back then being one of just two female engineers on a staff of 200 was quite challenging.

Clare Josa

And I would say realized I wanted to spend more time with people because making people smile was really what floated my boat rather than working with machines. So I went and I became, I went travelling for a year and then came back and I got the job as head of market research at Dyson. So I set up their market research functionality. I'd been running what we called guerilla market research in my engineering job. Because just being able to get engineers to talk directly to customers that gives you so much better feedback than when it's been through a marketing teams' filter because they're all speaking different languages. So at Dyson, my job was to be the interpreter between the design engineers, the marketing team and the end customers. And I loved that. That's when I qualified as an NLP trainer. So neuro-linguistic programming. After a few years, I realized I could never make a big enough difference in the world by selling somebody else's bits of plastic.

Clare Josa

So I took the leap back in 2003 and set up my own business in leadership development. The reason I got into imposter syndrome, which is what I've spent most of the last 17 years specializing in is I did a lot of executive mentoring work in those days. And my very first client had something that I didn't know what it was called a syndrome, but it was. And then my next one, my next one, my next one. And I kept working with all these people who to the outside world, they were really confident and successful, but at three o'clock in the morning, their self-talk was driving them crazy. It was holding them back from fulfilling their potential from really enjoying their role. It was making them micromanage. It was making them difficult to work with and people would often be sent to me as a last resort before they were fired. It's pretty harsh. Actually!

Clare Josa

All they needed was to let go of that in pain because they were projecting that pain and that fear and that worry and anxiety. And they discovered that when you allow them to get deep below the surface and clear out the triggers, they got to be all of who they really were to be an inspirational leader to really make that difference for their team. And that's what got me specializing in imposter syndrome. Then last year, ditching imposter syndrome, the book came out when I was writing it. I was looking for the latest research. I couldn't find anything that was much more than either a small study or a telephone pole. And so the UK is first large scale research study into imposter syndrome, which has been so useful. So now we've got really clear data on the behaviours, the difference between it and self-doubt, how it gets in people's way, how managers and leaders can spot somebody who's got it. And what we can do to really help people set themselves free rather than doing the sticky plaster kind of mindset. I'm going to pretend I'm okay.

Stephanie

Wow. That's amazing. What an amazing journey. Gosh. And is it the book that then started off your speaking gigs?

Clare Josa

Speaking? No, I've been a speaker for many, many years, but then when I had my kids, I had to stop for a while because a huge number of speaking events are in the evenings. And I wanted to be at home to put my kids to bed. It's one of the reasons I was running my business is I could have that flexibility. So I took a lot of my work online for a few years and I was very fortunate that I was well known as a virtual speaker long before it became the only option chronically over the last year before lockdown. My face-to-face speaking gigs had started ramping back up again and then like so many people in March 2020 in that fateful one week, everything just disappeared.

Clare Josa

And, and we all had it happen. So it was just a pivoting back to the virtual world. I was really lucky. I got to help a lot of teachers to be able to convert their teaching style, to go online because although we all see teachers find it really easy to teach, actually it's quite scary when you put a camera there and a lot of them were freezing. So I got to London, ran lots of workshops like that. I worked with companies on that and that helped build my reputation as a virtual speaker. Now I'm probably about as busy as a virtual speaker, as I would have been had the face-to-face world continued this year.

Stephanie

Oh, that's fantastic. That's good. That's great. And of course, it's something that can scale more easily because you don't have to do all the travelling.

Clare Josa

Exactly, exactly. And it's interesting because a virtual speaking day, that's fine. Takes a lot more energy than being on stage when I'm on stage, you feed off the audience. Yeah. And when it's virtual you have, I find it takes almost twice as much energy. So I've actually reduced the number of speaking gigs. I'll take each month despite not travelling because otherwise, it's just too exhausting.

Stephanie

I completely get you. I feel very much the same when you go online. You know, if it's an interview like this, it's, it's fun and it feeds you. But when you're doing a speaking gig. Yeah. It's like, it's, you know, it's like when you're with real people feed off their energy and you're so full of energy afterwards that, you know, actually you can go home and do a lot more than usual.

Clare Josa

Exactly. And there's a lot to be said for that final read-through of what you're going to present when you're sitting on the train on the way or plane on the way to an event. And then you decompress on the way home and you let it go. And with the virtual, one of the things I've had to work quite hard on is actually having clear boundaries is okay, that event's now finished. I'm not doing anything else for the rest of the day. And sometimes when somebody is contacting me about a speaking gig, they're like, but it's only an hour. And I'm like, no, it's a lot of work to create a really strong hour of content, particularly virtually why you have to make it higher octane. You know, I'm not quite a children's TV presenter, but you have to be a lot more bubbly and effervescent and you have to give the energy to the viewers, to the audience, instead of being able to, to share it between you, it's quite a different skill set.

Stephanie

It's true. And I have seen your online videos and they're absolutely amazing. I'd heard people say how good you are, but I actually watched your videos on your speaking page. And I'm like, yes. And you really, really do a great job.

Clare Josa

Thank you, I'm going to say there's one suggestion. I'd love it. There's one thing I've learned really important over locked down is in the olden days, if, if you're listening and you want to be a speaker or take your speaking to the next level in the olden days, we had to have a speaker reel, which was quick highlights, 30 seconds here, 30 seconds there a few testimonials from people in the audience on a higher, at the end of the session, it had to be beautifully edited together. We'd love you, background music. People don't want them anymore. What they now want to see is that you can hold the audience for an entire session. So what I did is my speaker page. There's a link to it now on every page in my website. Yeah. And it's an image link at the bottom of every article in the sidebar, on everything in the menu bar at the top and at the bottom.

Clare Josa

And I've got two full-length sessions that I'm running. One is a face-to-face session. And one is a virtual session because when they're going to invest in you, and it's not just their money, they're investing, the company's investing their trust and their personal reputation as a Booker in you. They want to see not just the 30-second highlights of a great during that 30 seconds people, won't your name, but you should have seen the rest of it. They want you to have the courage to say here's all of me, including the best way the energy's dead, including the bits where I couldn't say reticular activating system without putting my false teeth in. Yeah. They, you want to see that you're human. And the big thing that I've found with virtual speaking is they want that intimacy. They want people to be able to interact. They don't want you to take what we do on a stage and just put that on a screen.

Clare Josa

They want people to be able to connect with real use. So if you want to do anything on your speaker page, consider getting some stuff that you've done where you've run an online session or you've run even a Facebook live because they want to be able to see in real-time how you do what you do, how you communicate, your message. And that is what I'm getting is feedback is the reason why I've been booked. Yeah. So some, a lot of my work comes from referrals. I've got a very large conference. I'm keynoting at in November, which came from a Google search.

Stephanie

Fantastic.

Clare Josa

Search to my speaker page. So this stuff works, but it's really important for us not to get hung up on perfection. You've seen Stephanie, you know, the talks on my speaker page. They're not perfect, but people love them because they're real. And that's what people want at the moment. Someone they can connect with.

Stephanie

That's right. That's so true. So true. Wow. I can really hear all your experience in there. You really know what really makes a difference. So yes, I definitely encourage you all to go to Clare Josa and have a look at her speaking phage because it's, it's, it's really fantastic. I was like, I don't know how much time I spent on it when I sent you the message for the podcast. But one other, one of the reasons why I contacted you is because I know that my audience suffers from imposter syndrome. Like I do. Of course, I think we all do at some stage. And so I wanted to, to get your help with trying to identify what imposter syndrome is, because we all, we've all heard about it and maybe we suspect we have it, but we're not quite sure. So how would we go about that?

Clare Josa

Okay. So I'd love to start first by briefly talking about the difference between imposter syndrome, self-doubt because people often get the two of them mixed up. Is that okay? Yes. I say we found in the research study in 2019, that there is a really big difference between self-doubt and imposter syndrome. So self doubt, general confidence when people are doubting themselves, they're talking about what they can and can't do when they're talking about imposter syndrome, it's about who they really are. That sense of self. So I talk about the imposter syndrome iceberg, which at the surface, we've got to our actions and our thoughts, our beliefs what's important to us. And that sense of identity, the self-confidence and self-doubt are up there at, you know, the beliefs level. I can do this. I can't do that. Yeah. When you start using, I phrase, who am I to be doing this?

Clare Josa

Who am I to charge that much? Who am I to have that many clients? What if that person realizes I'm not good enough? What if me pitching for this piece of what means they find out I'm a fraud? Anything with I am in is an identity level statement, and that's where imposter syndrome hangs out. So it's the secret fear that they'll find this out, even though we're out, we'll be confident. And I often talk to clients about it being the fear of others, judging us the way we're judging ourselves. That's the essence of imposter syndrome now. Yeah. I have seen when we look at it, like, I think that it's important to be looking at yourself. Talk when you're talking to yourself about something that's a stretch or something you want to grow into or something you want to achieve, or maybe you're doing, you're planning on setting your goals, or you're taking action towards a goal.

Clare Josa

Is that self talk about what you can and can't do in which case go and get yourself some training. Yeah. Okay. My presentation skills might need reading. Great. To find a course. You know, I don't read a book, but if it's about who you are. Yeah. What if they realize they made a mistake hiring me? What if they realize I'm not who they think I am, then that's imposter syndrome and you need a different toolset working at the mindset level and that positive thinking level. That's up there with confidence and self-doubt, right down below the surface, you need to be clearing out the limiting beliefs. You need to get to that identity shift because imposter syndrome in its essence is that ravine, that gap between who you see yourself as being and who you think you need to be to achieve your dreams. And when I work with people on imposter syndrome, normally days we have that gap and we try and build a bridge over the ravine. And the whole time we're walking over that bridge with our coping strategies and our sticky plasters, we're looking down going, it's a very long wait.

Clare Josa

What I do when I work with people, what I teach in the book teaching imposter syndrome is how to close that gap. So there's a ravine and you don't need the bridge and you don't need the sticky plasters because you've allowed yourself to become the version of you for whom creating or achieving that is simply what you do. Amazing. That's what we do.

Stephanie

Of course. So can you help us do that?

Clare Josa

Absolutely. So the first key is to spot the self-talk. Yeah. And it can be hard to spot the self to it because we don't normally pay attention to our inner critic unless it's really yelling. One of the ways you can do that is something I call a flinch factor. So the flinch factor is where you're thinking, okay, I'm going to return that call. Yeah. I've just had a journalist message me. I'm going to phone them as they've asked and something in your body goes.

Stephanie

Yeah. It's like,

Clare Josa

There's a tiny, tiny movement that happens where you kind of look like a hedgehog. Yeah.

Stephanie

That ledge

Clare Josa

The fear is your warning sign. That there's part of you that feels scared about taking that action. So becoming aware of it can often be enough. It's simply then uncurling your shoulders, that breathing out, going okay. Is this really a real fair? Yeah. I talk about legitimate fear, legitimate fear and mine story fair. So legitimate fear is when you're walking along that cliff path and it's really windy and you're too close to the edge and your brain and your body is saying, Claire, move mine story fairs. The stories we tell ourselves, it's the, what if this happens? What if that goes wrong? What if I mess this up? What if they don't like me? What if I don't get the gig? The mind story fair is what's causing us to flinch because usually making a phone call is not going to be a life-threatening situation. So that can't be a legitimate fear.

Clare Josa

The challenge you have is the body feels every thought you think, and it can't tell the difference between the legitimate fear and my story fear. So it fires off the whole stress response. We've heard of the fight-flight-freeze response. Yeah. It gets the adrenaline and the cortisol running. And it means that when you make that phone call or you pitch to that client, or you run that discovery session, the dialogue that's running in the back of your head is what if they didn't like me? What if they realize I'm not good enough? What if I can't help them? What if I'm not good enough to help them? And suddenly the genius that's you can't shine because the fight-flight-freeze response is diverted. The blood flow from the front of your brain has your great ideas to the primal part that only cares about you not being lunch for the sabre tooth tiger.

Clare Josa

And that's why on the call, your mind can go blank because you're in the stress zone. You don't have access to the bit of your brain. That's brilliant at this stuff. And the stress zone really doesn't care about posing that question. It just wants to decide whether you're going to run or whether you're going to climb a tree or whether you're going to freeze and hope the tiger can't see you. So it's really important to start by becoming aware a lot of the little symptoms we can simply breathe out and let go. Then it's going below the surface looking at well, okay, what are the habits I'm running here? What are the beliefs that I need to play? There are questions that I ask people when I work with them that help them understand how they're getting in their own way. And you can actually pinpoint the specific block that's causing you to subconsciously self-sabotage.

Clare Josa

So that's the next stage is clearing that out, going below the surface, it's then looking at the identity level protection where we all, where that, you know, we've all had the experience of putting on that invisible armour so that we can feel safe, or maybe we've

As Entrepreneurs our mindset blocks stop us in our tracks every time we go to the next level. It's a process we have to get used to and learn how to manage.

In this interview I speak to Relinde Moors is a business coach who specializes in using energy work to help entrepreneurs take their companies to the next level of financial success.

Her unique approach enables new and experienced business owners to get into alignment with their vision for their brand and eliminate self-limiting beliefs holding them back.

Relinde’s clients have been able to replace their professional salary within three months of starting their business, grow their companies to seven figures, win awards, and more. She also holds certifications as a yoga, qigong, and tai chi instructor.

Her expertise has been featured in the media on podcasts, such as From Fear to Trust and Real Goddess Revolution and on sites like Thrive Global. As a former professional dancer and award-winning choreographer, she has been featured in Dance Magazine and on Dutch national television. She lives in the Netherlands.

We talked about…

>> How to identify beliefs that block you

>> How to release them

>> How to analyse and work through what's holding you back

Episode Links and Mentions:

The One Thing Freebie

Relinde's website

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Optimising you website for search engines and updating it with weekly content is probably the easiest way to create a consistent stream of income in your business.

When done right, and consistently it yields 10x the time and investment you put in - and that's just in the first year!

In this episode, I walk you through the key steps to make sure your content is featured in search engines multiplying your authority and reach.

Episode Links and Mentions:

The blog post where I mention SEO for coaches

The waiting List for the Profitable Content Group Programme (jump on if you want to get the super early bird price) Join here: https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/Profitable-Content-Programme

The Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogTrafficAndSEO

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This week's guest, Steven Logreira, is the founder of the Sales Process Automation Systems.

He is a tech wiz, an automation expert and a seasoned sales professional.

A Computer Engineering Graduate from the University of Florida with a minor in Business Administration. He started his career working for IBM as a Technical Sales Specialist. His forte is automating systems and processes in a way that impacts productivity and boosts revenues.

He is a whiz at creating automated profitable sales processes that save you time and don't let prospects slip through the cracks.

We talked about...

>> The glue between generating leads and closing the sales call, aka your CRM system

>> How to start your CRM system from scratch

>> How to make sure none of your prospects/leads slip through the cracks of your CRM

Episode Links and Mentions:

Automate My Process

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Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Full Transcript:

Hello, thank you for joining me. You're listening to the profitable content marketing show. In this episode, I speak to my guest, Stephen lo Guerrera, who is the founder of sales process automation systems. He's a tech Wiz, an automation expert, and a seasoned sales professional. I invited him here on the podcast because he is a whiz at creating automated profitable sales processes that save you time.

Prospects slip through the cracks. So if you're a coach, consultant or a service provider, get ready to get, Steven's help creating your CRM system. Let's dive right in.

So hello, Stephan. Thank you very much for being with us today on the profitable content podcast. I have invited Stephen to speak. Because he specializes in helping us close our leads. And as we know for coaches, consultants and service providers, as well as many other businesses, because we all lead needs and we all have to close them, making sure that we close all our leads and not leave any money on the table.

It's very, very important. So Steven is going to help us get through this process today. So Steven, can you help us get to know a little bit better? Hey, Stephanie, how you doing so glad to be here and to be part of your tribe and get hopefully by the end of this talk though, they'll have a little bit more knowledge as to really a very important piece that is, I, I think it's so important and quite often overlooked, you know, in, in, in business.

It's by the Williams, especially I find within the coaches and consultants and service providers, and everybody's focusing on lead generation. How do I, how do I get leads? How do I get leads? How do I get leads? But then what happens with those leads? Right? And then another industry that's really big within, within this is teaching people how to close.

Right. What do you say in the conversation? You know, how do you overcome objections and all that stuff? And there's so much training on that as the same as in the marketing side of things, right? There's this piece in the mood, I call it the glue between lead and actually having that sales conversation.

That's really the sales process. When a lead comes in, how do you manage that lead? How do you keep track of that lead from when it originally comes in all the way to when you have that sales conversation and then out of that conversation, there's three outcomes. Yes, no, maybe if it's yes. Do you actually have a onboarding process?

You know, how do you charge money? How do you get your, the contracts. What are the things that need to happen in order for you to start working with that client? Right. So being able to have all that automated having systems around that it's really, really important. And then of course, if they say no, or they say maybe because no could mean not right now, it could mean maybe I'm not the right person, but you could have someone that you could refer them to.

Right. Or it may say, or if it's maybe not right now, How do you make sure that, that, that, that lead doesn't get dropped on me. I've had clients that because of having a good follow-up system and having automation built into that I, my record is someone that we have been going back and forth for three years.

This was a dentist who was wanting to get out of dentistry and he wanted to launch a coaching business. And because I stayed on top, I kept on sending information. We kept in touch when he was ready to finally launch his first course, because I stayed top of mind. Of course he called me. Okay. Wow. So, so of course you, you help clients with some sort of system.

Is there a particular software that you use? Is it, is there anything you know, is there a specific budget that one needs to have. Well, one of the things that I have seen our clients and it's really important is don't put the cart before the horse, before you start trying to pick, okay, what CRM do I use?

What autoresponder to use, what technology do I use is be really clear on what your process is. What do you want that thing to do? A good analogy is let's say I buy a piece of land and I want to build a house. If I call the contractor and say, Hey, Mr. Contractor, can you build me out? He's going to be like, yeah, absolutely.

Where's the blueprint. Right. So, so really understanding what the blueprint is, what is your process? What are the things that you need to do is the most important part? So the first thing I do when I work with clients is really nail down what their sales process is. And then based on that, we pick the right piece of technology that will do the things.

 That that are needed. So I, I, you know, I can, I can, I can tell you, you know, what CRM or what auto respond or whatever. But you know, there's no one size fits all. Indeed. And what would be the most simple thing, for instance, let's say you're a coach or a consultant, and you're just setting up your first followup processes.

What would be the first thing you would recommend they go on to? So that's because I believe that, you know, the first time you're going to maybe design your process and then use that in the particular software, but it is going to take some time to improve. So maybe going. With the most complicated software may not be a first step.

So would you recommend starting start with something just like a simple automated scheduler? There's also maybe a quick questionnaire so I can know a little bit about them and what their business I can know ahead of time, what you know, what their needs are. Indeed. Yes. Okay. And yeah, let's hope it works a little bit better than today because we're recording this episode and it's 2:00 AM in Canada for Steven, terribly.

Sorry about that. But he was awake and we jumped on and did this anyway. But yes, schedulers can go wrong as well. So do do be careful of that. I'll definitely be having a second look at mine. So Steven once. So once you've got your scheduler in place you are going to need probably a place where you can kind of have some sort of view of who's in your pipeline.

So what are the stages that you would recommend to make sure that you don't forget to follow up with people? You know, you can start with something as simple as it's. And, you know, if you're only getting a few leads a week or a month, it's very easy to be able to keep track of it. But it's just, it's just having a placeholder where you can, where you can be, where you, where you can put those leads that are coming in.

Maybe have some notes around what the conversation is, what the client's needs are. And at some point you're going to outgrow that spreadsheet. What I don't recommend is post-it notes, having notes all over the place and notebooks, because those things tend to get lost and, and, and, you know, I'm a huge proponent of keeping your, your desk nice and clean.

 And not having mess a big mess around you. So, you know, something has said, they'll start with a simple as a spreadsheet or, or an ongoing word document, right? So you can keep track of things that are going on, but as soon as, as soon as you feel that it starts becoming a manageable, then start looking into a CRM.

A CRM stands for customer relationship management system. And then if you're managing what I call your sales pipeline, make sure that it's a sales focused CRM and will allow you to keep track of your leads. So how would you define sales focused something that will allow you to keep track of what stage you're in, in the sales process.

So for example, the first step of the sales process is prospecting which is marketing, right? How do you get. And do networking. You can do webinars, you can do social media. You do. You know what, however it is, are you generating leads? That's a prospect. And so that's the first stage in your sales process.

Once you've identified a potential client, the next step is maybe pre-qualifying them right. To see if there's a fit. Then the next step would be actually, okay. Let's let's contact this person with. Let's see when we can find a time to meet whether in person or online, you know, nowadays with, you know, tools like zoom, which is what we're doing.

We're using for our conversation. I mean, for crying out loud, you're in Malta, I'm in Vancouver, we're worlds apart. And then here we are, right. It's become such a small world, literally. Right. And then eventually having a sales conversation. Right. You know, is this, is this going to be a fit? And then if they say, yes, do you need to send them a contract?

You need to send, give them access to your online courses. Do you give them a, what, what do you need in order to start the relationship? Right? And then every step, every step in that process requires some piece of technology, right. And you know, Yes, you can do without it, when you're first getting started, you know, of course there's a budget and you gotta, you gotta be mindful, but at some point technologies have become your best friend.

Right. So, you know, again, figure out what that process is. Then let's leverage technology. So bringing in some automation and the thing that I stressed so much with people with. If you're not technical, if you're not that type of person, you know, you're in technologists, don't mix hire somebody outsource this, because if, if you try to do it yourself, first of all, it's going to take you longer and it might not get done.

Right. Right. Whereas you can hire someone who yes, you might need to have a budget to hire somebody, but at the end, it's going to get done. Correct. And you know, if something doesn't work, you always call him back, Hey, Steven, this thing isn't working, can you, can you help me fix it? Right. And if it ultimately increases your sales, then you know, it should be an investments worth making.

Definitely. Yeah. It's absolutely. It's absolutely the biggest investment you'll make in your, in your businesses is the origin technology. You know, it's interesting how I started this business was I was actually doing Salesforce. And I was managing things in a spreadsheet. So the first couple of months it was okay.

Then we started tweaking the marketing and got to the point where, I mean, marketing was just going like gangbusters. They were getting 20 to 30 leads a week. Okay. At that level of volume, a spreadsheet, just, it became unmanageable. I was dropping the ball. I was spending probably about 30 minutes per. Just doing admin work.

Right. And because I'm a geek and I've always been my, my background's in engineering, I was like, okay, I, I can't do this. This is taking way too long. So let me first map out. What's my process. What is it that I'm trying to get done here? And let me go find technology to fit into those different parts.

Right. And as a result, I lowered from 30 minutes to five minutes of admin time and literally when not a triple my sales. Wow. That's amazing. So, so that's what this whole process can do for you. I'm interested in a couple, in a couple of details of the process that you mentioned, Steven. Since for a lots of coaches it would be, I think especially the first time they're putting together the system it's would probably be a little bit difficult to perhaps understand clearly how to qualify prospect.

 It's something that I feel a lot of people are not very willing to do in the beginning because they feel, oh, I need to work with as many people as possible. So what's your take on. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. So for example, if you're trying to figure out who's your, who's your best client?

Who should you be? Who should you be targeting? I think at some point at the beginning, I would say, yeah, talk to everybody because that's going to give you, it's going to give you, it's going to help you gauge. Of who's the right fit or who's not the wrong fit. The thing is, is don't, don't get stuck on that because it's going to burn you out, right.

Once you identify who the right client is, then you know, you got to start asking the hard questions. What's your budget. You know, for me, that's one of the questions I get. I get answered as soon as possible as what's your budget. You know? Cause if, if you're thinking, you know, That, you know, your budget's a hundred bucks, $500, then it might not be a good fit, but you could probably find someone in the Philippines or India or something to, to be able to fulfill that.

Right. So be clear on what your, what the budget is and, and and then, you know, make sure that they're, they're open to, to technology. Right. And that they're not stuck on one thing and that they're open, right? Because there is certain pieces of technology that I do tend to prefer over others. And you know, I think it was Bruce Lee that said, you know, I fear a man that can do One kick that has practiced one kick or one punch 10,000 times, as opposed to the man has done, then those 10,000 punches.

That's right. That's right. So, so being, you know, being able to get really good at one piece of that technology and really being able to support the client in that it is important, but yeah, the press. So I kind of went off on a tangent, but from a prequalification Stanford, those are the things that are really important.

And what's your. Are you ready to work?

Indeed, it sounds it sounds like a, like a very good advice, because of course in the beginning you need to like you said, get to know a little bit to everyone, but of course in the long run that is not feasible. So you do need to make sure that the people you speak to can actually pay your price and that they are also willing to move forward.

Okay. So what do you believe would be the cutoff point in terms of leads volume? Would it be 10 per week when you, you know, can move away from the spreadsheet and start using something a little bit more for more complex? Yeah, I would say, I would say, just look at if, if you're dropping the ball. If you're, if you're like, Hey, you know, I talked to this person two weeks ago and I can't remember what we talked about.

And they said maybe they were ready, but if you feel like you've dropped the ball with one client, now's the time to start automating, to start delving, to leverage the technology, that one person, that one person could cost you, you know, what's your what's, you know, you gotta look at, Hey, how much is this?

How much is each client worth? You know, what's the cost of, you know, if I, if I. You know, know your numbers. If I get one client, how much is that client worth? Is it worth 500,000 is 10,000. Is it worth 50,000? Indeed. So that's very good advice. So if you have already lost a client because you forgot to follow up, then you should definitely take Steven's up and you should check Steven's website and have a look, see if he can help you out putting together your lead systems.

So, Steven, can you let our audience know where they can find you? Yeah. My website is automate my sales process. Excellent. So head over to automate myself process.com and check out Steven's services because he can help you take those leads and make sure you don't leave them on the table. Thank you very much for being with us today.

No leads are left behind. Absolutely. And that's exactly how we want it. No money on the table. Excellent. Thank you very much for being with us today, Steven. And I really look forward to catching up with you again. You're welcome. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for having me.

Finding a profitable niche is not hard.

But it needs to be done right, at the right time.

In this episode, I walk you through the process with examples from my own journey and that of my clients.

Episode Links and Mentions:

The blog post where I mention niching

https://www.stephaniefiteni.com/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-for-coaches/coach-marketing/

Ryan Levesque's Ask Method

https://askmethod.com/

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Prefer to read? Here's the full transcript

Hey, welcome to today's episode. I'm going to talk about niching today and I'm going to share my journey and, you know, the tips that I support my clients with as well, because, you know, niching is not just about finding that special thing that you can do that allows you to charge more later, but also finding that thing that makes you a no brainer in your industry so that you can really grow and scale your business.

Pick the right niche

So how can you make sure that you're picking the right niche? The first thing to do, which is probably a little bit counter-intuitive, is to look inwards, you know, finding your niche is something that you should not look to the competition to the strongest niche you can find is going to be one that your competition hasn't picked. So you need to make sure that it's definitely has a strong overlap with your strengths.

Your experience is your niche

What this means is that your experience, your life experience, not just your work experience is actually your niche. And in fact, this is very common with a lot of coaches and consultants. You know, a lot of coaches especially can find it quite easy to have a look at that motivator, that thing that changed our lives, that made them become a coach and that helped them discover maybe a new part of their life or any part of themselves. And they can actually turn that into something that they offer. For example, my experience is in SEO and building websites and, you know, I used to have my own agency. So, you know, my experience in, in terms of, you know, coding and websites and also writing content is what makes me a little bit different. So a lot of content writers have either a PR or you know, or a writing background.

So they were writers before they actually specifically niche down to blogging. So I came from a little bit of a different background, which of course is going to make me send out. This does not mean that the niche though is going to fit you like a glove. In my case, I had a little bit of a problem. I really wanted to work with coaches because I was so excited about the way I started my business online from scratch. And, you know, when you work within an agency, you tend to take businesses from say point C to point D you don't actually build from scratch. So I was really proud and I was really, I really felt that this was a strength that I had the experience of building a business and international business that was completely started from scratch. So I felt that working with coaches was going to help me really make use of this experience because I had built my own online coaching business, but it didn't fit me like a glove for one particular reason.

My background was technical. And I used to use words that coaches didn't understand. And, you know, this is something that I had to kind of learn to let go of. I had been, I had spent so many years of training, spending a lot of time with programmers and people in marketing. And we don't realize how much of the industry terminology you use without even being aware of it. So this was one of the disadvantages for me, but that didn't mean that it was around the niche.

What have you done that feeds your niche

So the next step to understand if this is the right niche was to see, to have a good look at the past. So the passion index for me, the passion index was really, really high. I love writing. I love technical stuff. I am, I have, you know tiny objects syndrome. So I'm always in the note when, when it counts to the latest tools that have come out and how you can use them, you know, all the Google algorithm updates and stuff like that, because, you know, I would do that for free.

I don't need to be paid to do that, so that a very nice overlap, of course, the writing was a big part of it as well. If I was going to sell blogging, then it doesn't apply to everything, but it applies to most things. You have to do what you preach. So of course, I had to pick something where I can be seen to do what I preach because I love doing it and I'm not going to stop doing it. So this, I knew that my niche was a commitment for the long Sam and my passion was a very big element. So, you know, the overlap of your passion is really important. Now at the stage comes the point where you can, and you should look at your competitors, have a look at your industry, understand what other people are getting paid for.

Competition and your niche

Especially when it comes to coaches and consultants. There are a thousand different titles out there. Some of them can be a bit vague, avoid that, try to be very specific and clear when you name yourself, by the way, you name yourself, of course, it's going to depend highly on the niche that you pick. So make sure that you can see others in other fields, even if they call themselves something different to what you would like to call yourself. But if they're doing something similar to what you would like to do, and they are actually getting paid for it, yeah. You can see that they have clients. You can see that they are busy. You can see that they have an audience. Then that is proof that your niche has business viability. You can see that it's as viable and that it will grow another interesting way, which I have.

I have actually learned from Ryan Levesque the guy who wrote the book, The Ask Method, he talks about also verifying your niche. And although there is an audience for a particular type of business by looking and comparing search results on search engines like Google and YouTube. And yes, I definitely recommend this too. So I would say definitely if you want to see if there is a market, find some people who are doing what you would like to do, who are specifically in your niche or something really, really close to it and have a good look at the YouTube channels. Have a look ideally use also a keyword tool because the keyword tool is going to help you understand whether there is traffic for a specific niche. For instance, when I was looking for my niche, actually one of the main keywords was marketing for coaches, and that was a really, really good keyword.

But I felt that it was a little bit too generic when it comes to, you know, the way I wanted to describe myself. However, the fact that it has so much traffic and it's, you could also see that it was a keyword that was going to convert. Well, it made me realize, you know, that probably a number of niches in that particular sector were going to be pretty lucrative. And finally, I would like to also clarify perhaps one last point, then once you have decided what your niche is going to be, you're going to really have to hone in and decide who your ideal client is going to be. The best niches are the ones where you can have a number of different products that serve the same ideal client at different points in their customer journey because this will allow you to add more offers at a later stage and then, you know upsell or down-sell the same people.

And of course, this is going to save you a lot on marketing. So niching only down to ideally one target, persona, or ideal client avatar as we sometimes call it does not mean that you're going to turn other people away. What it means is that your marketing is going to be specifically focused on attracting one type of person. Of course, you will also attract other people who have the same problems or wants the same benefits. And it doesn't mean that you have to turn them away. It only means that your website and your social media and all your marketing efforts are going to be very highly focused. And they're going to help you position yourself in a market where your ideal client sits and wants to find somebody like you. And the next point is my favourite because I am a bigger picture sort of person.

And I really liked to, you know, look ahead and plan the future plan. What's coming and plan, you know, where things are going to go in the next three, four, five years. So when you pick your niche, try to make sure that your niche actually allows you to raise your prices. So the first obvious thing to look out for is how big of an impact is your business or your service or your products going to have on somebody's life? Is it a big impact? Is it a small impact? Is it something that makes them money? Is it something that makes them happy if you did something that you know is very difficult to find without someone's help? All of these things are going to make sense, something that you can put a good price on. And I'm not saying that as soon as you niche down, you have to put your prices up.

Right niche, right pricing, great messaging

You could try, but that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that of course, you build up your prices slowly, but of course, you need to make sure that you're going to have a large impact in the sense that, you know, if you're selling something that is different, but doesn't have a high impact on somebody's life, then it's still going to be a little bit difficult for you to charge high prices. So, one good way to find out is also by looking at how much money your ideal target persona has and you know, how much they value, what you're going to offer them. So what's your initial going to look like? Well, niching is going to be a way of making people go to your site and say, okay, yes, this person is for me. What do you want to make sure is that it gives you a very good lens to look at everything that you're looking in, you're doing in your marketing. So everything you're doing has to say to your special niche, ideal client avatar. It's got to tell them this has been specifically designed for you. If you can achieve that with a group of people that really value what you do, then you're on your way to starting a really profitable business in a great niche.

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My guest in this episode is Colin Gray, he's a podcaster, international speaker, PhD and founder of The Podcast Host and Alitu: The Podcast Maker. Colin started out in Astrophysics, before realising, to his dismay, how much maths you had to do. Podcasting has less maths, but just as many puzzles, and fun ones at that.

He started ThePodcastHost.com in 2011, and it's now one of the biggest and oldest Podcasting blogs on the web, dedicated to helping you create a successful show.

He went on to found Alitu.com in 2018 to help podcasters create their shows more easily. It's a web app that takes care of the tech, by polishing, branding & publishing for you. It offers a custom set of tools for building and editing epic podcasts.

Episode Links and Mentions:

https://alitu.com

https://www.thePodcastHost.com/academy/

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Prefer to Read? Here’s the Transcript:

Stephanie:

Hello, thank you for joining me. You're listening to the profitable content marketing show. In this episode, I talk to Colin Gray about podcasting. If you've not heard of Colin before he is known as the podcast host, and he is a speaker, as well as the owner of a podcasting school. I met Colin in London around three years ago. He was speaking at the Youpreneur summit event. I believe it was actually the first event. And I got talking to Colin after his speaking gig. And I just love his down to earth approach. And the way his tips are just so doable. And this interview, we talked about, you know, how to stay consistent and how to improve your productivity as well as you know, it's not just the tips very often. It's also the tools we use. So Colin also shares this amazing tool. So if you are planning to start a podcast or you're podcasting already, but want to get faster and more productive, well, this episode is for you. So thanks for joining. Let's jump right in and hear what Colin has to say to him.

Colin:

Hi there. Thanks for having me on,

Stephanie:

Thank you very much for joining us. So Colin, I know that you actually teach podcasting, so you have a wealth of information to share with us. So I wanted to start by asking you one of the most common questions I hear, as you probably know I work with a lot of bloggers and content creators, so, and business owners. So we talk a lot about finding your voice when it comes to writing and making sure that you are authentic. Whereas with podcasts, of course, the actual voice can be heard. So we're talking also about, you know, perhaps excellence or lack of accent sometimes. Yes. What kind of advice do you give about this? Usually?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's, it's a tricky one and it's one of, it's definitely one of the most common things that come up. Like you say, it applies to just any content out there, but with podcasting, obviously voice, voice is so important because it's your voice that's actually been recorded. The advice I generally give is that podcasting is such a great medium because just about anyone can find fans for their voice. They can find somebody that will like the way they speak, the way they act, their ethos, their personality, all of those aspects. So the key thing really is to be yourself. And it's easy to say that I know, but the being yourself thing is so important because it's so much hater, so much harder to hight behind the mic. And it's so much easier, to be honest, transparent, open behind the making. I think the thing is with, you know, with blogging, you're kind of, you're hiding behind your typewriter.

Colin:

It's hard to get your typewriter by going back to the 1950s ranger keyboard. And it's much harder to, you know, in say emotion to, to really truly be yourself when you're typing. Then when you speak, when you speak, you're much more like yourself. So then we've got video and audio, but video, there's something about looking at a camera. There's something about that screen in front of you that, you know, it's, it's quite hard to be informal, to be yourself, to be honest. So then you come to podcasting and you have this microphone in front of you, and you're just speaking to an individual and it's so much easier, to be honest and transparent and all that stuff. So your self seems to come out. The thing that people struggle with though, as being natural on the microphone. And one thing that helps with that I find and being natural and being yourself is to start to think about that listener.

So start thinking about an individual as the key thing. You're not speaking to a crowd, you're not speaking to a hundred, a thousand, a million people out there. You're speaking to one person. So you should always say on the make like, hi there, how are you doing? How are you today? It's not, Hey guys, how are you all doing? It's how are you today? I'm speaking to you when you want to do this, you do this. When I want you to do that, you do that. It's an individual and something, a attract that I learned a long time ago. And I know a lot of people use is to have something to focus on behind me. So you'll have a photo, possibly a lot of people put a photo on the wall behind their microphone that they can look at, and that represents their ideal listener and maybe a real person that they know, or it might be, you know, a fictional character, an avatar, a persona that they've created that is their ideal customers are idealistic, but it's somebody that you can look at and just imagine you're speaking to that person.

And that little thing tends to meet you much more natural on the make because you know who you're speaking to, it's a conversation as opposed to a monologue. And it just helps you a lot with being yourself. I think the other thing, the last one, I'll just say there is I've seen people use soft toys for that. So you've got your favorite Teddy child. They set that behind the mate and you've got your, your Teddy that you're speaking to. And as a person, you know, it's a personality in your head and that's who you're speaking to little things like that. So having something, someone, some, you know, I think to talk to, because all the difference when you're trying to find your voice, but does that make sense? Definitely. Just around. It's just, it's just, it's personal. So it's just being yourself on the,

Stephanie:

And it absolutely makes sense. In fact, when I started creating online videos, I just could not even, you know, keep looking at the camera. That's what I used to do. I had pictures of my first clients and I used to put them, I used to put them on, on, on the screen at the top. In fact, I ended up running my cameras, taking them because I used to stick them onto the actual Mac camera, the front. But yeah, I suppose it's like you said, though, in this case, you cannot, it's not like a presentation. You don't imagine a group. You need to imagine that one person because it's a very intimate medium and you're in people's ears so it takes a different approach.

Colin:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's that one to one thing. And so many people don't do it as well as so many people. You hear them say it to start the podcast. Hey guys, welcome to the show. I hope you're all doing well out there. And I immediately break that intimate one-to-one personal connection. You're not speaking directly to the person. So it is really important. It does make a difference.

Stephanie:

Indeed. Absolutely. In fact, I think for that reason, I find that people with sort of very fancy loud intros kind of put me off.

Colin:

Yeah, yeah. Yes. It's not, it's not themselves as it. It's no, it's often somebody else that began to do, and that's not that works on TV. It works in film because it's like, it's a big production it's made to be dramatic by a podcast as a conversation. It's a, it's an intimate conversation. One to one you're learning from this individual. It's not a company. It's not a brand might be a personal brand, arguably, but it's a personal brand personal to you and personal to that person. So. Absolutely. Yeah. It's just, it's that intimate connection you're looking for.

Stephanie:

Indeed. And speaking of personal brands, I would really like to hear actually your take about that. Is it, do you find that it's valuable to certain types of businesses more than others, you know, having their own podcast and repurposing that content?

Colin:

I think it's, it's really, it's valuable to anyone. I believe to have some kind of a personal brand around the business, whether it's are a bank business that has a figurehead or you know, just a personality within it to kind of convey the ethos of that company. Like some of the obvious examples, being things like Apple with Steve jobs, you know, when he was still an Apple, he was the kind of, he wasn't the only person running it. We knew that it wasn't Steve Jobs that ran the whole of Apple built the computers, but he kind of conveyed the personality, his perfectionism, all that kind of stuff, just that the quality of the care that goes into the product. So it's that personal brand conveyed the ethos of the company, similar with other people that have sort of lay its companies that become the figurehead of that company, but even more important, I think with small companies like if you run a small business or you're an individual, the way to compete with the larger companies or with the slew of other small companies out there is your personality, it's your approach, it's your ethos, your values.

That's why somebody will choose like one, you know, Baker in a high street over another it's because there'll be nor the person behind the counter and they'll have talked to them and they'll like them, you know, trust them just because they know this person. So it's extra valuable to small companies, I think, and particularly small companies that are in relatively saturated markets. So a good example of that might be something like a, a solicitor, so Lester's office. So we work with a company called black counters, which are us Lester in Scotland, and they could be lost in the kind of the world of, of solicitor legal, all that stuff is it's a world that doesn't have much personality in a lot of ways. So they create a podcast which puts their personality out there. There's three of them often come into podcasts. They're really funny guys.

They create a really great podcast called employment lawyer in your pocket, which talks about how to run employment law. It's like, it's the driest subject ever, but because they are passionate about it, cause they're so knowledgeable about it. And because they have such a great team you know, chemistry, they make it entertaining. They make it funny, they make it useful. And so suddenly people that listened to that podcast immediately, they're going to go to black actors because of the personality that comes out there because they know that people ended, they trust those people. So that kind of personal brand that's where it's most valuable to me is that those industries often don't have much personality, a lot of competition and really need that differentiation.

Stephanie

That sounds great. And how many funny lawyers can you find really?

Colin:

Well, I don't like to, you know, the whole industry, but not as far as I know.

Stephanie:

Yeah, yeah. Especially when they're at work. I don't think they're allowed to be funny at work. So, you know, there's this, this persona they have to live up to. So that sounds really great. That's a great way to send out. It's definitely Colin. I know that's, our audience is always into creating better systems and automation and you know, so that they can reach more people with spending less time of course, on their content. So do you have any, any, any tips? Yeah. I know that you have a course about podcasting, right? So you help people set up. Do you have any, any, any tips that you feel could really help people, you know, set up their systems more easily and maybe automated a little bit more, some lists something that's not very well known?

Colin:

Yeah. I mean, I'm afraid actually there's, a lot of people are looking for magic bullets and this kind of stuff around how to get this thing out there every week. There's, there's a couple of things actually. I mean, the base of it is that really, you just have to set a time every single week as your regular podcasting time. If you have a full-time job, if that has to be 8:00 PM on a Tuesday evening, every single week, then that's what you have to do. If you're passionate about this, you want to get out there. That's what you have to do. But if you can set aside some time during your day, like if you can integrate it into your work, if you can really prioritize it, that's the thing it's like, do you want to go all-in on this or no?

Like, do you think it's worthwhile or not? If you think it's worthwhile, then put a time in your calendar the same way you would a meeting with your accountant or, you know, a meeting with a client it's that non-negotiable, you just have to put it in there and you need to stick to it. The kind of the less obvious things I suppose, firstly, is to just make it really, really simple. The biggest killer of podcasts is complexity is it's making a podcast that's that takes too long to create, you know, if you're going to end up taking eight hours a week to make podcast, that's when it's going to drop off the map because it's just too much to sustain. So start out by making it really short and simple, for example, do a solo show of 10 minutes once a week, that's going to take you an hour to do, because it's just, you know, five minutes of planning because it's just you, you're the only person you have to control 10 minutes of recording.

Cause again, it's just you, there's no organizing appointments, meetings, all that kind of stuff. And then, because it's just you as well, you can use some editing techniques to make editing really quick and simple. For example, one trick is to use clicks. So whenever I'm recording a solo podcast episode, if I make a mistake more often than not, I'll just brush past, I'll say, Oh, that's not what I meant to say. Sorry, what I meant was blah, blah, blah. That's fine. That's part of the personality for sure. But if it's a mistake that just can't stand, what I'll do is I'll pause and I'll go, just click my tongue and microphone, or you can clap. You can clap your hands. And basically as long as you pause either side of it, that shows up really, really clearly on the timeline in your editor. You'll see these spikes three spikes.

So your 15-minute episodes, you don't have to listen all the way through all you do as you load it into your editing package or mentality, which is our editing package as well. You drop it in there and you just scroll through the way form and you'll spot these clicks. You'll spot these spikes really easily. You can just cut either side. You can start to match up the words either site. For example, I often it's really easy to do this once you've practised, but you can, you can restart. So if I make a mistake, usually I can remember the start of the sentence I made the mistake on. You know, I've only just said it. So it's still in my head. So I can remember the first few words and it means you can match up those words really easily, really quickly. Just two quick cuts takes maybe 30 seconds or a minute for that edit and it's done.

So when you're recording solo, even when you're recording interviews, that kind of stuff, you can do that kind of editing tactic quite easily, but that really kind of that trick can help you save a lot of time. But also it's just the concept of keeping things as simple as possible, as easy as possible, trying to add it as little as possible under no circumstances, editing out your arms and your ass and your, that kind of stuff. Like it's just, just get better at speaking, just keep doing it and commit to getting better at it. And if you leave them in and will be good motivation to get better at those things like to get rid of those items in the ass and you'll, you'll sit here, your vocal text pretty quickly and built to get rid of them quite easily. So that certainly that's a big part of it for me as the chef, the time every single week, I used to keeping it simple as humanly possible using editing tricks like that, to make the editing and production really simple as well. And I think we're going to come on to tools. Aren't we? So using tools as well, which can, can save you time as well.

Stephanie:

Indeed. In fact, I would quite confidently say that our listeners are quite tool-hungry. They're always looking for that. As you said, the next silver bullet to make things just a little bit faster, just a little bit, perhaps easier to delegate. Yeah. So I know you have a tool, right. And it's of course connected to podcasting. So what does it do and how does it help podcasts?

Colin:

Yeah. So for anyone that really wants to, you know, take away a lot of the tech and podcasting, like it's possible certainly to learn how to edit, how to produce, how to do noise reduction, how to do compression, how to get your volumes, all right. Convert from one file to the next, all that stuff. It's certainly possible. It's not like super difficult, but it takes time. It takes a bit of technology and that's what altitude does. It takes care of all the take he says to that. It helps you build your podcast. So you upload your video, whether it's an intro, whether it's an interview recording like we're doing just know Alex who does all the cleanup. So automatically it does levelling, it does noise reduction. It does harm reduction. So it makes it all sound good. Then you can edit. So the resonating a tool in there, so you can cut the steaks, you can spot those fakes and like cut out the bits you want.

You can build an episode so you can bring in reusable segments. Like if there's an advert you're running for a month, you can have that in your line, buddy, and just drop it into your episodes. Or if there are a segment and troll-like a little jingle that you use all the time, you can have that in your library, drop it into the episode as well. And you can record your intro as an actress, straight into the app too. And in finally you export it and you can publish. And we publish direct to at least eight or nine of the best podcast hosting platforms right now and growing that retain. So we can publish rate to Libsyn, to blueberry, to bus sprouts. It will captivate all the rest of them. So that's the process that basically makes that making your podcast part really simple. You do your recording, you drop it down to your mic, the short, and it pushes it to your, to your publishing platform.

Stephanie:

That sounds fantastic. That sounds really cool. You don't have to worry about all the different platforms and also the fact that you can edit and have it cleaned up, I believe is, is a very good thing. I mean, of course, a lot of people who do podcasts are not professional editors.

Colin:

Or going to invest in becoming one

Stephanie:

That's right. It's not something that I think a lot of, a lot of people can do, so that's great. So where can we find the tool?

Colin:

Yeah, you'll find it over@altitude.com. So it's [inaudible] dot com.

Stephanie:

Excellent. And is there a free trial we can use

Colin:

There? Isn't DGA. Yeah. So it's...

Personal Branding for individuals doesn't need to be hard. In this Episode, Sage Polaris previously known as Sarah Grear shares how she transitioned into her new business persona.

She also shares her journey around pivoting from a client-based business to a mentoring/coaching business. She explains how her systems and team allow her to take 4 months off a year. (no not a typo 4 full months a year!)

Sage Polaris (AKA the artist formerly known as Sarah Grear) has written high converting copy for more than 350 clients earning them millions of dollars. She helps personal brands and service providers sell more of their service or offer with the words on their website.

Her emails and sales pages are responsible for generating as much as 7 figures in a single launch. She has worked with Chrisette Michele, James Wedmore, Rick Mulready, and Amber McCue. Basically, she makes money for the “internet famous” people we all look up to.

And in turn, has been an international speaker in exclusive private Masterminds. She can SHOW your audience how to go from storytelling to story-selling. This is what truly makes a brand legendary.

You can find Sage at http://www.sagepolaris.com

Episode Links

Sage's Free Gift

www.sagepolaris.com/profitable

Todd Hermann's Book - Alter Ego:

https://www.amazon.com/Alter-Ego-Effect-Identities-Transform-ebook/dp/B075WPWMSK

Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

Prefer to Read? Here's the Transcript:

Sage: (00:57)

Today we have Sage Polaris. Hello Sage. Thank you for joining us. Hey Steph. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. We're very excited to have you. Sage is a launch strategist to the online stars and she is a workless earn more mentor and we are very excited to hear more about working less, of course, but before we jump in, say I actually have a something that I know that my audience is very curious about because a lot, a lot of the people I deal with are women. And sometimes the question of the ego and this persona that we put out there and alongside imposter syndrome becomes a big thing. So I'm really interested in the fact that you, you actually changed your name to Sage Polaris, which is a fantastic name, but I would really like to know the story behind that.

Sage: (01:57)

Sure. Yeah. So I'm Sage to the artist formerly known as Sarah Grear. And the reason I decided to change my name is I was really stepping into a new identity in my business. I'm eight years deep into my business now and around like the six-year Mark, I realized that I no longer wanted to hide behind my client's success. I was doing a lot of client-based projects. They were having wonderful success with their launches. It was so beautiful to see, but I knew I was kind of hiding behind that and not really stepping out into my own identity. And so I decided to switch my name because I felt like it would signify something from myself like, okay, I'm not hiding anymore. I'm going to go into the spotlight, and since then I have been doing more, of my own launches for myself.

Sage: (02:49)

Personal/Individual Branding:

I've also created co-created mastermind with my business partner, Tarzan Kay, which was a hundred per cent event that we ran in Niagara falls and then turn that into a mastermind. So all of these things were a way for me to kind of signal to myself and to everyone else that I was taking on a new identity for myself and my business. And it's really been beautiful to see how I am perceived differently now. And it's like, it's basically a new, a new brand that I've created for myself. And it's been really fun to see how it's all played out.

Stephanie: (03:24)

Oh, wow. So, so you have felt the difference.

Sage: (03:28)

A New Name for Sarah's Individual Branding:

Yeah, definitely. I, well, for me, like also there's a lot of incredible artists that I really love out there who created their own identities. Like if you think about Sean Carter is Jay Z or Banksy, like we don't even know his real identity. He chose his own identity. I really admire artists who decide that they are going to inform how people perceive them in the world. So that was another thing. Like I was inspired by all these artists, Macklemore, his real name is Ben something. So like all these artists out there who choose their own identity, I was like, well, I can do that too. So, and then they create all this incredible work and I really see like working on launches is very creative work. So it's been very fun for me to step into this new identity.

Stephanie: (04:15)

Yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. Actually. I'm just finishing off Todd Herman's Alter Ego. I don't know if you've heard of the book and I actually heard Todd speak, a couple of months ago and I was just intrigued by this idea of creating an alter ego and stepping into this new persona. So yeah. It's, it's great to see that it works.

Sage: (04:39)

Yeah, totally. It's fun. And it's just a way for people to perceive you in a new light. And so it's been really cool to see like how interested and intrigued people are by the change. That's been fun. Like it wasn't something I expected, so yeah.

Stephanie: (04:57)

Yes, indeed. Of course. Cause you, you would probably of course worry. You know, did you have any worries and facts about, you know, maybe losing the audience before, you know, did you think that maybe some people may not like the change?

Sage: (05:10)

Changing Name:

No, I didn't think too much about like how people would perceive it, but I will say like I sent an email to my list that said, don't call me Sarah anymore. And that's my biggest ever opened email. So it's like, I knew right away that like people were very open to it. And so I think it's been for me, like a very positive thing. I didn't really feel any concern or worry about what other people would consider, you know, it's my choice, my business, my identity I get to choose. So the only thing I knew is that like my family members would, they, they definitely laugh at my expense. Yeah. And it's fine. Like when I wanted, I remember when I first started my business, around like 2013, 2012, 2012. And in 2012, like I wanted to dye my hair, green and family members were like, nobody's going to hire you if you dye your hair. And I was like, I'm going to do it anyway. And it's kind of the same thing with the name change. Like eventually they'll come on board, it will work on them, but for now, it's like, I get it. Like it's changed and it'll take the time to get used to it.

Stephanie: (06:22)

Yes, indeed. Fortunately, things work a little bit differently in online business, so you can get away with a lot more stuff like green hair. Yeah, totally. And I, it was a way to

Sage: (06:34)

Signify to myself that I wasn't going to be going back to working in a corporate environment or at a job environment. So it was just like, this is another way for me to step into this next phase and stage of my business

Stephanie: (06:47)

And then great. Then that's, it's so much more fun. And in fact, I wanted to touch on this great line I read on your Facebook page. It says you are the escape from client-based biz-jail. And I just love that because I actually run my own agency with my husband for over 10 years. So I really know what that means apart from all the clients. Of course, I also had a brick and mortar business with lots of employees in the office. So I am totally with you. And I would really like to hear sort of how this ties in with the work-less and earn-more mentoring that you do. And, you know, I believe you also do masterminds and events around this.

Sage: (07:36)

Freedom from client-based biz-jail:

Yeah, totally. So basically the idea of escaping from client-based business jail is something that I came up with because I saw a lot of people who were starting their client based businesses online. And they would be at like stage one of their business. They were getting, you know, leads and depending, highly on referrals and building out their businesses in that way. And what I noticed is that eventually they would get burned out on the client work. Like it just would be too much. They, they weren't putting systems into place to better serve those clients. And so a lot of them would just skip to stage three. So in stage one is they're getting referrals. They're working on working with clients and they're trying to get as many clients as they can. And then often they cap themselves at a certain amount of clients cause they're still trading maybe dollars for hours or whatever it is.

Sage: (08:27)

The Right Time to Launch a Course

And then they try to go to stage three and they skip stage two, which I'll tell you about in a minute. But stage three is essentially like launching courses and they're like, okay, I'm burnt out on client work. I'm just going to go do some kind of one-to-many program that will alleviate this issue. And I see a lot of people do this and often they will pivot their entire business. They'll go from, okay, I'm no longer serving clients. I'm just going to do courses now. And I actually don't recommend going from stage one to stage three in between that is stage two. And stage two is creating systems around your client based work so that you don't have to be as involved in the work, but you don't walk away from a profitable revenue stream in your business. So you continue to serve clients, but you have systems that make that service a lot easier on you so that you have the time and the money to invest in stage three.

Sage: (09:22)

I'm not saying don't launch a course. I'm just saying before you do that, don't walk away from your profitable revenue stream and you can do much better with those clients and feel like it's not so intense if you first build out some systems for it. And one of those systems that I put into my business was I committed to taking four months off every year. And I've done that now for the fourth year in a row. And that system, I know I love it. That system is very simple. So basically one week off every month and then one month off every year, total to four months for the year. So I'm not taking like four consecutive months off. But once I put that system in place, my team was on board. We had the scripts, the templates, the things that the clients needed, the intake forms. So that even when I'm gone, this work is still being done. My team is still supporting it. But I can take some time to kind of put my head back into the creative clouds and just, you know, I'll do staycations or some fun things for myself. Sometimes I'll travel, but those things have really helped me to be excited to be away from my desk and be excited to be back at my desk.

Stephanie: (10:37)

Yes that's okay. It helps to keep the energy up definitely with, with so much time off. So what would your support team look like? You know, so to allow you to actually step away for a whole week a month.

Sage: (10:49)

Taking 4 months off a Year!

Yeah. So now my team has built out quite a bit in the very beginning. Like I started small and I wasn't taking one week off every month. I was taking one day off a month. That was it in the beginning. And the very first person that I hired in my business was a bookkeeper. But then, that wasn't really alleviating the client work. It did help some with like tracking things in terms of client work. But then I hired a VA for five hours a month, $16 an hour. So $80 a month total. And that was my way of like testing the waters of having support. And then after that, I really started ramping up. The next hire that was really important for me was a project manager. So someone who could track all of the clients and the projects and the intake forms and the deliverables that really helped me to be able to step out of the work as much and let a writing team and a project manager support me.

Sage: (11:51)

So I wasn't the only one doing the writing for the clients. I was still quality control on everything. So I was making sure that everything was optimized for conversions and that the sales page and the emails, like nothing would get passed to the client without me looking at it for hours. And I was still on all of the meetings for clients. So I'm still showing up on video doing live edits with them so that I really made sure I wasn't missing a beat when it came to delivering a product that the client needed. So those were some of the people I had on my team since then. I've definitely expanded even more. One of the main things I've started doing more of, I mentioned earlier, I had that a hundred percent event and Niagara falls. So I started doing more speaking. So then I wanted a speech writer to support me, and of course, like a makeup artist and a photographer. So those are some more people that I've hired on to my team and everybody's subcontracted. So when we're working on projects, we're working together and then when there are no projects, I encourage them to build their own team, their own businesses and do other projects as well.

Stephanie: (12:58)

That's right. That's amazing. So you're, you're helping them do what you've done for yourself. That's great.

Sage: (13:06)

Oh yeah. And I encourage them, like if you outgrow me quickly and you need to go do your own thing, go for it. So I'm really grateful.

Stephanie: (13:14)

Uh, that's great. It's, it's great to be in a position to do that. In fact, one of the things I find that, I have found maybe more in brick and mortar businesses, so more people who don't have a totally online business, they kind of take a long time to find the right hires and then they become a little bit scared of losing them. But like Richard Branson says you've got to train people and have great relationships with them and just, you know, push them with

Sage: (13:44)

Yeah. A hundred per cent. Yeah. I wish everybody to have even more. I definitely had people who were on my team for a short amount of time and then went on to have even faster success than I have. And I love seeing it. I'm like cheering them on I'm in your corner. That's awesome.

Stephanie: (14:01)

You ended up mentoring your own suppliers. Yeah. So, excellent. I'm still curious. You were going to mention your stage two.

Sage: (14:13)

Oh, okay. Yeah. So stage two, was putting systems into your business. So that's where, yeah. Where you're either outsourcing hiring or you're using better project management systems. Those areas really help you to serve your clients better. And one thing I hear people talk about when they are looking to build out stage two of their business. So like, okay, I hear you. I need to hire support. And I'm thinking about if you're like, for me, I'm a copywriter. And if I'm going to hire another writer, the concern often is, well, are they going to do as good a job as I did on creating things. And I actually am of the mindset that they often will come up with ideas that are better than mine, because there is more people, more like it's a group think. And when you get all of those minds together, better ideas come up just from having more brains on it. Right. So I am of the opinion that the work doesn't suffer, the quality actually gets better when you hire a team.

Stephanie: (15:20)

Absolutely. I totally agree with you. Yeah. The more people pitch in the better, there are always, however, sort of, I deal with mostly, you know, coaches, copywriters, marketers, people who are sort of at that stage where maybe they have their first hire or they're just before. So, most of our listeners are probably at that phase. I find that a lot of people have this sort of fear of two things, you know, charging enough to be able to afford to hire somebody and maybe sort of waiting for the right time to hire somebody when you don't know what the right time to hire your first hire really is. So do you have any advice on how to actually know when the right time is?

Sage: (16:10)

The systems in your business

Yeah. So in terms of knowing when you need the support, honestly, I feel like it's best to test out a little bit of support and see how it feels for you instead of going on like a binge hiring spree and getting too many people on your team. But what I look at are the profit sweet spots in business. So essentially look at all your revenue streams and see where is your highest revenue coming from? And then I would start there in terms of where to invest and when to invest if you can see that your profits are coming in. And there's enough there. I usually break it down by percentage. So, 10% for admin, 30% for the facilitator, 30% for the creator and 30% for marketing. And I work on flat-rate projects, right? So if I have a flat rate and I can cover some of those percentages with a customer with, so with someone supporting the project, then it helps me because I can see like how much I should be investing in that project.

Sage: (17:20)

So really as you and I know people raise their prices to overtime, right? So as you raise your prices, you should build in these expenses so that it's covered as you serve these clients. And for me, like when I see my clients are getting big results from our work together, that is a clear indicator to me that I should get more support in that specific area, because I know that the profits are going to keep happening. They're going to keep getting the results. I'm going to keep getting referrals from that. And so it's a good time for me to support that revenue stream with a team. And in terms of like dollar amount, like, I feel like for people who are making anywhere between six and 10,000 a month, like that's a good time to start getting that support. That was kind of the threshold I hit, where I was getting up to like 6,000 a month or more, or I was like, okay, I need this support. And I knew it would serve me because then I could spend my time going out and getting more clients. So that was definitely worth it for me once I got to that level of my business.

Stephanie: (18:34)

Excellent. Excellent. Sounds really great. So your business today is divided between mentoring and creating events as well as the done for you business. So how, how do you balance that in terms of, so now how much time do you spend mentoring?

Sage: (18:56)

VIP Days

Yeah. So what I've decided in my businesses, I took way fewer private clients that I'm serving. And I started doing VIP days with my clients. So some of my clients who come to me who need like a full launch overhaul, they need all of their copy redone from top of funnel to bottom of funnel. Those clients take more time to serve. So I take way fewer of those. And what I've done is I added a VIP day, which is something I learned about from my business partner, Tarzan. Kay. She calls it a day rate, but basically for those clients who I couldn't get them in because they, I was already booked for some bigger projects, I would then offer them a day where

In this episode, I interview Zach Spuckler, the founder of Heart Soul & Hustle and creator of the podcast by the same name.

After making over 1.5 million dollars in online courses and coaching sales he pivoted to serving that same audience with marketing services and consulting. He's now the chief marketing extraordinaire at his Facebook Ads & Consulting Agencywhere he works with his clients to achieve multi-six-figure launches, automated funnels and consults on marketing strategies for course creators looking to scale their business.

Selling courses online:Zach walks us through how he built a half a million-dollar course and six-figure business in under a year and recently pivoted his business into an agency model.

Facebook Ads: In this episode, we also talk about Facebook Ads - Zach helps us get to grips with Facebook ads manager’s latest updates and deciding whether we're ready to outsource our ads.

Whether you’re still doing your own or you're ready to outsource this episode will have some gold nuggets for you.

FB Platform Updates:We talk about how to keep up-to-date with developments in the ad manager. We also talk about testing and how important this is to figure out what's going to work for you.

You can learn more about Zach at www.heartsoulhustle.com or follow him on Instagram @heartsoulhustle

Amy is an expert in content repurposing and the Founder of Content 10x – a niche creative agency. She helps content creators grow their audience by maximizing their return on the content they create.

She is also the author of bestselling book Content 10x: More Content, Less Time, Maximum Results, the ultimate guide to reaching more people online with your content. She is also the host of The Content 10x Podcast, where she teaches all that you need to know about repurposing your content.

She’s talked on stages all around the world about content repurposing, most recently at PodFest Multimedia Expo, Content Live, Agency Transformation Live and Podcast Movement, the inaugural Retain Live event, and Youpreneur Summit

We talk about repurposing your content and Amy's new book which you can grab at the link below.

We also talk about:

Episode Links:

Amy's Book: https://www.content10x.com/book

When deciding how long your blog posts should be, it's important to have a look at your goals, your industry keywords and your search results competitors. This episode explains how to find the right length so you don't spend a lot of time writing articles that have little or no chance of ranking in search engines.

We break down these steps into more details:

Checking out who you're competing with and specifically what content you're competing withStaying focused on your goalsDeciding what's best for you

You might also be interested in the following related content:

How long should my epic blog post be?

How often should I blog?