0:32  

Today’s episode, we’re going to talk about my approach for what it takes to create a thought leadership based business. Now, what does this mean? How are we going to make it happen? Why are we even talking about this? Let’s go ahead and dig into it. 

0:50  

I’m going to try to keep this episode relatively short. Full disclaimer, I need to record three episodes back to back right now, so we’re gonna spend some time together over the next few weeks. We have some great plans. 

1:02  

Last week’s episode I’ve shared, I have no plans on batching months and months of content. In fact, we have a really good plan on my team. We’re going to be recording some best of episodes. Yes, there are a lot of motherfreakin gems in these episodes. Am I right? I don’t hold back. I mean, we have fun together. I also don’t take myself very seriously. I got a message the other day from a business peer who was laughing on a episode I published over the summer, where I had a brain fart, and I don’t cut those out. I’m like, how do I say this word? What is the word? The word was swoosh. I was trying to say. 

1:40  

Anyways, we have a lot of fun with our random side tangents, Heather’s weird commentary, but also, y’all, I deliver in these episodes and I know you know it, this is not one of those fluffy, I’m going to dance around the issues. I actually share real stuff that has lasting impact for you and your business, a tangible thing that you can go out and do, and I always hear that all the time and, one, it’s just my style, but two, I always appreciate for those of you who reach out and appreciate me for creating the content. 

2:12  

Side note on that note, can I just ask, here’s my direct ask? If you love this show, if you like hearing my crazy rambles each week, you find them valuable and hilarious, if this is one of your go to podcasts, even if it’s not one of your go to podcasts, if it’s one that you have in your rotation, renew, remember to listen and then you’re like, oh my gosh, I need more Heather Sager in my life. 

Either way, if you have found value in this show, if you enjoy the show, could you just hit pause for a second and go to the little button where it says leave a frickin review. You know who you are. If you have not done that yet. It really, really would mean the world for me, especially over these next couple of months, as maybe the cadence of episodes and my ability to market the episodes is really going to be lacking given that I am keeping a tiny human alive, who should still be baking in my belly. If you want to support me during this time, leaving a podcast review would be the absolute best way to do that. 

3:13  

So if you are a new listener of the show, hello, welcome. Maybe hit follow if this episode resonates with you, you might be a little too early yet to check and see. But in this episode, you’ll get a really good vibe of my teaching style and I hope that this episode really just meets you at the perfect time. 

3:36  

Okay, let’s talk about this concept of thought leadership. I have to be honest. Years ago, when I was in corporate, we had this consultant, this fancy consultant come in and he kept throwing out this world thought leadership and the man quite frankly annoyed the crap out of me. He was very egotistical, did not listen to other people and talked over mostly the women in the room, so instant, I’m like, Oh, hell no.

4:00  

But now kind of thinking forward the thought of thought leadership, I’ve now embraced the term. It is what we do. It’s essentially you sharing your ideas and being a leader in your industry, and it’s been known for being a person with big, bold ideas. 

4:16  

And when I say big, bold ideas, I don’t mean they have to be controversial and they don’t have to be hugely outlandish. It’s just the idea that you are not regurgitating other people’s messages is that you are truly are showing up and serving with a, your angle of a unique message. 

4:32  

So thought leadership is this expert industry. It’s this idea where we are sharing our knowledge, our experience, and we are leading the way for others. That’s how I view thought leadership. And I would say any kind of information business, most information business, most coaches, most speakers, authors, they would fall into this category, right? Because we’re not we’re not just regurgitating something else. We’re not just teaching technical things. Were changing people’s worlds by helping them see things in a different perspective. 

5:06  

Now, I don’t care what you teach, right? Maybe you teach nutrition, maybe you teach something around fertility or motherhood or productivity, or there’s a bajillion topics that people teach. It doesn’t matter the like, what it is? The question is, is what’s your approach that you bring to this thing that you teach? This idea around thought leadership. 

5:31  

And when I think about like my business, for example, I knew out of the gate that I wanted to have a digital course, digital product business, I wanted to have speaking, and I knew I wanted to have a live element. I just love, I’ve talked about this all the time, love live events. I love live coaching calls. I love the live dynamic. 

5:51  

Now, I can’t be on calls every single day because it’s just not in my wheelhouse but I really live for those live interactions with my clients. So I knew I wanted to do client work, I knew I wanted to do coaching, I knew I want to do speaking. But all of this came down to I wanted to work with people by essentially sharing my opinions, my experiences, my ideas, my trainings, to benefit other people. 

6:17  

That might kind of sound weird to say out loud, it kind of felt weird for a moment but like, that’s the thing, right? Like, that’s when you are a self employed, kind of solopreneur, personal brand style information business. That is the thing, is you want to get paid for essentially talking to people, sharing your ideas and your knowledge and your expertise like that. That is it. Now we have to align it to a problem that people actually pay for but that’s what it comes down to. 

6:42  

And what I really wanted to do today is just simplify how I view my business and how I organize what I work on, and where I focus in my business in a process. So this process is something that I have developed over time, it’s super simple. It is my framework for what I walk my clients through. This is like the full on umbrella of what I do in my business. You’ve probably heard me talk about this before, but my whole thing is, I help people message, market, and monetize their expertise, message market, and monetize, and that’s what I want to talk about today. 

7:23  

Those are really the three pillars that in my opinion, build an effective information style business, said differently in expert based business or a thought leadership business. 

7:35  

Now underneath each of these around, what is that message? What is that thing that we communicate to other people? What is the way that we market to people, both marketing ourselves, and also finding expanding opportunities to get more people aware of what we do? And then of course, monetization, which is the area I hammered on in last week’s episode around, find activities closer to the point of sale if you want to make more sales but these really are the three pillars that I organize my business efforts around, and I would really encourage you to think through this lens too. 

8:09  

Now the thing is, is in each of these areas, your message, your monetization, your marketing, if you are weak in one area, it’s like a three legged stool. The stool is not going to stand up. And so often what I see from business owners, especially in this online world, if you get really into social media and really want to be around the Instagram or Tik Tok, or figuring those things out. People, for example, lean one way. They’re like, oh, I have to focus on my marketing. I have to get in front of more people. I have to get in front of more people, I have to post every day, I have to do all this stuff. I have to have the right website, I gotta rebrand, I gotta get my photos, all of these have put under the marketing efforts. 

8:47  

Marketing is getting your stuff in front of more people. You have a duty around how you show up and getting that stuff out there. Now if we spend all of our time marketing, but let’s say the, and let’s say even we have products that we can monetize, right? But if our message aka the content that we talk about, the way that we talk about, you already know where I’m going this, if that’s weak, it doesn’t matter how, like, people like Gary Vee, they’re like, just post more, just do more, just keep hitting it. But like, if the quality of your message sucks, like you’re gonna be in front of a lot of people, but they’re also going to just keep scrolling, or they’re gonna ignore you, or let’s say you have an opportunity where you’re speaking to a group, if your message doesn’t land, they’re going to just tune out and play Candy Crush. 

9:40  

Sidenote, that’s always my example is people to do not play Candy Crush which is hysterical because I don’t know if anyone actually plays Candy Crush anymore but that is the example we’re going with. Sidenote to the side note, this morning, I downloaded an app for a crossword puzzle which mean it was inspired off of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where somebody was filling out a crossword puzzle. And I’m like, I like crossword puzzles. It makes my brain work a little bit more and that might be a better activity in the hospital so that might need to be my new example. But I also feel like crossword puzzles, I don’t know, there’s just like, thoughts out there for old people. 

10:15  

Okay, let me get back on the point here. If your message sucks, right, or your message is dry, or your message misses the mark, aka doesn’t resonate with your audience, it doesn’t matter how, quote unquote, great your marketing is. I would argue your marketing is not so great if your message sucks. But also, if you have stuff for sale, that also doesn’t matter because if your message is lacking, both of those things fall flat. 

10:38  

Okay, let’s look at a different way. Let’s say your marketing is strong. Let’s say that your message is strong, the quality your content is great, you know how to speak to your audience is true perceived paid points, you know how to communicate in a way that really resonates with them but you’re not connecting the dots to sales and this is what I see a lot. 

10:57  

And a lot of times with entrepreneurs in this expert thought leadership education space, there is this fear that I don’t want to be put in a category of the Joe Schmoes, who are like in your face selling all the time. 

11:14  

But here’s the reality, you’re a business, okay? You’re not just a person online, like your friend from high school with an Instagram account, like you’re running a business. So if you don’t, even if you have products for sale, but if you’re not actually selling them and if you don’t have an active way to ask for sales or have people pay you money, for sure, this three legged stool is going to fall frickin apart. You do not have a thought leadership business. You might have a blog online, you might be seeing, I mean, you might be seen as a thought leader, you might be seen as someone who has great information but I mean, this is the problem with a lot of people on Tik Tok and on Instagram are these really huge accounts is they’ve got their marketing down. They’ve figured out their hooks and their message and how to like get a lot of views, but they’re not making money and that to me is not a business so we have to prioritize monetization. 

12:13  

Okay, let’s look at the last three way we can look at this. We say you have your message down, you have the monetization down, right? You have a way people can pay you money consistently and that doesn’t mean you have to have something for sale all the time. You could run your business from live launching. That’s a big part of what I’ve done, but if supplemented it with one on one coaching but let’s say that. 

12:33  

But let’s say the third bucket is with marketing, let’s say your marketing sucks. Let’s say you don’t have a presence online or your presence online was your personal Instagram that has pictures of your cat or not have you or have a bunch of personal development stuff but that’s not what your business is. It also could be is you not networking or reaching out or just there’s so many different ways that you can show up in market, right? You might maybe you don’t have a way for people to get on your email list. You don’t have email set up or you have email set up, but you’re not actually reaching out to people. 

13:06  

If you do not have some marketing and foundations in place, it doesn’t matter what you have for it to sell. It doesn’t matter what you look, how good your message is or how magnetic you are on stage. If you are not actively marketing yourself either as a speaker or as an expert, marketing yourself as a coach, getting your stuff in front of more people, help even just getting your stuff in front of the audience you’ve already built. If you are not marketing your stuff, you are no longer top of mind for your audience and that’s not going to work either. 

13:47  

So you see, we really have to focus on how do we create balance between all three of these areas. Nailing our message, that’s where I come in, getting our monetization down, having a way for people to pay us, not saying one day I’ll finally create the program, actually getting it done. 

14:08  

Side note, here we go again. Sager side notes are on fire today. At the time of this recording we are in, we just literally launched a super freakin scrappy style launch of the Signature Talk Accelerator On Demand. This is something I’ve been wanting to like launch all year. It’s been on my radar, but I wanted to prove out this new updated curriculum with a couple cohorts before we introduce a self face version, and we thought we had more time. We thought we had about another month to get everything ready, and with this curveball that I shared on that episode last week if you want to find out what’s going on the pregnancy and why I’m having to be induced so much earlier than anticipated. You can listen to that episode. 

14:54  

But we had to go, we had to go quick. So we, this week we launched this crappy version, we call it a pre-sale. The  course itself is pretty much finished but we have some editings, refinement to do to adjust it from a cohort style into the on demand style and I wanted to make sure that it really really could sing without that life support because it’s an on demand self paced version. 

15:18  

So we launched it, scrappy anyways. Literally, my team worked overnight on Tuesday night at the time of this recording. Tuesday night, they worked overnight to get this puppy ready and we frickin launched it. And if you want to go to my Instagram, you can look at the post I made on there and that post says because I’m launching a human soon. If you click on that carousel post, you can read through I wrote a little letter to kind of get some context to it and then went through the entire offer. 

15:48  

My point in sharing this with you is, you know, the expression done is better than perfect and I think this goes here. If you have been waiting to launch some kind of offer because you’re waiting for the perfect moment or you’re waiting for it to be, I don’t know, like you want to get it all outlined and have a high quality program, not some janky shitty one. You know you are if that’s your thought, like perfectionist in the room. I see you, I respect you, I have been you but also that perfection piece doesn’t actually serve anyone, but your ego. 

16:23  

So my recommendation is if you are delaying on launching something that you know will help your people, especially if you are delaying on launching a more scalable product. My question for you is what is the shortest path to launch? How could you launch it before it’s done, before it’s ready? How could you test out your messaging and the quality of your marketing to get something in front of your audience? Just float out the ask and start collecting money and getting paid for what you do. We need to start making more efforts on our monetization. 

17:01  

And since today’s episode is all about just me getting you thinking and saying, where can I lean in a little bit more. But what I also want to do is I want to address a couple questions under these categories that I got. Earlier this week, I posted on my Instagram a little bit around what was going on with this baby and this induction date and needing to get baby out quicker, and I needed to record a quite a few episodes. 

17:23  

And I asked, hey, what did you, what’s you struggling with right now when it comes to speaking, when it comes to visibility, when it comes to getting yourself out there. And I got some questions and topics that I’m not going to go through all of them in this episode. However, I will say my team took every single one of your topics and your requests and we built playlists around podcast episodes that go with every single one of these questions. And I’m kind of thinking you might want like to get your hands on that so we will include that in the show notes of this episode. So if you just click wherever you’re watching, go to the show notes. It’ll take you to my blog, and we’ll do the roundup of all of these. 

18:06  

I mean, Doreethy in my team, we probably have a good, I don’t know, 30, 40 episodes linked here on a variety of topics. So if you want to find an episode that directly goes with your question, hit the show notes, I think that’ll be a great place to start. We’ll organize this really well for you so that you can find stuff under marketing under pitching under finding stages, under how to more effectively convert your stage opportunities into leads into sales, when it comes to messaging and communicating. How do we get over our fear into our offers? We’ll package all those things up for you and to just, we’ll just do some links, right? It’s not an opt in just go to my blog and we’ll get you going on that but then you can start binging some episodes from the podcast for a specific purpose, right? Build a skill or answer a specific challenge or question that you’re having. 

18:54  

But I want to do want to address a couple of these because these questions always come up. It doesn’t matter how many times I talk about them. These are like the best of the questions. So I’m going to hit a few of them under these areas because I think this will be helpful for you too. So one of the top questions that I always, always every time I put a question sticker up, get asked is how do I find more aligned stages? 

19:23  

Now this specific question says, where’s my struggle right now? Get it on the right stages in front of the right audiences with the right CTA to maximize my time and effort. The reason why I chose this question to answer is, if you’re one of my students, you’re going to laugh because you know exactly where I’m going to go with this. The way this question is worded, here in itself showcases the challenge the person is having.

19:48  

So let me say the question again or the challenge, getting on the right stages with the right audience and the right CTA to maximize their time and effort. You see as a business owner, if you have the mindset that there is a right way for something, you will continue to seek it out and bypass so many other ways that would work just fricking fine. I’m a huge believer that get over looking for the right way and focus on the next way, the way that’s going to get you some results, so you can learn from them and then find the next way to do it. 

20:27  

Now it doesn’t mean that you should always be constantly changing what you do. But I really think that we just are a lot way too precious with wanting to get things right and perfect and that is just going to slow you down and keep you broke. 

20:43  

So for this question here, I think you’re asking the wrong question. I think when we say the challenge is getting the right stages for the right audiences and the right CTA. My first question is going, we need to, we’re looking at this different. You’re looking at how do I get on the right stages, with the right audience, with the right, blah, blah, blah? Well, my question for you with the right CTA is how effective right now is your lead magnet when you are in front of your ideal clients? 

21:11  

That’s the first question, right, is stop looking for the stage for the moment and say, all right, so when I am in front of my ideal clients, how effective am I getting them to jump on my list, my call to action? How effective I’m with that? 

21:25  

Now your your call to action could be jumping on your list, it could be subscribing to your podcast, it could be a variety of things, right? And if you want to know a little bit more about call to actions, you can download my purposeful and profitable speaking guide, where I walk you through how to take stage opportunities and make them count in your business, the financial return, the lead generation return, all of that, so we’ll include the link to that guide in the show notes, that by far is one of my favorite things because geek out we talk about how do you really take free opportunities and have them have longevity in your business by getting your results so check that out for sure. 

22:00  

But coming back to this question is we need to start with the end result which is where we taking this audience. And the question would be is if your call to action isn’t working when you’re in front of your quote unquote ideal clients, we do not need to be worried about finding new stages right now because it isn’t a marketing problem, aka finding more stages and more of your ideal client problem, it is a message problem. The way that you’re talking about your offer, or your freebie or whatever is you’re talking about, is not working. 

22:29  

So first, we need to work on how you make that call to action, how you talk about that call to action, because if that isn’t converting, no stage make it straight, like you’re just gonna get on stages and still have lower conversion. So I’m not about quantity in this moment, I’m about quality. And if you would like some more help on how to really nail that call to action, if you don’t have my 19 Simple magnetic phrases that you can use on stages for that call to action, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life.This thing I’ve been talking about now for almost two years, it is my favorite frickin cheat sheet that I get all of my clients just say these phrases, go download that. It’s Heather sager.com/magnet. You can also get the link in the show notes. But you need to focus on that for anyone listening who wants any kind of visibility opportunity to convert into a lead or into a sale. You have to have those phrases, like that is the secret way. One of my favorite strategies is the “if-then” strategy. I teach it for you in the document, a lot of little PDF, and I’ll give you lots of examples but go for that. 

23:36  

So let’s say for example, though, whoever wrote this challenge is going yeah, my CTA is actually good. I get a high conversion rate when I’m in front of more ideal clients. Awesome. Okay, so now we need to figure out alright, so how do you get in front of more of your ideal clients? 

23:52  

Now, what I would focus on is in this situation, I’m actually taking what they wrote and I’m working backwards. What they wrote is they want to find the right stages with the right audience with the right CTA. So there’s a couple different ways you can go about it, right? I don’t want to start at the CTA, but then I would work to okay, the right audience. 

24:11  

Well, you know, who your ideal client is. So what I would do is I would start by talking to your ideal clients and ask them, what other programs are they in? Where else are they gathering information and not information on your topic, but just in general? If they’re listening to you, they’re most likely listen to you because they’re learning something. Where else are they getting their learnings? Where else are there more people like them? Just spending some time to talk to your ideal clients often gives you ideas around where else they are hanging out, aka what other groups are part of, what other networks they’re in. 

24:47  

One of my go to strategies is and I know, I fully understand, I am a business to business coach. I specialize, I’m really really good at helping people who also are business to business get their messaging down, but I also have a lot of business to consumers in my programs, but a lot of times, I join programs not because I need the content, but because I want to be near the people who need my content. 

25:13  

Now, I’m not joining it to poach like, I’m not just joining random programs, like I still join it, if I find value in the content, right? There’s going to be something that I’m going to pull from. But a lot of times I’m pulling it for attending the events or the community aspect, so that I can meet other people and expand my network and get in front of my more of my ideal clients. 

25:33  

Now, you might be thinking, like, well, how does that lead to a stage? Well, here’s the fun part is you could spend a lot of time pitching stages or you could use my adjacent pitching strategy I shared in a recent episode. We’ll link that below which episode we talked about the adjacent pitch. 

25:50  

But the other thing to think about is I’m all about attracting stage opportunities and what I find is, when I’m in rooms with my ideal clients, I find out who they’re following, who their mentors are, who else is there, and then I go make friends with those people. I start building my peer group out. It’s the networking episode, I just remembered it. That recent episode I did around expanding your network, go check that one out. I think it was two or three weeks ago. But I talked about how I expand my network, how I’m really intentional with that and that is how I get people saying Heather, come in my group, or hey, Heather, come talk to my people on this or come on my podcast. 

26:30  

So now is this the quote unquote, right way to do it? No, I already told you there’s no right way. I’m just sharing a way to do it, right. This is a strategy that could work because I think the challenge in this whole statement here of finding the right stages with the right audience and the right CTAs is there’s this idea that there’s some kind of recipe, or some kind of formula, or some secret database that you can type in to be like, I’m looking for single, white females who, this is not Tinder. You can’t like plug in your desires. Side note, I’ve never literally logged into Tinder in my life. Online dating came out after I met and married my husband so I have no idea if you actually can do that so that’s full speculation. Please do not send me messages educating me on how to use Tinder or dating apps. 

27:14  

But the point is, there’s no like, enter in, here me clicking with my pretend keyboard, there’s no enter in to find it is you have to get a little scrappy and I said build your network a bit. Okay. So from that perspective, if you really want these to all align, I would work from the source. Make sure with your existing audience that you have when you know you have an ideal client, right? Does your stuff convert? Then start broadening it and say how can I get in front of more people like this? Chances are you can tap into your network. Now it’s not the only way. 

27:48  

Another way to think about it, though, is finding stages that might have your ideal ish client, right? They might not be an exact fit. You might not know super too much about them. However, what you could think about is alright, if I want to get some experience getting on stages, if I want to broaden who I speak to finding stages, just start finding them. And don’t worry so much about it being perfect because here’s the funny thing. I was just listening to my client. It’s one of my program graduates, Liz Wilcox. I’ve had her on the show multiple times before a shout out. She’s a great poster child of my program. She has gone on and just frickin killed it with her brand. 

28:35  

This last week, she was on Smart Passive Income, Pat Flynn’s podcast., and I listened to it the biggest shitty grin on my face because that girl is just frickin rocking it. And one big bomb she dropped on the episode as she shared with Pat, that hey, Pat, he asked her favorite lead generation strategy and she said by far podcast guesting. And she went on to say that she’s been on now over 300 podcasts in the last two and a half years. That has since Liz and I worked together back in 2020. And I just had a big smile on my face because she went on to say that look, I wasn’t so great when I started but doing it over and over and over and over and over and over again, I have slowly laid brick by brick and I have built my list to over 10,000 people. 

29:24  

And it was really cool because I’m thinking two and a half years building your email list of 10,000 people that’s frickin like amazing, but also the sheer work that she put in and 300 podcasts interviews, plus keynote speaking opportunities and all these other things. She put in the work for it. 

29:41  

Now, I would imagine and this is not from Liz, this is me just commentating on this. Is that a word, commentating? We’re going to make it like a sports announcer but I would imagine that when she said yes to those podcasts, she wasn’t going, is this a perfect fit? Is it a perfect aligned audience? No, she’s going, do they want to talk about my topic. Awesome. Put me on, like, put me in coach, I’m ready. 

30:07  

Like saying yes, right saying yes to more opportunities and it doesn’t mean that you need to do a bunch of opportunities for free. The thing about Liz, let me tell you really clear. Liz has these three pillars down. She is good at her marketing. She teaches email marketing and she’s got it down and she’s got her brand down. She’s got her website dialed in, but she’s got a very clear link with a very clear download and a very clear offer. She had that down. 

30:32  

Boom, then she went into, okay, so her offer, boom, monetization done. She’s got a $9 monthly email marketing membership where she creates templates. It’s so friggin awesome. I’m gonna link to it in the show notes because I, I get it, I use it for my email sometimes so it’s awesome. 

30:49  

And then the third piece is her message. She worked with me, speaking coach. We built her framework and she built her signature talk and story and everything in the old version of the Accelerator. It used to be called Speak Up to Level Up. She built that there and then she went out and she started practicing it and saying yes to opportunities, seeking out opportunities. 

31:10  

So my takeaway for this person, you were not expecting this big pep talk around this question is I’m going to ask you throw away this need to be right and get on the quote unquote, perfect stages where everything is aligned right now and just start saying, yes. You know your topic. The question is, is the stage aligned ish, right? Is there going to be an audience who’s interested in this topic that your offer could work for that could be a great fit? 

31:36  

Just say yes, so you can start going through the repetitions to practice it. But you have to have those other pillars in place, your marketing, aka, your lead magnets and such and how you consistently show up to nurture an audience once they start following you and then your monetization? Do you have an offer that could work? 

31:54  

Now I’ve done things before when I’ve spoken to groups and maybe my offer isn’t like an on the nose. So a great example, one of my friends, colleagues, and now she coaches inside my program from time to time, Emily Regan. So she teaches a program, it’s all around becoming a unicorn digital marketing VA. And she’s got an incredible story around how she worked her way up as a virtual assistant and learn the skills as a specific Digital Media Marketing VA and now she teaches other people how to build their own businesses and income by doing that service. 

32:27  

Now, where was I going with this? Oh, my gosh, pregnancy brain just hit. Okay. I remember. So Emily asked me to come guest inside her program because one of the areas where unicorns struggles, she calls them unicorns. They struggle with is competence on camera. And it’s one of those things at the time when I did it, I didn’t really have an offer around that, right? I’m teaching people how to speak on stages, on podcast, those types of things. But these are service providers, right, working as virtual assistants, marketing assistants and people’s businesses. 

32:56  

So my offer really didn’t align but I thought I could, one, could absolutely help these people. I am great with teaching people how to be more comfortable on camera because fun fact you might not know about me. I was terrible on camera when I started my business. Yes, I had been speaking on stages at that point for 15 years and I was terrible on camera. 

33:22  

Now what’s funny is at my old job, they would laugh and be like, wait, you’re on camera all the time. I’m in like a ton of training videos at my old company. But I was awkward as all hell in terms of if you asked me to, like speak off the cuff. I would develop this weird word slur. Like, I like the character in the 40 year old virgin were got wax. It’s like oh motherfucking, Kelly Claxton. 

33:49  

Like, I just, I can’t, I couldn’t. I couldn’t put sentences together when you put a bit of video camera on me. So I had to work and I mean work to make up for that just awkwardness on camera. So I know all about getting competent on camera. I really really had to work through it. 

34:09  

So back to it when she asked me to speak I’m like, I could totally. I could totally do something around this. So I built a training around it and then I had a lot of my clients want to get better on camera so I put together this offer. This is back in like late 2020. I put together this workshop and I pre sold it, and it was called Lights Camera Rockstar and it was all about getting over your fear of the camera, getting comfortable and showing up consistently. 

34:36  

Now was it about like how to be awesome on a live and how to create a live stream strategy? No. Was it about Instagram reels or TikTok? No, those things didn’t exist at the time. 

34:45  

Essentially, it was me sharing what to do to get better on camera so that you could show up. Now at the time in 2019, 2020. I was using Facebook Lives quite a bit, not because I thought they were awesome but because it was the best and the easiest tool for me to show up consistently and force myself to speak so that was great so I taught a little bit of that. 

35:07  

But anyways, I created this little offer. I sold it and then a few months later, I happened to be teaching in Emily’s program. So I made an offer for that, like it was the hey, if you want this, here you go and I give him a little special bundle of stuff. 

35:22  

But the point I’m making is, was that my perfect stage with my quote unquote, perfect audience into my perfect call to action? No. But did I make it work? Did I want to do it? Could I serve those people in the best way? Did I have an offer that would be valuable to my main audience and to that group? Yes. 

35:44  

So my point that I want to make here is, I think a lot of times in an effort for us to be so efficient, and effective and strategic, and all these other big words that people throw out, and I know I use. You probably do, too. I think sometimes we just missed the point. That’s like, what’s going to move us forward? I think thought leadership running an expert business, sometimes we just have to ask the question is what’s going to be the most of service to our audience? What can we do if we stop overthinking it and just simplify and say, is there a workshop within us that our audience would really benefit from?

38:28  

I think a lot of times we spend all of this hype trying to focus on is it high ticket? Is it low ticket? Is it whatever ticket, right? Screw the tickets, folks like? What’s going to help you reach your goals and what’s going to serve your audience? Because I just, I don’t know, I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit into a world in this online marketing where there’s so much arguments around what’s the right way. I only want you asking what is the way that feels right for you right now in this season of your life. 

39:02  

And where I like to go to use last week’s episode as a really great gut check aroun, are you headed on the right track? Are you hitting your goals? If you’re not hitting your goals that gave you a little recipe around how to get closer to the point of sale to hit your revenue goals. But when it comes to where you’re at right now and thinking about finding stages, getting in front of more audiences in 2024, that’s probably what we’re talking about here. 

39:25  

I want you to let go a little bit of trying to get everything so dialed in and perfect and accept that the journey is gonna be a little bit of a shit show, my friend, and it’s gonna be a fun one, right? You’re gonna reflect and be like, Oh, that was a wild roller coaster, just like me and my life phase right now. It feels very roller coaster, but also it’s the path that’s required to get to the end result. That’s how simple it is. It is the path that’s required and if you think that you’re gonna be able to lay out all your ducks in a row in one smoothy process, you’re up for a lot of disappointment, so I would just embrace the what’s the next step? How do I build the foundation on each of these three pillars? 

40:04  

Now let’s talk about it. So I want to circle back to the three pillars piece, case we talked about your message, your marketing, your monetization. What I want you to get really clear with right now is know where you’re at right now in your business. Earlier this year, I did an episode around helping identify your stages of business, we will link it in the show notes. But I talked about how in like stage one, you’re in like new business build mode, versus I can’t remember what I call them but like growth mode versus scale mode. There’s these different levels in business. 

40:35  

And I think a lot of times when we’re looking online in other people or we’re being exposed to other people’s marketing’s, sometimes we’re looking at strategies that are at a level that is far beyond what our business requires of us right now. I’ll give you an example of this. 

40:53  

I have a five year old at home znd we are in the season of building Christmas Legos. Yep, we are the A-holes that pulled everything out for Christmas on November 1st. Now argument is I could tell you, it’s because we wanted to get everything done before this baby comes but also we’ve done this for the last few years and it makes us so happy because we love Christmas. I swear I married Buddy the Elf over here and we just love, love how our house feels at Christmas times. We keep up the decor longer than possible and then we pull it down pretty quickly in the new year because at that point, I’m ready for like clean, clean house, simple house, changed house. 

41:31  

Anyway, so my five year old right now so as one of our traditions, when I say our, I mean, my husband and our kids, definitely not me. Every year, they buy a new Christmas Lego set and my eight year old, he likes Legos but my five year old loves building Legos with dad and he’s wicked smart, too. He’s building kits that are way more advanced and he’s five years old. And last night, he was building a kit for 14 year olds and up. 

41:58  

Now with that my five year old, we have to have conversations all the time because he’s not interested in the five year old level, he wants to build the more complex, cool looking ones because you look at toolboxes and you’re like, do I want to do a dinky Mickey Mouse with a dump truck? That’s like three pieces or do I want to do this really cool train with Santa Claus and like a little tiny waffle maker in the elf house. I mean, come on, get the two choices. They’re gonna want to do the more advanced one. 

42:22  

Now bringing this to you, same thing for you, right? In your business right now you gotta be honest with yourself, the basic stuff, you’re like, oh, stab me in the eye. I want the more advanced strategies, I want the mini chat automations, I want the fancy funnel, blah, blah, blah things from the whatever tool, we look and we’re comparing the five year old Lego box to the 14 year old or that 20 something year old Lego box. My husband’s like really into the architecture ones right now and wants to get all of them and like we don’t have money for that. We’re paying for two homes and having a baby. 

42:56  

So anyways, I understand I understand how it goes. Now with my five year old, we constantly have to have conversations around, when he gets stuck and frustrated. It’s okay to be frustrated when he’s building a form. It’s okay to be frustrated whenever but when he’s following directions and can’t quite compute and figure it out and it’s not working as the picture shows, well, yeah, you’re gonna be frustrated buddy, but also your five and this is meant for a teenager, like cousin, like you are doing an amazing job. 

43:32  

So we’re constantly reinforcing that like, that learning and that that gap between what like how much he’s covering on this, right? But you can already see the bridge here into my my story about my kid into the point for you is, as a business owner, when you think about your message, when you think about your marketing, when you think about your monetization, I want you to be really clear around what level you are right now in business. 

43:58  

So for example, if you are pre profit, you should be having very different conversations with yourself, with your coaches, whoever you’re working with, then if you were making even $100,000 a year. There’s a huge gap between there versus a gap between 100 and 250. That is another gap, 250. I would say 500 and then 500 scaling up to a million and beyond. There are different levels, aka different Lego kits for your business in these areas. 

44:28  

And what I really would focus on for you if you want to be more effective with your marketing, with your message, with your monetization, if you want to be seen as that go to thought leader. I think the key, just my opinion, is really mastering the stage you’re in. 

44:45  

So let me give you an example of this. If visibility is high on your list for this year, for this next year, and you are let’s say you’re at a half a million above in business. All right, what we can focus on is all right, you have monetization down. If you were pulling in $500,000 a year, that’s 40 grand a month, okay, you are at a point where you’ve got your monetization, now you’ve probably got your marketing down and I bet you have your message down to a degree. 

45:15  

But I would argue we could really take your message further and amplify, amplify all those other areas if we dial in your frickin message, if we hone it in, if we work in a couple things together. We figure out more effective storytelling, get a little bit more strategic about what you’re saying yes to, that is your golden ticket, so do have a little different level of conversation that we need to have for you to amplify in 2024. 

45:41  

If you are, let’s say, let’s just put this together in the 100 grand to 500 range. Okay, I know that’s a big swing and I’m grouping a lot of things together there but there’s opportunity for you in your monetization. Something is happening in your offer suite, there’s something happening in your marketing, there’s something happened in your messaging, it’s probably a combination, that there are some holes in the boat, my friend. And we need to start thinking about, alright, so how do we have the simplest way possible to shore up in each of these areas? How do we get our message down, aka Signature Target Accelerator could be your best friend, especially for those of you above 100,000 above 500,000. Like, if you are profitable, the Signature Talk Accelerator is a frickin no brainer because the ROI on that if you already have a consistent monetization strategy, aka how people pay you money, whether it’s one on one consulting, whether you get paid for speaking or you are selling some kind of offer, that will just amplify and frickin up your results for sure. 

46:46  

Now, if you’re sitting here and you’re under $100,000 a year or your pre profit, I’m going to tell you the tough love right here. I want you to think about this and I do not mean this in an offensive way possible. I’m about to call you my five year old child, not that you’re a five year old child, I hope that we can get over the analogy here for a moment. But if you are pre profit or under 100 grand, okay, I want you to recognize that when it comes to a lot of the ideas and strategies that you hear on these big podcasts, that you see these other big people doing and pushing, that is the kit from the 14 year old or the more advanced adult level Lego sets, and I agree they’re fun and easy to look at but, my friend, right now we got to go simple and master the basics. 

47:31  

We have to master the basics. That comes down to what are you talking about? Like what is the niche that you’re in? What is the problem that you’re solving? What is that core message that you’re communicating to your ideal client? Monetization, what is the way people are paying you money? Ff you do not have a consistent monetization plan, so whether it’s a program you’re promoting, or one on one services, whatever, if you don’t have something like and you’ve said, this is the thing I’m focused on or maybe you’re selling like 14 things. My friend, if you’re not at 100k, and you’re selling 14 things, those 14 things are not serving you. So can we simplify and do a few of them better? 

48:16  

The last part is the marketing piece. How are you getting in front of more people and what I want you to think about marketing and this is for anyone listening regardless of your place or your revenue, I want you to think about marketing, I want you to simplify into two buckets, marketing to your existing audience, marketing to new audiences. That is the simplest way I can put it. 

48:38  

What I mean by that is your your existing audience is your email list. It is your people who already follow you online. It is the people who already know who you are and pseudo, what you do. You need to show up for them to stay top of mind. A lot of times sales and these relationships online, it is a process. People are not ready to buy right away. Some are, but a lot aren’t. This is that whole nurturing cycle. You have to show up and the beautiful part is when you just consistently show up for your existing audience, you really get to practice your message, you get to practice your monetization efforts and see how they’re working, so showing up serves you too, but you really get to show up and serve them. 

49:17  

But the key is the second part of the marketing piece, I think this is what a lot of people are missing and it’s your responsibility to go out and find new audiences. If you’re constantly just marketing the same people, if your strategy for marketing just posting on Instagram every day, you’re hoping the algorithm will pick you up on the for you page and other people will find it. But let’s be honest, what’s the likelihood of the people who find it if you go viral, that they are even your ideal person? You’re just setting yourself up for a bunch of strangers to give you a lot of feedback on the internet. 

49:47  

So what we want to do is really think about for you. I would say if you are not getting the results you want in your business, whatever price point you’re at, well number one I would look at your monetization plan? How are you monetizing your expertise? What is the thing you have for sell? And if you’re not happy with the thing you have to sell, like, let’s talk about it. 

50:13  

But the second thing I want you to think about is if you are not selling the quantity you need to hit your goals, of the two buckets, I would say, are you showing up in your own bucket but more importantly, how do we get you in front of more people? How do we get you in front of more people? 

50:29  

And so if you want some help with that piece, if you want to talk about visibility, if you want to figure out alright, how do I get my message, whether or not you have a super dialed in message that you feel confident with that, you know, converts that you know, serves it well, or you need some help with that. The Signature talk Accelerator my program is now on demand, you can grab it, I can help you get your messaging down, we want to make sure you have your message nailed down before you start really amping up your visibility, so perfect timing for 2024. 

50:56  

But if you want more help with the how do I get in front of more audiences, instead of me giving you just like a list of ideas, I’m going to give you a list of episodes that talk exactly about this and that’s going to be in the show notes here. It’s going to talk about finding stages, it’s going to be talking about pitching, what goes into that I actually do a two part episode with Emily Regan, who I mentioned here today around how to leverage a virtual assistant to support you with your pitching, and it’s also going to talk about oh episode 167, 10 stages you could be speaking on right now to attract clients or you can also go back to Episode 176. It was at the end of last year, I called it planning guests speaking of visibility for 2023. Spoiler, still works for 2024. So there are a crap ton of episodes here that will help you get more intentional with your visibility efforts. 

51:47  

But first and foremost, I want you to declare and say okay, what is the pillar I really need to focus on? Do I need to get my message dialed in? Do I need to get my monetization down, or do you get my marketing, or do I need a little bit of everything, and at what level do I need? But we have things here on the show, we talk about all three of these pillars, we can support you with that. 

52:06  

And my hope for you is over the next few weeks, as we round out the end of the year, you use this time to cut out all the noise and all the big ideas telling you these big fancy things and for you to get quiet and just really simplify what’s really necessary for you to enter 2024 as the confident and clear thought leader, you know lives with inside of you, with inside of you, whatever. You know what I mean. 

52:35  

If that person right, you show up and you say this is the year that I’m really going to make leaps and bounds on my plan for growth. This is the year that you’re going to serve the people that you want to serve. And in order for you to do that, you’re going to have to get quiet with yourself and say okay, what what do I need to focus on? I can’t tell you that unless you and I actually spent a day together and we did like a CEO Intensive and we can walk through these things, right? I think other marketing coaches they’re gonna probably have a lot of ideas for you but the end of the day, you really got to think about what you want and where are you? Do you have a way for people to make money? How are you marketing yourself? How you showing up for your existing audience and nurturing that, helping them? How are you getting in front of new audiences and what is the message you’re leading with on all fronts? 

53:26  

I hope this episode not only got you thinking, I know it got you thinking but I hope that it serves you with clarity and knowing that business does not need to be as complicated as it’s made out to be. Business at its heart can be very simple. It’s you have a heart to help others, they have problems and you can help them. Find them, help them make some money, give them a high five, move on with your day, feel good about it. 

53:54  

This business does not need to be so complex and overwhelming this as we as we head into the holiday season. I wish for you so just peace of mind and excitement as you head into planning the New Year. Alright, friend. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I will see you on the next one.