Sarah Jolly Jarvis
Appearances
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
is to support you on your journey and to help you feel not alone and to provide you with inspiration. So use that inspiration, surround yourself with individuals who are doing well, who you admire. And then that way you can feel more energized and you can believe it. You stop saying, maybe I can, or if I do, and you start saying about when.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And that in itself, that massive shift in your thought process can make a huge, huge difference. to your business, to your performance, to your self-belief, because of your self-belief, enabling you to generate that income and get your business up there and being consistent, okay? No one grows a business alone. Sometimes the best investment is in yourself and your support network.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
It is very, very difficult to get here all by yourself without any help or any support whatsoever. And so when you can, make sure that you are investing wisely in the resources and the support that you need. But don't try and figure it all out. It's crazy to think that we can just start a business and know straight off the bat exactly how we're supposed to be running it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
a musical instrument you go out and you get lessons and that might not be formal lessons but you'll go on the internet and you'll you'll download youtube and watch loads of videos and all that kind of stuff to kind of get an understanding of what you need to do and that can be the same thing in your business is you can't expect your business to improve or your skill set around something to improve without doing some learning right
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
it is not unless you are you know running a business mentoring business coaching business then you're not going to know all the things and even then most people have specialities so some people they might come in from a financial perspective but that doesn't mean that they've got the sales and marketing that doesn't mean they can create the messaging there are so many hats to wear when you are running your own business that it is
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So you're kind of setting yourself up for failure if you expect yourself to know how to do all those things without any support or further training. So that's it for me this week, guys. Please do share. You can link with me on LinkedIn. You can link with me on Facebook. Share with me the challenges. that you've had over balancing your business growth.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
I will probably more than likely put, I will put out a post in my You Can group on Facebook where you can share what's helped you navigate it, where you've kind of found yourself going a bit wrong and how you've got yourself back on to focusing on your business and helping and supporting it as it needs.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So, you know, please do share those and reach out if you do need help with having more structure, having more clarity in your business. That is what I do is I help people to grow their business and create a business that works for them. So thanks very, very much for listening. And as ever, please do subscribe, rate and share the podcast so that we can get more listeners in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And that supports what I do. So that's it for me, guys, this week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
better understanding it or at least doing supported practice. And so when I said to this person, you know what, what have you done? And they were like, well, I haven't done anything because we've had a lot of costs. We've been away on a big holiday and we've got another one coming up and we're in the middle of a house renovation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
that for me was really like whoa you know wait a minute what is your house renovation what is your holidays got to do with your business now i am like you know a big fan of going on holiday and taking a bit of time out and having the opportunity to kind of re-look at things um and so you know you could argue that a decent holiday will provide you with a new perspective on your business etc etc help you come back energized you know you can't run on empty etc etc but
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
When you start prioritising multiple elements like that over your business and your business doesn't have the funds to invest in itself because it's supporting those activities where what I tend to call them, whether it's a little bit too
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
black and white, but I tend to say, well, actually, activities like that, activities which are non revenue generating activities, they're not going to help your business. They're not going to help you move things forward. So holiday, as harsh as it sounds, it's not a revenue generating activity. You could argue with a holiday that it gives you a new perspective.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
You could argue with a house renovation that new doors and windows. are going to help you feel better. But in reality, they're probably not the best investment for you to make if you want your business to develop and grow. For example, if you're struggling with your sales, if you're not able to reach new audiences and really need to run paid ads, etc., etc.,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
then spending your money on new windows is probably not going to be the best investment of your finances, but people do it. And why do we do it? Well, a lot of the people that I work with, they come from a corporate background and they are used to a particular amount of income. And obviously, you know, with that level of income that you have, you tend to live to that level.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
Are you expecting your business to fund your lifestyle before it's really fully grown and in a position where it can do that? So we're going to talk about personal priorities and whether they are out of sync, out of balance with where your business is and where you want to take it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So, you know, you'll have a mortgage, which reflects that you'll have a lifestyle and tastes and preferences that reflect that. And it is very difficult to kind of rein that in. Okay, that becomes very easily human nature. So weird, isn't it? But we tend to find our sort of baseline, our minimum expectation, and that just tends to go up.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
That doesn't tend to be, at least subconsciously, without a conscious effort, we don't tend to sort of review and rein things back in. We're just happily going about and kind of growing and developing all the time and spending that bit more and expecting that bit more. And I don't think we're wrong to feel like that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
But it's understanding that in the early days, your business might not be in a position where it can afford that wage on a consistent basis. If you've come from a corporate job, then you've had, you know, you've been with a business which has been around for some time. And so with being around for some time, it has more. established ways of generating leads, converting leads, et cetera.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And so its income tends to be a little bit more reliable. Whereas when you are first starting out, there's a massive learning curve with running your own business, but also there's a massive learning curve with your customer base, your lead generation, et cetera. And so the likelihood is that you're not going to get consistent leads.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
You're potentially going to take on clients that are more time consuming, less ideal, et cetera, et cetera. And so that is likely to impact your income. Also, as you are running between wearing one hat and another in your business, you can drop the ball somewhat and you can end up on that cycle of that feast and famine where you get clients on board and then you're delivering for them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So you take the eye off the ball of marketing and then so that continues. So then you'll put your focus into marketing and then you'll get those clients. And so it is a real sort of up and down roller coaster. And so with that comes that impact on finances. And at the end of the day,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
If you don't have money to keep things ticking over, for example, you know, you have support, you have to let support go, you have to have somebody who's on a temporary basis, like zero hours or whatever with you, so that they're in a position where you can drop their hours down as and when you need to, then things are going to, you know, move and develop forwards and then they're going to stagnate.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
If you have a gap in your skill set that you need to fill, either with an individual themselves or by upskilling yourself or another of your team, then again, you're going to have to fork out money in order to fill that gap and get that skills in-house. And so with that, you're going to have to invest.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So what we'll cover is balancing those personal priorities like renovations, like holidays, like life, but also why it matters. So many early stage entrepreneurs unknowingly sabotage their progress because they take too much money out of the business and expect it to develop and grow on too little resources.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
If you don't have the money to invest because you've bought your windows, because you've bought your holidays... then that's when you're going to have that struggle. And so it is really important to remember, you know, you can't harvest fruit from a tree that hasn't matured yet.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And so you're taking from it before it's in a position where, you know, you've really given it a chance to establish itself and be able to take that hit. So I'm saying, oh, you can't do it. You shouldn't do it. It's going to stunt your growth. But how? How does it really do that? Well, you know, it can be in the form of missed opportunities. Your sales isn't up to scratch, for example.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
You know, obviously, I love sales, but you haven't put the effort into learning. You haven't invested in learning how best to go about securing people, particularly those ideal clients or people when, you know, you really have to kind of you feel like you're taking a step up. and so you haven't got those skills to secure those individuals and so those are missed opportunities.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
You've also got the fact that you just can't progress, like I said before, taking on a member of staff and then not being able to have them all the time, having to let them go or I know a lot of clients who've got VAs and so they have to increase and decrease the hours and so then they spend more time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
If you're not able to pay for your VA, for example, to do your admin for you, then you've got to do your admin, which means then that takes you off
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
either the delivery or it takes you off the lead gen side of things unless you've got somebody in on your marketing if you've got somebody in on your marketing and you can no longer afford them then because you know they've generated the money they've got the money into the business but you've taken it out for extracurricular activities then What can you do? You can't pay them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis. And today we are going to be talking around, are you holding your business back? It's a big balance. It's a massive balancing act between your personal priorities and your business growth, particularly when you run your own business. And so that's what we're going to be talking about.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So you're not going to be able to use their services. And so that's where that growth can be really stunted. And that in itself can put you into that kind of feast and famine scenario. So, you know, you can get loads of money in and think, oh, yeah, this is great. But you spend and then you don't have the minimum that you need to kind of keep going and keep reinvesting.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So you're like, yeah, okay, Sarah, I get the problem. I can totally see where you're coming from. What do I do about it? Well, you know, there are ways to navigate it to help you to better balance things. The first up really, the sort of main thing that you can do is manage your expectations. You know, don't plan for a wedding, a big holiday.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
etc etc don't put that pressure on yourself but also on your business and its finances um to come up with the goods for that instead you know pare things back a bit when you make the decision to work for yourself then be prepared to to just rain things in a bit not go on that holiday not have those those new things or or that big christmas etc that you would normally plan
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
That can sound a bit pants. Absolutely it can. But if actually you use forecasting and revenue cash flow, then you can have a realistic view of actually where your finances are at and what you can therefore afford. At this stage, it makes sense not to get yourself into debt. I know people who have. I've been there with myself with using money and using credit.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
to get yourself in a better position. That can really seriously damage your business and put a lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. So if you've got that better grip, and that's the thing is, is people put their head in the sands. I must speak to people on a weekly basis who want to leave their job. And I get it. I was there. I didn't like being told what to do. I was really conscious of...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
This all came about really because I was talking to a business owner who I was asking them, you know, how's it going? They've been going now about just under a year and they were telling me that, you know what, I'm disappointed with the amount of leads that I'm getting. My audience isn't a bad size, but I'm just not getting the conversions that I was expecting at this stage.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
how to balance the life that I wanted with having a job. And so I totally understand the desire to leave a full-time job. The challenge is that that provides a consistent revenue. And so if you're not going to be getting that revenue from there, where are you going to be getting it from?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And so regularly with clients who are sort of leaving the corporate world and setting up their own business, I'll encourage them to have kind of key milestones. So milestones of the amount of a buffer in the bank. So how many months they are comfortable with having sat there waiting to be used if things don't go so well. And the thing is, is we're not just talking about, oh, you know what?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
I always get leads. I always get clients. We're talking around like people being ill. You know, I'm in a position now where I've got a young family, but I've also got aging parents. There are demands on me everywhere. And so, you know, it's all right when the going's good, but if something goes wrong, then what? So having that many there, not wanting to be too doom and gloom,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
but it can really help you to sort of weather those storms a little bit better and with less financial stress. So, you know, consider those alternative revenue sources. Do you want to keep that full-time job a little bit longer? You know, yes, I totally get it. It is really, really hard work to have a business on the side and a full-time job. I've been there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And so I totally get you don't want to do that long-term, but just understanding, okay, this is the consequence. This is how much money I'm going to have to earn. I speak to people who need that. 15 to 20k a month coming through their business in order to be able to sort out their personal finances and continue with the income that they used to.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And that's the thing is, is I'll speak to people on a regular basis saying to them, you know, so what is your minimum? And they're like, yeah, you know, it's 10k. And I'm like, okay, but what actually is the minimum to cover your bills and to enable you to eat? And they're like, oh yeah, you know, that's like half of that. And so it is being honest with yourself.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
The more finances you expect out of your business, the quicker you're going to have to get going. And, you know, I'm going to come onto this in a bit, but the more you actually need to invest in help. You know, it is possible to do this all on your own and to get your business up and running really, really quickly, generating loads of money.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
You hear success stories, you know, around people doing this. But the thing is, is they are success stories. They are not the norm. You know, everyone knows the statistics on how many businesses fail within the first three years. It is really high, some quote, as much as like 75%. And so, you know, why is that? That is because, well, you know, they failed because of the financial side of stuff.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And it's like, where does that come in? And I think this expectation and, you know, that sort of willingness to compromise is a big thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
you know sometimes those holidays those renovations they just need to wait um you need to prioritize back into your business you need to fill those gaps if you thought about your business and your skill set as a calendar and you need to fill those holes until those holes are filled you know you haven't got a complete unit you haven't got a complete option you are going to get loss of income and loss of clients um through through those those holes that those gaps in your skill set that you've got
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
So how can you go about this? How can you navigate this? Well, yes, you can be prepared. You can be ready to compromise. You can look at alternative incomes. But when you're in that situation, one of the best things that you can do is to budget for reinvestment. OK, so set aside a fund for business growth. OK, so for coaching, for marketing, for software.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
For resources, that means that your business will be able to get itself on its feet and stable, and ideally in as short a time as possible so that then you can start to expect more from it. What you need to do in order to do that budget is to identify the help you need. So clarify on what support will drive your business forwards, how much that will cost. Do research, okay? It's window shopping.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
and so obviously it's sales i love sales so i was straight in there asking all the questions and what came up for me was when i asked them around what have they done so far to make changes with this and actually i saw a post out on linkedin this week about you know people when they want to do better at something than when they want to improve if you want to learn
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
It's fun window shopping. So don't be afraid to do that. The biggest leaps forwards that I've made in my business is when I've invested in a mentor. Before that, you know, you're sort of bumbling along, you're kind of second guessing yourself, you're looking at different options, you end up getting distracted by all these kind of low priced and
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
free kind of insights into how different people work. And you're literally all over the place, which is wasting like really the most valuable thing, which is time. And that's the thing is, is you only have 24 hours in a day. You know, there is lots of money out there, but there It's about spending that time wisely.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And that's where, particularly if you choose to stay in a side hustle, so have your business as sort of a side hustle and have a full-time job still so that you keep those funds coming in, you want to be spending that time really, really wisely. The amount of people who I've worked with who have still been in full-time jobs
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
jobs because they've wanted to make sure that the time they are spending on their business, which is very, very precious and very, very small, was the right activities to be doing. So they're working smarter, not harder. And I think that's the main thing here is using your time wisely to then get yourself in a position where your business can then generate money.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
And lots of people I speak to, they're like, if. And that's another thing is that I want to put in here is about belief. Okay, you look around you and try not to beat yourself up by where other people are because they're on a different timeline to you. They're on a different journey. And also what you see on social media isn't always true. But look around you and look for the inspiration.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
Look at the people who are those few steps ahead of you. Look at what they're achieving. Look at what they're doing. And, you know, that can be a starting point as a mentor is even somebody you're not paying somebody who doesn't even know that you're that they're your mentor, but somebody that you're looking to and you are looking at how they navigate things and you are mirroring that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
can have a real impact i talk often on um normally actually when i get interviewed on podcasts i talk around you know using podcasts as to to create that kind of environment that bubble around yourself there's um that um five five steps of a highly effective person or whatever it was
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Are You Holding Your Business Back?
um you know they talk around in that and it's touched in so many different places that you are the sum of the five people you hang around with the most and the thing is is that you know it can cost a lot of money to hang around with the right people but with podcasts and things like that nowadays podcasts just like this one you can be surrounded by individuals who are doing really well that's the point of this podcast
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
You are your business, you are your brand. So you want to make sure that it is what you would say, how you would say it. It is you. It sounds like you because it is you because it is words that you've said and pearls of wisdom that you have shared. And so the more you feed your AI with your own content, transcripts, previous posts, et cetera, et cetera, It helps it learn.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So putting your posts in and going, create more something like this, create this in the style of this, use this words, focus on this, can really help it to learn. And that leads me on to what not to do. Okay, the not tos with this are don't copy and paste AI generated text because it's not going to sound like you because it's not you, particularly right in the beginning. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
If it feels robotic, is it because the AI doesn't know you well enough or do you normally sound that formal? The likelihood is, is that it's actually, if you think it's robotic, it's because it doesn't know you well enough. And so refine that output by, you know, tweaking it, personalizing it, putting it back in, um, you know, asking it to structure it differently or, or, um,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
or format it differently so that you can it will also be learning at the same time i have found the fastest way for it to better understand me is to feed it my podcast episodes like this one
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So to kind of conclude, you know, you want to be feeding your AI as much as possible with you, with authentic bits of information that are genuinely you, genuinely your thoughts, generally, genuinely who you are and what you stand for so that it can better understand you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Whereas once you've got to use it and you've got to know it, I do feel now like I'm in a position where I've been using it for a solid... eight, nine months and adapting the way that I use it, evolving the way that I use it. And so now I thought was a great time to kind of share where I'm at with it and how I use it. So when and how do I use AI?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
The more words you provide it with that you use on a regular basis, the more it's going to sound like you, the less of the editing it's going to have to do because it is you. OK, and that's the thing is, is it's like, oh, I want it to sound like me. It is you. It's just repurposing you. It's just using the information you've already added. It's pulling it out.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So it's like having a VA who has taken notes on you and then put resources and information together from that. That's what it's doing. OK, experiment with your AI for content creation. OK, but make sure you refine it to match your style and let it know what's your style. Try dictating your next post or podcast outline into your AI.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
and ask to structure it and see how it helps, see what it comes up with, okay? And let me know how you get on because I would really, really like to know. So thank you so much, guys, for listening. Please do share your thoughts on AI and content creation. You can do that on comments on the podcast. You can message me, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, on any of the social platforms.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Alternatively, you can email me at sarah at youcan.online. If you have enjoyed this episode or any of the other episodes, please do rate this podcast. Please do follow this podcast and support me by sharing this podcast with anybody you think would enjoy it. So that's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you again next week. Until then, bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Well, the when is really, for me, I have too many ideas, not enough structure. That is my kind of challenge. So I've got a creative mind. I come up with lots of ideas. But when I actually go to write that down, it tends to be scattered. It tends to lack direction. I'm trying to get four or five key kind of bits out of one go. And so for me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Now, the process that I tend to use, the software that I tend to use is ChatGPT, and there are obviously other softwares out there, and that's the one that I am most familiar with and have spent the time getting to know and sort of building my bank of words and phrases within. I have so many ideas, but structuring them into an effective piece of content for me is really challenging.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I wasn't being as effective as I could be with the content that I was creating. And that went for my podcast as well. I'd go off on all sorts of weird and wonderful tangents. Less so with this podcast because I've been more structured, because I have been using AI to help me. I'll come on to that in a minute. But also with my previous podcast, I had to be all over the place.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So a lot of my clients face the same issue. They know their expertise. They know what they're doing, but it's presenting it in a cohesive way. usable way, really. And so that is where AI has really come into play for me. So how do I use it to improve my content process? Well, in structuring content itself, AI helps me to organize things in a clear and a logical flow.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So for example, using this podcast as an example, I will go to my chat GPT, I'll open it up. It's always my one, don't go, and I'll come onto that in a little bit, as it's some of my sort of tips on when to use it and when not to use it and what to use. But using the same system, it helps it gets to know you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So what I tend to do is go onto it and I will say, create a 20 minute podcast episode or approximate 20 minute podcast episode following these key things, focusing on this, explaining this. And then it will provide me with a structure. Okay, so from there, I am then able to follow that logical flow and stick to the logical flow, which is what I'm doing now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I'm currently on point three of my logical flow. The first one was the introduction. The second one was introducing the challenge. The third one was how I use AI. The fourth one that I'm going to come on to is what not to do. And then my final thoughts. And that helps me give those structure. And then I've got different key things that AI has suggested.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
And then I've inputted additional things or remove some of the AI stuff. under each of those headings, but it helps me be structured. I already failed at stage two and went straight into how I use it before talking more around my challenges. And so it really does help me stay on track. This podcast episode in itself is proof of that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So when I'm generating, then I go on from structuring that content and producing the episode, I will then generate episode descriptions. So What I would do is I will use software and there's Descript. There's all sorts of different softwares out there which would take your podcast, your audio and put it into a transcript.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
And then what I will do is I will, normally it's short enough to be able to put it into AI. Sometimes I have to shorten it a little bit.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
myself before I can put it in there so that you can get the crux of what was going on and the reason I use that and I don't use the structure is because it is my words it is able to take from there from that structure from that backbone of the process and structure of the podcast it's able to take my own words from there to create the description so it's much more accurate with what is in the podcast episode and I'm not sort of trying to to bend and alter what I'm doing
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
To reflect what is in a description, for example. So it will take my transcript and it will put a description in there. From there, I can ask it to make that description more SEO optimized. So more on what people would be searching for so that my podcast comes up on that. It will then sometimes suggest keywords as well within that description.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I will then ask it to create social media content from that transcript. So it's all my own words that are then being used to turn into social media posts. What I do for social media posts is I will ask it, for example, for LinkedIn, I tend to ask it for a more peer-to-peer observational kind of style of post. So I'm talking to somebody at the same sort of level as me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
If you notice on LinkedIn, there's lots of kind of, it's a bit like the Times. There's lots of observations of things rather than the preaching and the telling in the same way as other platforms. With Facebook, I ask it to go with a more sociable conversational style. And then from there, I am able to develop those different pieces of content.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Therefore, using AI has been a real game changer for me. What we're going to be doing in this episode is I'm going to be talking you through with you exactly the process that I use, the process that I use to create this podcast itself, but also how I then use it onto social media and how you can adapt if you don't have a podcast, how you can adapt what I'm doing for you. social media.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Now, they will all need editing and I'll come on what not to do in a little bit, but they will all need tweaking, they will all need altering. And even though I have fed hours and hours and hours now of me into my
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
chat GPT I always go through and there's always changes to be made a lot less than they used to be but absolutely I want it to be covering the information that I want to be covering and I want it to be in words that I would use so then and but what is really interesting with that is is my husband bless his little cotton socks has actually said to me Sarah that sounds really AI and I was like actually I wrote that
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
And so there are bits that I still write myself. There are bits that I will take out and then I'll do massive alterations on. I tend to use quite large words when I am writing. And so I can come across as a little bit like AI. But if that is you, if that's where you talk, that's the way you talk. Embrace it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
But it is worth knowing that sometimes what it throws out actually is a very good reflection of you. And so there's been a number of times that I've read through and I thought, yeah, OK, that comes across formal. But I am quite formal in the way that I speak. And so that is absolutely fine. And the way that I communicate when I am writing. So. that's all really helpful.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Um, what I have said within, you know, within this and a big tip for you here is the transcript side of things, feeding it. If you want it to sound like you, then feed it with you, feed it information, feed it reams and reams of you. And, you know, people have said about that whole, Oh, ask chat GPT what, um,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Hello and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're going to be talking around AI and how to structure and streamline your content using AI.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
what I don't know about myself or what it would say about me or you know what my ambitions and all this kind of stuff is and you're doing that because you've actually put that information in it is able to make observations and assumptions about you based on the information you have fed it whilst that is a really nice fun pastime and then people go on to social media and they share it
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
It can actually be used in a really effective way to write bios. For example, I had I wanted to write an updated bio the other day and I couldn't find my previous one. And I actually went on and I said, write me a bio. And literally the only thing it missed out on was my book, my best selling book. Other than that, it had all the key things in there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
And it had the key things in there because I fed it with that information. And so it can be such, such a useful tool. And you can see how that could look to replace human elements and human support that some of us are already receiving with VAs and things like that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
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Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
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Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Now, it is worth saying at this point that I am one of those people who I am better at talking. I might not be that structured with my talking, but I'm better talking. I don't overanalyze. I just get the information out there. Then I am at writing things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
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Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. It has, it definitely has a place. So moving on from creating social media content, repurposing that content. I talk to clients and I'm gonna do more on this within the podcast around how to make a bank of podcast episodes, how to make a bank of content
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Not to go mad and create things for the year. I'm not a fan of that. I've got a client though, who is gonna be going off on maternity leave towards the end of this year, well, middle of this year. And so, you know, we are banking content with her. We are getting ahead of the game and we are using AI to help us with that. That doesn't mean it's not gonna be personalized.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
If you are a writer, if you are really, really good at writing things, if you enjoy the process of writing things, then you might think, you know what, parts of this aren't for me. But I do firmly believe that everybody can take something from this episode. Talking to clients, I wasn't the earliest adopter of AI. I was a big fan of seeing how it panned out, see how people were using it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
It doesn't mean that it's not gonna be you. It's not gonna have your pearls of wisdom in there. You aren't gonna be lazy and just go create me a course and it creates some sort of bog standard rubbish that it's pulled. It's going to be stuff that comes from you because you're going to feed it with that information. It's going to structure it for you in the right way and an efficient way.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
But, you know, repurposing a bit of content, for example, if you want to write around, I don't know, news resolutions. So you're a weight loss coach and you want to talk about why news resolutions don't work.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
you would go on and you could actually dictate onto otter onto one of you can even do it onto notes um on your if you've got if you're appled like me so you can dictate onto your notes that will transcribe it from that transcription you can then go on to your ai and you can do you can ask it to take that information and put it into a social media um piece of content so i would say you know make this as sociable and conversational for facebook
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
It would then create that. You can then edit it. You can then put it back in and then you can go, convert this in a peer-to-peer observational style for LinkedIn, and it can do that. You can say, shorten this and provide me with hashtags for Instagram. And so straight away, you're getting it onto those different platforms. You're not having to spend hours doing it. It's your words.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
They tend to keep with your words when they're redoing it and adjusting its structure and the words within it. They tend to keep with the same key things, but you have to go through and you need to check what your sociable conversational style is versus somebody else's. But again, over time it learns and so the whole process is speeded up.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
You can also use AI to extract key snippets and rework them into different formats. So if you're talking around, for example, news resolutions and weight loss and why they don't work, you can also then pull out probably what you're going to be talking around is the fact that it is short lived and you're trying to make too many changes.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
So then you can ask it to write another piece of content focusing on why changing too many things at once. won't help you to keep a habit and to make it maintained in the long term. And so you can start to repurpose that in different formats with different bits of information, with different takes on it really, from the same key core bit of transcript that you put in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I actually now with my posts, I have links to my posts that I put out. I have a bit of a resource bank. I look at my posts, I look at the ones which are popular and then I look to build on that. So I might look at that piece of content and think, okay, how can I work that in a different way? How can I say that in a different way?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I will then keep the original and I will alter it and then I will do like the second version, third version, fourth version, and then you can put those out. It is very, very easy, particularly when you've got key things you're going to be talking around all the time. I call it beating the drum to clients.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
When you're beating the drum on the same things, it is very easy to create a bank of resources, a bank of content that you can use over a period of time without worrying about your audience getting bored or anything like that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
What I would say, though, is when you're new to the content is there's no point in, you know, totally changing tack, for example, pivoting on your business, creating a load of content on a new approach, on a new message. And then, you know, yes, I've got six months worth of content.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
And actually, you know, you put out your first few bits of content and you realize that it absolutely is just tumbleweed.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
though it does it tanks there's no there's no energy behind it people aren't resonating with it you're gonna have to change it up so don't go creating loads and loads of content on something that is untested but once it's tested and you know people like it then it's about just creating more you can ask it to create it in the same style you can take inspiration from somebody else's style but don't copy their posts they're not you they're not going to have the same priorities opinions
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
I've gone about quietly using it in my own time, in my own way, behind the scenes, because I didn't want to be sharing false information. There were so many people who sprung up overnight as experts in AI. It's like, it's been around for 10 minutes, guys. How much of an expert can you be?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
You are enough. You do not have to go out there and start plagiarizing other people. What you can do though, is you can look for the structure, the inspiration, the kind of take on things. And you can ask ChatGPT to help you to structure your content in a similar way. But remember that it is better to be original. There is no point repurposing somebody else's post that did well, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Maximising AI for Content Strategy: My Process & Tips
Because it's already done well and it's already been done by that person. Be you, find original stuff that comes from you and then, you know, share that with the world, express it in a structured way that people are going to engage with and then, you know, you can use that momentum to build you up. Because personalization, it really matters. You are the crux of this, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Number eight is to reconnect with your audience. Okay. So that's a little bit like some of the, um, points that I made earlier on with, um, engagement and optimizing and launching now is get that energy behind your brand. It takes time. You know, you don't want to turn up on the 26th of December and be like, yeah, I'm going to make Haywater Sunshines with this whole Crimbo Limbo thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And everyone's like, who are you? I've not heard from you in like eight, nine months. So start now investing and reengaging and reconnecting with your audience. Also, take the opportunity. Surveys are not only a really, really good way to re-engage people because people like talking about themselves. They like sharing their opinion. But also, it's a great way to market research.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Am I going to be providing them with what they want? Because, and did you notice I said want? Okay. So we are so very, very good sometimes when we really know our audience and we really know what their needs are, that we supply them with what we know they need. But the problem is, is that sometimes what we know they need isn't what they want. Yeah. Think dentist. Yeah.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Nobody wants to go to the dentist today. No one's like skipping in there being like, but we go because it's a responsible, sensible thing to do. That's if you can find a dentist in the UK, terrible at the moment. And so, you know, think that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
looking and scrolling through their phones, looking at things to buy with Christmas money that they've received, or they're looking for that entertainment. And that is when not only interrupt marketing, which I could care about all day, having the agency side of things with interrupt marketing and getting in front of those individuals when they are in that buying mode.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So just because you know that this person needs this checkup and they need to be doing things on a regular basis doesn't mean that they're willing and there to pay for it. And so what are they willing to part with their money for and start there? Also, sharing sneaky peeks of January offers to your law followings can really, really help.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So, you know, I've got this thing coming, but I'm going to offer to you first. I've got a beta client at the moment. Well, I've got a client at the moment who's looking for beta testers. And I put that out to my kind of like little inside client group, which I haven't really mentioned ever before.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
But it's a group that I've created and they get access to resources and it's people that I've worked with one way or another, or I am currently working with who I really enjoy working with. And so I've created kind of like a little hub area for them to engage and access information and they get offers first.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So I had a client today who needed some beta testers, so I dropped the opportunity in there first. I'll give them a few hours. I'll probably give them until after I've done the check-ins tonight with the alliance guys. And then I'll open it up probably to my group if those spaces haven't been taken. But it just gives them that sneak preview.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
It's a bonus point of being on the inside and being that bit more connected with you. And it makes them feel special and it's useful. So, you know, providing those previews, reengaging with them, making them feel special, making them feel heard can really, really help. And finally, one very important one is financial preparation, number nine.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So, you know, looking at your pricing, is your pricing right? Does it reflect the value and does it remain competitive going into 2025? Or, you know, have you developed, have you got more proof of concept? Have you got more of an audience? So can you be charging that a little bit more? Do a bit of work, do a bit of market research.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
get clear and get your words around how you would sell offers to clients, to existing clients, or to clients coming in in future for a higher value package, for example. So you're looking at readdressing your pricing and upping that game. What can you do? What could you add to your current offering to increase that price? Or very last one, I promise, is how to look
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Look at your business and think about how can you take a step back? How can you rearrange the balance, readjust the balance? What went well this year? What didn't go so well? Obviously, you've got the opportunity to do your plan for 2025. I am going to be running workshops on that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And I can share with you on the podcast some of the things that you would be thinking around as we head nearer towards that new year. But having that understanding of this is what went well this year, this is what I'd like to address and how you might go about that. The key thing here, guys, is whatever you do is to make the most of this time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Don't regret it because it doesn't come around very, very often. You can lay that groundwork now. You can hit that ground running come January. So you're in that position where you can really make the most of those opportunities and that ability to serve your audience when they are receptive. So that's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you again next week.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
In the meantime, please, please do like, rate, follow, subscribe, share this podcast far and wide so we can get as many listeners behind us as we can so we can support each other and keep growing together. So that's it for me guys this week. I will speak to you again next. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
This is great, not just for B2C with retail opportunities, et cetera, et cetera, but it's an interrupt marketing, obviously, one that I could talk around in much detail, but it is also a great opportunity for B2B sales. So people who provide businesses with services, with products.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And the reason for that is that those individuals beginning to look into the new year of things getting going again after Christmas, it is the kind of peak getting active again time after September.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So I think between January and September, depending on what industry you're in, you have those peaks, one potentially being more than the other, but both great opportunities for pushing your business forward and getting more customers on board. And so how do you make the most of that? And that is what I'm going to be talking around today.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
That Christmas limbo time is the time that you're really talking around. When I'm talking around January and getting ready for January, I am really talking about the 26th onwards to kind of mid-January are great opportunities. Now, obviously, not everybody wants to be working and actively working during that period of time. And I am absolutely with you on that one.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
But there's lots of things you can do to capitalize on that without having to be present for your customer base. But just to be clear on the opportunity that is available, there was new research done recently which talked around nearly half, it was basically 48% of Brits shop more during the Christmas limbo, the Crimbo limbo time than they do actually Black Friday. So 48% shop more.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
more, then you've got the fact that 92% of Generation Z and millennials spend the same or more than what they did on Black Friday during that Crimbo Limbo time. So everyone is push, push, push, focus on the Black Friday offers. You know, Amazon this year is running a Black Friday week, which is actually more like 10 days. There is so much push towards that Black Friday.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
But actually beyond that, there is an amazing opportunity with that limbo time, particularly for people who are B2B. And those individuals are supporting particularly smaller enterprises. Those business owners are online looking for solutions, looking at ways to make 2025 a better year for themselves and their business. So why are you telling me this, Sarah, as we go into December?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Christmas is not a make, hey, once the sun shines kind of opportunity for this customer base. What is an opportunity is that time, well, is January, but more specifically, that limbo, crimbo limbo as they call it now, between Christmas and New Year, that period of time where between Christmas and New Year, you're at home, you're more than likely not working.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Well, because now is a great time to maximise those sales, to be in a good position within your business. It's very easy to be like, oh, you know what? Everyone's winding down for Christmas. I'll wind down too.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And absolutely, if that's what you want to do, if you've had a busy time, et cetera, et cetera, then that is absolutely up to you because at the end of the day, it is your business and you can do whatever you like.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
But if you're thinking, you know what, actually, it appeals to me to put a bit of effort in so that I'm in a position to make the most of January, or you know what, I need to make the most of January, then listen up because I have nine ways, nine ways in which you can act now to maximise those sales come that crimbo limbo onwards. Okay, the first one,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
is plan and launch a targeted marketing campaign, okay? So you can actually launch now, you can do pre-book January offers, you can do early bird, you can do seasonal positioning with tailored messaging. So for example, New Year goals. There is no reason why you can't take people's bookings now for starting in January.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And for a lot of people, that's actually quite appealing because they've got these things going around in their head. They're thinking, oh my gosh, you know what, next year I need to do better with this or I need to be working on that. And they can actually feel like, you know what, I've ticked that off. And that is one of the approaches that I'm going to be doing with people is to help them to
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
to feel like you know what yeah that is a problem and i'll get it sorted and i'll get that sorted in january and so i will be doing pre-bookings okay i'm also going to be helping people prepare for january and dusting off and getting their courses up to scratch but that's for a different time You've also got the ability to create holiday content.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So make content now that is relevant, that is going to engage people, engage your audience, provide them with the touch points so that they are more confident and more aware of you. And so come that opportunity, that time to buy, they are going to know about you, they're going to remember you and they're going to want to buy from you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Next on my to-do list, number two, is to optimize your sales funnel. Okay, so refresh those landing pages. Ensure that they're optimized for conversions. They've got clickable to actions. They've got the testimonials there. They've got value propositions. They're ticking all those boxes and they look good. They are loading well, et cetera.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Okay, so do a little bit of a refresh, a check and audit on there. If you're not confident over it and you want somebody to cast their eye over it, then get somebody to cast their eye over it. You know, it helps to have somebody look at something and say, you know, actually, this is what I would do differently. It doesn't have to cost an awful lot.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
I don't charge a crazy amount for it because you're not actually doing the content. You're not actually writing the copy. You're critiquing it. And that is a different thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
scenario the other thing is to look at your email sequence email sequences so what i mean by that is those nurture campaigns um where you can target past clients so you could set something up now to go live during crimbo limbo okay if you get your technology right it can work for you there is no need to go and touch it it will just send out those emails as and when you want them to go out
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
People aren't expecting you to be working, which is really nice. This is one of, this is one of my favourite things about the Christmas period. is that time where you might be doing the odd thing with work, but there's no expectation for you to be there. The summer holidays, people are taking holiday at different times.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So obviously the focus is gonna be on the new year. So if you're talking, if your audience is motivated by new year changes, then that's what your content, that's what your email sequences are gonna be talking around. You've also got the opportunity to run retargeting ads. So use remarketing campaigns, to re-engage warm leads. Yeah. Get in front of people, get in front of website videos.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
For some people, it might be a case of looking at the landing pages and the websites and making sure that you have that Facebook pixel on there so that you can make the most of those things. The next thing on my list is promotions and incentives. So I've got three little elements with this. You've got gift cards, so you can sell gift vouchers, okay, as holiday presents.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Hello, and welcome to episode 23 of the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're gonna be talking around maximizing the opportunity of sales in January. A lot of my customer base are service-based businesses who, when it becomes closer and closer to Christmas, it begins to wind down and get quieter.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And that is something that you could look to do. So people could look to buy them as Christmas presents. You know, You can very easily say, like for me, I'm thinking straight away, for me, would that work? But the reason I include it is because I don't know. I haven't tried it. And so until you try it, do you actually know?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Maybe somebody somewhere out there, I know somebody recently who was working with me who they got financed towards working with me as a wedding gift because they said, you know what, if I can get this sorted, then, you know, that we can really set ourselves up in our new lives together, which was really nice. So, you know, I've been gifted or part gifted as a wedding gift.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So you literally never know. Not personally, I haven't been gifted, my services were. But anyway, so you can also pair services with complimentary products or add-ons for a limited time. So you can do those bundle offers. You could look at running those now to encourage people to buy now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
You could also be putting them together and putting the resources together so that they are good to go come the limbo time. The other thing is referrals. So look at your referral partnerships. Have you got referrals in place? Could you get referrals in place? If you're thinking, you know what, I don't know anybody who could refer clients to me, then make a change, okay? Connect.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
If you spent the whole of December connecting with even just five people who could potentially recommend people to you in future, then look at the position you'll be in come Christmas Eve. You know, what better way to set up into the new year than with all those new contacts? And whilst we're on about resources, number four for you is leveraging your social proof.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So look at collecting those testimonials. When was the last time you asked somebody for a testimonial? Reach out to those past clients. Get fresh reviews, okay, that highlight where you are now and what you have been doing and the impact that you've had on those individuals. Equally, you could take time in the next month to put case studies together.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Impactful stories of how you helped individuals go from where your audience is now to where they want to be. Putting those case studies together are a great resource. They can be put out between that limbo time, but they can also be used for future. So getting those in place now is a great use of your time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And so there is still people working and wanting to get things done and deadlines and people chasing you. Whereas actually during that Christmas period, everyone is wound down. Everyone is busy doing their own thing. And so there isn't that expectation of you getting back to people, of you pushing projects, et cetera, forwards. and so it's a really, really nice period in time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
so are number five strategic partnerships so collaboration with people so a little bit like the referral side of things and looking at that referrals and their bonuses but looking at collaborating with individuals who are influential in your industry in your for your market okay partnering with those that are aligned to you and seeing where that might be able to go so you know
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Basically, it's influencers, isn't it? But I think whenever you think influencers, you think of somebody, some tanned person with crazy white teeth sat on a beach somewhere touting a product. Whereas actually, it can be individuals who are respected within your industry, who you could partner with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Because if you genuinely know that what you can do can make a difference to people, then why wouldn't you reach out and speak to those individuals so that you can spread your message further? You could also look at setting up now cross promotions for the new year.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
So if you, you know, co-marketing campaigns or whatever you want to call them, but you know, cross promotions where you are, you see them on Instagram in the kind of simplest form where it's, you know, we're going to give away this bundle and it's like, like this person's page, follow this person and share with, tag two people. That is all about audience growth.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
That's all about cross-pollination between one business to another. And it can just be brands that serve the same people. You're not competing in any way. You're just serving the same individuals. Fairfax and Favour, they used to do great collaborations. There's a lot of these sort of equestrian-based businesses that tend to do that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
You've also got an opportunity to audit and enhance your systems. Look at your customer journey, okay? Look at your bookings. How do people check out? How do people access you? How are your bios looking? How are your links looking within those bios? You know, what's useful? What are you missing? When you look through that customer journey, when a customer comes to you, what problem do they have?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Do you solve that problem? Do you look to address that problem, discuss that problem, help them understand something better? What is it? What is the first touch point? Could you make it more impactful? Could you make it easier to access? Those sorts of things that you can be looking at. to understand if you can make it easy for that person to come into your world and then to go on to buy from you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
And that's the same with the sort of next thing in those audits and enhancements, which is to automate your workflow. So look at tools that do automatic email responders, for example, appointment reminders so that you get people showing up more.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
know how irritated have you been this year by people not showing up to sales calls so having something in place which automatically reminds them and any you know an opportunity to do an upsell have you got a product that sits at the front end um as a paid lead magnet is there something that you could put with it which could create an order bump is there something that you've been meaning to do to add on to there for the kind of next stage because
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
The idea is, is that that person will come into your world and that first problem will be solved. But then what's the next problem? And is that something that could be solved with something equally as hands off for you? But it could be nice and lucrative. It could help you edge towards ad spend or it could tilt you into the positive on your return on ad spend. So think about what you can do there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
What it also is is a great opportunity for online sales. You've got the likes, lots of online retailers, lots of websites that will report major peaks in their hits and their visitors over that period of time. I think one of the biggest days for people going online and looking at houses and buying holidays is Boxing Day because people have ticked the box on Christmas Day and they are then
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
All this information obviously comes from your numbers. If you don't have numbers, Yeah, if you're not aware of actually this is the number of people in, this is what happens next, this is what happened next, this is what costs me, cost of customer acquisitions, lifetime customer value.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
If you don't know those numbers, now is a great time to get systems in place to record them going forwards or to take the last couple of months and look at what those numbers look like so that you've got a foundation for next year. And this is the thing, right, is these quiet times are an amazing opportunity. They're not the make hay whilst the sun shines.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
You're not crazy busy chasing leads and opportunities. It is a great opportunity to get those foundations in place in your business. Number eight, oh no, sorry, number seven, is content and visibility. So think about your content, look at how visible you are, how easy are you to find online, okay? A little bit of a refresh, for example, on your SEO. So update your website, your blog,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
That will all help you to rank higher for relevant search terms. Have a look at search terms. So have a look through and see what people are searching on the search engines. You can go through that with Google Ads, the software that you can use. You can go into YouTube and you can look at some of the videos that other people are accessing and engaging with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
which can help you to better understand what people are looking for and how to attract people into your world. Maybe this could be your opportunity to do some of those videos that you've been putting off for forever and a day, where you can share some tips, you can create tutorials, you could even do reels, okay? So that you have them there and ready. You could get so far ahead.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
In the next month, you could create all your content for 2025. I know you can because I've got clients who teach people to do it. And so why aren't you making the most, please make the most of this opportunity. If you take nothing else in this podcast, then take the fact that you have a band of opportunity.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
Now you have time where, yes, it's interjected, particularly like for me, it's interjected with, you know, nativity plays and open book sessions and carol services and all those other things. But
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Maximise Your Sales During Crimbo Limbo 🎄
between those there is still opportunity to make the most of things being that little bit quieter okay so have a look at some of the things that you have been putting off a little bit like the video marketing it might be the reels it might be the creation of content it might be starting a podcast who knows if it is then please do get in touch because i have an amazing resource for you um which is very accessible and can really help you kickstart that podcast journey
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
The most time consuming customers you tend to come across are those which are not your ideal. You get them on board. You realise that they are going to be trickier. They are going to be more time consuming. And actually, they take up more than their allocated time. you could probably have two clients in that timescale and deliver better for them than one difficult and not ideal client.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So why is that important? Well, it's important because you don't want to get yourself wrapped up in the implementation. You've got to be working on the business as well as in it. You've also got the fact that you want proven results because proven results end up creating you more business, more work. And so you can begin to get referrals. You can begin to build a reputation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
You have evidence that those individuals who purchase your offer or the outcome that you're promising or the product will go on to actually receive that and get that positive experience and get that value for money and get the outcome that they've paid for.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So those testimonials, it becomes easier to secure new customers with those testimonials, with that social proof, with the evidence that you can deliver. If your time is spent delivering for people who aren't ideal, who aren't going to get results, who aren't going to provide you with that evidence. then it's going to waste your time. It's going to slow you down.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So I pick people on a regular basis who they have clients, they are busy, but when you start to look at the type of clients they've got, they're the ones that suck up all their time and won't give them that result. So I always say to people that you're not after that transaction, you're after the testimonial.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So when you're doing your sales process with those individuals, remember sales is a two-way process. It's your opportunity to get to know those individuals better and to suss them out and to see what they'll be like to work with. Your gut instinct on that is normally very accurate, just to put in there. And so you begin to realise that actually this person isn't ideal.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
This person is going to take up that time. And so during that sales process, it is a two-way vetting scenario. And sometimes it is a lot more sensible. And sometimes I totally understand this is really tricky to do, but it's easy to let a non-ideal client go.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're going to be tackling the number one reason why most businesses struggle and consequently go on to fail. More importantly, how you can avoid it. Okay, we'll cover why leads matter so much, how to attract the right kind of customers and how to avoid the trap of scaling without a solid client base. So let's jump in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
um or you know to be more specific to let somebody go who who is going to take up too much of your time they can they don't have to be your perfect client but if you can get those ideas that you know what this person is going to take up a lot of my time they're complaining they're they're they're absorbing a lot um they're taking a lot from me and they're not making as much progress as i'd like for example if you're an expert if it's a product and they're not necessarily going to be using that product in the right sort of way they're not going to get the
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
And so let those individuals go and use that product for the right people. Use your offer for the right people. So you've started out, you've got those foundations there, you're getting leads in. Then it comes the next bit, which is the scaling trap. Okay, so you've got different times within your business that actually leads and the amount of leads coming through may become a problem.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So the next kind of key bit is the scaling side of things. When your overheads start to increase, you start to take on members of staff, even if that is on a sort of temporary or contract basis.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
if you scale too soon once you've got some success that temptation is to scale quickly yeah to hire more people to get people into those roles to be doing the things that you don't necessarily enjoy that much to be doing the implementation and when we were growing the agency you know we were had to be very mindful and we found ourselves in a position where we had people on the payroll
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
who were not customer facing, who were not income generating. For example, with the agency that we had, you were taking on staff as media buyers. And so the thing is a media buyer meant that you could increase your capacity.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Other supporting staff, somebody to edit videos, somebody to do the admin side of things, they, whilst they could help things run more smoothly, they were not income generating. And so you were better off looking at those income generating opportunities than you were looking to fill roles where it's the admin side of stuff.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
You can get a VA in, you could get a PA in on a sort of temporary basis to help you with those sorts of things and see how it goes. But don't overstretch yourself, particularly on people who are not income generating roles. So you end up increasing your expenditure on HR, for example. You might invest in more tools. You might increase your marketing spend. But this is the problem.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
If you haven't nailed down that system for consistently attracting and converting those quality leads, if you're relying heavily, for example, on referrals, then you're not in control of that pipeline and how quickly those individuals are coming through. What you want to be able to do really with your pipeline is to understand, right, I do this and this increases the amount of interest.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
And then I can scale that back when I don't need anybody and then I can scale it up again when I do. And so you want something that you can be in more control over, a bit more like a tap that you can switch on and off. Between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date with everyday tasks, who has time to stress about website security?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Well, with Kinsta they take care of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best, which is probably not website security. So what is Kinsta? Well, Kinsta provides managed hosting for WordPress. So offering lightning fast loading times, top tier security and unmatched human only customer support.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
First up, we want to be looking at the foundations. Okay, so when you start out in business, every business needs customers. Without them, you don't have a business. You have a hobby and potentially a very expensive and time-consuming one at that. Okay, when you're starting out, that focus should be on the building of that predictable and repeatedly way to generate leads.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
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The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
They have a user-friendly customer dashboard called MyKingster that makes managing your site or multiple sites a breeze. MyKingster is packed with a range of features that simplify site management, including tools for cache control, debugging, redirecting, geolocation, and even CDN setup.
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The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
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The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. That is what you're looking for when you are looking for having those processes in place to get those leads. A lot of people end up scaling before they've nailed down a system for consistently attracting and converting those leads. And then the problem is then,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
With scaling, you've got more overheads, you've got more pressures to bring in that money and that puts a lot more pressure on you to actually bring in those customers. Then you're more likely to take on customers who aren't the right sort of fit because you need the money and then there you go again, you go into that cycle.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Why do most businesses fail? It's not what you're thinking, it's not a lack of passion, it's not issues with the product or the offer or even their competition. It comes down to one thing and that is not enough quality leads that actually convert into paying customers. Welcome to the You Can Podcast.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So if you've got more expenses than you have revenue, if you're relying on inconsistent or low quality leads that are keeping you super busy, or you're overworking and underpaying despite working harder. So we found at the agency that the only people who were getting the decent, consistent wages were people who were working for us, not ourselves.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
And that is where we really needed to kind of take a check on that. And also to be fair, figure out what direction we wanted to go in and where our skills lay and where we actually wanted to be spending our time. So why leads still matter at this stage is because more revenue comes from those more of those conversions. OK.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
The takeaway on this is if you haven't got a proven, predictable lead generation system in place, then I would hold off the scaling as much as possible, put temporary stuff into positions, et cetera, et cetera, to fulfill what you've got, but be in a position where you can easily do something about it if you find yourself missing those clients coming through.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Okay, you need that pipeline or whatever else you want to call it, which refers to that journey that people go on. You need to have people in that process of getting to know you, like and trust you, to be in a position to buy from you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So I talked about the problem and you're like, yeah, okay, Sarah, I get that. I definitely have one of those problems. But what do you do about it? Well, you know that I love ideal client, okay? And the first step in this process is to look at your ideal client, okay? Get super clear on who you want to be working with, the problems that they are facing, the problems that you are solving, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Where are they hanging out? Okay, because that's really key. That's where you can tap into that resource. It's your little happy hunting ground. Where can you go and find customers? Where can you get in front of them and show them that you are the answer to their problems? Show them that you understand their problems. How can you do that?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
And then what are they willing to pay for the solution that you are offering and where does that fit for you? And I think sometimes there can be an inconsistency there. So, you know, yes, they do have a problem, but your pricing just isn't right. It's not positioned correctly for that problem for those individuals. The next thing to then look at is your offer. It needs to be an attractive offer.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
It needs to be something that speaks directly to the problems or the outcomes that those customers are looking for. You want to make it easy as possible when you dangle that opportunity in front of them for them to say yes. okay? A decent offer, it will sell itself without all the bells and whistles, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So people saying, oh, you know, I need this and I need that, I need this landing page, I need this branding doing. At the end of the day, absolutely, you need people to be aware of your offer in order for it to sell, okay? There is no way that a decent offer will sell itself if it is being sold to an empty room, if it's not being promoted, if it's gathering dust somewhere.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Maybe if you're getting it out there, even if it's imperfect, even if the branding isn't quite right, even if the look and feel of it isn't quite right, a decent offer will sell without those things being totally up to scratch. People who are getting the outcome they're looking for
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
from an offer from a product they will overlook the absence of those bells and whistles in order to get that outcome they don't really care that much it's the icing on the cake it's the things that make you look professional but they will still go for things that are imperfectly presented as long as they are made aware of it and it's a decent thing that actually meets their needs
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Now, as you get into business, as you start to get customers on board, you begin to realise that actually you don't just want leads who turn into customers, you want the right kind of leads that turn into the right kind of customers, okay? Not just any leads, you want quality leads.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So when you've got that understanding in place, when you've got a decent offer in place that is attractive to those individuals that you're trying to target, then it's about building that consistent lead generation system. You need a predictable and scalable way to bring in leads. That might take all sorts of different formats, okay? It might be email marketing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
It might be a funnel off of social media. It might be paid ads on a social media platform. It may be your SEO and working through that side of things. It might be referrals and partnerships. If you can consolidate those up, if you can get enough of them, then actually you can be less reliant on single individual people. And, you know, you've got you're spreading that risk.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
You're making sure that you have got number of channels where people can feed in potential customers to you. The leads thing, you know, my husband and I, Martin and I, we run the lead generation, the outsider things as a business. They are, leads are really important. They absolutely are. But actually, leads are only the starting point. These leads have to convert.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
We talk to clients and we're like, you know, what's the conversion rate? How are they doing? What sort of quality of lead are you getting? And you need to focus on that conversion. It's not enough to be like, oh, people are coming into my world. They're doing inquiries.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
are they buying okay so you need a strong sales process you need to follow up however good something is your marketing doesn't need to be spot on but you need to have a sales system in place to enable those individuals to buy from you it is busy out there and so people are easily distracted a good sales process will help you make the most of those leads
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
client onboarding that builds trust will help you to retain those customers and give them a good experience and get them referring other people into you check out your numbers look at what's happening are you converting what percentage are you converting what is happening why aren't more people converting those are the sorts of conversations you want to be having
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
So in summary, guys, businesses fail because they don't have enough quality leads that convert into the paying customers. That's the crux of it. That is the number one reason I see businesses fail. Address your lead generation system. Know your ideal client. Craft an offer that is... so clear to them what outcome they are getting. Okay, give them something that they really want.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Build a reliable lead pipeline off the back of that and then convert those leads as effectively, as time efficiently as possible. If you want a deeper dive into building a scalable lead generation system, then drop me an email at sarah at youcan.online or drop into my Facebook group, You Can Women in Business. And you can find out more around the different types of support that I provide.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
The reason for that is because you want those leads to be aligned with your offer and your business model and where you wanna be taking that business. You want those leads that are ready and able to buy ideally as much as possible, because then that makes your sales process a lot easier. Attracting the wrong leads that lead to poor results. It can waste your time. You can feel frustrated.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The #1 Reason Most Businesses Fail (And How To Fix It)
Thanks for listening to the You Can podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it. See you next time. Remember, you can build a thriving business. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
If you have, then please do like, share, everything else to help the podcast get out there and meet more people. Please do review as and when you can and make sure that you are subscribed. So that's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you next week where we're going to be talking a little bit more around automation and when to automate and when automation is not a good idea.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So that's it for me this week, guys. Have a great rest of your week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
It doesn't matter to me if they're coming to me as a producer of something. If they're not getting enough leads, then those elements need to be looked at. Okay. It just needs to be applied uniquely to that individual. But the principles are still the same. So as an efficiency, if I was to teach every single one of those from scratch every time, it would take three to four hours per client.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
but there is a smarter way. Okay. So before a session with me, clients complete structured training modules on the marketing, the target audience and the audience growth. Okay. The benefit to the client of that is that they learn at their own pace that you can't, you can't rewind me. You know, I do do recordings of the calls, but they're not going through slides. They're not going through visuals.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
They are very basic because I'm talking to that individual. So they're able to learn at their own pace in their own time. We are busy individuals. Some of us work well by sitting down and working through something all in one go. Others of us feel overwhelmed with that. And so it's better to break it up. And so they might do sort of 15, 20 minutes at a time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
They're able to revisit that material at any time. They're able to do that material at any time. Whether they're snatching time or whether they work better in bitty times or whether they're gonna block out a whole session. Some of us, I work really, really well at night. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So if I was to be using my optimal time, it would be evening when everybody else is winding down, everyone else is going to bed and I am working and I can really then bosh things out. I can really focus on stuff. Now, if I was working with somebody who actually they're a morning person, we're never going to match up.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And so, you know, it enables that individual to do it in their own time at the time that works for them. Okay. They're able to come to sessions prepared with information and So rather than me putting them on the spot, for example, with, you know, ideal client that comes up a lot. Everyone's always like, yeah, I've done an ideal client.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
I've had one client in the whole time that I've been working with businesses who has actually had all that information to hand right there and then. And we've been able to move on from ideal client because they've already got those foundations that I've been able to take on that information. But it has not been an exploratory process for them because they've already had it there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So, you know, you've got that traditional mindset of we often believe that direct, the face-to-face time is the most valuable. You know, getting access to that person And that's where that value is for those clients. And to a point, I 100% agree with you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Everybody else, there is something that they can learn from the exercise alone. And so by getting them to tune in with that and then provide me with the information, we are able to make better decisions. The information is more focused, okay? We're able to make informed decisions based on that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
If there is anything that they need to go away and think about, I'm not having to put them on the spot in that session in order to move the session forwards because they can go away and they can work on this and come to the session ready. And so there isn't any time wasted. There isn't any guesses made because we don't have the information there and then.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
But from a time point of view, we need to keep moving on. And so it's a much more rounded resource of information, bank of information that we are then able to draw from. So that is a much smarter way of working. The time they have got with me, one-to-one, to get that tailored advice, I'm actually giving them tailored advice specific to their scenario. It's time efficient. It's to the point.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And they're not getting that watered down with overwhelming other questions, other bits of information that we need to get. You know, you've all been in those meetings where at the end of it, you just feel like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've run a marathon. And so because you've had to do so much mental work in there. So that's the benefits of the client. But what about for you as the expert?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Well, it can save you three to four hours per client. Yeah, just in that initial setup alone, that's what it saves me. It allows you to serve more people because you're not having to provide that information. It also obviously enables your business to scale because you can take on more people within that time. So you've got more of those time efficiencies.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And it also enables you to have continuity and quality control over the information that you are providing. You know, if you speak to me at the beginning of the day really early, my...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
sort of explanation of stuff might not be as good as as if you spoke to me in the evening whereas you've got consistency there with the information that you're imparting as well if anybody's got any questions if things you know keep cropping up that show that the information isn't as um as in-depth as it needs to be it doesn't confirm all the the information for them then you can go away and you can add things to it to make sure that you've bolstered it out
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
I was talking to a client recently and she said she'd signed up for somebody else's program and she'd gone from having that opportunity to speak to that individual to having no access to her. And she felt rather cheated by that. And I totally understand that. We're not talking around taking any contact with you away.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And so it's not necessarily a create once and never come back to. It is sometimes a working resource, but very quickly you get that resource to a point where it is good, it is decent, it is creating the outcome that you're looking for. So I'm going, right, okay, so what you do is you send people off and you have prerecorded resources, but what does that really look like?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And in this part of the podcast, I'm gonna break down for you what that looks like, where that looks like for my business, what that looks like for a lot of my clients. So normally what would happen is you would onboard a client, I onboard clients, and they are given access to what's my training area. Within my training area is hours and hours of training.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Now, not all that training is going to be relevant to them, thank goodness, but You know, I've got probably over 100 hours worth of training in there now. So, you know, for some people, they're not going to be starting a podcast. For other people, they're not going to need one pages. For other people, they're not going to want to go to automation and software straight away.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And so, you know, it's really about having those resources there that I've built up over time. I have never pre-recorded them. No, I haven't. They have all come from live workshops and trainings that I've done where I have saved those recordings. And so for me, that works very well. I haven't on some cases re-recorded from those normally again in a live workshop.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
to enable the information to come across more clearly, et cetera, et cetera. But it is all been derived from creating as I go. So I have never had to sit there and be like, right, I need to create a resource which does this, this, this, and this. And that's what is normally the process for my clients.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So I'll say to them, you know what, let's start looking at taking some of this information and putting it into
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
um a a course a resource that stands alone from you where you don't have to keep um you know using your time and and trading that time for money and so i will get them to start recording stuff for clients they've currently got and then um or i'll get them to do it if they've got a group that's really good i tend to not record and save the recordings
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Hello, and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're gonna be talking around how you can provide high value client support without overloading your schedule, how you can serve more clients without adding more hours to your day, to your work day, to fit those clients in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
where it is just one client, it tends to be for clients who, when it's a group, if you don't have a group, then sometimes it does make sense to, rather than have that one individual on there and it'd be a bit awkward because you then end up talking more specifically about the business, is to do that training as a bit of a standalone. But all you do is you think, right, okay, you know what?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Um, John, my client, he needs information on this, this, and this. So I'm going to create those videos and you have that person in mind.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
But what if I was to tell you that you can actually provide more value and help more people and work smarter always freeing up your time, always actually providing those individuals with the support they actually need and the value that they expect. Tailored advice is super important. It enables you to take that theory or the
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And actually it is really powerful to have a group of people to, or to have an individual in mind when you are creating these resources, not so you can make reference to their individual businesses because you don't want to do that, but just so you can be clear in your own head over what you need to cover and what you want to say. Um,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
I often, when I'm doing these podcasts, think about who I am talking to and the type of person who would need that information and what information that they would need. And then, so you record those resources. You can record them on something as simple as Zoom. Obviously there's other platforms available, whichever works for you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
From there, you're then downloading that and then you're uploading it into somewhere which can hold those videos. Now, you can start off with, and I'm gonna go into this next week with where automation fits in your business. And so do tune in next week for that one. But I do like people to start off with something very, very basic. And so you are testing that concept.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
You are making sure people want it. You're making sure it works before you go and invest in anything. If you're that little bit further down the line, you've got the clients, you've had the clients through, you know that you're confident that you need this resource. You're already using an email system. You're already using a CRM. Please tell me you're using a CRM.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
I probably need to do a podcast on that soon. You've also got, what else does it do? So calendar, managing calendars, anything like that. If you're already doing those sorts of things, you may already be using Go High Level. You may already be using a white labelled version of it. There's a lot around. We use Go High Level. It responds. It's the answer to so many different things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
They've now got an app. It's very much looking to address the demand for things like school, ClickFunnels, ActiveCampaign was our email provider. Thinkific was the platform we used to keep all our trainings on. And it's really taken that and just put it all under one place. And that is
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
go high level software that we use the courses are easily accessible the plus point for me is that it's also very easy to upload so when I have done a training I will go in and I'll just upload it into the training area I don't even get anyone else to do it because it is so quick that in the time that it would take for me to brief somebody else I might as well have just where it needs to go etc etc category I'm already opening it up to look at the category so it's just putting it straight in
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So that works really, really nicely. The dashboard can be customized so when the user and user experience can be customized so you can have different looks to it, different feels to it. The entire process can be automated. So I just say that somebody's got access to an offer and that's it. It sends them an email, granting them access, giving them their details, their login details, etc.,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And so it is very user-friendly. We used to have things where we would use Zapier to zap between the different technologies. So somebody would sign up, they'd then zap it over to Thinkific. If something went wrong with the zaps, which it did one time, all those zapping automations went down.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And you're then having to sort of look through and investigate where it went wrong, when it went wrong, and manually doing stuff. So for us, it was a bit of a no brainer. We've got an agency account with them, which is quite a bit more sophisticated than the most basic level that you can get with them. We offer sub accounts out.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
We have clients when clients on board with me, they get access to an account on go high level for the duration of working with me because.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
that you need that access, you want that access to those different resources so that when I say to them, you know what, you'll need a landing page for this or you'll need a sales page for this or you'll need a checkout, they can just go away, they can use one of our templates and they can create it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So if you are interested in bringing all those things under one roof, if you're looking at doing courses, if you're thinking, yeah, you know what, putting something digitally there for my clients would make sense, then please do get in touch. We offer sub-accounts.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
the process that you're learning or the information that you're taking on board or looking at someone's perspective. And it enables you to take that information and relate it to your individual scenario and feel confident implementing it. And that's where a lot of the time this Taylor sort of advice comes in is actually providing you with the confidence that this will work with me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
And if you email me, sarah at ucan.online with the heading of Go High Level, then I'm more than happy to give you a two-week free trial online. to see for yourself how it can work for you and your business. It really is really good. It's just getting you to be, to have everything under one roof and to really be able to work those leads within that CRM. The CRM we used closed.io before and
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
I really like the Go High Level format of being able to track those leads. I much prefer it to the Close.io. It is a very good all-in-one solution. It does all sorts because now it does apps and stuff like that. I haven't gone that far with it yet. It does quizzes, all sorts of things. But I'm very happy with the support that I get through it and also the functionality that it has.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So the key thing here is, is if you've already got somewhere to keep the pre-recordings or if you're just starting trying this process, you can even put them into the G drive, a G drive or a Dropbox or whatever else. So Google Drive and then give people access to that training. The fundamental thing is, is, you know, creating it as you go.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
so that you are not creating something in advance and then trying to sell it. You are creating it in real time for people who need this resource, for people who need an explanation about ideal client in my case or lead generation or doing their marketing analysis.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So you're providing it when there is a demand for it as opposed to creating something and hoping that people will come and that there'll be a demand there. You also want to be thinking around as you go through and what you're working with clients. One of the sort of telltale signs that your business is ripe for this is when you find yourself repeating things on a regular basis.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
Even at the end of a client call, just jotting down at the bottom of your notes and then reviewing those notes to say, you know, what you covered. So, you know, I covered this, I covered this theory, I covered that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
and getting them to go away and to look at it can free up your time you are still giving them tailored advice you are still guiding them over their particular situation whatever that might be and so you're able to work with them with their variables but you're able to point them in the direction of resources that are standalone and that you don't have to be going through yourself
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So honestly, onboarding alone, it saved me that three to four hours, which is really good. It also gives people a really good onboarding experience for them to be able to go away and start taking action before we get on a call. So if you're interested in setting up your own system and you haven't got one already.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
email me sarah at youcan.online and you know if you've got any questions so if you're wondering you know what do courses work for me how would this work i'm more than happy to have a quick chat and put in the right direction okay but the key thing is is to think about how you structure your time with clients how that time is best spent where you really do add value and where actually when you think about it is there a more convenient way for them to access that information
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
This applies to me and this is how to apply it to my situation. But for example, every client that struggles with lead generation that comes to me, they need to refine their marketing strategy, their target audience and their growth tactics. Okay. That's the foundational work. It's the same for everyone. It doesn't matter if they're coming to me as a coach or consultant or expert.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
and access you. I've got clients who are doing digital resources with drop-in sessions. I've got others who actually, it's better to have a kind of WhatsApp chat available to the individual for a particular length of time whilst they're going through the material so they can ask any questions.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Secret To Helping More Clients Without Adding More Hours
So there's no formal time where they're going to meet, but it's just that access, they know that route to being able to tap into that person's knowledge. By using a pre-recorded training for foundational work, you save time, you deliver more value and you can help more people. It's a win-win. So that's it for me this week, guys. I hope you have enjoyed this week's podcast.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
And the thing is, if you carry on on that trajectory, what is the potential?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Yeah. And then what should they do if they find and you do have a resource on this, don't you?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
get to that before it gets beyond as it did for me I want I want I really want women to understand and be aware so much earlier on than I was and I think that's the thing isn't it is it's like yeah it's been like oh it's only it's only stress and it's like but actually you could have had other serious illnesses that you'd got over quicker than they just it just doesn't have such a buzzword it's just been normalized a lot more than it should have been
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
My seven-year-old tells me she's stressed before going to school in the morning because she's going to be like, I'm stressed, and it's like... Really? No, you're not. The thing is, I know... You should know what stress is. But the thing is, is, you know, like it is and it's good to open up the conversation and people be more aware of how they're feeling.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Because I think that was another thing is, is there's that whole suck it up and just get on with it, which obviously it doesn't work. It doesn't help. So being able to talk about it is great. But it's understanding that being stressed in a moment and feeling like that all the time are two different things and things that we need to work on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
No, and that's the thing. You're numbing, aren't you? Your body's actually numbing itself to what's going on. So your quiz is free. Where can people access it?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
So LinkedIn, Instagram? LinkedIn and Instagram, yeah. Brilliant. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Jenny, for coming along. It's been a real pleasure. And I called you Jenny as well then. Jenny. I really didn't want to hear that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
it's been serious serious conversation but no it's been really lovely to have you along thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and you know guys don't just assume that this is normal don't feel like it's something that is a reflection on you things get too much and it's about acknowledging that and taking action absolutely yeah thanks for having me So that's it for me this week, guys.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
I look forward to speaking to you again next week. In the meantime, please, please do like, rate, follow, subscribe, share this podcast far and wide so we can get as many listeners behind us as we can so we can support each other and keep growing together. So that's it for me, guys, this week. I will speak to you again next. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Like, can you can you kind of express that better now? Like, you know, you felt better, but you didn't. There was just something not quite still fitting.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
mindset is massive you know like you can be so skilled I've seen some really really talented people whose heads just have not been in the right place to make the most of those talents and it's it's really frustrating to see and it's like people want to be skilling themselves all the time and they don't realize that actually they've got the skills they need it's just their head needs to be in a different place looking at things differently and that's really hard to do on your own yeah and I think as well well I don't think I know when you stress that looking back now I know that
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Which is hard work, isn't it? I mean, that's the thing is, is whenever you think about mindset stuff, like, as you said, it's kind of always ongoing. There's always stuff to tweak and improve and everything else. But it's like it's not easy.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
And then that's the kind of crux of it, isn't it? Is it actually fun? Are you actually happy and enjoying life when you are running around, feeling overwhelmed, feeling super busy? And I think when we really search for it, most of us are like, no, it's actually not. It's not that nice. It's not that fun.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
but so when you do it so thinking about the whole because I said at the beginning like we have this culture of everyone's being quite you know people quite stressed they're quite overwhelmed like the word overwhelm I use so often in in my own house and even the kids will be like mommy's overwhelmed but you know but like you know what why do we how do we get ourselves in this situation
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
You know, like, It's frightening to face up to what might be causing that because it I don't know, I think it's easy to get ourselves into a situation where you feel like actually it doesn't like I've got no choice. You know, like if if it's my kids that are making me overwhelmed and it's my job that's making me overwhelmed.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Well, I need my job and I have my children and I, you know, neither of them are going anywhere. And so it's like, what am I going to do once I know?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
And I think also there's an element of feeling like.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
like it's a reflection on us that we can't deal with it because you look around like social media is not helpful with this but you look around at other people and they seem to really have it together you know like you have the odd one who videos themselves crying on the internet but in general people look like they're on it and they're doing all these things and their houses are all great and everything else and so it feels like it's a reflection on you that you're not able to do this
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
So Jen, tell us a little bit about what got you into this.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
That's not allowed. It's not allowed. You shouldn't be a failure. And it's normal. Like, this is the normal. And I think that's the thing is when you look at different generations, actually, people used to take longer to do tasks. Like, it's all so much quicker now. You're fitting so much more in. And, like, there's that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
I've read some sort of, there was some sort of statistic on, like, you can now, at your fingertips, you've got more information than people used to have in a lifetime. Yeah. which you can access just there and then thanks to the internet and everything else, we're processing so much more than our ancestors ever used to.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Welcome to the You Come podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today I am joined by the very lovely Jen Wilson, and she's going to introduce herself in just a moment. We're going to be talking around overwhelm and the kind of busy being busy society that we tend to find ourselves in. So Jen, over to you to start off with. Please introduce yourself to us.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Yeah. There is just so much information. The world is so noisy. It's a noisy world, isn't it? Yeah.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
It's a lot, isn't it? It's a lot. It's overwhelming. And I think that's the thing is, because I was in the last week's episode, I was sharing kind of changes that I've made with my business. And the episode before that, we were talking around planning and looking at like what you want to achieve in the next year. And you can do that as a business owner or not.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
But it was when we sat down to do the plan was when I realized how much I was expecting myself to do in still the same amount of time as I'd failed to do things so far going forwards. And it was like, actually, something has to give. And and I think that's the thing is, is sometimes we can't like you can comes from the idea that you can you can have it all. You can do it all.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
But it's understanding what your all is. And and it's prioritizing. And I sat there with what I wanted as my all. And I realized actually that isn't that isn't feasible. It's not doable if I want to do things well. And I think that was a really, I was quite impressed with myself that I'd actually done that because I think we, so often we just plow on and we're like, oh yeah, it makes no sense.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Don't know where I'm going to magic that time. And we say it, I hear people say, I don't know how I'm going to magic that time out from, from, from nowhere, but you know, I've got this, this and this to do. And so I'm just going to have to crack on and do it. And it's like, we kind of set ourselves up for the stress, for the failure, for the overwhelm, for the anxiety before we've even started.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
any different no and it's like you said before like you know you can you can take on these things and you can pretend to to be being all right but you're actually being really under unproductive and you're having that it's negatively impacting you physically and emotionally in the process yeah massively yeah I achieve more now in less time I work a heck of a lot less hours and I achieve a lot more
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
No, because the stuff wasn't flowing and you weren't actually able to think straight. No. Yeah. So how do people know what's normal? So we're talking about, oh, you know, like we're normalizing and you're right. Like people do like, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed. And it's like, it's just a normal thing we say.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
And actually, before we started recording, we were talking about like the whole, I'm busy, you know, like my default for anybody used to be, you know, if somebody said, how's things or how are you? I'd be like, oh, you know, busy.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
yeah and everyone would be like oh yeah yeah yeah me too I'm so busy and it's and it's it was like that we feel like I think as business owners as well but also in employment you feel like oh if I'm busy I'm I'm doing a good job I'm doing well I definitely feel like I think as an employee you have to justify what you're being paid to do yeah and I think I know me for me as a business owner it's like well
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
Well, I think there is that when people that you've got two camps with it, the people who are going, it's really hard. It's a massive slog. You've got to do like 80 hour weeks, which I was like, well, that doesn't not going to work, is it? And then you've got the other lot going, oh, you know, I just, you know, it's like three hours a week and I'm a multimillionaire, which also doesn't work.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Breaking the Cycle of Burnout & Stress
And so it's kind of, that's the thing is, is it's difficult, isn't it? To see, because I struggle, like I haven't got, my mum used to work, but she didn't,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And that's not going to be in your end testimonial, but that can be the information you collect along the way. And that really is invaluable. What you're after here is creating really, really decent testimonials, not just with your beaters, but also going forwards. And so you need to do a good job with the beaters. You need to listen to them so that you can do more and create more of the same.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
beta testers they provide new perspective okay and they create a foundation of trust yeah so those as i said before those those beta testers are likely to go on and purchase from you even if you haven't charged them for that beta test okay so so please do if you take nothing else in this episode please do take the fact that beta testers are
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
use them, okay, at the beginning stages of creating a course. And what I tend to do, and for those of you that have been in my world for a while, you'll know that I'm like sell and then create. And that would be where I'd go with this as well, okay, is yes, okay, you might not be selling them into to buy, physically purchasing, handing over money, but they're willing to invest their time. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
If you've got individuals willing to invest their time in something at the very least, then you know that you've got interest. I've worked with people who we've not been able to get people engaged enough to be willing to invest any of their time, let alone any finances going forwards. And if there is reluctance at that initial stage for people to
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
in those sales conversations, in those sales calls and all would be fine and dandy. I very, very quickly understood that actually those individuals needed help earlier on in the process. They needed to draw on my marketing skills to get those sales calls into their diary so that they could actually practice then the sales skills I was wanting to teach them. Because
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
to part with their time, then you're going to really struggle with a colder audience and getting them to part with their money. So then it's looking at, okay, what value proposition you're putting forwards? What messaging are we using? All is not lost. Okay. Don't ever feel disheartened and think, you know what, I just need to give up and go and get a job somewhere else.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Because that is more than likely not the case. It's that your messaging isn't right. It's not going out to the right people and all those other things that may feed into it. Okay. If you are struggling with this, if you want to be successful at creating courses and putting them out there and selling them, then please, please do get in touch with me, Sarah, at youcan.online. And let's have a chat.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Let's find out how I can help you or at the very least point you in the right direction. So please do take a few minutes and think about how you may be able to use beta testers in your business either now or in the future. with whatever you've got planned. So thank you very much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the You Can podcast.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Please do share this far and wide with your friends and anybody you think will enjoy it. Please do follow, subscribe and also review this podcast. Every bit helps. So that's it for me this week. If you would like further support and help, then please do check out the links in the description where you can start to get help and get that business growing. But that's it for me this week, guys.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
I look forward to chatting to you again next week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
it's all well and good learning the stuff, but if you've got no one to practise on, if you're not putting it into practise, you're not gonna get any results. So in this episode, what are you expecting to learn? Well, I'm gonna be talking around what a beta tester is, why beta testers are so valuable, how to find beta testers, okay? Where are we gonna magic them out of?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Where are we gonna find them? when to use a beta tester, should you charge for a beta tester, should you not charge for a beta, when not to use beta testers. And then we're gonna wrap all that up so that you've got really, really clear on where they can fit and hopefully energised over where they can fit in your business. So let's get started. What is a beta tester?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Well, a beta tester is someone who tries your product or service before the official launch. That's your kind of technical definition. In reality, what does it look like? It looks like a group of individuals you get together who are ideally your ideal client or as close to your ideal client as possible, who can feedback, who can work with you on what it is you are offering.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Anybody from startups who are testing a new business idea and through to individuals who are wanting to take their expertise and work that they've been doing with clients and to put it into a more sustainable and scalable structure. So I use beta testers all the time with clients. I talk about this all the time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And the value that that brings, I'm going to come on to in the why bit in just a second, but it really does revolutionize your ability to hit the ground running, make sure that you are offering something that people actually want.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And that's the thing is, is time and time again, people come to me having created a course, people are out there telling people how to create a signature course, but they're not actually teaching them how to sell it. And that's because the problem is, is they can't sell it because they made it in isolation. I have a client at the moment who had created a course and it took her a year. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And actually during that time, she never once spoke to somebody who could be a potential client because she was following word for word what is this individual, this organization was telling them to do. And so she didn't go anywhere near her ideal clients to sense check if this was actually what they wanted. And guess what? Surprise, surprise. They don't. Surprise, surprise.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
The messaging is absolutely totally off. But already I have spoiled some of my whys. So let me just continue to kind of explain the beta tester role. So. They're helping you to meet the needs of your ideal client. They're helping you to understand. It's a bit of a try before you buy and you overly commit. It enables you to test that idea, that concept. It's like a rehearsal for the real thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
It gives you that opportunity. I had a client recently, Rebecca, and she did a beta test with some of her ideal clients. They didn't show up, they weren't committed, they weren't engaged.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
and she was like these people are just too busy they're just not prioritizing the outcome that i will provide them with with this course and so you know she that made her go back to and look at who her ideal client really is um and she picked a slightly different niche the difference was it was still female they still had the same challenges but they were individuals who had not yet had a family who not who not yet had any commitments
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
um or significant commitments and so they were able to focus on themselves they didn't feel bad for focusing on themselves it was the normal for them and that really helped her to hone in and understand if she had gone off which so many people want to do they want to go off they want to create a website they want to get business cards they want to do all the official stuff the branding that would all be very different okay not very different not crazily different but significantly different enough that they should have had to come back and undone and redone all those different elements
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
instead we did it really really lean we did all the checking we did all the practicing and then we were in a position where we understood okay these are the people she wants to work with she then retested she worked with that group of individuals she enjoyed working with that group of individuals because they were switched on they were able to prioritize themselves and then she was in a position where she could go and invest in that branding and that marketing and everything else that she wanted to do to make things official and to attract her ideal client in more volume
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So why are they so important? You know, I've already kind of said, I've already kind of said this, but to go into more detail on it, it's that experience, okay? It's an opportunity to see what it looks like to work with those clients in that real life scenario like Rebecca, okay, which I've already mentioned. You've also then got the validation of your course or offer. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
It must be, if you were to record my sort of conversations and the topics that I talk around, it will be ideal client and beta testers. They're right up there on the words and phrases that I use on an hourly basis, let alone daily. So Why do I think they're so good? Why do I think that they're so important? As I say, I've seen them be so, so effective for clients.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
You can assess that course format. So the quality of the content, the delivery method you've chosen, the timing for that delivery. I've got a client, Helen, who literally today we were having a messenger conversation back in two because last night was her first beta test group and she did her presentation and she was like, I was just trying to fit way too much into that first session.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
It would just be totally overwhelming for those people. And that is the reality most of the time is we totally underestimate or overestimate where our clients or potential clients are going to be at and what pace they're able to work at, what level of information they're able to take in. And that's because we are experts in our own area. And so we are used to using the lingo.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
We're used to having those kind of theories going around in our heads. But that isn't the reality of a lot of your ideal clients' worlds. They're not as switched on and that's why you're imparting that information to them. And so they're not going to be able to take up the information and process it as quickly as you would like and as you would be able to do.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Another reason why there is so much value in beta testers and not just producing something and then trying to sell it off straight away without having kind of built as you gone, which is what I tend to encourage people to do with beta testers. That's possibly for another time, but we'll see where we get to. is because you're able to get questions and get feedback all the way through.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So sometimes feedback is official feedback, absolutely. So it's you sending out questionnaires and asking them for feedback. But a lot of the time, actually, you can get feedback on your course on the,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
on the usability of the course on how useful the information is how clear the information is from the questions that those individuals ask so I regularly have clients come to me I had Sophie last week who said to me you know what my clients they seem to be a lot of them are all asking about this they're all asking around this subject and I covered it in the session and I'm like well
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
you clearly didn't cover it well enough or you didn't use the language that they can understand and it can really bring what you're trying to say to life.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis. And today we're going to be talking around beta testers and why basically I'm so obsessed with them and I recommend them to people and I use them with clients all the time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And so it's about going back all those questions of feedback for you that you need to go over that a little bit more, you need to explain it in a different way, you need to use examples, case studies, metaphors to bring that to life and to help people to process what it is you are trying to tell them and kind of take that on board so that they can use it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
You've then actually then got the really obvious bit, which is the testimonials and the proof of results. And, you know, they come, they're kind of what most people set out for is, okay, yeah, I want testimonials so that I can use them in my marketing. I can use it to go on and demonstrate the impact that I can have and I can use it in my marketing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
The proof of results, you know, I've got a client at the moment who I've got, I've helped to get some beta testers And she's able to ask all of them before they get access to the course and that they take particular screenshots of different areas of their social media platform so that then she can do the before and afters.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
Because so often you're so busy onboarding somebody that you will get them on board and you will start serving them and you'll start seeing results, but you're not able to capture them. the place that they started from because you didn't do enough research, you didn't get enough background.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And so that can be really, really key in helping you show what it is that you are able to do for these individuals. So how do we find beta testers? Well, beta testers, there's sort of three main places that I would encourage you to look. It is first up your warm audience. So start with people you already know, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So think around people that trust you, such as past clients, engaged followers, friends, friends of friends, people who may be willing to take a punt on you for either a paid or a free trial of what it is that you are offering. You obviously want to make sure that those individuals are as close to your ideal client avatar as possible so that you can get really meaningful insights of the course.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
For example, if somebody is already really switched on and educated to what it is that you do. So sometimes people get peers to kind of be a beta tester. The problem is then they're kind of critiquing your presentation of whatever concepts it is that you're sharing, they come with their own kind of filter and that filter isn't one of your ideal client.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And for me, my personal journey, my business, my first business started off, my first service-based business started off with a load of beta testers that I got together, asking somebody to tap into their network and offer my services online. out for them to test out a sales program with me and a kind of sales offer.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And so you want to steer towards as close as possible your ideal customer avatar. And then, you know, Your kind of key places to look for these people are really your email lists, your social media, or personally reaching out and inviting these individuals. So I've got clients at the moment who have got people from all three.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
They've gone onto their email list and they've found people who have worked with them before. So their email list has got previous clients on there of all different sort of levels. They've gone onto social media and they've put out a post and seen if they can get anybody off that. And then they've reached out to people who they've been networking in person with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And so, you know, they have done all three. So it is whatever mix is going to work for you. The key thing is, is to understand where your ideal client is and who your ideal client is so that ideally you can find them in the places that you will go in future to look for them so that you can start to do that harvesting and that creation and that attraction through messaging.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So when would I say, yeah, use beta testers and when would I say shy away from them? Well, you should definitely use beta testers whenever you're creating something new, be that a new business, venture, a new offer, a course or approach to deliver your service, okay? So it's, or even a refinement of your existing ideas.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So it's enabling you to really get a test and a flavour for how this is going to go. And is this the right format? And anytime you've got those sort of questions in your mind and you're not clear on it, then I would absolutely go down the beta tester route, which means that I would not use beta testers if you've already validated your offer with past clients or beta groups before.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
OK, there's no need to redo that test. I have had clients redo it, but that has been more from a marketing point of view. And it's not really been beta testers for beta testers. It's been kind of like a promotional starter promotion, having created a course and then it all gone cold and quiet.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
when you've already got loads of testimonials and proof, you don't need to go down the best beta tester route. If you're changing the format somewhat, then maybe you could look to do it as a bit of an intro offer, but I definitely wouldn't go down the full beta feedback handholding that you will do for your first round of betas.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And then if you are confident in the offer and you don't need that additional feedback, I would then say, do you really need to do beta testers? I tend to veer towards the ample testimonials and social proof or when you've already got it validated, when you've had it run past somebody.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
But if, for example, you've created this with a focus group, for example, then that might be then something that you don't get people to test in the same way. So should you charge for beta testers? Well, when to charge, okay, is if you're providing significant value.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So a lot of my clients will do a kind of tip of the iceberg or they will segment a section of their full, well, their intentional full course, ideally. If we're doing a bit of a repair job, it might be part of a course they already have and they will deliver that on its own. What you want is for any sort of intro courses, smaller courses to feed into that bigger course.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
95% of my clients get their first paying client on a course from their beta testers. Okay, I got one of my first paying clients from my beta testers.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
And so from that, I understood who I wanted to work with, who I didn't want to work with, what results I could expect. Actually, the reality of working with those individuals where I needed people to be in their business, where sales fitted for that business. I thought, you know what, I can come in, I can show people how to maximize the impact that they have.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
um because that person has sampled what it is that you are to offer they've sampled it's a sample okay it's like you know when you go in and you do the little chef samples okay as a kind of it's like a pre-starter in nice restaurants and it gives you a sample of what that chef's all about it kind of um
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
gives you an insight that is not your meal at no point are you going to have that and then go you know what i'm already full i'm going um you're going to stick there for the next bit because you've experienced how good it is and you'll continue along that i presume unless you hate it and then i presume you could leave um but i'm yet to encounter anyone who's done that um so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
I would charge if you're already providing significant value, if you can't split it up like that. OK, or if there's an established level of trust already with your audience. So if you're producing, for example, you're switching from doing, you know, just trading time for money to having some sort of hybrid or a new digital course that stands alone.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
If you've got loads of trust already with your audience, then absolutely look to charge for that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
most definitely and when to offer it for free is with your testing something brand new to a new audience or trying to build that initial trust you don't have that initial trust there and you don't know anybody who has that trust of that individual either if you need feedback more than revenue then and test and you know if you need feedback in the form of testimonials for more than you do revenue then I wouldn't be charging at that stage in in that case okay so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
That's the kind of top level when you would charge, when you would not. Obviously, there's loads of nuances within that, but that's a bit of a guide for you. I tend to treat it on an individual client basis because obviously it depends like, you know, how many how much trust is enough trust. And so that is something that we look at and we make a decision based on the information available.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Beta Testers - The Secret Weapon For Course Creators
So, you know, just to kind of wrap this up and conclude what I'm saying here about betas is that they will save you time. Okay. They will save you effort and money. Yeah. They will help you gain invaluable feedback in the form of testimonials, but also in actual live feedback on, I don't understand this bit. This bit was great. Could we do have more of that?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
It does take time, but it will happen. So that's it for me this week. I hope you have enjoyed this episode, guys. If you have, then please share it with somebody who needs to hear it right now. If you can, then subscribe and please review this podcast to help me reach more women in business. So that's it for me this week, guys.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
I hope you have a great rest of your week and I look forward to speaking to you again next week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Because they have got that connection with you and that person that they rate and whose opinion they care about has told them that you are good. So that is why they are those sorts of leads that you'd really like to just make multiple of, just clone them all. but you can't.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
So what you need to do is you can't be sat there waiting for past clients, people you know from networking, people you know from online, contacts that you have within business, your auntie Jo. You can't be just waiting for them to find somebody, to know somebody to send in your direction. You need to be a little bit more proactive than that. I speak to people regularly who
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
have relied purely on referrals and the challenges is right and I totally get it is when you've got loads of referrals and people are coming to you and it's all so easy it's great and it keeps you busy and when you're busy you're not thinking you know what where's my next lead going to come from because you're busy serving and supporting and delivering for the leads that you've already got.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
The problem comes is if that resource dries up, somebody retires, somebody moves on, somebody forgets about you, somebody uses somebody else as a referral partner, or they start offering that service themselves because they see how many people they send your way. And there is a little bit of a trick on that, but I will talk to you about that in a minute.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
But at the end of the day, it's the power of trust. They already trust that person and so therefore they already trust you and that person's vouched for you. It's an easier conversion. It makes you feel amazing at sales. I spoke to a salesperson about a year and a half ago now
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And they were, I was seeing if they would be a suitable candidate to work with me and to support me within my, it was at the time when I had a sales team, I was working with a sales team. And they were saying to me, yeah, you know, it's great because this individual, the leads come and they come through her Facebook group and they're already really switched on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And I'm like, well, actually, then you're not much of a salesperson. I didn't actually say this to this person. Obviously, I was very polite and I nodded lots. But that individual isn't actually having to sell very much. They're not having to sell very hard or use their sales skills very much because they're almost like an order taker.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
I know I don't tell you if something's great and then I go and tell you that not to rely on them totally, but we're going to be talking about how to create a warm lead experience for non-referral leads. So how are we going to warm up those leads to help people to get to the point where they feel confident to buy from you. And that's what this thing is all about.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And that's the thing is, is the more convinced they are, then the less convincing they need. And therefore the sale is faster. It's easier. is less reliant on your sales skills. So for those individuals that I've worked with and they said to me, Sarah, I'm terrible at sales. Most of the people actually, they can really switch it around. You can change your mindset on it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You can upskill yourself and you can actually become a much better salesperson. But what can make you feel even more confident, what can make your sales experience better for both you and that individual is that they already come to you pretty convinced that you are the right option. As I said before, the downside of this is it's passive. You can't control it. It's unpredictable.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You don't know how many you'll get and when. And if you only rely on those referrals, then your business growth is out of your hands. You are not in control. And if you're anything like me and you like to be in control, you like to feel like you know what's going on, you like to be in control within your own business, then that is not a nice position to be in, not a nice feeling to have.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
So how do you warm a lead up like a referral? Well, the goal here is to make cold leads feel like a referral for you and And then for the sales process. Okay. So you nurture them with touch points. Okay. One interaction just is not enough. You know what? I sent them an email. They saw my post. They liked it. Why aren't they buying from me?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
If you think about your own buying habits, if you look at even the bigger organizations, when they retarget you through your Facebook feed, after you've been on their website,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
they they understand people understand that it takes more than one interaction with you as a business to decide that you know it's a good idea to work with you so they're going to need lots of touch points now there is some evidence out there that they need in excess now of 18 plus touch points in order to be in a position where they think you know what this seems to be the right thing for me and that's the thing is it's not just it's not just potentially seeing your brand it's actually seeing the information it's you reiterating stuff
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
That is an awful lot of touch points, particularly if you're, for example, relying purely on social media. You haven't got an email list. You're not emailing individuals who've come into your world. You're only sending posts.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Now, if you look at your reach, it is very easy to see why it takes so many months for some people to get in a position and sometimes years to be in a position that they want to buy from you. And kind of moving on from that, not all touch points are equal. For example, like an in-person meeting is the strongest.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
I went out today and saw a potential client and sitting down with somebody, understanding their workspace, understanding their business. It has so much more power. You know what you are saying, you are saying to their face directly, not through a screen, not for anything else, but. actually to that individual. You know, that real builds real rapport. It's human to human contact.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
That's what is, you know, we used to, that's what has been the traditional way of doing business and having and conversing with people. But that isn't always possible. So, you know, it's kind of stepping down from that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
This is what this process is all about. It's helping people to get to a point. What you want to do really is have somebody so warmed up, so confident that when you get onto a call with them or when they head onto your landing page, whatever way it is that they buy from you, that person is as convinced as a referral. That is the optimum. That's what you're really wanting to achieve. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You've got the fact that, well, actually a Zoom meeting where that person sees your face, they build up more rapport and therefore you build up more trust and you can rely on that person a little bit more. I've got a client who their clients, their potential clients keep ghosting on them. So they'll have a call, but it's a phone call. And so that person isn't building up that rapport.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You're not getting that face to face. They're not showing their face. They're faceless. And so, you know, if you think about how people behave on the internet when they haven't got a face, when they've got a picture of a squirrel, for example, not that I've been trolled at all by somebody who had a picture of a squirrel as their profile picture.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
But, you know, they hide behind that because they haven't, you haven't seen their face. They haven't shown up as their full selves. It's been a conversation over a phone. They're less identifiable. Between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date with everyday tasks, who has time to stress about website security?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
They have a user-friendly customer dashboard called MyKingster that makes managing your site or multiple sites a breeze. MyKingster is packed with a range of features that simplify site management, including tools for cache control, debugging, redirecting, geolocation, and even CDN setup.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. It means less, you mean less to them, and so they feel able to do it. Messenger conversations, they build up relationships. It's one-on-one conversation. You're actually chatting to that individual. You're giving them air time. You're talking to them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Hello and welcome back to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host Sarah Jolly Jarvis and welcome to episode 34. So what we're going to do this week is we're going to be talking around why referrals are that best kind of lead, why you want referrals in your business, but why you shouldn't rely on them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You're better understanding them. You're asking questions. Then stepping down from that, it's like social media posts. They help with awareness. They might think, oh, you know what? What this person's saying here really resonates with me. You can obviously get it out in front of way more people, but it's not as valuable to that individual as a conversation, which I'm sure you can appreciate.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And referrals are the very best type of a lead that you're going to get. And the reason for that is, is that they tend to come from people who you know, who you like, who you get on with well, who you might have worked with before. And so they are normally of a similar type of personality, a similar approach, or at least they get on with that individual.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Those emails, they nurture trust and they nurture trust over time, but they're there around about there with a social media post, possibly a little bit more depending on what you put in it. It could feel a little bit more personalised. but doesn't have social proof, but it's again, it can be lost in the noise of an inbox. How often are you getting emails from people like this?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
There's a person that I've been on their email list now for a couple of years and I've really rated them, but I've noticed recently I've been like, where are their emails? And they're just getting lost in my inbox. And so, you know, you are easily lost in the noise of an inbox. You're easily lost on a platform like social media.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And equally with something like social media, yes, you can absolutely be warming people up. But if you aren't consistent with who you are, if you're not showing up as your genuine, authentic self, then you can mess up. You can say something that is incongruent with the person that you are trying to be online. And then that can damage their trust in you, their belief in you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And so that is worth bearing in mind. That's a whole new episode and a whole additional episode on its own. But, you know, that is worth bearing in mind. What you want to have really is a mix of approaches. You can't be just relying on social media because that can, you know, some of these platforms can just, they can go down, they can, the algorithm can be messed around with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
they can set up new rules. Okay. So it's not enough to just be posting with your content. You want to have those referrals as well. Okay. But you want that mixture. I was saying to somebody today, you actually want referrals. You want social media being proactive. You also want to be actually actively outreaching and engaging these people with DM conversations, um,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
networking, emails, et cetera, so that you've got a, an entire mix. Um, you know, I'm, I think if the internet went down, we'd have bigger problems than, you know, oh, wait a minute. I can't find my leads right now. Um, and you know, everyone will be changing the way that they behave in the same way that when we were all made to stay at home.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
during lockdown um in the uk you know people found new ways to communicate and the use of zoom was like crazy um and i've never had to explain to somebody ever since then um how to get onto zoom and so you know things change behaviors can change you don't want to be doing this as like oh well you know something happened to the internet something happened to the internet then you know that'd be quite catastrophic in itself and the impact would be far reaching um but it is the fact that you aren't just playing on somebody's platform
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
If you only relied on a particular, for example, networking group to go and get your leads from, you're reliant on that networking group continuing to keep going, to continuing to add value to people. So those people keep showing up. And it's the same with the platforms. Things come and go. Some things have longer life cycles than others. But, you know, the popularity does increase.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
does peak and trough. So, you know, it is worth bearing in mind that when you are using social media platforms, you are playing to somebody else's rules.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And you should always be working to build your own resources, to build your own email list, not only as a touch point, but also as a way of affirming up your business so that if something was to happen and you weren't able to get onto that platform anymore or that platform changed, you still have a way of contacting those individuals. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Again, I could talk in depth around this and some of the scenarios that people have found themselves in, but hedging your bets is the way forward. And that is what we're looking at doing by balancing referrals with that online presence, with that online, with the outreach, whether that outreach is online or in person. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And so they are not just, just some random, they are more likely to be somebody who you're going to work well with. They're also going to be way more informed and way more confident because they have been told by somebody they trust, they know, like and trust that you are a good option. And that is why these people come to you already so pre-sold, so confident, so interested.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You want that strong online presence, the content, the social proof, the authority. You want Google My Business, if you can, so that you can show where you're, you're, you're, feedback and your testimonials and everything else that that your reviews are there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
You can set up an outreach process with personalized messages, building connections, following them up, whether that's through a platform or via email or by the phone. Okay. The out, you know,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
outreach is still a very very effective tool and one that's overlooked by most people because it's not something that they enjoy or they're struggling to understand how to navigate it if that is you then please do get in touch and i can talk you through it in a little bit more detail and see if it's the right thing for your business You also want to look at in-person networking.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
Now, not all networking events are worth your time. They're not all made equal, but the right ones can create valuable opportunities and contacts.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And that's the thing is, is if you find yourself sat at home, if you find yourself not creating a community online where you get to know other business owners, if you find yourself more isolated, you want to get out there, you want to meet people locally online. You know, that's something that I've taken on board and done recently and thoroughly enjoyed.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And it is that opportunity to just touch base and be in the same room as other people who are running their own business. So that is well worth thinking around. I tend to have a rule that I only will entertain breakfast meetings. If people are doing lunches and whole afternoons, you've got to wonder how busy that business is.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And so I tend to go for the breakfast ones where people, they get up, they get on it, they do the breakfast and then they go off and they do their day's work. So that is just my take on it. But that has, for me, that has, as a rule of thumb, has worked really, really well.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
So just to kind of recap on all this, referrals, they are amazing, but you can't just rely on them alone if you want to be growing your business or you want to know that you have a consistent pipeline of leads coming through. You want to warm up leads through strategic touchpoints so that they're getting those touchpoints
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
at the right time with the right information so that you can take control by building that online presence and a process, which means that you can turn it on. You know what? I can do a bit more outreach. I can get some more clients. I can step off that outreach. I can just look after my referral partners. I can just do the social media presence.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
And then when I need more clients again, I can put in that outreach. And that to me, is what I tend to do with a lot of clients is use it as a bit of a boost. And so that's worth taking, you know, thinking about implementing into your business. So if you're not doing any of these things right now, then. pick one proactive.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Why Referrals Are Gold, But Not Enough – Warming Up Your Leads Like a Pro
So something that is actively getting you out there more, getting in front of more people. And you try that strategy this week, use that strategy this week and see how it goes. Some of these strategies do take time to come to fruition. So it is worth bearing in mind that, you know, you're not going to just, I know I've, I've, I've been posting for a week and I haven't got any clients yet.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
A year from now, at the end of the year, at the end of this year, where do you want to be when you're having that meal or you're sitting down and having a bit of reflection, which we do do and I enjoy doing. Where do you want to be? What do you want to think you've achieved? So what's working at the moment? What's not working? Where are things progressing? Where are things stalling?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
What's getting in the way? what's giving you energy and what's draining your energy. And I think the giving and the draining of energy is a really important one for me. Um, sounds really like old, but as I've got older, um, that's become more important to me. It hasn't just been about the financial returns or the, um, the areas where, you know, you've got the most results or anything like that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
It actually comes down much more to the emotion side of stuff, which has been something that I've worked on that hasn't come naturally, but actually has been really fulfilling.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And so the sort of the answers that I came up with were an awful lot around projects that I wanted to take on and develop further projects that some of which are in their infancy, some of which are a bit more established, where I'm not just using my business skills to sell my business skills, if that makes sense. I think, you know, it's really easy when you are in that position, when you're
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
imparting your knowledge and skills onto other people that you end up using those core skills purely to market yourself and those pure skills. And actually those can be adapted to anything. You can be focusing them onto all sorts of different projects to do good. And so there's a few projects that we've got going on at the moment.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
A couple that I can't really share with you and one that I am going to go into a little more detail with you today on. So that was kind of really important to me when I looked at whether I want to be here a year from now. It was actually about my sort of side projects, one of which is a joint venture, one of which is got an element of property involved with it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And another one which focuses in on supporting people and supporting families who have children with special educational needs and families.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
This has been something that has really come to the fore over the last sort of 12, 18 months with the struggles that we've experienced as a family, but also with the struggles that whenever you speak to anybody, there is always a story to be shared over the struggles that are going on, the challenges that people have faced. It might not be them, but it's somebody they know.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
sort of entered into my yearly planning session expecting a nice tidy neat set of actions and next steps and milestones and all that kind of stuff and actually it left me to start off with an awful lot more questions and answers and so I wanted to do sort of share with you a little bit more on that because that's the point of this podcast it's to share the sort of reality of business and
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
Everybody knows somebody affected by the lack of support out there for families who have got children, who've got special educational needs. And I'm really passionate over supporting those families and giving them an opportunity to tap into and get the support they need at a price point that is achievable for the majority of people.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
My sort of personal circumstances and my family commitments has made me reassess. I remember looking in the summer, I came back after summer and said to clients, you know what, this summer has not worked. I need to reassess this and look at this differently. And so looking at those commitments and what I want to do for my family, how I want to show up for my family.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
It means that there needed to be changes. At the end of the day, I am so very, very fortunate that as a business owner, I have that freedom to realign my work, okay, whenever I want. I'm also very, very lucky to be able to tick the box and go to those events.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
the you know the sports days the nativity plays all those things but it's not about the exciting days it's not about those exciting things it's about showing up for the kids when you know they're struggling when they're having challenges at school or with friends or whatever else which They're not the momentous occasions. They're not the enjoyable nativity plays and sports day events.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
They're the smaller little micro sort of situations. And being able to be there and be present for those two made me sort of reassess the way that I work, the amount of one-to-one or group scenarios that I'm working with, and also the amount of work that is going in at the moment into the promotional side of the business and where I want that to go in the long term.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
Over Christmas, well, in the lead up to Christmas, I was in a position where things were quieter and people were... There wasn't the activity. There wasn't the need for launches and things like that. And I was in a position where I could go and help out at the school and be around my kids and see things that I just wouldn't have been able to be around for had I not volunteered to go and help.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And that made a real difference to me. And that got me sort of thinking. And I do feel like all these things, all these changes... they do align.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I think if you look out for them, if you're willing to listen, even though they can seem quite scary and daunting, these sort of different messages that you get, these different opportunities, they get you to start thinking and looking at things that little bit differently and not just carrying on with the sort of status quo. So what am I doing? What is going on?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
Well, my plan is to not walk away from because I really enjoy supporting and mentoring. I love the clients that I've got at the moment and I thoroughly enjoy helping particularly women in business, but business owners in general to take their business to the next level or start their business And that first client, that first course that they've created, which means they've freed up time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I love being a part of that and I don't want to lose that completely. What I do want to do, though, is I want to step back from the active promotion of those things, particularly with programs. And I have an amazing program at the moment that I am that I've been running that I'm that I'm sort of doing a last round of.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
and the decisions that we make sometimes in decisions that are easier than others. This was not an easy decision. It definitely won't go into that category for some time. And I don't know at this stage, whether it's the right decision, but it's a sort of a way, an avenue that I want to explore a little bit more. And therefore I have to weigh up my pros and cons, but
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And that is helping people set up and get the automations and the funnel and everything else in place for their own course. And I love that. It's an amazing offer. It is amazing value, but it is really demanding to get those results, to help those people get those results takes a lot of hard work from both sides.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And so although it's a done with you program, there is just so much of my time is put into that. And I couldn't see that being scalable. I couldn't see that being sustainable. But I want to keep helping people. And I have so many hours now of digital resources there that people can come to me with all sorts of problems.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I had a lady that I've been working with since before Christmas who she wants to start her own podcast. She knows that she procrastinates. She knows that 101 things always come up in the way. And so I've helped her to get to the point where she's got those episodes recorded. She's building up our audience and then they will be launched. And that is amazing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
That's what I want to keep doing is help people move beyond these blocks. But the active promotion takes an awful lot of time and it's time that I could be putting into a completely additional project. And that's what I'm wanting to do. Now, what I could have done here is I could have upped the ads focus and I could have gone more and more with ads.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And I love ads, you know, I part own an ad agency. And so, you know, I can really see the benefit of them. The thing with ads is you're feeding a monster. And so, you know, if you are spending
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
you know eight ten grand a month on ads then you need to generate eight to ten grand it needs to justify you need to have those workings there it they are amazing for scaling they are amazing for generating leads but then you have to do something with those leads and so then you've got that pressure you've got that kind of conveyor belt of activity that you have to go through um and that's in addition to the delivery side of things so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
It was either look at scaling it back or looking at giving away, giving up on one of these projects. The biggest project that I want to sort of focus on, the one that's kind of my baby, is the one for supporting SEND families. I am fully aware of the need for support for those sorts of families.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I am no expert, but I know so many people who are leaders in their field when it comes to supporting these families that I've been really fortunate to be able to get to know and to tap into. there is still more out there that I want to get to know better and use for my own reference.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
Hello, and welcome to the UCAN podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis. And today we're going to be talking around business evolution and prioritizing what matters. And this fits in really well with last week's episode where we were talking about your yearly plans and the fact that actually, you know, I shared with you during that, that I had.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
But I'd love to be able to make them more accessible to everybody as a whole and to provide that a support area, be that a membership or a group or something where people can feel part of a community, they can feel supported and they can have that knowledge there. It was a little bit like when I was going through
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
um my pregnancies and complications with pregnancies that you would go on to websites and you would get all this these people with all these opinions and i was really aware as i have a pharmaceutical background um that you know and i've been around medics for so long that a lot of these people were giving advice that that wasn't very accurate wasn't very helpful and actually in a lot of cases wasn't very safe
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And so I was really conscious of getting information that was from a reliable source. That goes for every single area. Whenever you get desperate, whenever you've got concerns, whenever it's emotionally charged, you're getting people sharing anecdotal information. things that they've tried, which you wouldn't necessarily recommend. And so I'm really conscious of helping individuals.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
Let me just recap first on my own yearly planning and how I got to this point of getting clarity or facing up to the reality that I do need to sleep. I do have other commitments outside of work. And if I wanted to get projects done, then things had to have a bit of a reshuffle. So
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
People don't have time to siphon through and to figure it out. They're not as aware. They haven't had the background. They haven't had the experience to know how to go about or the energy to go about figuring out these different opinions and what best to do and what not. And so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
you know, having provided them with that reliable source of information and experts to hand, I think can make a massive difference because as a parent to a child and the wife to an autistic person, people expect you overnight to become some sort of expert and that just is not the case. So I'm really keen to get into this area and to help support people and to make a difference.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
So, you know, if you are thinking, you know, what, I've got this niggling idea, I've got this thought that I want to work on, then try and see how you can make it happen. This has not been easy. It's not been easy to walk away from a growing business and a press pause on the growth of that, on the development of that, and really scale it back.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I'm not turning my back on it, but I'm certainly scaling back my efforts so that I can use my efforts elsewhere and to make a real difference to people, people who are in a very, very similar situation to myself. And I'm acutely aware that with being in that environment and giving myself those opportunities to absorb that information, I can better the situation for my own family.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And that is something that I'm really eager to pursue. This is all evolution. I was talking to a client earlier today around it because there's been lots of questions. People have been asking me if I'm pregnant and all sorts. I am definitely absolutely not. But there's been so many questions, people asking what's the plan, what am I doing?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And I was talking to a client and they were saying about how their business has evolved and how it really is a joy to see things evolve, to see people try different things, to do different things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
to focus their time and attention on this this is absolutely not a end of story for for mentoring i want to continue with the podcast i want to continue with my group i want to continue supporting people in business because i'm passionate about it i may no longer be using them as a source of income um as a an audience to um to generate money from and to to grow a business from but that doesn't mean that i don't want to help them i fundamentally want to help people
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
some of the questions that I asked myself you know where do I want to be a year from now you know that's pretty standard really I often say to clients if you know if it was New Year's Eve um and which always sounds like I do something really exciting at New Year's Eve normally I'm at home um often I do actually see the new year in as in I see watch the fireworks on the tv or whatever um but it's not like I'm at parties and you know I'm down in the champagne or anything but um
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
people in business, families. And so I will continue to do that. I will not be actively promoting things to those individuals, but I will be there if people do need help and do want to work with me. There will still be opportunities there, but I'm just not going to be promoting them. Doing this will be so much more flexible around my family. It will benefit my family.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
And that is what's really, really key to me right now. If you ever find yourself in this situation, if you ever feel yourself torn between different opportunities or different responsibilities, then please do feel free to DM me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
I'm there on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, or you can email me sarah at youcan.online and I am more than happy to support you and give you my thought process on your best way to navigate through.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
evolution is part of business growth and prioritizing what matters to you at that moment in time is so much more impactful and fulfilling and that's what's really really key here so thank you again for listening to the you can podcast i am thoroughly enjoying talking to you each week and i will continue to do so please subscribe leave a review or share this episode or one of my other episodes any of them with someone who might need to hear these
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Evolving My Business: A New Focus for the Year Ahead
So that's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you again next week, where I'll be joined by the very lovely Jen Wilson. And we're going to be talking about overwhelm and taking on too much. Again, you can see the theme at the moment. So that's it for me, guys, from this week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So here are nine reasons why your course isn't selling. First up, the market doesn't want what you are offering.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Now, this is always obviously a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, but as simple as it sounds, if your target audience doesn't want or they're not prioritising what it is that your course is offering, the outcome that your course is offering, for example, you know, it's very easy, you know, straight to mind comes weight loss. OK, if your audience doesn't want weight loss, which
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
it would be surprising, but you never know, then they are not going to want to buy it and therefore they are sat there, your resources are sat there, your course is sat there doing nothing. Next up, your course gives them what they need, but not what they want. And this is always a bit of an aha moment for some people.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
It's similar to the fact the market doesn't want it, but with a slight twist that You're selling people what they need. But that's not always what they want. That's not always they are willing to pay for. OK, going back to the weight loss idea, you lose 36 pounds in six weeks by tracking your food and eating like a rabbit and not having any coffee or alcohol.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
That might get results, but that's not what people want. And so that then would be a case of looking at your messaging. OK, how am I positioning this? Where is it going wrong? Because the communication of what your course can provide isn't hitting home. It's not attractive. They do want that an outcome.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
They do want to lose weight in this example, but they're probably not very enthusiastic about the route that you take to get there. The next up is around the same sort of theme with the messaging, but it's around not having a big promise. I talk to people on a weekly basis who have said to me, I say, what will people get from this course? And they start saying, well, they'll get...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
a check in a week, they'll get a resource area, they'll get a workbook to work through, but they are all features, okay? And it's really, really important to be clear on this is a feature, this is not an outcome, okay? OK, so if you are able to say at the end of whatever you describe what that means is OK, then delve that bit deeper. What does that mean?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So having those resources, having that information means that you've got all the information to hand to help you get that result. What that means is, is that you are much more likely to get the result, which means you are, this is your best bet to getting, again, stick with weight loss, why don't we? You know, that out hitting that 36 pounds.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
It may be that they go off and they listen to resources and information on their own. It might be that they do that, but they also spend some time with you. It might be that you are working through with them and helping them to come up with an outcome, but based purely on bespoke and one-to-one working.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So you've got all the resources that you need to achieve that goal of losing weight, losing specifically, ideally. And that's the thing is, is that, does that promise have specificity to it? That is in sort of another element. That's like a 3A point. Okay, so it's having that big promise, but having the specificity so that it can really bring it to life for somebody.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Now people get really hung up sometimes and a little bit agitated by the need for specificity. But for example, I work with people a lot who are doing
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
um happiness they're doing confidence they're selling all those kind of softer things it's like how do i put a value on that sarah well that is very very achievable and the thing is is that i've then got clients saying rather than i help you be more happy or i help you be more confident it's like after taking my course people went um had an increase of happiness by up to 80 okay now that is a lot more um hard-hitting it's a lot more compelling um it's
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
going to encourage you to part with your money more because you're able to understand okay that's how much more so 80% more I'm going to feel 80% more happy is that worth whatever it is that person's charging for it versus your competitor who's still going yeah I help you be more happy Can you see? Another one is like direction, fulfillment, all those things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
And so it's about measuring them and measuring them in a way that you can then talk to people about that outcome. But anyway, I have kind of gone a little bit off piste. Back to my list, number four. Okay, number four is price. It can either be too high or it can be too low. I know, how annoying. It's like Goldilocks, isn't it? And a porridge. But it's true. I've seen both.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
I've seen it being too high. I've seen it being too low. Often it's too high when it's the only offer you have. And that's a major hint there on actually, you know, having courses and having resources at different price points. It's also on a regular basis too low. Then customers don't value it enough. They don't see the value in it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
They're not convinced that you can provide the outcome that you are promising at that price point that you are promising it at. Up next, number five, is you aren't shouting about it enough. How often do you promote your course? If you're not shouting about it on a regular basis, no one's gonna know about it and therefore no one's going to buy it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
That whole idea of I've created it and then people will come, they don't because they don't know it's there. And there are so many opportunities out there in the market for them just to listen to somebody and take action that they're not gonna go searching around for your offer in the hope that there is one. So make sure that you're shouting about it and you're getting it out there.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
That's why I get my clients to run social series, a launch on social, to help buyers buy right now, to help people understand what's available. Next up, number six, you don't have enough proof, okay? So that's either results, testimonials, or the volume of people through the course. Now, this can be a tough one because it's very chicken and eggy, isn't it?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
The point is, is that a course is a set program, a set approach that you are using that somebody on boards onto and goes through that process to get that outcome. That is the point of a course. It's a systematized process. But there are so many people out there with courses that are collecting digital dust. They're not doing what they hoped they would.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
It's like, well, how am I supposed to do one without the other, and I need clients to get clients, and that's just so frustrating. But there are ways to overcome it, like getting one or two key case studies, for example. So there are ways to work around it. You don't have to have millions of testimonials. Obviously, they're really helpful, but if you don't have them, you don't have them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Whatever you do though, don't make them up. Okay. Because that is, first of all, it's not going to sit right. You're going to feel bad. You're going to feel like a fraud because you are being a fraud. But also, you know, that only leads to you getting found out. So. Don't do that. Next up is number seven is the sales process isn't right.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the You Can Podcast. Today we're going to be talking around why your course is not selling, okay? So you've put together some sort of course, so it's some sort of journey program that a customer will go through to take them from one point to another. And this may take all sorts of different formats.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
OK, what I mean by that is that you are sending people to a sales page, for example, so a checkout page for a high cost course when actually they need more convincing than what a page will do, especially if it's one you've written yourself and you're not a copywriter, then you probably haven't done a particularly good job at convincing that person that this is the right thing to part with their money on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Or you're avoiding speaking to that customer. So, well, basically sending to a landing page, probably because you are trying to avoid talking to that customer. So, you know, get into the DMs at the very least. Ideally, get on a call if you need to, particularly in the early days so that you can feel confident around your wording.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
And then you can take that step back and you can start with just you can do with just the DMs. um we recently ran a a course offer um and that was for um 750 was pounds or dollars pounds pounds and um that we closed everybody in the dms so there was an early bird at 500 the after early bird was 750. And all those people were closed in the DMs. There was no sales calls on that whatsoever.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
But that's because we knew the product, we knew the market, we've got reputation there. And that's where listening to someone like me, who's a little bit more established and going, oh yeah, well, I'll do that then, probably isn't the best move because I'm in a different place. And so my advice to you would be to start off with, get them onto calls, then from calls, then look to do DMs.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
And then from DMs, maybe you could even look to do a landing page on something like that. Um, I do like to do a bit of a send check. That's the biggest challenge with this. Again, I've gone off piste a bit, but the biggest challenge with the landing page is that you're not speaking to that person until potentially they turn up on a call with you. For me, I'm just not that comfortable with that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
I would rather make sure and send check that person is the right fit for me and that it's going to work with us working together. Okay, but that's number seven. For lower price courses, oh yeah, so the other part of that is that for lower price courses, you might need to send them to a landing page and you're actually putting too many steps in the way for them to do anything different.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
Are you making it as easy as possible for that person to get the information they need and then to purchase? And that's what you want to be asking yourself about your sales process. in a nutshell. So next on number eight is you aren't shouting about it to the right people. So going back to shouting about your course, are you talking to the right people? Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
It might well be life changing, but it won't be right for everybody. And so are you definitely getting in front of the right people and sharing your message and how good it is with those people? Finally, number nine, is your messaging spot on but you're just shouting in the wrong place? So what I mean by that is you know who you want to be talking to but you're actually not where they hang out.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
They're not getting them out there as they hoped they would, either because they're not being marketed or a number of reasons we're going to go into on this podcast. So where do I start? Well, I have sold thousands of copies of my course, literally thousands of copies of my course across the globe. Okay. I know what it takes to make a course successful.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So for example, I've got a client and she was saying to me, you know what, I want people who really value what I do, who see the value in using it in their business And so, but I'm just not getting traction. I care more than my audience do on Facebook.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
And I was going, well, if you want people to value your professional service and all the experience that you've got behind you, then you should be on LinkedIn. And that's the thing is, is her audience on Facebook, they're not there to take this kind of thing seriously. They're not there to take her credentials as seriously as she would like.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So get on to the right platform where you are valued, where people do see the value in what you do. It's a bit like that violinist who was playing a concert in London, I believe. He went into the underground to play there and he basically made like... It was a very minimal amount because people didn't see the value because he wasn't there in front of the right people.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
But actually, people were paying thousands for a ticket to be in the same room as him and hear him play. Total madness, but a very, very good example of where people see the value in you and therefore where you want to be.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
So if you're struggling to get your course sales in and get that course really, really running as it should and getting it in front of the right people so people can actually get the benefit of it to help you make your course as successful as possible. I have created a 42 page guide, in-depth guide. on how to guarantee your course sells 100 copies. Right now, you can get that for free.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
All you need to do is drop me an email at sarah, S-A-R-A-H, at youcan.online, and put in the subject title, Free Guide, and I will get that sent over to you. So just a quick recap for you guys. There are a number of reasons why your course isn't selling the way you hoped it would be. It could be the market doesn't want it. Your course isn't what they need and not what they want.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
There's not a big enough promise. There's not a strong enough promise there. The price isn't right. You weren't shouting about it enough. You aren't shouting about it to the right people or in the right place. You don't have enough proof or the sales process just isn't right.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
It'd be one of those things that is standing in your way of your course really taking off and getting in front of the right people. If you would like more help with that, then do get that guide, sarah.ucann.online Or alternatively, drop me an email with help and we can chat over how I can help you to get your course back up and running and in a good. So that's it for me this week, guys.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
I look forward to speaking to you again next week. We're going to be talking around beta testers and why betas are so very, very important. I'm actually slightly obsessed with it. uh in the meantime please do if you've enjoyed this podcast episode please do um give feedback on it and please do follow and support the podcast it really does mean a lot that's it for me guys this week bye for now
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
9 Reasons Why Your Course Isn't Selling
okay and that does not happen without having my own um highs and lows let's say you know i've had a few total flops from time to time i've put things out and they just haven't gone i put things out and they've flown you can learn a lot from both but actually what gives you the time to learn are those which don't go so well because you have that time because you are not then implementing you're not then onboarding people you have the opportunity to reflect during the time where you hoped you would be doing those things
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
My final thoughts on this, guys, are whether you DIY or you delegate, make sure tech is working for you, not just making things more complicated. It's supposed to make your life easier. It's supposed to make your customer journey better. So that's it for me this week, guys. Thank you so much for listening. If this episode helped you, then please share it with a fellow business owner.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Subscribe for more insights on building a business that works for you. And I look forward to speaking to you again next time. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So if you want to take all the money out of your business, if you don't want to have that money in your business,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
for development then that's your choice okay but it's being aware where has this money gone why can't i spend it in areas that would help me and potentially speed up the process and give customers a better experience just because you can do it yourself okay just because you've seen that other people do it and people have shared with you their journeys or you've looked on youtube and you've seen how people talk people through it it doesn't mean you should okay or does it
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Well, the things to think about if you are thinking, yeah, you know what, I think I'm going to do it myself, is how much do you actually need to learn? So for me, I am not an overly techie person. I have done little bits with websites. I can do updates. I'm generally quite good when something is in place to follow a process to get things up and running.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
I have delved in deep on things like go high level with the CRM and areas like that because they have been relating to my skill set. which is the sales, which is the marketing. And so it has made sense for me to upskill myself on these elements because I am constantly in people's CRMs.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
I'm constantly in my own CRM looking at what's going on, what's going on with clients, where they are, where the opportunities are, if the pipeline is strong enough, etc. So for me, it made sense to learn those things because they kind of complemented what it is that I do. OK, I help people with their businesses.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And so to be able to basic understanding of different ways of setting up sites, navigating, putting up courses. I tell people to go and do courses and put courses online. If I didn't know how to do that, if I wasn't aware of the processes involved, then I feel that would take away what I can bring to the party and how I can help these individuals.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
But if you are somebody, for example, who I've worked with clients who are, um, autisticians or dentists, um, and if you're a dentist, there is no value, you know, when you've got somebody with their mouth open, um, on your, on your chair, going to them, you know what? I can show you how to create a course. I can show you how to update it and go high level. They're going to be like, that's great.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Do you actually know anything about teeth? And so, you know, it is way outside of your skillset. It's not something that's going to bring value. Understanding it isn't going to bring any value to your end customer. Okay. So equally, if you are a massive, massive tech phobe, but you want to have something up and running,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
that is technology-based, then you've got to either understand, you know what, I'm going to need to get my head around this, or I'm going to be able to choose the right people or know that I've got the right safety blanket and setup there for me if something goes wrong with this, that I'm not going to be left with not knowing how to fix it, who to fix it, what to do. So how...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So, you know, you've kind of got clear on, should I be using it? Should I not? And now it's kind of like, well, okay, do I do it myself or do I pay someone else to do it? And that is the next step we're going to be talking around today is to DIY or to delegate. And so I'm going to be sharing with you my own take on this, plus some key things to think about when making this decision.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
much you actually need to learn that learning curve. How steep is it? How much do you want to learn? Yeah. So if you are a massive tech phobe and you don't really want to learn about it, it doesn't really have any value. It's just one of those things that needs to be done.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And once it's done, then the idea is, is that other people could help you maintain it, then get those people involved at that initial stage. Also, the how long it will take you. So, you know, I have spoken to people who have spent days, literally days, doing something that somebody who knew what they were doing would take an hour to do.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And not only is that really demoralising, but also it's just an absolute waste and a devaluation of the value of your time. You could have spent that time adding value to somebody and actually getting paid for that. They could have spent time
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
with clients they could have made the money back um you know doing day something that a next month could take an hour to do you know your time is money like if and it's taking you away from your family even if you know what you're like well i don't have any clients right now or then that's the question whether or not you should be doing tech but you know
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
If I don't have that many clients right now, then you could be doing business development to get the clients. You could be working for minimum wage and probably end up being better off, particularly for those individuals who spend days doing stuff. It would take an hour.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
They would be absolutely better off getting some sort of temporary work and doing those few hours and then paying somebody else to do it. And it would have taken them less time. So my personal belief on this is that even if you plan to outsource, even if you're going, you know what, I'm never going to touch this ever again, upskill yourself a little bit so you understand the basics.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
If it is a fundamental element of your business, you kind of want to know what to do with it, don't you? It would be like having a child and it being your child, but relying on somebody else to change its nappy. Is that a fun job? Absolutely not. But is it an essential job? Yes. Is it one that you're not always going to be able to call on somebody else to do? I believe so.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Even if you had people in, if you had a nanny, they need a day off. But that kid's going to keep pooping. So you might as well learn how to do it. And it's the same with your business is, yes, you can have an individual who you're like, this person really knows their stuff. They're in house. I'm paying their wages. They're going to be here.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Once that person's off ill, what happens if that person leaves? You don't want to be in a position where You know so little about it that you haven't even got an understanding of who could do the job, who would be suitable, if that person was doing a good job or if they weren't.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So the DIY versus hiring dilemma. Yeah, it's a decision that often comes down to budget. OK, particularly if you're in the early stages of business, you feel you have to DIY it. You have to do it yourself because the cost incurred with people doing it for you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Hello and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and we are on episode 33. How has that happened already? Well, I've been talking over the last couple of weeks around automation and tech and when to use it, when not to use it, the value it brings, how it can free up time, how you want to be using it at the right time to create opportunities in your business.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
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DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. taken advantage of, and that's something that we find all the time from an agency point of view, is that people will come to us and say, this person is doing this, but is that right?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And it's really, really sad because the vast majority of the time when their gut is telling them this doesn't seem right, it's because it's not. And so these people have been taken advantage of because they have no idea how to run ads. So even if you're thinking, I want to outsource this as soon as I can, then I would encourage you to delve into it a little bit. But that is my personal belief.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Does that mean you have to create an entire funnel? Does this mean that you have to do all the automation? I don't think it does, but it does mean that you need to understand it a little bit. So, you know, getting somebody and working alongside somebody, asking them about it and better understanding, you know, can be a great way of doing it because they're doing it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
You're getting an expert to help you do it. I'm a massive, massive fan of mentoring. Martin also does mentoring with the ads and that can really help because they are directing you. They are giving you the correct information. You're getting the correct outcome, but you're getting that support along the way.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So you're not wasting money, you're not wasting time, but each step of the way you're able to speak to that person and to get their feedback. That would be my preferred way of doing it, but that's not always possible.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
But if the timing's right, so please, if you haven't done so already, do tune into last week's episode, so episode 32, where I share with you when is the right time, then your offer is priced, and your offer is priced correctly, you should have the funds to get help, unless you are taking too much money from your business, which is what I covered in, I can't even remember what episode it was now, but you can be in a position where if you're taking out too much to cover your own expenses,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
My thought process is you don't have to be an expert, but knowing that something doesn't sound right or work right or that doesn't seem to be my understanding of it and being able to open up the software, look through the software, ask questions on it is a good process. place to start.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
If you can get somebody who can help you to create it and you can go off, they can say, right, now you need to do this. Then you can go off and do it. I feel that is a better position because you can understand it. You can understand the steps you had to do.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
But it might be then that you're going to get that finished to that standard of that individual, but you're going to get a better understanding in the process. That's my preference. But It is absolutely entirely up to you if you do hire. Okay. What do you need to look for? So you've decided, you know what? I don't want to touch this. I'm just going to make it go all wrong. What am I looking for?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
What am I going to do? Well, look for experience do they actually know what they are doing ideally get a recommendation from somebody okay personally if you can but if not then look at reviews or client success stories if they if they are quoting somebody and this is the thing right with social media is is they they quote somebody so they do a screenshot of that person or that person's name
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
it is very easy to find that individual again and to speak to that individual and find out what their experience was like. Are they still experiencing the positive things they were putting, they put into that testimonial or that feedback? Equally, like Google reviews, you can see that somebody is verified. It's an actual bona fide review.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
It's not just that person getting their ante or something else to do it. That person is of that name with that account. And so you can do your due diligence. Ideally, it is somebody that you know in the business world who's used that person before.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
But that is not always possible, particularly if you're not surrounded by individuals who are doing what you're doing and who are on the same journey as you. So, you know, look at their reviews, look at the client success stories, chat to those clients. I've had people ask if they can speak to my clients and absolutely they can. Um, and I'm more than happy to do that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Um, so, but you know, it depends on the individual. It depends on where they are in their business. Somebody who won't let you talk to their clients.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
somebody who starts with the whole well if you're not able to make a decision without doing that then you're probably not right for the program etc etc trying that kind of reverse psychology on you absolutely steer clear if that person won't let you anywhere near somebody who's used them there's a reason for that and it's because that person in my opinion it's because that person isn't going to give you the review that you're looking for or that they'd hope to get in order to get your money
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So what I would do is avoid the trap of paying someone who overcomplicates things or sells you a solution you don't actually need. So, you know, a good rule of thumb is to hire for strategy, not just for the execution side of things. And what I mean by that is, you know, you're saying to somebody, this is what, you know,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
I think that all I want to do is do this and that they're selling you into this resource and that resource and this software and all you'll need that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And if they're bamboozling you, if they are not able to provide you succinctly, um, with a clear understanding of what they would do and what they would bring to the project, then, you know, they're kind of, um, you end up feeling a bit sort of bamboozled with the whole thing. Then I would, I would steer clear. Okay. Um,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
So go for somebody who doesn't overcomplicate it, who talks to you where you're at with your understanding that you've got. OK, and a solution that you're actually wanting, not something which is even more complex, which is even more wrapped up in support and additional resources. or expenses or resources or complications. You want to keep it as simple as possible.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
And you want to look at the work that they've done. For example, if you're looking at a funnel, go through a funnel that they've created, look at it, see if you actually, you would like your customers to have the same experience. And that would be what I'm looking for.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Again, you can go back to social media, you can look at the reviews that they've got, see how those individuals are using those resources, if they are still using those resources, and what sort of user experience you get using them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
If you aren't sure what bits were created by that person or how the tech or what tech they helped with, then reach out to that individual and ask them, you gave a testimonial for this person. I'm just wondering what they did for you. And if I can see an example of that, if that is something that you're still using. The key here is to understand balance.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
then your business isn't in a position to support itself. And so, you know, if you haven't got the funds to ask yourself, why do I need to be putting this automation into place yet? And if the answer is, yeah, you know what I do, then it's like, okay, well, where is that money gone? And remember it's your business.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
Know enough to make informed decisions, but don't get stuck in that DIY mode, creating something for weeks on end, for months on end. That's going to slow your business down. If you are not working within your zone of genius, if it doesn't add to your zone of genius, then get involved and know enough. But that doesn't mean you have to be doing all that implementation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
You can get somebody to do it for you and ask loads and loads of questions and get more clarity. OK, the key things to ask yourself are how much do I need to learn? How much do I want to learn? And how long will it take me to do this? And is that investment worthwhile? If your offer is priced right, you should be able to reinvest in hiring help when that time comes, when it is right for you. OK.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
DIY or Delegate? The Smart Way to Approach Tech
If you are thinking, you know what, I haven't got those funds, why haven't you got those funds? If you haven't got those funds because you haven't generated the income yet, then go back to last week's episode, episode 32, and listen to when is a good time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
and get people to start supporting your podcast and having that launch, that big push, so you can be in a position where you are able to really get that energy and enthusiasm behind it can be really, really helpful. You can use your podcast to do all sorts of directing of your listeners to different offers, to different leads, different resources, based on the theme of that podcast episode.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And so you want to be thinking around, if you're creating this podcast, and we will come onto the strategy behind your podcast in a moment, but if you are wanting to create a podcast podcast,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And that long-term strategy is always around your consistency. Consistently turning up makes so much difference. Consistency is like, yeah, I feel like if you were to force me to have another tattoo, it would probably be in relation to business, it would be the word consistency. You'd have to pretty fire it up though, wouldn't you?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So, you know, you want that long term strategy to have that consistency in there, to have engagement of your audience and obviously to look at ways to monetize it, to get it to pay for itself, to get it to provide you with some sort of return for the effort you're going to be putting in. Now, if this sounds a little bit like what on earth, where do I start? Don't worry.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I've made it a super simple for you. I put together a good few months ago now, a step-by-step guide that walks you through everything with over the shoulder videos and how you set stuff up, et cetera. I've kept adding to it. I've get running clients through it. I am really, really happy with it. It is a fantastic resource. It helps you to launch. It helps you to record.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
It helps you with all that strategy without all the overwhelm. I'm putting that out for you guys I'm only going to be charging £27 for it you get instant access it takes out all that guesswork you see I went and said that there was nobody in the office and then there was somebody in the office banging said doors anyway um you know it's Direct access, instant access.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
All you have to do is head to the link, which is in the show notes, or sorry, show description. And in there, you can go straight through to the offer, pay your money and access it straight away. If you have any questions on it, then there is information in there on how to get in touch with me so that I can support you. I'm happy to jump on a quick call if you need to, if you have any questions.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
for your ideal client and you know sometimes you want to think beyond your area beyond your remit to their bigger their wider concerns we'd all love to think that actually their main priority is exactly what I do but in reality it's not um in the vast majority of the time you know
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I am here to help as much as I possibly can.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
okay so that is it from this week guys i am off to collect my kids so i will say thank you so much for listening and if you've enjoyed this episode if you want to support the podcast if you don't want to start your own podcast then you know you don't have to obviously go on and start one or download the resource you can simply like review subscribe and share this podcast with anybody you feel could benefit from it
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
That's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you again next week. In the
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
even with me, with sales and marketing and generating for your businesses, you know, you've got other things in there. You've got areas in there that actually aren't necessarily my speciality, but you've got accounting and things like that, that you want to be thinking around and getting involved with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So, you know, it is really important to kind of acknowledge that and be realistic with how committed am I going to get people in the long term? Are people going to tune in week after week after week if I'm only talking about a very small segment and how can i better serve these people and that's what it's all about i love talking business i would talk any element of business
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I know I'm sales and marketing heavy, but I am really aware that there are so many different elements to running people's businesses. And that's what I want to bring to the table and share with you. So it is worth considering, you know, what's in it for them. So that kind of feeds into sort of the first step. I'm going to go through five key steps with you on this podcast this evening.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
The first one, evening, my time, sorry, shouldn't do that. Should you on a podcast? Anyway, I'm going to move on and not edit that out. So step one is choose your concept. So what's your podcast topic? What's your niche? Are you going for a real niche niche where you're not necessarily going to have reams and reams of seasons and all different aspects to talk around?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Or are you going to go with a broader appeal, which could go into the hundreds of episodes? Then the kind of next thing is, is thinking around, okay, so if you know who you're aiming it at, you know what sort of topic you want to focus on, what do you want to call it? And what I would encourage you to do here is make it clear, make it memorable and make it kind of do what it says on the tin.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And obviously you want it to be aligned with your audience, you want to be appealing to your audience. I'm a big fan of saying what things do. That's what I do with my podcast. That's what I tend to do with a lot of my labeling because people then, they know what they're getting into. People want to name things obscure stuff. You know, like, oh, well, Coca-Cola did it, Nike did it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Yeah, they did, but they're bigger brands. And, you know, they were starting in a different place. And, you know, I would, it provides no clarity. And so people actually have to take the time to bother to get to know what it is that you're talking around.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So I started the You Can Podcast off the back of my Selling Without Sleeves podcast that was out there for just shy of 200 episodes. And now we're in a position where we are just over six months on. You've got, this is the 30th episode, which is why I thought I would share that, share my knowledge with you at this stage. There's been over 37,000 downloads of this podcast across 42 countries. So
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So, you know, in a world where people are increasingly spoon fed, I would spoon feed them what it is that you are actually providing and offering, which is why you can is all around the fact that you can and inspiring women in business, which is what it says in its title. Then you've obviously got sort of format. Do you want to go solo on every episode? Do you want to do a. interviews?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Do you want to do co-hosting? Do you want to do a mixture of solo and interviews? What is it that you're wanting to do as far as structure is concerned? What is the format for those episodes? How long do you want it to be? All those kind of things you want to be thinking around in that kind of initial step. 20 minutes is the kind of optimal.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Last time I looked into it, that's what I tend to aim for with this podcast. Sometimes it's a And at the end of the day, I'm not going to try and squeeze more time out of something if I've kind of already said it is my kind of thought process. I feel really respectful of the time that people give to things. And so, you know, I don't want to be rabbiting on when I don't need to.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And trust me, that is actually quite hard. So you've got that. You also want to think around what do I want to get out of this? Why am I doing a podcast? Is it because I love speaking into a microphone and being committed to making content every week? Is it the fact that actually I prefer to talk than write? Is it the fact that you want to reach your audience in a different way?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Is it the fact that you want to actually interview potential clients? And that's something that... I was really quite surprised when I found out that people did this. But you will interview people. It'll be an in. And so, you know, you'll get into an organization or you'll get in to speak to a particular individual because you've invited them on the podcast.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Then you'll start talking about the challenges. And that is when they'll start looking at working with you. That was kind of news to me. I kind of always came to it from serving your audience in those people which are listening, but it wasn't actually about the listeners. It was about the interviewees and getting, striking up that conversation, which was very, very interesting.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
You now see actually in some of the podcasting groups when they're asking for coaches or experts and they basically want to sell you something and they've already got actually like a landing page and everything else where they're selling you into extra stuff.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
um puts me right off and i never ever go through with being interviewed on those podcasts because i just can't be bothered it's just it's that's not a place i want to come from they're not serving the audience that's actually listening which i just find really strange but anyway so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
moving on from that step you know your intentions and everything else the next thing is to think about your tech and your setup you don't have to go crazy with this i've had a client who has just bought um the same microphone as me which is a yeti i have then a like little um it looks like a little book it's like a little sound booth bit around it to reduce the amount of echoing if you are in an echoey space then you might want to look at doing that i'll come on to that in a moment
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Your minimum viable though is your microphone, your recording software, so basically whatever on some sort of computer and then headphones. Recording tools on top of that, you've got lots of different options out there. I tend to go with either Riverside or actually use GarageBand because I am completely appled. And so those are the things that I tend to use.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
There are obviously other options for recording. I know actually quite a few kind of trainers within podcasting and now encouraging people just to use Zoom, whereas Riverside was always the preferred because it did optimize the sound. I have had technical problems with Riverside where the delay, the lag has been so much that I've had to rerecord, which recently has put me off.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
But that was a lot more to do with my Wi-Fi than the platform itself. But it was something that I was experiencing on Riverside, but not on Zoom. So, you know, obviously Zoom has kind of improved, particularly since lockdown. And so, you know, that is an option for you as well. As far as hosting platforms are concerned, there is Buzzsprout, the Spotify, Red Circle. You need to host it somewhere.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So you need to host it somewhere. And then you basically put out little bits of string called RSS feeds to your different platforms. providers, so Spotify, Apple, et cetera, et cetera. So you have to keep it in one place and then you kind of connect the dots together to go look here and you will, whenever this is updated here, then put it on your platform is basically what you're doing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So you don't have to go to each platform and do the uploads each time. Between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date with everyday tasks, who has time to stress about website security? Well with Kinsta they take care of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best which is probably not website security. So what is Kinsta?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Today, what I wanted to do was share with you how to go about creating your own podcast around your chosen topic area, around something that is passionate to you. And that's what I would encourage you to do before we even get started on the steps and the processes and the strategy and everything is to think about actually, you know, what lights me up?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
hello and welcome to the you can podcast i'm your host sarah jolly jarvis and today we're going to be talking around how to start your own podcast and i'm going to go through step by step with you what sort of things you need to be thinking about and what you need to be doing so if you've been thinking about starting a podcast for some time but you're feeling overwhelmed by all the tech and setup you are not alone and this episode is for you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. It's kind of the best way of doing it. As far as your editing is concerned, I edit on GarageBand when I'm doing solo, when I am doing interviews with other people, it tends to be on Riverside.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
The reason for that is Riverside, despite his little glitches with me, has got a really good editing tool. It does little magic, little excerpts and snippets and all sorts of stuff. So I thoroughly enjoy it on there. I know that Descript, D-E-S-C-R-I-P-T, has improved. I really enjoyed editing on Descript because you can just highlight actual phrases.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
It can also take out the ums and the ahs and I do um a lot, just generally. And so it is very helpful to be able to sort of remove those all in one go and it can do those filler words. I don't tend to put things through descript as much as I used to. Riverside is tends to be for the interviews.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
If I find myself umming and ahhing too much, then I will stop my recording on my garage band and edit as I go. I do not use an editor anymore. I used to have an editor. I used to pay him $60 an episode. And in all honesty, Riverside can come up with better excerpts. And for when I'm doing the interviews, I'm not too fussed with the solo episodes. I should be really, but I'm not.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
What am I going to want to talk about week in, week out? And is actually my topic area enough? Now, I was speaking to somebody recently who I was supporting with their podcast setup and And they were actually quite niche with their focus. Their focus was on a particular area of marketing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And so for the effort involved, I haven't bothered to have somebody. I find it helpful to be able to listen to
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
um back to my podcasts and and see how i went on so that's the kind of second step is your kind of basic stuff your basic editing your tech setup then looking at step three it's recording and editing so scripts versus bullet points i am not a fan of scripts but if you don't give me bullet points and structure then i go off on random weird and wonderful tangents as it is even with a structure in place that i have created
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I will go through and I will still jump ahead and I'll still put things in the wrong place. But I'm still got more of a structure, more of a backbone to my episodes than if I was to go off on a random. I don't agree with scripts. I sound terrible. I sound robotic. And it becomes then acting and it doesn't feel real.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
So, you know, you generally have conversations, even really quite difficult ones, even confrontational ones. You don't tend to have a script. You might have bullet points to make sure you cover stuff. So, you know, that makes sense to, I think, be human and use your bullet points. I would encourage you to find a quiet space to record background noises and apps that play in the bottom.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I am currently in our work office. I do this. I record the podcast episodes where I'm solo, actually, when my daughter and son are at Beaver's. which is just down the road from the office. So I'll do that. It's quiet in the office in the evening because it's always between sort of five and six o'clock.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
If I was in here during the day, we have those soft closed doors, which actually the hinges are so loud on them that I don't know why they bother. And so I presume it's to keep the walls from falling down. But, you know, there's no point in trying to record anything when there are other human beings around. So I always do it in that quiet time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
I have known people who do it in their airing cupboards and soft places. The more soft upholstery you have, the better. This is probably a little echoey. Ideally, I'd have a sofa in here, but I tend to not work in this office. I tend to work at home. So I can't really go rearranging it with plush furnishings and fluffy cushions when my husband is not going to really appreciate it. So
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
think about the acoustics but don't you know don't overdo it at the end of the day you're better to record stuff and it'd be a little bit tinny than um not bother at all then you know as far as cutting out mistakes i have already said around um doing the um doing the editing as i go so if i make a mistake i'll pause it i'll chop it back out and i'll do it there and then i find that a lot easier but for some people you might find that it cuts your flow
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
And with that, they were hoping, they were wanting to do weekly podcast episodes for their audience on various elements of that. The thing is, is for your audience, that is a small pocket of a much bigger picture.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
As far as publishing and getting out onto the platforms, you set up your podcast hosting, and then you will tell it, like I said before, the little bit of strings, the little bit of communication, that RSS feed to your Spotify, to your Apple podcast, et cetera, et cetera. You want to then write interesting, compelling episode titles and descriptions to encourage people to listen in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Obviously, you don't want to go crazy, I don't think, in my opinion,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
um you know the proper hyped up there be honest what is in the episode um if you have uh i would encourage you to have canva i mean doesn't everybody have canva if you don't have canva then canva is amazing um but you know obviously from a business point of view the vast majority of business owners do have um access to canva and and i even you can even get the free version and you can put you can create podcasts you've got some templates going on on there
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
Um, so that would be my go-to again. I previously for selling that sleaze, I got, I paid somebody to do my cover art. It's crazy how quickly time moves on. That was 2020, four years later. And I was like, obviously I do it myself. Um, you've got templates, you've got other bits out there. I follow the design that I've had from the designer. And
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
How To Start A Top 10% Podcast
and as part of that they did do the tile but it wouldn't be something that I would do separately and particularly not when you're first starting out you can get inspiration from the other podcasts in your niche and go from there would be my encouragement on the way forwards then as far as growing and monetizing your podcast is concerned you know you can promote it I would encourage you to start with use social media use your email list use collaborations to get the information out there
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
It wasn't just about making a roadmap for the year. It was about confronting what wasn't working. So a lot less clean, a lot less enjoyable. But let's be clear, planning doesn't mean everything will go smoothly. It just means that you'll start that year with clarity, with that intention. and that process will feel less messy. You'll have a better understanding of what's going to go on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
It does not mean there aren't going to be bumps in the way and there's always unforeseen stuff. Whenever I look at my plans, there's always stuff that I never anticipated happening and priorities switch and change. I tend to get clients, and I'll come onto this in a little bit, but I tend to get them to
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
have um two or three key projects that they're working on alongside their day-to-day within their business because at the end of the day your plan is about working on your business not in it and so the day-to-day carries on as normal and it's these extra bits that you put in to make things happen and to make those changes so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
You know, the surprising benefits of facing those tough questions this year, actually taking the time to answer them meant that what would have been a one-day session spilled in two weeks. Why? Because those questions that I had to wrestle with, that I had to get my head around, were much more bigger than usual, much bigger than usual.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
I hate to say it, but these questions have probably been there before if I was to sense check some of my plans and some of the things that I wanted to get done. I think that I regularly, I'm one of those people who thinks that like a task will take like 10 minutes and actually it takes four hours. which always infuriates Martin.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
But you're ambitious, you want to do all these things, you have all these ideas. And I think this has always been there, but this is the first time I thought, you know what, realistically, I need to be more sensible here. And there's a number of reasons for that. My commitments outside of work are growing as my family get older and I have different demands on them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
um we've got quite a lot of neurodiversity within our family which comes with its own struggles it comes with some major plus points but there are also struggles to fit around um what goes on in normal education systems etc and so there's that going on as well but i've realized i cannot over commit so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Those bigger questions that I had to wrestle with were around, you know, am I focusing on the right things?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Which is really hard because for those of you running your own business or wanting to run your own business, you are so passionate around your business and what you do that you're like, I couldn't possibly, you know, it'd be like, I don't know, putting not quite one of your kids, but probably one of your pets up for adoption. You know, am I trying to do too much here? You
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Is what I'm working on really aligned with my long-term goals? And for me, that final question was the one that sort of grappled with me the most. You know, it's that head and heart scenario where I love what I do. I love all the bits of what I do. I love supporting women in business. I love the projects that I've got on the side that I've been sort of
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Instead of clarity, I ended up with an awful lot more questions than answers. But you know what, that turned out to be a really good thing, and that's what I'm gonna be talking around today. Let's talk about, first of all, why yearly planning is so important. Well, planning forces you to get real.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
in some cases um waiting for some time to have some focus and tending to um for others you know they've sort of been taken along but have so much more potential if you've ever spread yourself too thin or you've been worried about slow progress and why that's happening or if you're unsure you've been unsure over if you're heading in the right direction then you know how important these questions are yes they are really uncomfortable but when you do dig that deep then you do get clarity
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
After digging that deep, it has meant some pretty big changes for 2025 for me. I'll share more of those as we go along within the podcast, but for now. Just know that it's okay for your planning sessions not to end nice and cleanly on that one day you allocated. To not be able to answer those questions straight away.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
I think I'm one of those people who people ask me a question, I feel like I should just know it. And sometimes just mulling it over, just having it in the back of your mind and getting on with this other stuff is the way forward. Sometimes answering those questions, focusing on those questions, grappling with them is the point of the whole thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Over and above having a lovely, nice printed out A4 plan with all the bells and whistles. So I've talked a little bit about my yearly planning session, but how can you make your own yearly planning session effective? I base mine on a mix of ideas from two frameworks, which is best year yet and traction. And here's how you can get started using my framework as I talk you through it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
If you want the resource for this, if you want the recordings from my workshops, they are things that I am making available now for free. So please do drop me an email, sarah at youcan.online and I will send you a link to a dashboard that will be set up in your name and you can access those resources from there using our lovely Go High Level platform. So how can you get started?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
First of all, first and foremost, you have to reflect, you know, what has worked, what didn't work, what lessons can you take? How do you wanna do things differently? Unfortunately, sometimes you do have to look backwards. I'm not a fan of looking back too much.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
You definitely don't wanna live in the past, but you do wanna take that into consideration because it can teach you an awful lot and it can save you from making the same mistakes again. So reflecting on that past year or past years, So you know what you want to take forwards.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
I regularly, when I used to run the workshops, I used to get people to note down two or three things that they wanted their future self to remember on a post-it note. And then you can have it up in your office or work area. Because at the end of the day, we sometimes learn things and then we end up getting into the same habit and repeating the same thing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
It gets you to really think about what you want to achieve, how much time you've got to achieve it, and what sort of time that achieving will... For me, this year's session was a real eye-opener. I realised I was trying to take on way too much. And honestly, that realisation was invaluable.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
And then before you know it, you're in the same situation again. And so it's really good to remind yourself what not to do as well as what to do. The next step is to set clear priorities for the new year. So I tend to go with two to three goals. I think that that is sufficient.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
If you've got things around sort of the same outcome, but different elements of it, for example, you know, efficiencies within the business, which means a certain amount of revenue, then you could do up to five goals. But what you want to do is sort of actionable things that you are going to be working on and projects you're going to be working on. You don't want to overburden yourself.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
You also want to be clear on what are your non-negotiables. So for me, it's always been that I don't work on a Friday. I didn't care how much people told me that that was impacting my business. I did not want to work a Friday. And the thing is, is now reflecting on that, looking at where my business is at, looking at the direction that I'm going in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
I am so pleased that I didn't listen to those people who said to me, you know what, you should just be working full time on this because you're never going to get those years back. And there's only so much money that one person can want and need over and above those experiences that you just can't pay for. So what are those non-negotiables for you? Then break it down into quarters.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Okay, so what milestones do you want to hit in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, or thinking around, okay, this is my long term goal. This is my goal, sorry, for the end of the year. And therefore the first steps I need to make and they are your quarter one steps. Yeah. What resources or support will you need in order to help you get there?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
So what milestones are you going to hit by the end of the quarter to get you closer to that goal? And then what resources or support will you need to get to get there or to start moving towards those? OK, the other thing to think about is, unfortunately, there are going to be roadblocks. OK, or there might not be, but there is likely to be. But we just don't know which ones yet.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
So what might you get stuck on and what's the plan if you do? Because even if it's just get help, if it's a particular roadblock, then you can feel more prepared. Sometimes we're most afraid of the unknown. So making those roadblocks known to us and having a bit of a plan, however loose, however vague, can really help us to feel confident as we step forwards and into that quarter.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
And then how will you course correct if things don't go as planned? Okay, so what's the plan? If they get that roadblock, what's the plan for the roadblock? If you need to make tweaks and changes, then what are you open to? What are you not open to? Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's about creating a starting point and that's it. It's all these things are foundations. You have no idea.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Hello, and welcome to the You Can Podcast, where we dive into strategies and stories to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I'm Sarah Jolly Jarvis, I'm your host, and today we're gonna be talking around something that can feel both inspiring and overwhelming all at the same time, and that is yearly planning. So this year's yearly planning session for me didn't go quite as expected.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
It saved me from trying to buy all those bits off all at once and to get partway through the year and realise that I hadn't made as much ground as I'd hoped to. I hadn't made as much progress.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
You know, like if I'd have been talking to, if I was talking to me from a year ago now, so much has happened in the last year that you cannot predict. Some of which we knew was going to happen, but we had no idea of when. Some of which just came totally out the blue. Okay. And they impacted both businesses that we own and and took our times, our efforts, our focus away from those things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
We had no idea. But having a plan in place means that I can then look at these activities that I was doing and go, you know what? That one's not so important. This one I really have to stick to. But if you don't have that clarity, if you don't have that written down, then how are you going to do that assessment? And so, you know, what's the plan with the course correction?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
What are you willing to do? What are you not willing to do? This doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a starting foundation. Okay, if you've never done a yearly plan before, as I said before, I've run workshops on this. And while I'm not hosting one this year, I am more than happy to share recordings and resources for you from past sessions.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Even if you're listening to this mid-year way through, you can still be putting a plan in place either nice and tidily to the end of that year, that calendar year, or however it works for you. Some people still do their plans based on their financial years. So, you know, do feel free to get in touch whenever it may be that you are listening to this. It's sarah at youcan.online.com.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
And I'm more than happy to share those resources with you for free. So I want to leave you with this. Yearly planning isn't just about setting the goals. It's about setting yourself up for success. OK, that nice little document, if you file it away, if you do nothing with it, then it was a bit of a pointless exercise. It was a bit of a pointless use of your time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
Even when it feels messy, even when it raises more questions than answers. The act of planning, it forces you to think intentionally about your time, your energy, your focus. And that is the key thing here. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or unsure about the year ahead, prioritise this process, prioritise the process I've just gone through.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
And that's the thing here is when you water yourself down too much, you end up feeling like, you know what, I'm not achieving anything because your energies and your efforts are just diluted so much that you're not able to make a really strong impact.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
It might just be the most important thing that you do for your business and your life this year. Let's make 2025 intentional, focused and aligned. Thanks for tuning in to the You Can podcast. If you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you'd share it with friends or leave a review.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
And if you want those planning resources I mentioned, then head over to your email and email me at sarah at youcan.online, S-A-R-A-H at youcan.online to grab them. So here's to a powerful and purposeful 2025. Until next time, take care and keep going because you can. You can.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
So instead of creating a neat list of goals and then calling it a day at that and feeling really chuffed with myself and just having a bit of lunch, I had to face that misalignment between my ambitions and the reality of the time that reality was going to take, that time those ambitions were going to take and how long I really had to work on these various projects.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
If you have any questions on CRM, if you would like to find out more around those recommendations, then please do drop me an email at sarah at youcan.online. That's S-A-R-A-H at youcan.online. Okay. In the meantime, guys, please do be sure to subscribe to the UCAM podcast for more tips on scaling your business and optimizing those processes. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn or on Facebook.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So I am literally the only Sarah Jolly Jarvis out there. So that's it for me this week, guys. I look forward to speaking to you again next week. Bye for now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
and you know that that kind of niggling starts with feeling confident and confident in your offer and the market and everything else and we kind of hit pause on that and I said you know what let's look at where we're at let's take stock of the leads that you've got I obviously always come to these things with a sales and marketing focus that's what most of my clients need and you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So I'm always looking at the kind of leads and your pipeline and all that kind of element to kind of get a real understanding of what's going on. And also really importantly, where people are dropping off. But that's that's something for another episode. So I said, you know what? Let's look at your CRM and let's see what we're up to. Now, Amy is quite a new client for me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
She's been working with me for the last year.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
four and a half weeks and so she has been in the process of we use go high level having used a number of CRM systems in my lifetime I have found that go high level does have it's a really good system for keeping track of it's a very simple system when people get used to it but obviously it's part of a much more monstrous software and so it is quite daunting particularly to start off with so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
When we got onto her CRM, being a client, she has a sub account with me, so I'm able to access that and have a look. It was clear that she hadn't been keeping it up to date. She was already cringing and looking uncomfortable before I even opened it up. And she said, you know, yeah, I haven't been keeping up to date. I've had it on this kind of scrap of paper and that kind of scrap of paper.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Having bits of information all over the place does not help you to get clear on what's going on. It doesn't give you that snapshot that a CRM can give you. It also doesn't give you that one-stop shop for understanding, okay, what are my actions today? Who am I following up with? Who am I expecting payment in from? What's going on with this client? it's all over the place.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And with it all being all over the place, you've got to remember where you put it. And then you've got to make, it's very easy to drop the ball on a client or two because the information isn't all in that one place. It isn't all readily available. It's not easy to see if somebody is missing. If you're anything like me, give me a weekend between my conversation with somebody and
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
and rethinking about them and I can quite easily have forgotten and dropped the ball on things, particularly when you're speaking to multiple people a week. With information all over the place, it meant that we didn't have a clear understanding of how many people had taken up the resource
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And then from that, how many people had responded when the resource had been sent to them on their DMs or on their emails. And then where those people had then dropped off in that process from initial, yes, I'd like the resource through to booking a call and signing up. And so it was very difficult to identify who was to be followed up, what stage people were at.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
There was also a lack of visibility on how many leads there were and therefore how much value was in her pipeline. So then it's very easy to be unsure of, oh gosh, what have I got coming through? So it impacts your decision making, obviously, on where you spend your time and where you allocate your time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
But overall, it can also impact the confidence that you have that people actually want what it is you've got to offer. So you're not in a position, she wasn't able to say straight off the top of her head, for example, how many people had taken up that resource, how many people she'd offered the resource out to, etc. et cetera, et cetera.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So Before we get started, what is a CRM? Well, a CRM is a customer relationship management tool, okay? It is used to enable you to get a clear picture of your leads and those people who are doing inquiries, making inquiries into working with you. If you don't have a CRM, don't worry at this stage, all will be revealed later on in this episode.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So it was very difficult to keep track and understand where she should be spending her time. Should she be spending her time getting more people interested or should she be spending her time following up on the people who had already voiced an interest, for example? If you don't know that information, you're not able to make that decision.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
The process of getting the CRM up to date was to start with, I went through and I helped Amy. I pointed out what we needed to do and I talked her through it. I inputted a few people for her because we're both able to share the same sub account. She was able to go in and add things whilst I got on with other stuff.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
and then we were able to reconvene at a later time so that we were able to look at the information that had then been put into that CRM. The key thing that made such a difference was to understand the revenues. So prior to the CRM being updated, there was no clarity on what value there was in her, for example, the leads that she had coming through.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And as you sort of progress with the CRM, what you'd look at doing is inputting your stats. So if you have an offer, so her CRM, the pipeline that she'd created that we were working on, that pipeline was specifically for a product that was just over the $2,500 mark. And so she was then in a position where she'd know that everyone who signed up would create that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
But what you don't know, to start off with, is your statistics on from the number of people who, for example, take up a lead magnet, how many of those will go on to buy. Because over time, what I have with my pipelines, is that you can actually provide a value to those initial leads coming in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So the leads that come in, you would be, I think the last time I checked my initial leads, the value of those initial leads was something like $250. And then from there, because you know that from there, there'll be so many individuals who go on to buy that higher ticket item. And so you can then begin to get much clearer on the actual value, which is in your pipeline rather than a guesstimate.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Because at the end of the day, those initial people who take up a lead magnet, not everybody is going to purchase your high ticket offer, but a percentage of them will. But if you put their value as that high ticket, you're going to be well excited by the value that's in your pipeline. But it's unrealistic that you're going to get that 100% conversion.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So using your conversion rates can help you to understand actually what I can expect from the current pipeline that I've got. As soon as we were able to input all that information, it was really clear that actually where her time needed to be focused was not on necessarily generating more people for the lead magnet, but it was actually following up those people who'd taken up the lead magnet.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Hello and welcome to this week's version of the You Can Podcast.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
They'd been neglected because it wasn't such a clear step for her because she didn't have that pipeline on that CRM in place. Now, when I say a pipeline, what am I talking about? It would be easier at this stage for me to be able to show you. But we are on audio. And so what I will do is talk you through. It's very, very similar to a Trello board in that you have those columns.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
and so at the top of the column you'll have the different types my I tend to get particularly to start off with with clients they tend to run on the same sort of format as myself the vast majority of my clients are service-based businesses and so it's potential lead it's inquiry as the next column the next column along would be soft detailed so you would be basically saying roughly you know this is what I do on a casual basis nothing specific about a course but
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
But for now, let's talk around my client Amy and what was going on with her. Well, she did a course and she was driving new enrolments to that course via a free lead magnet. Now, that's not what I get all my clients to do, but in this situation, this is what this client was working on and working to. So she was putting out and offering a free lead magnet, and then she was then following that up.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
But that person now knows that I do X and Y. OK, that would be your soft detail, your full detail. I tend to full detail on on a message, on a messenger, on a message rather than get them on a call to full detail. But a lot of my clients would have, you know, calling sent at that point and then call booked. and then full detailed or call complete.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And then you would then go on to have purchased or signed up or awaiting payment. And then as a final step, you would have not interested at this point. I tend to keep my not interested in my pipeline. If they are absolutely not suitable, unqualified, you wouldn't want to work with them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
then i will remove them off that pipeline but a lot of the time i like to be able to see um those individuals that i potentially want to follow up with in the future or if situations change it is very important to keep those notes of those individuals then up to date so that you can you know reflect on those um and refer to them so that you can you can make decisions in the future
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
your CRM literally is only as good as the notes that you've got against those names because those names particularly when you're starting with volume can quickly get out of hand and you have no idea who those individuals are having those leads all in one place is the only way to keep on top of them and to make sure that nobody is slipping through the net it's also as I said before a very very good way of being able to understand where people disappear okay so when I say drop off
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And disappear is when those individuals are no longer in that sales process. So, for example, at the moment with Amy, a lot of people are getting that resource, but they haven't been followed up sufficiently enough for those conversations to happen.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So what we ended up doing was when we sort of reconvened on that session, we ended up talking about what words we would use, what comments we would use to open up that conversation and to get that individual thinking around additional support. And so those would be the things that you would look to do.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Sometimes we avoid actions and steps and things and we procrastinate when we're not 100% sure what to do on them. And so we address that so that way she can start focusing on that stage in that pipeline. The sort of cherry on the cake for us with this tidy up of the CRM and getting it up to date was that actually she realized that she generated 7,800 in revenue over the last three weeks.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
The thing was that the reason why she wasn't seeing that land in her account was because a lot of those were through payment plans. And so they were smaller payments that were going to be over a period of time. Now, some people love to have money up front.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Others, actually, it's quite nice to know that for the next three, maybe four months, you're going to get those smaller payments from those individuals. So for some people, it works. I always encourage clients to have a combination of the two.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
um for for amy she was like you know what i'd rather just have it secured and in um and i get that because then you're not having to send check or follow up although if you use the right payment systems they all will let you know for you um and and recharge for it if it fails etc but it is just easier to feel like it's the money's in the bank so
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
We then went through and looked at, okay, well, we want to incentivize people to pay upfront, then it's looking at putting additional cost and implications on the pay, split pay, so that we can encourage people to go with the pay in full. The big thing for me, though, was the realization that that isn't a small amount of money to have made in the last three weeks.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Very much this lead magnet was relevant to her target audience, which is obviously really, really important, so that she is then able to, if these people want it, she's able to identify them as being a really strong potential of a potential customer.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
And it gave her that kind of boosting confidence that she needed to look at future cash flows and what she could be expecting. We were able to look further along to the left of that pipeline to the newer leads coming in and see what potential was in there and what she could expect. And going forwards, that data is only going to get better and better.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
I'm your host Sarah Jolly Jarvis and today we're going to be talking around a real life story actually that illustrates the impact of keeping a CRM up to date, keeping your CRM up to date, especially during a course launch but at any time with your business, particularly when you're looking at cash flow and focusing on leads and ensuring that you have that steady flow of customers into your business.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
So if you're sat there thinking, you know what, I don't even know what you're talking about with a CRM, then do please get in touch. I've got recommendations that I can make. I can send you my sort of top three. You've already heard me mention GoHighLevel. I've also used other systems.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
I also have a very, very simple spreadsheet that I am more than willing to share with you, which we can get you started on the tracking of your customers. A CRM, at the end of the day, is a customer relationship management tool. It is a way to manage your customers and to manage your customer information. It's a way of tracking those resources and that's what's really, really key here.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
the important thing is is the time efficiencies that a crm can save like yes absolutely you may find that there is you've generated more money than you're expecting um but it is that time efficiency so you can quickly see who needs following up and who needs prioritizing it's making your sales process easier sales is probably not something that you thoroughly enjoy doing and so having that information there you just go in and you take the actions having those comments and messages
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
templates at the ready so that you can drop those into Messenger Conversations so that you can get that conversation going and you can move that person along. Again, it makes it more of a system and it takes away that stress and that worry over it being a sales process.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
The understanding that the pipeline visibility, the overall what's happening with your pipeline, helping you to understand exactly where the potential clients are in that sales funnel enables you to do something about it, to move people along, to focus on more areas, to focus on generating those leads, for example. It gives you a much better understanding of what's going on.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
and so from there which was to then get back in contact with them when she provided them with the resource and then she would find out from them if they wanted more support um more information on that support so amy came to this week's uh check-in with me she's on the courses that convert program so she gets weekly check-ins with me and she came to this week's session and she was a little bit despondent she was a bit like oh you know what the cash flow isn't coming in as i was hoping for
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
It enables you to make data driven decisions. Okay. So you can use real numbers, real numbers based on what's going on in your business to make choices over where you spend your time, where you spend your resources. Okay. It's very easy to think, oh, my sales are really bad.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
Whereas actually it may be that your lead generation needs a little bit of help and you're putting too much pressure on the sales process. It's not just a tool for large companies, okay? A CRM, if you have customers, if you have, I have people who are starting out who they have beta testers for their business, for their first offer, and I get them to put those customers into a CRM.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
You have to start somewhere. It is a really, really bad idea to write it off and think, you know what, it's only for big businesses.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
it's for anybody who has customers because if you've got all potential customers you're talking to people you're trying to generate leads okay so maintain your CRM okay make sure that your CRM is up to date on a regular basis use it okay I don't want you to think of a CRM system as as a way of something I have to do. Okay. It's a useful resource. Okay.
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This 1 Thing Can Make Or Break Your Launch
If you can update it, you should be in there daily looking at your leads during your business development time, looking at who do I have to sort out? Who do I have to be following up now? Okay. It is a usable resource. If you keep it up to date, it will, honestly, it will revolutionize your business. So please do take that on board.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
And if they were into their coffee, how into their coffee were they? Now, the smart approach is to start with something like a pop-up store, okay? So you can test that area. You can test the demand in that area. And rather than going the whole hog, signing a lease, committing to all that money, you could do a bit of a pop-up, okay? And you can serve that great coffee.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
You can see where the demand is. You can see where there is a demand and where there are lulls in that demand. And you can already begin to start thinking around
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
okay actually um i only catch people during the week this isn't very busy on the weekends do i want something that is is only really busy during the week uh or do i want to look at a different location once you've signed a lease once you've got yourself committed to that that geography that you are in it is very difficult um and very costly to to change that so you know look at um
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
understanding what is it, what format, what demand is there, what is appealing to people before you start investing in that shop, before you start investing in automation, okay? That is the same logic. It is exactly the same logic for coffee shops, for leases, as it is for automation and complex systems that sit behind that automation. There is no point having a 14-day email sequence, for
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
into your business, into your world, into upsells, if you haven't yet got anybody coming through the front end and you have no idea what's going to attract that person to you and therefore what it is that they'll be wanting to experience, see, understand, what's going to convince them to buy.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
There's just so many different variables that until you really know and understand who it is that you're attracting on that front end, you have no idea how to create the right resource or something that's really going to resonate with them. So what am I saying here? What am I telling you to do? Well, really what I'm encouraging you to do is to sell your offer manually first. Okay.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Whether that's a course, it's coaching, it's a service, whatever it is. Okay. Yes, it will absolutely not be efficient. It won't be scalable. It will be a lot of effort. It'll be a lot of legwork, but it will allow you to start earning revenue very quickly. It will help you to gather real feedback from buyers rather than you guessing and making assumptions.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
So that's what we're going to be talking around today. Many new business owners, they get bogged down in tech and automation before they've even made a single sale. And I see this not just with new business owners, but also with people who are creating a new offer.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
You'll know because those people will be putting in their hand in their pocket to buy that thing from you. It doesn't have to look perfect to start off with. There are very, very few industries where you need it to be all shiny and sorted before it goes out there into the domain. Even the most professional of services can start quite basic and you can grow and you can develop from there.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Now, that's not to say that we don't feel better selling something which is totally put together and has got all those bells and whistles and is all shiny and has got a system. It makes us feel more official. It makes us feel like, you know, proper. It makes us feel justified in the price that we're offering. It makes us feel more confident in our offer.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
But that offer can, a decent offer will sell itself. I know people who are generating millions per month now with their programs, with their courses, with their trainings, who started those trainings, those products off with Google documents and access to those Google files and Google videos where those individuals could access that information.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
People didn't care because they knew it was rough and ready. They knew it was at a price that was never going to be repeated. They knew they were getting good value for money, not because it was this polished opportunity with all the bells and whistles, but because it had the information that they were after. And that is the key thing.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
So even if you're just starting out, you can still get away with providing things in a more rough and ready format. The key thing is to understand what resonates with your audience before you automate, before you put those things in place. From a sort of practicalities tip, because everyone always wants numbers, if you can get at least five sales,
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
for that offer that you are creating before you start to put things into place from an automation. Five sales is a good sign that your offer is worth automating. Obviously, that depends on the size of your audience, et cetera, et cetera. But that is a good starting point. That is a good rule of thumb. If you're thinking, hey, what about me? What about my scenario?
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
And you're left puzzled by this, drop me an email, sarah at youcan.online, and I will help as much as I can, okay? So when to start automation and what to automate first? Well, you want to start small, okay? Don't disappear down this sort of rabbit hole of automation for the next, you know, for weeks on end, not reappearing, not being present, not talking.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
If they're changing the direction of the business or the format in which they deliver their services, they will faff around with technology. We will get ourselves all dug into all the sort of black holes that exist. that are there for technology and landing pages and different resources and all these different things when actually sometimes we just need to get ourselves going.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
to your audience etc start small okay so begin with simple automations where you are wasting your the most of your time like you know automatic purchasing and signing up for the course okay so you can start with a lot of my clients start with a basic checkout so then you're not faffing around with card details and they go to that quite quickly and particularly with stripe and things like that you've got those payment gateways you've got that opportunity
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
With softwares like the software I mentioned last week, GoHighLevel, where you can be putting those resources in place very quickly, very easily. Yes, you might get charged more to start off with than everything else, but it's a way to take payment. It's an easy way to take payment. And then from there, you can progress. So they might be your first step.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Then you might look to, you know what, actually, I don't want to be talking to people in the DMs or whatever for a product that's worth less than $100. Totally agree with you on that one. So then we can start looking at having landing pages, sales pages in place,
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
We need to test that theory out. We need to see what people want. We need to see what format that they want it on before we start getting all those bells and whistles in place. I often see people trying to launch that first offer with... all the technology already in place, all the emails, all the automation and everything else.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
so that people are able to sign up through those pages and get convinced over your offer being a great offer without you having to have that conversation with them. Then it might be email sequences for the onboarding of new clients where you just go in, if they make the purchase and then it automatically
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Hello and welcome to the You Can podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we are on episode 32. Can you believe it already? And so today we're going to be talking around how automation can speed things up, but only when the time is right. And that's the key thing here is when is the right time and when is possibly a little bit too early on in the game.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
puts them into that offer, makes that offer available, sends out emails, starts that process of automation even better. The more complex automations like upsells and downsells and other offers and order bumps that can come into a sales funnel, they can come later, okay?
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
equally if tech isn't your thing then outsource it because you'll be able to outsource it because you'll have made sales and if you are better your time is better spent if it doesn't float your boat or you're not naturally good at this kind of thing or it's not something you see yourself doing in the future then if you are making the sales then you will be in a position where you should be able to reinvest that money in getting the help you need to get that tech up and running please do your due diligence there are lots of people out there saying they can do things which they can't
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
And so, you know, look for recommendations, et cetera. Again, if you're ever confused about that, drop into the UCAN community and ask, who would I recommend for such and such? Or drop me an email, okay? The key thing is here is to play to your strengths.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
If you have listened to my earlier podcast on not strangling your cash flow and still stunting the growth of your business through taking too much out of it to cover your own expenses, then you've already got the idea that you are wanting to reinvest into your business and therefore you can do that with the sales that you will make from the
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
the revenue you've generated from actually putting this thing out there in the first place rather than keeping it under wraps until all the automation is sorted. It will pay for its own automation, okay? Now, automating after validating that offer, making sure you've got demand for it, making sure that people are coming through, making sure the right people are coming through as well.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
There's no point automating it with the bad message. So for example, you know, you are putting out a message of, I can help you get 10 clients in the next six weeks. And then from there, what you're getting, you're getting real newbies, but you don't want newbies, you want people who have been in business, but they just not got the lead gen that they would like.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Then what you can do is you can tweak that initial messaging. If you had built an entire automation on that, then you'd have had the follow-up emails talking about, getting those six clients, getting those leads within the next 10 clients, 10 leads within the next six weeks, whatever. You would have been basing everything off that, but actually that brings you the wrong people.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
So as it's going through, you can see the quality of the leads you're getting. You can see the type of people you're attracting. You can either do more of it or less of it or pivot or whatever you need to do to get it in front of the right people. That is when you are then in a position, I would go again.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
And so we're going to be talking around why that's not a good idea and actually how doing it at the right time in the right order, you can actually make your life easier when it comes to what to put in those emails, what to say to those individuals and how to really resonate with your target audience. But first of all, I want you to imagine, right, just to kind of set the scene on this.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
And when you've got five sales from people who actually you want to work with, you enjoy working with, for example, then I'd be like, yeah, okay, this is good. This messaging works. And then I would start to slot it into my automation and that automation process.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
So, you know, automating at the right time, once you've got the right people coming through, it saves you time and money by building only what is needed, okay, when it is needed. It fits your audience, which is what I was explaining there with, you know, you better understand them, you know that you're getting the right people through. You make more sales because the process is streamlined.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
It is optimized. You're getting the right people. You're not having to go back and rechange anything. You're not having to, you know, down tools because it's not working and you need to get another one up and running. You can fit it in as you go. You sell first, you automate second. It's the fastest way to build a business that actually works and actually gets the right people through the door.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
okay so don't let automation slow you down okay you're using it to speed it up it's supposed to be a tool that enables efficiency but used at the wrong time it's going to slow your launches it's going to slow your progress it's going to slow the development of your business it's going to slow your understanding because you're going to be detached from those individuals and so you're not even going to know who you're talking to if you stick a sales page in the way when you've got a sales page going between you and a client you want to make sure
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
You've got that client right and you know who it is you are tailoring that sales page for. If you've enjoyed this episode, if you've got somebody in mind that you think, you know what, this would really work well for them, then please do share it. You can feel free to DM me.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
You can DM on Instagram, Facebook, or you can drop me an email, sarah at youcan.online with your biggest automation challenge. And please don't forget to subscribe and review this podcast. Every bit helps. So that's it for me this week, guys.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
I look forward to speaking to you again next week, where we're going to be talking a little bit more about referrals and why referrals are your best source of leads and how to get more of them. So I look forward to speaking to you then. In the meantime, have a great rest of your week. Bye for now.
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Automation: Speeding Up Without Slowing Yourself Down
Imagine opening a cafe, investing in all that high-end espresso machine, the custom-built website, an automated ordering system, all that point-of-sale stuff, before even testing whether people wanted your coffee, yeah? Just imagine, right, if you moved into an area and you actually had no idea if these people were really into their coffee.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
So as long as it's relevant, I don't feel it's unethical. If you don't feel comfortable with it, you can make it very clear. If you still don't feel comfortable with it, then don't use them. Go out there, get some free or low cost people trialing and then get their feedback in. So what are you gonna ask them to say?
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Well, I have a free download for structuring testimonials, those key sort of testimonial questions that you wanna be asking people. So in the show notes, you can click a link and get those downloaded. So do click that link, do download those free of charge. The sort of thing you wanna be looking for are, and what is detailed in this download,
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
a questions around that sort of circumstances prior to working with you um any hesitations they had um before working with you the change the transformation that happened with by working with you um specific results they got um whether they'd recommend what they would say to somebody is always a good one and it's one that's actually on there the download is you know what would they say to somebody thinking who was kind of on the fence thinking about working with me
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
So, you know, all those are available in that free download. Click the link in the show notes for that download for me and you can get that for free. Where do you store them? What do you do with these testimonies once you've got them? Well, you know, I've said about using them on social.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
You can obviously use them on websites, your social media posts, your email marketing in a kind of case study style. You can use it on Google My Business, on Trustpilot. You can use it for your landing pages for your various courses or products or offers. So having those testimonials and also checkout pages, guys.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
So not just the landing pages, but also if you're just sending them to checkout, I'd have a brief bit of information on what they're gonna get with that on the checkout page. And then I would have testimonials, at least one or two testimonials on there. As far as storage is concerned long-term,
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
I actually have a screenshots, well, I have a folder in my, I'm all appled, so in my photo section on my phone, which is like business brag. And in there are all my screenshots from things that people have sent me. I will, normally I'll put them out almost straight away onto, or yeah, almost or actually straight away onto my stories and then I will also save them in there.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Then they can be used by the team for all sorts of different reference points. Google Drive is what we use. You can obviously use Notion or you can use Notes or whatever else. However, notes to store them, we use Google. So we have different Google Drive sections and I keep them in a brag section. I tend to have them just in there and then I'll potentially date them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
So I'm going to share with you how to get those testimonials, whether you... have had clients or not, what to ask, where to store them and how to use them effectively. Because I bet you a lot of you are going, you know what, I have testimonials, but I don't really know how to use them, where to use them. And so we're going to be sharing all that in today's episode. So why do they matter?
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
I'll potentially put them by offer, but I tend to just have them in there now because I've found that otherwise you're rooting around way too much. So how often should you be using them? I would say that one in every sort of three to four posts should have something in there of social proof, making reference, telling stories.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If you're thinking how much, how often, then what you can do is you can look to use them, you use them as snippets, you can reference the person's full name, you can reference initials so that you can feel like you're not just having to put out the exact same testimonial. There's ways to switch it up while still feeling like you're using your integrity.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If you're using a combination of formal testimonials plus screenshots, then actually you'll surprise yourself with how often, even with a sort of handful of clients, you can get some decent evidence and resources to use on a regular basis. The thing is, is it's consistency with testimonials like everything. Not sexy, but really effective. So keep collecting, keep updating them.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
We can all get out of the habit. So don't beat yourself up. You can always go back to a client and say, hi, would you mind? If you haven't started yet, then set yourself a goal. Collect your first three testimonials this week. OK, do something, take action to get yourself into that better place.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If you haven't got anybody yet, then reach out to three or four people and see if they'll do something with you in return for a testimonial. So once again, if you want that testimonial question guide, then click that link in the podcast description. And as ever, thank you for listening.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And please do support this podcast by going and reviewing and following and subscribing and encouraging others to do the same. That would be really appreciated. So that's it for me this week, guys. In the meantime, have a great rest of your week and I will speak to you again next week. Bye for now.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
They are social proof, as I've already talked around. They are the proof that you are able to deliver on what you're promising. It helps people trust you. OK, beyond that, I believe that actually it can be a great way to access and to engage your audience. For example, you know, people always remember stories and so it's easier to provide information in story format.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
I have a client who is very high end considering what he does. And so people come to him, they're expecting him to be paid by the hour ad hoc and instead he puts together packages which provide the outcome that they're looking for. And within that, he provides them straight from the get-go.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
As soon as he finds out what problem they're experiencing, he provides them with a case study with evidence that this can happen. Now, he does that for a number of reasons. He does that because it shows that person, it gives them belief that actually this problem can be resolved. They've got long-term problems. And so...
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
You know, how can they, over time, your belief that actually this can change your circumstance, this can change, begins to waver. And so he gets them right up there with going, you know what, here's the evidence that actually you can go from where you are. Actually, you can go from a position which is worse than what you are and you can be fully recovered. And so that sets that belief off.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
But it also means that that individual is able to relate to that story rather than feeling accused. So what I mean by that is when you put out social media posts, again, I'll come on to this in a bit. I love just jumping ahead, don't I? But when you put out social media posts and you share with them that this individual went from this problem, they did this and they got this outcome.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
What can help people feel confident in making that decision to work with you? That can be your testimonials. You can't buy them. They're things that are genuine. Well, As long as you don't make them up, but that's a totally different story. And I 100% advise you not to do that. But, you know, they are your proof that what you are saying actually you can deliver on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
It's much, much better. It's more powerful. It gets rid of any emotion around that person feeling accused. If you were to say, hey, you, I believe that you are this, this, this, and this. You're not confident. You're not at your best. They're probably likely to start feeling a little bit on their guard, a little... a little bit like they are being got at. And so they're going to get defensive.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And with defensive, they stop listening because they start getting offended. They're not taking on the information in a positive way. They're seeing it as a dig at them. And you want to avoid that as much as possible. You don't want to be calling out your clients. You don't want to make them feel bad. You want to give them hope. And that is what you can do with testimonials. You
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
You've also got, it's a conversation starter. It's a point of reference. I talk about my ideal client, Jenny, a lot. She isn't a testimonial, but she is an example of a situation that people are in when they come to me. My ideal client is Jenny because I talk about ideal clients a lot. My ideal client is Jenny and this is the scenario she's been in.
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The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And the amount of people who go, oh, you know what? I'm just, I'm basically Jenny. And so being able for people to relate to that, it starts that conversation. I know when they say that exactly the situation they are in. There are also SEO benefits to testimonials because Google, Google My Business, Trustpilot, they help your business appear in searches.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If you are feeding that Google My Business, if you are feeding your Google profile, then obviously you're going to get more hits. You're going to appear higher up.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
when people search on those search terms which are relevant to your business so well well worth it the other thing is is testimonials are essential if you are in it for the long term okay because they will deliver for you time and time again now i do meet people sadly who they are in it to make as much money in a short period of time deliver as little as possible and then make a run for it to another little lucrative pool which they will do the same thing in um
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
i don't like working with those people i don't work with those people but they do exist and if you are in a position where you're not wanting you just want to making a quick buck um then you know testimonials they're not going to be reaping the benefit they could be your testimonials are there they are your foundations they are the bricks that you can keep drawing upon and pointing to um time and time again um they are an amazing way to engage your audience
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
and something that you don't want to overlook, particularly if you are building, hopefully you are building for the long term and you're wanting to stick around in this space. Building up that testimonial bank is priceless. So when do you start collecting testimonials?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Because I've had people say to me, well, you know, I'm not quite finished, my offer isn't quite right, or I haven't got testimonials for this offer, but I've got testimonials for other things, and I will come on to that in a moment. The best time to start is now. Okay, if you don't have any, then don't beat yourself up about it.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Do think, though, if you don't have any right now, but you've had clients, you've had good experiences, think about who you could just get in contact with again and ask for a testimonial. People don't like to do video testimonials, okay? And actually when people are doing testimonials in general, they're a bit like, oh, what do I say? What don't I say? How do I put this?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And those testimonials, you know, the more clients now come to me and I'm like, Google reviews, get your feedback, get that feedback onto platforms, which is easily accessible for potential clients. People want to do their due diligence. They want to feel confident that they're making the right decision. And I do not blame them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And so providing them with a bit of a framework, a bit of guidance is a great way of helping them to know what to put and to create a testimonial that is going to do your business justice and really help get the result. I've had it time and time again with clients where they've gone away.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
They haven't used the format that I've suggested because they haven't had the resource with them or something else has happened. And so they kind of just let that client go off and do their own thing. And it hasn't hit home. It hasn't been as good as it could have been from that client. They're like, this person did amazing. They did this, this, this and this.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And none of that was included in the testimonial. If you find that, if you have that challenge, the best thing you can do is go back to that person and say, hey, would you mind if I put this in for you? Or would you mind if you included that? And either do it for them and get them to approve it or ask them to add that in. And then you can always have a conversation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
You can think, oh, gosh, I don't want to be pushy. OK, you don't. But this is a really, really vital bit of resource for you. I'm just saying to them, you know, I don't want to be pedantic. It's just that, you know, it's really I was really pleased with the work that we've done together. It really helps my business to have testimonials from people like yourselves and provide the context.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Hello and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today we're talking around why testimonials and reviews are the real currency within your business. The thing is here is, wow, that's a bit of a claim, you know, like really, you know, to keep the lights on, you need revenue. Yes, you do. But what actually can drive that revenue?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And I'm sure they'll be more than happy to help. um when is the right moment to ask so if you assuming that you're not backdating and going back to people that you finish working with the really good time is when a client has just had a big win okay so you're on a call with them and they're going yeah i've done really well i've been really pleased with this
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
they're buzzing they've got that positive energy that's going to come across in any video and in any testimonial that they do what I would do what I tend to do is because I have calls with clients over zoom is it's being recorded anyway is to be like hey would you mind if I stopped the recording restarted it because that's cleaner for me and we can go through and I can record a quick testimonial from you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
It doesn't matter if you think, oh gosh, but I'm only on week three with this person. You know, I've got another eight weeks. So what I should really do is wait till the end. The problem is, is that the biggest change happens in the first few weeks. You are a new thing. You are creating change quite quickly. So the effect is quite, it's quite a steep learning curve to start off with.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And then people tend to plateau a bit because they've picked up that information, they've learned that information. And then it's between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date with everyday tasks. Who has time to stress about website security?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Well, with Kinsta, they take care of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best, which is probably not website security. So what is Kinsta? Well, Kinsta provides managed hosting for WordPress. So offering lightning fast loading times, top tier security and unmatched human only customer support.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
There are so many claims going around on the internet, particularly with online businesses.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Kinsta provides enterprise-grade security and is one of the few hosting providers for WordPress with SOC 2 and other certifications that guarantee the highest level of security for your website. Kinsta customers can experience up to 200% faster sites simply by moving their WordPress site to the platform.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
They have a user-friendly customer dashboard called MyKingster that makes managing your site or multiple sites a breeze. MyKingster is packed with a range of features that simplify site management, including tools for cache control, debugging, redirecting, geolocation, and even CDN setup.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
The claims that they're making, particularly within that sort of coaching world, are so unsubstantiated and so extreme that it makes a lot more sense to make sure that every scrap of evidence you've got that actually you can deliver on what you're saying is there for them to take note of and to feel reassured by.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
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You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today. consistency. It's the consistency of implementing it, particularly in my case. So the problem is then is that person's got into kind of consistent mode. It's not so exciting. You know, even the big wins, multiple big wins later, it's become a bit of a new normal.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And they're hungry for more. And so even if at week two or three, they get a big win and you take a testimonial from them, you can go and get a testimonial from them later on. You get them on week five or eight or whichever week it is that you're working with them. And you could get, you know, a testimonial two years down the line from them. It doesn't matter. People don't really mind.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
And there's not a limit on it. And it's not, you know, a socially acceptable number. I probably wouldn't do it weekly. But if there's been a massive win, I'd be like, oh gosh, would you mind? and just have that open dialogue with them. So you can also ask if they are sharing a positive message with you privately.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
I tend to make it very clear, it's in my Ts and Cs, that I will use what people send as messages, I can use in marketing. What I do though is, is anything personal, I remove it. I also, if I wanna keep that person's name in, I'll check, do you want this done anonymous?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
anonymously or would you like me to um or is it okay to keep your name in um so that that is how i kind of navigate that but if you have it in your t's and c's to start with obviously if there's anything personal in there which could clearly identify them i would always check
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If you haven't had clients yet, then that's when you can offer free or low cost trials, depending on where you are, depending on with your audience. I was speaking to somebody earlier today and she was saying, I'm not even actively promoting my mentoring and people are still coming, which is lovely. And so. I was having a conversation with this lady today and she has a massive audience already.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
It's just about monetizing them. And so I wouldn't go out there for her with a free offer. She's done stuff for free before. It needs to be, you know, kind of setting out her store and creating that awareness that you need to pay me guys for the value that I'm providing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
So, you know, whenever somebody is working with me, whenever they start off working with me, we look at what resources they already have. And one of those key things is always testimonials. Have you got proof that what you want to sell, you can actually deliver on, you can actually provide?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
You can also, if you haven't had clients yet, you can speak to past colleagues, mentors, people you've helped on an informal basis, which kind of led you to doing what you do now. And you can ask them for feedback. You can ask them for testimonials. And that's the thing, really, guys, is people get really hung up on, oh, well, I haven't had anybody through this specific program.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If that specific program is relevant, directly relates to, for example, like my programs, I've done sprint programs, I've done private client programs, I've got a startup program, I've got a course that a one to one, which helps you to set up courses and establish courses into your own business.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
I have those if people approached me about those then I would offer what was relevant to those individuals I didn't have for example the the courses course I didn't have testimonials for that because it was new I made people aware this is new but I had testimonials on there with people saying how great my course was how great it had been working with me one-on-one before because it
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
it's a course it's a program which helps you to create courses so therefore evidence that my courses are actually decent is helpful and they'll be working one-to-one with me and so the testimonials on working one-to-one with me cover that off as well so you know she's good at creating courses and she's not weird and she's actually quite enjoyable to work with um come over with those testimonials and that's what you're trying to do with these testimonials is it's not specifically you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
about that program that you're currently offering or the offer that you've got on that page. It's about you as a person, you as an individual, you providing those credentials. Now, if I was to start marketing my skills for, I'm a qualified riding instructor, horse riding instructor. If I started to use my client testimonials from my business mentoring for a landing page for my equine coaching,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
then I would absolutely feel that that would be wrong because that isn't about me in the same setting. It's not me on Zoom. It's me working with somebody with their horse. That's very, very different. And so if I needed testimonials, if I wanted testimonials, if I wanted to reignite that element of my skill set, then I would provide free sessions so that I would get testimonials that way.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
The Real Currency Of Business: The Power of Testimonials & Reviews
If they don't, and if that's what you're thinking, then we're going to go into that in a little bit more detail in a minute. But if you don't have the evidence, all is not lost. There are ways to get them. That generally means working with people in return for testimonials, but not always. But as I say, we'll come on to that in a minute.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
beyond that and we've kind of we've spoke about this before that you know as long as if you've got a house you've actually got assets that's when you kind of the time is to kind of have a will as far as the business side of things it's looking at the you know the the documents for setting up the business it's a limited company and it's looking at actually where do you what do you want to happen um yeah it is the kind of key thing isn't it definitely definitely and then once they're in place you know you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yeah. And what happens if it gets a little bit out of date? So, you know, the business name has changed or the person name has changed or any property which is referenced isn't your home anymore because you've moved house. Is that something you need to update?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Will it tend to slow the process down, I presume?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And presumably, powers of attorney within your business and all those kind of the legal stuff within your business can be charged, can be set against the business. It can be a business expense.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
yeah you can charge that as a business expense it can be invoiced to the business brilliant okay so that's that can help some people and they're thinking you know what it's not something i want to take on personally it's covered and then you know at the end of the day you're going to pay less corporation tax so yeah absolutely bonus happiness is so um okay claire so if they want some more help on this if they're like you know what claire seems to know what she's talking about where's the best way to get hold of you
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Are you okay? My name's Jade. I'm nothing.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
I might have to get myself some more water in a minute. It's always when I'm doing podcasts. Always. It's like, oh, the mic's out. Let's get coffee. Right. Carry on. Carry on.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
No. And that's the thing is actually because we got into a conversation about this because one of my clients said, Her husband was in his 40s, and he had a stroke. And they didn't have anything like this in place. Because why, you know, why would you naturally, as a regular, you know, regular everyday person thing, you know what, I need these sorts of powers of attorney.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And the health one was something that I wasn't aware of. So I knew about the finances one because that was something that my parents needed for my grandma. And so they could they could sort of look after her estate when she went into into a home. But I was never aware of the health one. So just taught me top sort of level through that.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Okay, that easy sounds good. Because this is not a fun topic, is it really? Like this is not anything that anyone ever jumps out of bed and is excited for?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Which is mad, isn't it? I find that really weird.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Hello, and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today I am joined by the very lovely Claire Sutherland, and we're gonna be talking all around powers of attorney and wills and things like that. And so I'm gonna let Claire introduce herself to you, and then we will get cracking from there. So fire away, Claire.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Madness. Okay. That makes sense.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
I need another bit of paper. Okay, so that makes sense. So as a business owner, The vast majority of people who listen are either they're sole traders or small limited companies. There may be some partnerships mixed in there as well. What do you need as a business owner?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
came into a situation where you could no longer make decisions. Between juggling client meetings, managing your website, keeping up to date with everyday tasks, who has time to stress about website security? Well, with Kinsta, they take care of the technical stuff so you can focus on what you do best, which is probably not website security. So what is Kinsta?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Well, Kinsta provides managed hosting for WordPress. So offering lightning fast loading times, top tier security and unmatched human only customer support. Whether you're a business owner, web developer or you're running a digital agency, Kinsta makes managing your website easy and efficient so you can spend more time on what matters most.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Kinsta gives you complete peace of mind by ensuring that your WordPress site are always online, secure and performing at their best. Kinsta provides enterprise-grade security and is one of the few hosting providers for WordPress with SOC 2 and other certifications that guarantee the highest level of security for your website.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Kinsta customers can experience up to 200% faster sites simply by moving their WordPress site to the platform. They have a user-friendly customer dashboard called MyKingster that makes managing your site or multiple sites a breeze. MyKingster is packed with a range of features that simplify site management, including tools for cache control, debugging, redirecting, geolocation, and even CDN setup.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Thanks to their unlimited free expert-led migrations, Kinsta makes it a smooth transition from other hosting providers so you don't experience any downtime. Plus, they've got 24-7, 365 days a year, human-only support. Available in multiple languages, it's ready to assist you with any inquiry regardless of site complexity.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
What's incredible to me about Kinsta is their fast and reliable customer service and premium features that are included at no extra cost. Ready to experience Kingsta's hosting for yourself? Get your first month free when you sign up at kingsta.com today. It's the perfect opportunity to see why Kingsta is trusted by thousands of businesses worldwide to power their websites.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Visit kingsta.com to get this limited time offer for new customers on select plans. Don't miss out. Get started for free today.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And sometimes you're kind of doing it, which is good, isn't it? I mean, it's good that you like it. I think sometimes it's more around for the people that you care around than it is for you, really, isn't it? Because obviously a lot of these things are looking at if you are no longer around or able to do what you're currently doing. So it is more around protecting those that you love, isn't it?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Makes sense.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
If you don't have a power of attorney specific to your business, but you do have a power of attorney for you, does that power of attorney cover your business or does it just go into a very vague area?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
loss of capacity or reduced, there might be something in there. Okay. So it's, it's a good idea to check those first. And then if you haven't got something in there, then the power of attorney would be the way to go. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Cause you've also got, cause I always think out, you know, like you play out different scenarios, don't you?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And it's like, if you've got a partnership and the power of attorney, the power, the decision-making goes to that person's other half who you don't have a working relationship with, who doesn't really understand the business. they're not, you know, they're going to be in quite an emotional state themselves. They're not going to necessarily be making the best decisions.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And then that baton is passing to that person in that state to step in for that individual. You know, you can see where that could really spiral and you could end up in a really tricky situation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yeah, that makes sense. Especially, I always think of, oh, if you get someone who's totally clueless, but they don't realise how clueless they are.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
That would be like my worst case scenario would be that they, you know, they go all guns in, but they don't actually know what they're, they're pushing through um yeah it's very painful painful okay so if they haven't got these things so really as a normal human being you need that will you need those powers of attorney in place um
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Is this too much? Have I taken on too much? Can I do this? But here's the truth. Most of those feelings, they are temporary. Yeah, they don't last. It's one of those things that you tend to have a real challenge and a real downtime and then you have a massive breakthrough. It is genuinely such a roller coaster. And that's all part of that entrepreneurial roller coaster.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
And those challenges, those times when you think, gosh, I really don't think I can do this. They can be fixed. So let's talk about those times where it's not about quitting. That wouldn't be the solution. It's actually an opportunity to reassess. Okay. It's those, I want to give it moments and why they might not actually mean that it's time to walk away. Okay. You're not making any money now.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
That is a really common one. I hear that all the time. People come to me because I can help you with lead generation and converting those leads into paying customers. So especially for the first year or two, it's a very regular problem that people have. And in all honesty,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
There are businesses that I've worked with who have been going 10 plus years who are still struggling with inconsistent income because they have inconsistent leads, okay? It just means you haven't found your groove yet. It might be that your message needs tweaking, your offer needs tweaking, you need to look and reassess your audience, you've gone too broad, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Money problems are solvable as long as you're willing to adjust and as long as time hasn't run out on that and I will come to that in a little bit, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
you want to to face money challenges head on you don't want to keep burying your head in the sand and hoping things will change but keep doing the same things and and that would be my kind of key word of warning there is if you're finding that you're not making enough money then something needs to change plugging along doing the same thing is unlikely to give you a different outcome okay
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
I know that's vague. I know that's a very general thing to say and get help, reach out, reach out to me, reach out to other business mentors. Okay. And get your, get that support and get that sense check. Okay, you're exhausted, you're burnt out, okay? Burnout is not a reason to give up, okay? Now, I'm not talking extreme burnout, can't get out of bed.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
I'm talking about when you are exhausted, okay? You haven't had those boundaries in place. Everything's merged together. You are busy from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, okay? You're maybe doing too much. You're doing too much. You're taking on too much yourself. Okay. Maybe you're not being as strategic as you could be.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
It's done as an announcement after the time. And that is around. Is it time to give up on your business? Is it time to give up on your business dream? Is it time to say, you know what? I quit. I walk away. I'm going to do something different or I'm going to absolutely change what I am doing. I'm not going to stick with my current approach and my current business model.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Maybe you're not using the resources around you as much as you could. Okay. These are all fixable. Okay. Again, you don't need to give up. You need to rest. You need to restructure.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
okay it's an it's an indication that it's not sustainable the vast majority of people come to me because their business is not sustainable it's either because it's not sustainable because it's not making enough money or it's not sustainable because it's running them ragged and they know that they can't keep this up in the long term okay you need rest you need to restructure you need to regroup and you potentially need some help okay to see the wood for the trees and to figure out how to move forward and get those systems and processes and structures in place
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Okay. You may feel like no one cares. Okay. You've posted, you've shared, maybe even launched something and got zero response. Crickets, tumbleweed. Okay. That is deflating. It's demoralizing, but it doesn't mean your business idea is a bad idea. Okay. Often it's fact of visibility. So, you know, there hasn't been enough. The volume is, it's frightening. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
The amount of volume needed to get people's attention, particularly online, particularly in this day and age, Again, it's very fixable, but you need to dial in with more messaging, with better messaging, being in a better place, so maybe you're not hitting your target audience, posting where you are, posting at the time that you are, posting the information that you are posting.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
But it's all very fixable, it's just understanding, okay, what is it that is misfiring here? Yeah, it's a misfiring, it's not a, this is a really, really bad idea. Having worked with so many people who are like, you know what, I've launched this, I've done this, I've done that, and nobody cares, nobody's interested. There has been...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Probably out of, I don't know, tens of people, you're probably looking at like 50, 60 people that I've worked with, with that exact problem. They've come to me, I've done this and nobody cares. There's probably been less than 1%, absolutely less than 1%. have actually needed to relook at what they're doing and the core of what they're offering.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Yes, there might be some tweaks, there might be some messaging, but fundamentally they're providing the same thing. They're just packaging it, looking at it differently, messaging it differently, putting it out to a different audience in a different way. So don't feel like that is a reason to walk away just because no one is interested at this moment in time. It takes time.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Okay, it takes time to build an audience. It takes time to have those people's ear and them interested and ready to respond, okay? And then they talk around like comparison being, you know, the thief of joy. They talk around it, you know, being such a source of problems. And it's because it is, okay, comparing yourself to others.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Spoiler alert, they probably have the same doubts, the same rough months, the same meltdowns. They don't let everyone else enjoying those moments, they don't share those moments. What you see online, what you see of somebody else's life, what they choose to tell you is curated, okay? Are you going out there and telling people right now that you think you might have enough and that you're done?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Now, before we dive into this episode, I want you to know that this one, it might hit close to home, but I promise this isn't going to be a doom and gloom episode. It's about getting clarity because sometimes what feels like a need to give up is actually just a sign you need to tweak things. Things aren't working as they are.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
I very much doubt it, okay? So you're not behind, you are on your own path, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
you are on your own path now that doesn't mean that you're going to stick behind that person that always going to be that step ahead of you it just means that you're going through your own journey okay if you're going through a rough patch then you know maybe it is just that a rough patch that doesn't mean it's time to quit it might just be time to regroup get support okay look at your options and and reassess what it is that you should be doing
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
and where you should be going with it, okay? I would strongly advise you to get support from somebody who has been there, done that, okay? That might be somebody that you know in business who you can talk to. You might not be in a position where you're like, you're great, Sarah, thanks for the whole suggestion of a mentor, right? I will do a 15-minute conversation with anybody, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
I will try and help and guide you in the right direction. OK, because I want to help as many people as possible to develop in their business and to have successful businesses. So and I'm not alone with that. You know, decent people, they will get on the phone with you. They will get on a call with you. They will chat to you and share with you their thoughts on your situation.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
At the end of the day, it is your business and it is your choice. But there is lots of people out there who can guide you. But find somebody that, you know, whose opinion you value and talk to them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
The more opinions you tend to get, you get a little snippet from Auntie Jane and then another one from, you know, your next door neighbor, then another one from a business owner of a friend of a friend. Then you start to get, you know, it starts to get diluted. It starts to get confusing. Find somebody that you really trust. Speak to them and find out what they think. OK.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Now, that kind of leads me on to. why you might want to walk away, okay? There are only two real reasons to walk away, and actually neither of them mean you have to give up on having a business. It may just be a case of reshuffling your current business and getting it to look different, or it may just be a pressing the pause button, okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
The two reasons are you are facing immediate financial hardship, okay? What I mean by that is if you keep that business going, it means you can't pay the rent, you can't put food on the table, support your family, you need to pause. This doesn't mean you failed, doesn't mean your dream is over, it's dead in the water.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
It means that you need to make a smart decision to stabilize your lifestyle, okay, before you start to rebuild. Some of the biggest problems that I've seen in a business have come from people trying to draw money out of a business which isn't in a position to support that yet. OK, that's looking at your business like a host, like a source of resources. It's like pulling things from that resource.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
There is no need to explode, press the I'm done button and give up on everything and destroy everything that you've built. Okay, so let's talk about that difference. So to start with guys, let's be honest. There are so many reasons that might make you feel like you want to throw in the towel. Okay. You're tired. You're not making the money you hoped for your latest launch.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Hello and welcome back to the You Can Podcast. It's a show that's all about helping you turn your expertise into income and create a business and life that works for you. I'm Sarah Jolly Jarvis and today we're going to be talking about something that a lot of people come to me and talk through with me. But few are saying it out loud. Few say it in the public domain.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
It's like picking strawberries off a strawberry plant before they are ready. You're going to run out of strawberries if you're not then giving it a rest, allowing them to mature.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
you can get a job and still be an entrepreneur you're not failing many successful business owners had to press pause and come back stronger later that doesn't make you a quitter that makes you responsible it makes you resilient and actually it puts your business in a much better position i really enjoyed working with people who are currently working a job and setting up their business on the side the people who are setting up their business
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Pure, 100% all in. I get why you do it. And for some people, they need that sense of fear and that pressure. But from my point of view, it scares me.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
And I know straight away that they're going to have limited resources to work with because they haven't got the finances available because what they're bringing into the business, what they're making, they're having to withdraw to cover their own financial costs.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
and that can really strangle as i've said in a previous podcast your business and your business is growth so for the sake of your business sometimes some people look for funding some people look to self-fund you may need to go and get a job and get money coming in so that you can actually support the growth of your business and make your business better in the longer term the other reason for walking away rather temporarily or altogether
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
is if you genuinely no longer enjoy your business. I don't mean I'm tired or this is hard. I mean, every task feels like, you know, like you dread it. You hate it. You're not proud of what you're doing. You feel out of alignment. You feel trapped. If you hate your business and that has become your reality, it is time to take a hard look. It's time to think, you know what?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Maybe this isn't right for me. You didn't build this business to feel like a prisoner. You started it to feel free. You'd probably look for freedom and flexibility. And here's something that I wish more people said out loud. You are allowed to change your mind. Yeah, you're allowed to grow. I mean, people get divorced, right?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
But we're not allowed to change our thought processes on running our own business because we see that as a failure. You are allowed to grow. You're allowed to grow beyond things. You're allowed to mature. You're allowed to better understand things. You're allowed to walk away. Sometimes success looks like staying.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Sometimes it looks like closing one door so you can finally open the right one for you. And that might be back into a job. That might be back into employment. It might be into running a totally different business. I have helped people do all the things.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
walk away retire go into employment set up a new business sell the current business so many different options none of them were failures they were the right move for that individual at the end of the day the most important thing is that you are happy and you're enjoying what you do because it takes up too much of your time for you to dislike it so if you're standing at that crossroads today i want to leave you with this thought before you give up you know
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
Get quiet, not with a podcast or a to-do list or someone else's Instagram feed or scrolling or looking at Facebook. You know, honestly, take some time out. I'd encourage you to walk. Most of my clients do go for a walk and ask yourself, do I want to keep going or am I just tired or am I truly done? Okay. If you had unlimited money, would you still be doing this work?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
If your answer is yes, but I'm stuck, then get help. Don't quit in isolation, okay? Talk to a mentor, talk to a peer. Sometimes a single conversation can reignite that spark. It can get your head going. Just saying it out loud, I don't know why, but it can make such a difference.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
But if the answer is a solid no, if this business is draining your soul, if you are no longer happy, if it's jeopardizing your life, it is okay to walk away. Your identity is not your business. Your worth is not tied to lasting this out and achieving all the things within a business. It is your choice. You are not failing. You are evolving.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
flopped your family and friends don't understand they're not supporting you you feel like you're constantly on but on it doing stuff in the business but you're getting nowhere you're kind of like feel like that but kind of busy fool okay if you've ever cried into a laptop or googled jobs near me at 2am in the morning you are not alone we have all been there we've all thought you know what am i doing every single business owner i know has had a moment or a number of moments like that where they've wondered would it be easy to just walk away you know
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
yeah and that's the important thing one of the worst things you can do is keep slogging away not because you want to but because you feel you have to So that's it today, guys. I hope this episode has helped you feel seen, whether you're in that storm right now, or you just need a reminder that it's okay, not always to push through. Okay.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
If this resonated, I'd love it if you hit that follow button and left a quick review. Okay. It helps more people find this podcast and they can feel a little less alone in their journey. Okay. If you know someone who's struggling with their business dreams right now, send them
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
When to Quit Your Business—and When to Keep Going
this way okay send them towards this podcast sometimes you just need to hear that we're not broken we're just being human and that can shed a whole different light on it so thanks for being here today you can do the hard things you are doing the hard things you can find your way forwards whether that's in this business or in the next chapter so until next time guys bye for now