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Ten Bold Moves I’ve Made in Business

Ten Bold Moves I’ve Made in Business

by | Apr 7, 2021 | Business foundations, Business Growth

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
~ E.E. Cummings

1. Started a blog (2011)

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

The Missing Piece When It Comes to Business Growth

The Missing Piece When It Comes to Business Growth

by | Mar 31, 2021 | Business Growth

 

“Networking is simply the cultivating of mutually beneficial, give and take, win-win relationships. It works best, however, when emphasizing the “give” part.”

~ Bob Burg

Do you ever feel like there is a part of the business building puzzle that you just can’t seem to find. You know like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is invariably found covered in dust under the sofa, when you move house?

It can feel so frustrating to have so many of the pieces in place yet still not be making enough money to really feel like you can say this thing is working.

Of course when you find yourself in this place (and it is much more a case of when rather than if) it can feel very disheartening. Like everyone is in on some secret you haven’t been told yet. In several of my recent coaching sessions this question of the missing piece has come up and in this blog post I want to share with you what I believe that piece is.

Allow me to cut right to the chase — CONNECTION is for many business owners the missing piece when it comes to business success.

Yes I know. This isn’t news coming from me but It bears repeating again (and again) because it’s so easy to forget and get drawn into the idea that we should be focusing on promoting and selling ourselves rather than making meaningful connections with people. Even when people hear me talk about the importance of connection in business and agree that it’s makes perfect sense, rarely do they follow up with the very real action required to develop and deepen actual relationships with people in their audience and network.

And what does connection look like in practice? Simply put — it’s having conversations — the actual real-life sort!

Back in the day when I spent a LOT of money on an expensive Business Coach, one thing he drilled into me was the idea that no client was ever created outside of a conversation. So the goal of everything I did in my business was to have more conversations. And let’s just be very clear, conversations are not: posting on social media, commenting on other people’s posts, doing Instagram stories, making videos for YouTube, writing on Medium or blogging. Conversations are what happen after those things. They are what happen when we engage with another human being and say: Hey thanks for your comment on my post, I’d love to know more about how it impacted you, do you fancy hopping on a call? Or Thanks for sharing how you are struggling with this issue, I’d love to gift you a complimentary session for us to look at that?

In a recent coaching session with a newly qualified coach, we looked at what she was doing to grow her business and I was impressed to see that she was consistently putting out solid content to her audience and getting a lot of great engagement in return. What she couldn’t understand was how to take this engagement and transform it into paying clients.

The missing piece? Connection.

As we reviewed her Facebook page and looked through the comments people had left on her content, it quickly became clear to me that she wasn’t doing enough to deepen the relationships on an individual level. She was responding to the comments people left by saying thank you but she wasn’t trying to move the conversation forward beyond that.

When we seek to deepen the connection and engage in a more meaningful dialogue, it becomes more likely that an opportunity to serve the other person will arise. And when we genuinely serve the other person, we allow that person to see the potential impact of working with us.

Just this week someone left the following positive comment on one of my videos on YouTube:

Lovely interview, I was so engaged, the information was beneficial and relevant, thank you. Now I could have simply replied with something to the effect of thanks for your comment or not even replied at all as some people do, but instead I wrote the following: Thanks Lillian! I’m so glad you found the interview useful. Curious to know what your biggest take-away was?

Can you see the difference, now this lady may never reply but if she does and she shares with me why the video was impactful for her, then the chances of me being able to help her on a deeper level dramatically increase. And if I genuinely help her, the chances of her hiring me also increase.

People buy from people they know, like and trust and it’s said that it takes 7 touch points (interactions with your business) to create a deep enough connection to make a sale. In fact some experts predict this is now closer to 13, given how inundated we are by marketing messages across devices and platforms these days. Some examples of touch points could include, reading a blog post, seeing a FB ad, watching an Instagram story or receiving a marketing email.

But here’s the thing. Not all touch points are equal. Which do you think is more likely to be effective in creating a genuine connection — a cleverly crafted social media post that you blast out to hundreds or thousands of people or a direct and meaningful 1 to 1 conversation? In my mind it’s a no brainer and as well as being more effective at creating connection, it’s also a far more conscious, authentic and fun way to do business.

The problem I’ve found with this missing piece is that it’s so deceptively simple — sure people say, I can have more conversations but when it comes to doing the real work of outreach, people often underestimate the time, effort and energy it takes to be in a mode of connection. It requires you to take actions daily to reach out to people in your audience, to serve them powerfully and to deepen the relationship. But here’s the good news, whilst it may take effort, the rewards are plenty. To name just a few, if you prioritise connection in your business, you’re likely to have:

  • More collaborations,

So there you have it the missing piece that many business owners simply overlook when it comes to growing their business. Who could you reach out to today to be more connected in your business?

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Six Reasons to Make Content a Business Priority

Six Reasons to Make Content a Business Priority

by | Mar 10, 2021 | Business Growth, Content creation

“By dedicating yourself to a content rhythm, you’ll develop a consistent level of creativity and energy that flows into everything else in your business.”
~ George Kao

You might already get that it pays to have a presence on social media, to publish a blog and/or to send out regular newsletters. But if I were to guess, I’d say it might not be abundantly clear to you why it’s so important to make content a business priority and because of this, perhaps you’re not making it the priority it deserves to be.

Before we go on, let’s just clarify what we mean by creating content.

What I’m not talking about here is marketing copy such as sales pages, launch posts or any other copy designed specifically to get your audience to buy. Instead, what I’m referring to is content that serves your audience, in much the same way that your products or services might, albeit, of course not as profoundly. Content that helps them, educates them, inspires and uplifts them. Content that freely shares your best ideas and advice on the very transformation you help your clients to achieve.

What trips most people up when it comes to content creation is the mistaken belief that their content has to entice people to buy, which of course then feels icky and gross. When we let go of that idea, we’re free to simply show up and share what we know and when we do that, not only does our audience benefit but we also enjoy creating content a whole lot more.

So why is creating content so important if it’s not focused on making a sale? 

Good question! Consistently creating and sharing free content supports you and your business in a number of fundamental ways.

1. It demonstrates your expertise. What better way to show people how knowledgeable you are about your skill or service, than to create content that illustrates it?

2. It helps you more deeply connect to your audience. When you show up regularly in people’s lives, be that in their inbox or their newsfeed, people not only get to know you better, but they also begin to trust and rely on you and the information you share.

3. It allows you to serve your audience before they’ve even spent a penny with you. Being generous with your content and giving your best ideas away for free cultivates reciprocal generosity, meaning people are more likely to invest in what you’re selling (if the content resonates) and/or refer you to other people.

4. It allows you to find your voice and express your point of view. Having a strong point of view is crucial to helping you stand out to your right-fit people. Creating content consistently allows us to explore what we believe and share that with the world.

5. Consistent content creation allows us to get to know our audience better. By paying attention to which pieces of content get the most likes, shares or comments, we begin to better understand what our audience is interested in and therefore what it needs from us.

6. It helps to grow your audience. As your content improves, which of course it will the more you practice and the more you heed the feedback you get, the more likely it is that people will share that content and the more eyes will, therefore, be on you and your business.

It’s for all of the above reasons, that content creation has been at the heart of my business growth strategy for years now and because of this ongoing commitment and consistency, my content is now sending me paying clients on the regular. Two clients recently told me that they found me via my content on Medium and many of my current 1:1 clients found me via Google because my blog posts came up in their searches. 

This wasn’t the case even a year ago but over the past year, having been pretty consistent with my content since early 2019, people are now finding my content online and hiring me as a result.

So what does consistency look like? I always think about these words from my business mentor, George Kao:

“How often should you create? Once a week is a good rhythm, but what’s interesting is that it’s easier to do it everyday. When you have a weekly habit, it can be hard to build momentum. When it’s a daily habit, there’s no question that you have to do it each day, and it becomes a rhythm.”

I certainly don’t write every day these days, but back when I was struggling to get into a rhythm of weekly writing, I took George’s words to heart and whilst initially thinking that there was no way could I create a blog post every day, I subsequently remembered a 30-day challenge I set for myself back in 2012, where I did exactly that for my old personal growth blog.

This in turn led me to running a 30-day content challenge in 2019 in which I wrote 30 blog posts in 30 days. This is where my journey of consistent content creation began. Since then, I’ve written many more pieces and regular content creation has become a ingrained part of my weekly business schedule and I truly wish the same for you.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Five Stages Of Business Growth

Five Stages Of Business Growth

by | Mar 3, 2021 | Business Growth, Business model

 

Growing a business is a journey, it’s a transformative journey that has various stages of growth, through which, we need to pass until we reach our own personal definition of success. Each stage requires us to do different things and with each stage we ourselves become different people. If that sounds scary, it’s because in many ways it is. Being a business owner is not for the faint hearted.

The problem with this fact, is that many business owners simply don’t acknowledge it. Which is, in part, because unless you’ve done the journey before, how would you know about these various stages and also because we are, more often than not, fed a very distorted image of what the business journey entails.

What we most often see online is a story of overnight success. Those that sell this story will speak of some struggle, for sure, because we wouldn’t believe it otherwise but then there is the big aha, the turning point, the moment when it all made sense and the right strategy appeared and from that day forth, money and clients poured in.

But it really doesn’t work like that — of course there is a turning point, a moment when things do start to fall into place but it’s far more gradual and nuanced than we are led to believe. In this blog post, I’m going to attempt to walk you through some of the stages you’ll inevitably experience on your way to success. To be clear, your success and my success are most definitely not one and the same thing so it’s important to be clear for yourself what some of the terms I use below mean for you.

This is what I call pre-business, it’s the desire to start a business, the idea behind it. I see a lot of people hanging out here without ever making it to stage 2. I myself quit a well-paid career in Program Management in 2012 with the idea of becoming a Life Coach, yet it took me 2 more years to really go into business, when in 2014 I got my first paying client. Why? Because I had no clue how to start or run a business, which left me stuck in procrastination and overwhelm. Eventually I hired a business coach to guide me and things took off from there.

Possible Pitfall: Getting stuck thinking about starting, without ever taking any concrete action. It’s easy to get overwhelmed in research at this stage and feeling pushed and pulled by all the competing advice we see online.
Suggested Focus: Avoid hanging out in this stage and get into action as soon as possible. Taking action on any strategy is better than not doing anything.

This is the stage when you move beyond thinking about your business and start taking tangible actions, you don’t yet have paying clients, but you have the makings of a business, you might have a product or service to offer and are ready to enrol your first client or accept your first paying customer.

Possible Pitfall: Taking lots of action but on the wrong things. Getting bogged down in the superficials of your business like branding and web design rather than focusing on the foundations.
Suggested Focus: Make sure that you are creating solid foundations for your business and taking action that will support your business growth in the long term.

This is where you really can call yourself a business. You’ve made a sale (or two) and now know that this thing is possible. In this stage your initial excitement of making your first sale(s) might be replaced by doubt as you struggle to replicate your initial success. You now know that it’s possible to make money and that your business idea is therefore viable, but you don’t yet have a solid system in place to bring in consistent and predictable income. Income that can sustain you over the long haul.

Possible Pitfall: You might find yourself trying out lots of strategies here. The temptation is to strategy switch until something sticks, never truly finding traction.
Suggested Focus: Focus on two key strategies that have stood the test of time: content creation and outreach to grow your audience, deepen relationships and increase your income.

This is where things start to feel easier. Your business is now covering it’s costs and your living expenses but there is little wiggle room here and if you lose a client or two, it could mean that you slip back and find yourself struggling to make ends meet once again. We tend to overwork here and, if not careful to manage our workload effectively, can end up in burn out.

Possible Pitfall: You might get complacent with your success here and take your eye off long-term growth or you might stop working on growth strategies simply because you’ve become so busy sustaining the client load you already have.
Suggested Focus: Here we want to streamline by taking a good look at your business model to remove activities and offerings that are a drain on your energy and replace them with offerings that bring in recurring income you can rely on.

This is the stage when your business does more than just cover your expenses. This is where you can really enjoy the fruits of your labour and breathe easier. It’s a time when you might finally be able to hire help, outsource, invest in your business, clear debt and/or start saving. You know how to make money, your business model is working for you and you can trust in a steady and predictable flow of income.

Possible Pitfall: You try to hold on to everything you’ve been doing thus far to grow your business. Meaning you struggle to outsource or delegate and end up working all hours to cope with your increased client demand.
Suggested Focus: Adjust your role in the business by putting in place the systems and support to allow your business to grow without burning you out completely.

And there you have it, the five stages of business as I see them. I’d love to know where you think you are or if there is anything you think is missing from this roadmap. I’ll be developing these 5 stages more in the coming months and I’d love your input so if you’d like to share or discuss with me, please leave a comment below letting me know.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I’m learning about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.