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How to fix your content strategy and get clients

How to fix your content strategy and get clients

How to fix your content strategy and get clients

I could talk all day long about the benefits of creating content for your business but something I’ve been guilty of overlooking is that not all content is equal.

Because many of the clients I’ve historically worked with have struggled to maintain a content habit, my focus as their coach has often been more about cultivating consistency than about the strategic quality of the content itself. But over time I’ve noticed something interesting. Even the ones who do crack the consistency piece often find that their content still isn’t converting into clients. 

The obvious assumption is that it’s a reach issue, but something else is just as important, if not more so.

And that’s relevance.

Oftentimes, and I’ve been guilty of this too, we write about what feels relevant to us. What we feel inspired to write about. But it’s important to remember: we are not our ideal client. Perhaps an earlier version of ourselves is, but what concerns or inspires us today isn’t necessarily what our ideal client needs to hear.

I’m a big believer in having a purpose for every piece of content you create. For years, one intention has guided my content creation: 

“I want the person reading these words to feel like they are being coached by me.”

And as such, I’ve used my client sessions and group program calls as the inspiration for almost everything I write.

A question I like to  share in my group programs is this:

If your ideal client read this, would it feel relevant and useful to them?

To answer that question, you need to know who your ideal client is, what struggles they’re facing, and why they’re on your list or following you in the first place. If there’s confusion about who you help and what you help them with, that confusion shows up in your content.

And even once you know who they are, understanding what they actually need isn’t always a given.

This is where I’m a big believer in making a decision for now and committing to it long enough to learn from it. Double down on a specific problem or ideal client. Set up research calls with those people. Offer gift sessions. Create content for them. If it’s aligned, you’ll feel it. And so will they.

Since I made the decision to focus more specifically on mid-stage business owners navigating the feast and famine cycle, a few things have happened. First, an uptick in unsubscribes, which can feel disheartening in the moment. I also had some pushback from readers who weren’t fully aligned with the direction I was taking. But here’s the thing: both of those are signs that your message is becoming clearer. The people who aren’t a fit are opting out, and that’s healthy.

And then came the thing that told me I was on the right track: a noticeable uptick in referrals. People responding to my newsletter saying a friend forwarded this because it was so relevant to a conversation they’d just had. Not once or twice, enough times for me to know that writing with a specific person in mind makes it genuinely easier for people to refer you.

Relevance is the thing that makes content travel.

If you want to check your own content for this, I put together a content audit tool that walks you through exactly these questions. It’s free and you can grab it here.

If you do use it, I’d love to hear from you in the comments – let me know what came up and whether it was helpful.

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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.

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Not all results are visible

Not all results are visible

Not all results are visible

Recently I had a research call with someone in my audience where we were talking about content and outreach and what gets in the way, and she said something that I hear all the time.

“I think I stop because it feels like I’m not getting any results.”

Not because she doesn’t know what to do, and not because she isn’t capable of doing it, but because from her perspective, nothing much seems to be happening.

And I think this is where a lot of people quietly fall off.

There’s this underlying assumption that if something is working, you’ll see it. That results will be obvious, visible, and measurable in real time. More responses, more engagement, more signs that it’s landing. Ultimately, more clients.

But that’s not always how it works, especially at the beginning.

Someone shared an analogy with me recently about working on business growth as being like a pot of water on the stove. For a while, it looks completely unchanged. There are no bubbles, no movement, nothing to suggest that anything is happening at all. And yet the temperature is rising the whole time. The water is heating, slowly and steadily, even though you can’t see it.

If you turn the heat off too soon because you think it “isn’t working,” you don’t just pause the process, you reset it. You go back to the beginning and have to start all over again.

Growth activities like content and outreach often work in exactly the same way.

There is a period of time where you are showing up, sharing your thinking, reaching out, and it can feel like very little is coming back. A few likes here and there, maybe a reply, often silence.

It’s very easy in that space to assume it isn’t working.

But what I’ve seen over and over again, both in my own business and with my clients, is that there is far more happening than you realise.

I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me, “I loved your last newsletter” or “That post you shared really stayed with me,” and I’ll realise I had no idea they were even reading. They’ve never replied, never liked, never engaged in any visible way, and yet they’ve been following along, taking it in, and trusting me more in the process. 

The same thing happens with my clients. They’ll tell me they “only” got two or three responses to something they shared, and they dismiss it almost immediately because they’re focused on all the people who didn’t engage.

But those two or three people matter. They are paying attention. They are leaning in. They are often much closer to working with you than the numbers suggest. A brilliant coach once said to me, “Your next client is right in front of you,” and half the time I think we’re too busy looking out there to see them.

When you overlook this, you miss the actual signal. Because here’s the thing: 

Not all results are visible.

Attention is a result. Recognition is a result. Trust building is a result. They just don’t always show up in ways that are easy to measure or validate in the moment.

And if you only trust what you can see, you will almost always assume it’s not working far sooner than is actually true.

That’s the point where people stop, or pivot, or start something new, thinking they need a different strategy, when in reality they just haven’t stayed with the current one long enough.

At the same time, there’s another question that matters just as much.

It’s not only “is this working?” or even “have I stayed with this long enough?”

It’s also “am I doing this in a way that can actually create results?”

Because consistency on its own isn’t enough.

You can show up every week with content, but if what you’re sharing doesn’t speak to a clear problem your ideal clients are facing, it’s unlikely to lead anywhere.

You can be reaching out to people regularly, but if those conversations stay at the level of friendly catch-ups, without any direction or depth, they’re unlikely to turn into opportunities.

So there are two things to hold at the same time.

Staying in the process long enough for the invisible to become visible.

And making sure that what you’re doing is actually designed to create results in the first place.

When those two things come together, that’s when momentum builds.

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.

 

The two things that create steady client flow

The two things that create steady client flow

The two things that create steady client flow

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know that the two main levers I talk about when it comes to getting clients are content and outreach.

I’ve written about and taught both extensively, and over the last few years I’ve run in-depth programs on each of these topics.

But something I realised recently is that I haven’t really spoken about the interplay between them.

And when I look at the advice out there more broadly, it often feels like it’s split into one camp or the other. On one side, content is everything. The advice is to show up consistently, build an audience, and clients will come. On the other, I hear that content is largely a waste of time and that what really matters is networking, outreach and conversations.

And I myself have been exposed to both sides of this.

Over a decade ago when I worked with my first business coach, he actively told me to stop writing content altogether and focus purely on outreach. And to be fair, to a large extent, it worked. I got clients.

But what I also noticed was that everything depended on me being actively in conversation all the time. The moment I stopped, things would slow down.

A few years later I started following a coach who talked a lot about the importance of creating content and I made a commitment to creating content consistently. It wasn’t until I started creating content consistently alongside regular outreach that my business really began to grow in a more stable way.

Because here’s what I’ve realised: both are required to have a consistent flow of new people coming into your world.

And that’s because content does something that outreach alone can’t.

It makes you more visible and allows people outside of your existing network to find you, to spend time with your thinking, to understand your perspective before they ever speak to you. It helps you to demonstrate expertise and builds familiarity and trust at a distance. Articles I wrote as long as 7 years ago are still sending traffic to my website and converting into clients.

And by the same token, outreach does something that content alone can’t.

It turns that awareness into relationship. It creates trust and space for real conversation and for someone to feel seen and supported in a way that simply isn’t possible through content alone.

When I look at my own client base, and the data I’ve tracked over the years, most people don’t come to me directly from a post or a piece of content.

They come through a person.

A colleague who recommends me. A former client who shares my work. Someone who mentions me in a space I’m not even in.

But when those people land in my world, they will typically head to my blog and/or subscribe to my newsletter and then it’s my content that does the heavy lifting. It helps them understand how I think, how I work, and whether what I offer is right for them.

Something that happens often is that I’ll get on a working together call with someone who has completed the application form on my 1:1 coaching page and they say that they heard about me from someone in my network. When we talk, they’ll say something like so-and-so told me about you and then I found your blog and binge read all of your articles or I joined your newsletter and have read every single one of your letters since. It’s not uncommon for people to tell me that they had already decided they wanted to work with me before even speaking to me. 

So you can see, it’s never been one or the other. It’s always been both.

And more than that, it’s how those two things feed each other.

Content gives you something to be known for and something to share your message. It creates touchpoints and entry points into your world. It’s a place to share your approach and point of view. For me it has also become a resource, a body of work. In effect, my intellectual property.

Outreach keeps you close to real people. It shapes what you say, who you say it to, and opens the door to the conversations where clients, collaborations and opportunities are actually created. Not sure what type of conversations you should be having, you can read about the 4 types of conversation I recommend here. 

Don’t know who to reach out to? Look at who’s paying attention to your content. Don’t know what to create content on? Look at what people are saying in your conversations.

When one of those drops away, you’re missing something important.

When both are present, but inconsistent, it can feel like you’re doing a lot and not getting very far.

And when both are working together, in a way you can actually sustain, that’s when things start to feel very different.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, particularly in the context of what creates steadier, more predictable client flow over time. Not more effort, not more noise, but a way of connecting with people that has them trusting you enough to buy from you.

I’m curious which side you’ve found yourself leaning towards.

Have you been focusing more on content or more on connection? And what have you noticed as a result? Let me know in the comments. 

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.

 

The roadblocks to consistency

The roadblocks to consistency

The roadblocks to consistency

I want to talk about consistency.

It’s easy to argue the point that consistent revenue and clients come from consistent business growth effort and from continuing to show up, share your work and stay in relationship with the people you serve but in truth, we’re often thinking about consistency all wrong.

How many times have you thought to yourself that if you could just show up more consistently in your business, sharing your ideas, writing, reaching out and connecting with people, things would start to move more easily but then reality lets you down? Same. I used to beat myself up often for not being more consistent, more disciplined, more productive. I would create an annual business plan that on paper seemed flawless but then when it came to execution, I repeatedly found I just couldn’t deliver on what was required of me to achieve the goals I had set for myself.

Something always happens that I haven’t planned for. Getting sick or my menstrual cycle or perimenopause symptoms kicking my butt. My kids getting sick and being off school. Needing to travel to be there for a loved one who is having surgery which has happened twice in the last two years. Sometimes it’s the inevitable heartbreak and despair over world events or extreme weather cutting the internet for whole days and closing down school.

And sometimes, I am just tired or low energy and simply don’t have it in me to follow the plan. I need to take more breaks, sleep in instead of getting up early to exercise, meditate and plan my day.

The difference between how I now handle these situations and how I used to handle them is night and day. Before I would allow these setbacks to completely derail me and when there wasn’t an obvious cause of my inaction, I would take it as evidence of my failings. I would feel bad about myself and sink into a rut, taking even longer to get back on track.

These days, I not only accept that life interruptions and lows happen but I expect them. I make my plans in light of their inevitability and I pay attention to what tends to interrupt my rhythm of showing up in my work.

I have even created a whole framework around them.

That framework is something we use inside The Clearing during our monthly Focus + Priorities reflection, especially when we notice that something we intended to move forward, share or follow through on simply didn’t happen. I also wanted to share it lightly with you here in case it’s useful.

Usually when we plan to do something and it doesn’t get done, there is a specific reason that goes beyond laziness or lack of motivation. I refer to these reasons as roadblocks and I’ve identified seven of them.

#1 Capacity and health
This relates to illness, chronic health conditions, burnout and energy levels. 

#2 Time + Competing Priorities
This happens when we have too many demands on our time, when we have set unrealistic timelines or when other responsibilities take over.

#3 Mindset + Inner Dialogue
This looks like perfectionism, self-doubt, fear of being judged or a feeling of inner resistance.

#4 Clarity Gaps
This is where the next step is unclear. Perhaps the task is too big or vague or we are missing information or support.

#5 Emotional landscape
This might look like overwhelm, anxiety or tenderness resulting in low motivation.

#6 Environment + Systems
This could relate to your workspace or a lack of reminders, structure or systems that support the work.

#7 Alignment
This comes up when we perhaps planned the task out of a “should” or when we realise on reflection that it isn’t actually a true priority.

I’ve found that something quite profound happens when I’ve used this framework for myself and with clients as a lens to look at stalled tasks. More often than not, it becomes immediately clear that the issue does not represent a lack of commitment. It is that a very real and tangible roadblock was present, something that interrupted the rhythm of showing up or moving the work forward. And once we can see that clearly, there is almost always something that can be done to get back on track.

When I do this, sometimes it’s a really simple fix. For example, I failed to carve out time for the task and then my schedule got booked up with calls. The fix? Block out time to work on the task, perhaps the time to write, reach out to someone or share something I have been meaning to publish.

And sometimes it’s trickier. If for example I’m dealing with a hormone issues like fatigue, the fix isn’t always so obvious. But acknowledging what’s going on brings about more self empathy and compassion which in turn helps me to think of small things I can do to feel better, such as getting more sleep or reducing my expectations slightly so that I can still make small progress.

That is very different from simply feeling defeated because tasks went unfinished and not really being sure why.

When we look at unfinished tasks or a lack of obvious progress through the lens of possible roadblocks it allows us to get proactive about support rather than simply applying more pressure on ourselves to just get things done.

Examples of this include:

  • Reducing the number of priorities you’re setting yourself.
  • Breaking tasks into even smaller steps.
  • Creating better structures or systems in place to support your work.
  • Getting support or accountability.
  • Allowing rest or emotional space so recovery time is shorter.
  • Letting go of something that isn’t aligned and freeing up mental space.

I find that this practice helps us to notice patterns with curiosity and compassion rather than judging ourselves or forcing momentum. And when we understand what tends to interrupt our rhythm, it becomes much easier to return to the work and begin showing up again.

And now a question for you. If you think about something in your business that hasn’t moved forward recently, which of these roadblocks might have been present?

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.

 

Where you might be quietly losing clients

Where you might be quietly losing clients

Where you might be quietly losing clients

One of the first things I do when I land on a new client’s website isn’t read their About page or their story. I look for how I’m supposed to work with them.

I put myself in the shoes of a prospective client and go in search of a clear next step.

What I’m hoping for is a frictionless journey from curiosity to action. Something simple and obvious like making a payment, completing an application form, or booking a call. The smoother that journey, the less likely we are to lose people along the way.

It’s worth remembering what the average person who lands on your website is up against.

They’re likely already overwhelmed. Bombarded with information about their particular problem. Faced with endless options, conflicting advice, and a lot of noise. Most people aren’t looking for more inspiration or explanation. They’re looking for something that cuts through and tells them, clearly, what to do next.

When you’re newer in business, and you don’t yet have a lot of traffic or the budget for beautiful design or optimised copy, it’s often the small things that make the biggest difference.

Over the years, I’ve seen just about every possible way people lose potential clients in the short window between interest and action.

Sometimes there’s no clear “Work with me”, “Services”, or “Offerings” page at all. When I visit a service provider’s website, that’s where I’m heading first. I want to understand what’s available here that could help me with the problem I’m trying to solve. If I can’t find that quickly, I often won’t keep looking.

Other times there is a services menu, but it’s packed with confusing dropdowns. Even after clicking “Work with me”, I’m left unsure where to go next or which option is actually relevant to me.

I also see a lot of offers described in just a few vague lines, with no page that gives the full picture. No context, no detail, no clear way to understand whether this is right for me without having to reach out first. For many people, that step feels like too much.

And then there are the very practical issues.

Broken or outdated links. Pages that no longer exist. Buttons that promise one thing and deliver another. These might seem minor, but to someone already hesitating, they can quietly bring the whole journey to a stop.

The same principle applies beyond your website.

For many people, your social media bio is the first doorway into your work. If the link there leads to a dead page, a confusing set of options, or something that no longer reflects what you actually offer, you’re creating friction before the relationship has even begun.

I often use an analogy (I first heard from Tad Hargrave) of imagining your business as a house in the forest and it’s always stuck with me.

Given the nature of a forest, there are various potential pathways to your door. What I’ve noticed is that most people spend a lot of time working on the signposts and the paths themselves. The content, the posts, the links that help people find you in the first place.

But sometimes, once people arrive, the doorbell doesn’t work.

They press it once. Then again. They wait. Nothing happens. Eventually, they assume no one’s home and walk away, even though you’re inside, ready and willing to help.

When your website or bio doesn’t make it clear how to take the next step, or when links are broken or confusing, this is often what’s happening. People are finding you, but the signal isn’t getting through.

This isn’t about being perfect or polished.

It’s about recognising that when someone is interested, they’re often already doing a lot of internal work. Weighing up whether to ask for help. Whether to spend money. Whether now is the right time. The least we can do is make the external journey feel clear and supportive.

A gentle place to start is to take a few minutes to metaphorically walk the different paths someone might take to work with you.

Imagine they find you through social media, a referral, or a newsletter someone forwarded. Where do they land first? What do they see? What do they click next? At what point might the doorbell stop working?

You don’t need to redesign your entire website or rewrite everything from scratch.

Often, it’s about noticing and removing small points of friction. Clarifying a menu label. Simplifying a choice. Fixing a link. Adding a sentence that helps someone understand what happens after they click.

Making it easy to work with you isn’t about being pushy or salesy.

It’s an act of care.

It says: if you’re here, if you’re curious, if you’re considering this, I’ve made space for you to take the next step in a way that feels clear and contained.

And that, quietly, can make all the difference.

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.

 

Where My Clients Come From

Where My Clients Come From

“All things being equal, people will do business with — and refer business to — those people they know, like and trust.”
~ Bob Burg

I want to share with you where my coaching clients come from in the hope that it gives you some insight on where to focus your attention to get more clients into your business.

It goes without saying that the number one question I get asked by my clients is how can I get more clients? Much of what I teach and the strategies I share are designed precisely to help conscious business to answer just that.

Lately, as I’ve been pondering this age old question, I’ve been thinking a lot about my business and the steady flow of new clients I enjoy and asking myself where do my clients come from? When I consider the various ways in which people come to me, I’m able to see the fruits of my earlier business building efforts.

My hope is that in sharing these details with you, you’ll get a sense of the work you need to do now, so that you too can have a steady source of new clients coming into your business, down the road.

How I know where my clients come from

It’s important to note that I’m able to make this analysis because I ask anyone who enquires about my coaching services how they found me. If you don’t currently do this, I highly recommend you find a way to do that. I ask the question in my 1:1 coaching application form but you could just as easily ask it in your client intake form.

My referral source categories

Before we dive into the numbers I want to share with you some details about the categories of my referral sources. My recording of this data goes back to late 2021 when I switched from using gift sessions to an application form as the CTA on my coaching sales page. My analysis covers 74 applications where a referral source was indicated. These roughly break down into the following categories.

Social media — this is pretty self-explanatory. For the record I’m on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter although I’m most active on Facebook.

Google — this is where someone either googled a term like “Conscious Business Coach” and found my website or searched a topic like “Discovery calls alternative” and found one of my blog posts.

Client referral — this is where a current or former client has directly recommended me to someone.

Word of mouth — this is where someone has shared a piece of my content or talked about me in a group or shared a post about me — often I don’t know who this was or had no sight of the recommendation because I’m not in that group or I don’t know the person in question.

Colleague referral — this is where one of my colleagues has personally recommended me to someone.

Hubs — these are places that I share my teaching, knowledge or content where my ideal clients already hang out (like Tad Hargrave’s Marketing for Hippies Membership or The Focalizing Institute). There is some crossover between hubs and colleagues because for example a colleague like Tad Hargrave might personally recommend me to someone (which I count as a colleague referral) and then other people might discover me from the classes I’ve taught inside his membership program (which I would count as a hub). In essence both leads have come via Tad but for slightly different reasons, which I felt it was important to parse out.

Personal connection — This is when someone I know personally decided to hire me.

Before we dive into the numbers, I’d love you to consider which of these you think sends me the most leads and which send me the fewest. I’ll admit, I was surprised by the results the first time I did this analysis.

See below for an pie chart overview of the breakdown.

What the numbers tell me

So to present the information another way, let me list out my referral sources from top to bottom:

Colleagues send me 32.8% of all my coaching client applications.
Hubs account for 17.2% of my 1:1 applications.
Client referrals and word of mouth both account for 15.6% percent of referrals each. 31.2% in total.
Google searches accounts for 14.1% of applications.
Social Media accounts for 3.1%
And personal connections account for 1.6% (this was actually only 1 person overall).

What these numbers tell me.

People matter more than content

If I add up colleagues, client and other word of mouth referrals, this accounts for 64% of the applications I’ve had in over the few years. That means that the majority of people who decided to apply to work with me, did so because someone they trusted recommended me.

Given how much time I spend on content, that surprised me. I also wouldn’t have guessed that the majority of my client applications actually come from colleagues, some of whom do very similar work but no longer do 1:1 the way I do.

I don’t employ any particular strategies to bring this about but there are some things I do and have done, which might explain this number.

One thing that I’ve always done is to share generously about my colleague’s offers, even when they might compete with my own offerings. I do this because I want people to get access to the right resources for them, even if that means they spend their money elsewhere. I also only share products and services I truly believe in and many of my colleagues are doing amazing things in the world.

I also don’t subscribe to a scarcity mindset, I truly believe that there is enough clients for everyone and that my right-fit people will choose me because what I offer is the best fit for their needs, not because I was the only coach they knew about!

Something else I try to do is thank those colleagues and clients personally when they send people my way. If it’s a colleague who sends people regularly, I might send the occasional note to let them know that the person they recommended me to did in fact start working with me and that things are going great. If it’s a former client, I’ll reach out to say thanks and maybe even offer them a gift session as a way to say thank you and to be of support to them.

Another thing that I have done for as long as I can remember is create relationships through outreach and just simply being out in the world building and nurturing relationships. Several of the colleagues who send people my way, came as a result of a connection we made online or inside a program we were in together.

The big takeaway here is that I have invested heavily in BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS, not to gain anything, more often to be of service to others.

Content does matter

Even though personal recommendations are by far the most important source of clients for me, content does still matter, with Google searches, social media and teaching in hubs accounting for 34% of the applications that come in, my content still plays a huge part.

If we take google searches, I can tell you that around 3 or 4 articles are bringing in the majority of google leads. One in particular, has me ranking on the 1st page for the search term “discovery call alternative”, which is a piece I wrote about gift sessions way back when I had no idea about SEO or the fact that many, many coaches are looking for a more ethical approach to sales calls.

I also invested in an SEO program last year to make the most of all the content I have written but haven’t yet had the time to implement much of what I learned, so the success I’m having on Google is not coming from lots of SEO work but just my general commitment to creating content that serves my target audience and answers their most pressing questions.

Teaching in hubs has definitely been a great way for me to find new clients and a way that I really enjoy. Not only do I get to present my “content” to someone else’s audience, but they get also get to experience me in real time, which I’m sure has an impact.

Social media is having the least impact. Who knew!?! Well I did. I’ve known for sometime that people rarely say that they found me on social but I must admit, I do still find it a bit surprising that so FEW people do. Whilst I will continue to be active on social media, it does give me some comfort that my livelihood is not at the mercy of the algorithm and means that I can prioritise more enjoyable marketing activities than posting on social!

I should also note here that several people who gave a name of someone they heard about me from, also stated that they then joined my list and read my content for some time before reaching out to work with me.

So even though those personal referrals are so important, I’m confident that my content does a great job of helping people to get to know me better. I also believe that my content is one of the ways I’ve built trust with colleagues, who see what content I’m creating and come to understand my point of view and therefore feel better able to refer me.

The key takeaway here is to CREATE CONTENT THAT SERVES. Stop trying to create content that sells and instead create content that expresses your point of view and really answers the questions your potential clients are already googling.

Another takeaway here is the importance of DEMONSTRATING EXPERTISE. I think my content does a good job of this but when I teach in someone else’s group program or mastermind, I inevitably get more subscribers, sales and client applications.

I think this is because I’m giving people a really good insight into how I work, what I stand for and the approach I take when it comes to business growth. Lots of people also give me the feedback that they like my down to earth nature, which I love hearing too!

A note on personal connections

You might be wondering why so few clients are coming from personal connections — well that’s because I live in a small town in Catalunya, Spain, where I barely speak the language and where a large proportion of the population are over 70.

That’s why all of my relationship building activities are happening online but if you live in a place where your ideal clients also live, don’t forget that building relationships via hubs and colleagues could work really well in your locality.

I’m curious to know what you make of these figures. Is there anything in here that surprises you? Is there anything you might do differently in your business as a result of reading about where my clients come from? Or do you have any questions for me? If you said yes to any of these questions, please let me know in the comments.

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