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Why you’re more producutive than you think

Why you’re more producutive than you think

by | May 26, 2026 | Big picture, Business foundations, Business model, Ethical Marketing

Why you're more productive than you think

Recently we had our monthly Focus + Priorities call inside The Clearing where we looked back over the past month and set direction for the next. 

When I first sat down to design that call, one thing that felt really important to me was understanding why we hadn’t done what we said we would do. Not from a place of judgement or shame, but to actually understand the roadblocks that get in the way of following through on our plans.

But after the very first call, I immediately realised something was missing. By focusing on what hadn’t got done and why, we were completely missing out on what did.

Because here’s the thing.

The people I work with are nearly always productive. They are always doing something, even if it’s not what they originally planned. Sometimes that’s navigating life or health challenges. Often it’s other meaningful work inside their business. That might, for example, look like not completing your marketing tasks because you were fully focused on serving your existing clients well.

Also by ignoring the wins, we miss the fact that sometimes something we planned to do one month actually got done a month or two later. The follow-through was there but our expectations of how long it would take were just off. 

When you only look at what didn’t get done, you ignore the progress you have made. And for most of the people I work with, myself included, that inability to see our own progress is the norm. We move through our weeks doing real, meaningful work and dealing with life and we barely pause to register what we have accomplished before we’re already berating ourselves for where we still haven’t got to. 

So I added a wins section to the call. Not as a warm-up or a formality but as a crucial part of the work. Because I’ve found that if you try to look honestly at what stalled, without first anchoring into evidence of what moved, the whole thing tips into self-criticism very quickly. You absolutely need both. The wins without the honest look at what didn’t happen can feel like denial. The roadblocks without the wins can feel like deflating to say the least.

For me, the call has now become an opportunity to take an important and honest look at my business progress, month on month. Something I’ve always known was important but that now has a proper space in my schedule. 

If you want to try the wins reflection yourself, here are the questions we use:

What went well last month?

Where did I show up well, even if the result was imperfect?

What feels stronger, clearer, or more aligned than before?

And then the question I find changes everything:

What does this remind me about my capacity?

When you have real evidence of your own follow-through, it becomes much harder to convince yourself that nothing is moving.

As you look back on the past month, remember this: You did more than you think. I guarantee it.

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.

 

Why I don’t teach marketing (and what I teach instead)

Why I don’t teach marketing (and what I teach instead)

by | Apr 7, 2026 | Connection, Ethical Marketing

Why I don’t teach marketing (and what I teach instead)

This might sound strange coming from a business coach but I don’t actually teach marketing. 

In a recent blog post I shared the idea that revenue follows connection. I’m curious what your mind did with that sentence when you read it.

Did you immediately think of marketing? Did you feel as though you need to get better at posting on social media or letting people know about your offers?

Did you even notice that I didn’t say revenue follows marketing?

In my sustainable growth framework, there are four foundations that I believe need to be in place and relatively stable for a business to grow in a sustainable way: visibility + connection, an authentic message, aligned offers and supportive structures.

In my world visibility and connection means something quite different to what most people mean when they talk about marketing.

Marketing, as we’re most often exposed to it in the online world, can feel extractive, manipulative and misleading at worst. Even at best, it’s often focused primarily on “getting the sale”.

You only have to look at the language used in mainstream marketing to understand why it’s at odds with conscious business. Language like funnels, tripwires, lead magnets, lead acquisition, pain points, capture, squeeze, convert. Pretty dehumanising stuff!

Visibility and connection, on the other hand, speaks of something entirely different. It speaks of:

Cultivating conversations.
Building relationships.
Making invitations.
Being of service.

Something I see often when working with thoughtful business owners is that they don’t actually struggle with visibility itself. What they struggle with is their relationship with marketing.

They’ve absorbed the idea that marketing is pushy, self-promotional or manipulative, so they avoid it for as long as possible. And the result is that good people doing important work in the world often end up earning less simply because they don’t want to participate in that kind of marketing.

One of the most powerful reframes I ever made was this.

Instead of asking:
How do I market my work?

I started asking:
How do I connect with people and serve them deeply before they’ve even spent a penny with me?

That shift changed everything.

To quote Brené Brown: 
“Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued.”

It is this way of connecting with the people we want to serve with our work that I teach. 

When we start thinking about visibility in that way, it can completely change how it feels to show up.

Connection isn’t something you switch on when you have an offer to sell.

It’s the ongoing practice of being present in your work and in your relationships. It can look like:

Sharing your ideas and point of view on the problem you help people solve.
Reaching out to people you genuinely want to stay in touch with.
Starting conversations with people you’re genuinely inspired or intrigued by.
Trying to be genuinely helpful without making a sale the end goal.

When I sit down to write a newsletter or share something publicly, my intention isn’t to promote myself. It’s to be useful. To share something that might help someone think differently about their business or their work.

When I do have something to offer, I’ll say so clearly. In that way I keep content and sales copy separate. Content is where I serve and share ideas. Sales copy is where I make an invitation. Mixing the two can start to feel manipulative, and that’s not how I want to work.

It’s my intention to be useful that allows me to truly connect.

Over time those small acts of connection begin to compound.

People get to know you.
They begin to trust you.
They recognise themselves in your work.

And when the moment comes that they need the kind of support you offer, you’re already someone they feel connected to.

This is why I say revenue follows connection. Not instantly. But reliably and over time.

So I’m curious. When you think about connection in this way, what might a practice of visibility and connection look like 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.

 

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

by | Jul 9, 2024 | Ethical Marketing, Uncategorized

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
~ Bob Burg (The Go Giver)

I want to share with you my best advice on how to make your freebie a success.

Here’s the thing. Not all freebies are created equal. You’ve no doubt experienced the disappointing freebie. The pithy PDF that promised you all the answers to your greatest struggle, only to find it didn’t contain anything you didn’t already know. If you’re anything like me nothing has you reaching for the unsubscribe button quicker.

I gave up on freebies like these many years ago after handing over my email address countless times, only to feel disappointed at first and then deeply irritated after being bombarded with sales emails thereafter. Not cool.

As you might imagine, I offer a different approach.

What I recommend to my clients instead is what I call the “Generous Freebie”. Something that is blow your socks off useful for the people who sign up for it.

What follows, are the key elements I believe any freebie worth it’s weight should include plus some examples of the types of freebie that tick all of these boxes.

1. It’s actually free

If you are going to offer something free, please don’t make it a hidden sales pitch. Don’t offer a gift, only to bombard people with sales emails afterwards.

For years now I have even been offering freebies without making people sign up to my newsletter as a prerequisite because my thinking is that it’s not really free if people have to pay with their email address but I’m changing that.

I think as long as you are super clear up front that people will be added to a mailing list and given an easy way to unsubscribe afterwards if they want and you don’t then use this as a means to send lots of sales emails, then I don’t think it’s a biggie to add people to your list. The key is to be clear and transparent.

2. It offers real value

If you are going to offer a freebie, have it be something that really is of value to your people. That means taking time to create it. If you can whip up a freebie in 5 minutes, the chances are it’s not going to have an impact.

So my advice, don’t just throw something together and slap a big promise on it.

Put in the work to actually create something that will support the recipient to make progress on the very problem you help people with.

It’s my belief that when we can offer real value to a person before they’ve spent a penny with us, they trust that we’re not just after their money and we actually care about them and their journey, which begins a relationship that in many cases will result in future sales and it’s such a lovely way to do business too!

3. It demonstrates your expertise.

Find it hard to explain what you do to prospective clients? A good freebie will show them the impact of working with you. No convincing pitch necessary.

Think of your freebie as a place to really shine. What skills and expertise do your ideal clients need and how can you bring these to the fore in your freebie.

My whole approach to business is to focus on demonstrating expertise rather than trying to manipulate and cajole people into buying from us. What could you create or share that truly demonstrates your gifts?

4. It’s generous.

Yes the clue is in the title — given I call it the generous freebie, what I’m talking about here goes above and beyond the pithy PDF. We’re talking about something that has actually taken you time to create or takes you time to deliver, something that people won’t quite believe you’re offering for free.

I’ll get into examples later on.

5. It’s visible.

It doesn’t matter how generous or valuable your freebie is if nobody knows it exists, so if you are going to take the time to create a truly generous freebie, you must also invest the time to promote it.

If you are struggling to grow your audience, a good and well promoted freebie can draw people in who otherwise wouldn’t be ready to buy. It’s a great way to take people from not knowing us to getting a better sense of who we are, what we’re about and how we can help, leading them to stick around (join our list, lean in etc).

So, now that you know what it takes to create a generous freebie, you might be wondering how on earth you’re going to package all of that into one free offering. Don’t worry, I have some examples.

The free workshop — why not create a free workshop that really helps people in your niche? You could run it a few times a year for your audience and even offer it out to other people’s audience. I’ve been teaching free classes for other people’s groups for years and they’re always a heap of fun and I nearly always get a load of new subscribers and/or clients.

The free challenge — this is one of my favourites and I’ve run several over the years, including my Outreach Challenge, My Content Challenge, My Spring Clean Your Business Challenge and many more besides. They’ve proven time and time again to help me to expand my audience, nurture those already in it and give generously to my audience.

The free session — for years, my most generous freebie was a 60 minute coaching session and when I had far less clients, I gifted these regularly. These days, I rarely offer gift sessions simply due to constraints on my diary but when I feel really inspired to, I do. Not only have these been an amazing way for me to meet and get to know people in my audience but I’ve also got lots of new clients over the years from people who loved the session enough to want to continue working with me.

And now for some examples from people I love.

My own brand designer and former client, Nathalie of Utterly Create offers people a free lite review of their brand. Something that definitely ticks all of the boxes.

My favourite copywriter, Lauren Van Mullem hosts free Craft and Copy hours, where you can hang out with her and do crafts while getting your copy questions answered.

I’m not sure he does them anymore but Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies used to offer 60 second niche reviews in his stories on Instagram. You can see the videos of these here.

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.

10 Things I Want You To Know About Email Marketing

10 Things I Want You To Know About Email Marketing

by | Nov 17, 2021 | Ethical Marketing

“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”
~ Katharine Hepburn

In this blog I share 10 ideas about email marketing that will hopefully dispel some common myths about this business practice, as well as give you some ideas to inspire your own email marketing efforts.

I’ve alluded to these ideas in various ways throughout my teaching and 1:1 work but this is the first time I’ve pulled together, in one place, all of my thoughts on email marketing and how to make the most of it for your business. Whilst I am using the catch-all term “email marketing”, what I am mainly referring to here is the practice of sending newsletters to your subscribers.

Let’s take a look at those ideas.

1. Your email list is not your business.

Most mainstream marketing advice will have you believe that your email list is everything. That without a solid list of newsletter subscribers, it’s impossible for your business to succeed. Now whilst I’m a huge fan of writing and sending newsletters to my people and highly recommend it for your business (if you so feel inclined), I don’t believe that any one business strategy or tool is the be all and end all for your business.

For sure there are successful businesses out there who don’t have an email list, as well as many unsuccessful businesses that do!

2. You don’t have to have a big list to make money.

Since I’ve been working online (circa 10 years) the idea that the size of your list determines the level of income you are able to generate has been doing the rounds. I remember years ago working hard to achieve the goal of 1000 subscribers because it was (and still is) said that 1000 subscribers is the magic number needed to start being truly profitable in your business.

This is simply not true.

I’m actually making a lot more money now with a list of less than 1000 than I was in my old life coaching business with a list greater than 1000.

And it’s not just me, I remember collaborating with two colleagues of mine to sell one of my group programs. They agreed to share details of it with their list in exchange for an affiliate payment for any purchases made from their subscribers. The colleague whose list exceeded 1000 and was far bigger than my own at the time, made zero affiliate sales. The second colleague whose list was tiny and far smaller than my own, did.

The moral of this story? When it comes to your email list, quality over quantity is key.

3. You don’t have to focus on list-building.

Say what?! Honestly it’s true. I do not and have not focused on building my list for years now and yet I have a steady rate of growth, which on average looks like a new subscriber every couple of days. Now if you’re looking to get tens of thousands on your list in a fairly short period of time then a new subscriber every other day isn’t going to cut it, but given that I don’t believe that huge numbers are even necessary then this level of growth works well for me.

Even with a smallish list and an average growth of 15 new subscribers a month, my coaching practice is booked up with a waitlist and I often have several applications in for my mastermind, before I’ve even launched it.

So you might be wondering where these new subscribers are coming from if I’m not really doing any list-building activities. Well instead of list-building, my focus is, and has been for many years, on creating valuable content for my audience. Because of this content, people find my articles from searching on Google and on platforms like this and then come to my site to find out more. Once there, because the content they read is helpful to them, they sign-up to my newsletter to get more of the same.

In terms of promoting my newsletter I do just 1 or 2 things. Most of my blog posts have an opt-in box for my newsletter at the bottom (I don’t use pop-ups because we all hate them don’t we?!) which means when people find my content, which I do make an effort to promote, they also get to hear about my newsletter. Very occasionally, I’ll also put out a post letting my audience know the subject of my next email and inviting them to join my list to receive it (just like this one).

4. You do have to focus on engagement.

Whilst I don’t focus on growing my list or selling to my list, one thing I do focus on is engaging with my list. For me, I want to look past the numbers and focus on the very real people who are actually taking the time each week to read what I have to say. I do this in a number of ways.

  • As mentioned above, I make the intention of my newsletters to be practical and useful to the reader.
  • I make invitations to engage directly with me into every single email.
  • In my welcome email, I invite people to complete a short survey so that I can find out more about their particular needs.
  • Now and again, I’ll incorporate surveys into my emails to find out more about what my subscribers want from me.
  • Less so these days because of time constraints, but many times over the years, I’ve looked at who is reading my emails most regularly and will send them a direct and personal email to say hello and ask how I can help.

Engaging with my “list” serves to remind me that real people are on the other side of the metrics (number of subscribers, open rate etc), which is a far more important focus than the stats.

5. You don’t have to sell in every email.

In my research for this piece, I came across this definition from Neil Patel:

“Email marketing is the act of sending promotional messages to people in mass quantities. It typically is to generate sales or leads and it may contain advertising.”

If this is the accepted definition of email marketing then what I’m talking about in this piece is not email marketing.

Do I sell in my emails? Yes (well “sell” might be an overstatement, I prefer to think of it as letting my readers know what’s on offer. Is the primary purpose of my emails to generate sales or leads? No. If it were, I think I’d be dealing with a far higher numbers of unsubscribes. We’ve all been on the receiving end of emails designed to make a sale and we’ve also likely been on the receiving end of emails designed to serve.

I show up to write my newsletter as close to weekly as possible, as a means to serve my audience and deepen relationships with my subscribers. Do I hope to make sales as a result? Of course, I’d be lying if I said otherwise, but I never hold that as the intention behind my words. In fact the opposite, my intention as I write my letters is to help my readers to grow their business whether they decide to buy from me or not.

I believe that having this as the purpose of my emails makes me enjoy writing them so much more and my hope is that it helps my subscribers enjoy reading them so much more.

I do feel I have to add here that this isn’t your permission slip to never talk about your products and services because if you don’t, then you’re doing yourself and your would-be clients a disservice. You absolutely must find a regular rhythm of sharing about your products and services but it does not have to be the focus of your emails. Read this amazing article for another perspective on this.

6. You don’t need a freebie opt-in to grow your list.

I can still remember when I believed that having a freebie opt-in and using content upgrades was the only way to grow my list. Hours were spent trying to figure out what I could possibly create to entice people onto my list. More time spent messing around in Canva to create beautiful PDFs and even more time spent (aka wasted!) trying to figure out how to work the backend so that I could offer different opt-ins and only have one list.

And then about 3 years ago I read an article from the brilliant George Kao titled No More Lead Magnets. In it he argues that making someone pay for something “free” with their email address (i.e. their time and attention), is neither truly authentic nor effective. When people join your list because they want your freebie, you’ll find that they’ll either unsubscribe shortly after downloading said freebie (we’ve all done it!) or they’ll stay on your list but rarely (or never) open your subsequent emails. Which makes sense because they weren’t signing up to receive your newsletters, they were signing up to get the freebie you promoted to them.

Since reading George’s post all those years ago, I got rid of the freebie opt-in on my site and instead focused on promoting and creating a newsletter that people would want to receive. I have a whole page (which you can read here) dedicated to explaining why you might want to join my list

7. You don’t need to pack your emails with lots of content.

Generally, when I start working with clients on their newsletter strategy, they often think that they need to have a ton of content in each email, with links to their own content as well as featuring other people’s content as well as useful resources, what I’m reading etc, etc! Personally I think this is what keeps most people from getting an email out on a regular basis — when we make the task of creating and pulling together our newsletter so big, it can be easy to use the time it takes as an excuse.

I like to keep it super simple by choosing a topic that I know is relevant to my audience (generally it’s something that keeps coming up in my client calls) and I share my best strategies and advice on that one topic. It typically looks like a long-form piece of writing which could also be an article or blog post. Sometimes at the end of the email I’ll share details of one of my products and services and oftentimes I don’t.

When it comes to writing for your business, I have a simple rule — if it feels burdensome and like hard work to create, it will feel burdensome and like hard work to read. Keep it simple for your sake and your readers.

8. You’re not bothering your audience.

More often than not, when we inevitably begin to discuss the idea of sending regular emails to subscribers, clients of mine tend to fear that they’ll be “bothering” their audience by sending out regular emails. This makes sense because for sure, we’ve all at some point or another felt irritated by a barrage of salesy emails from a business owner, we now regret handing our email over to.

The thing is, the people I work with — the likes of you and I — don’t do salesy and barrage, we endeavour to serve and support. Who wouldn’t want to receive a weekly email that contains relevant information for the very thing you are struggling with/working on? Think about the newsletters you love — do you feel bothered by them? No of course not — are they fairly regular and consistent? My best guess, if they are an established business, that they are.

Please drop this idea that you are bothering people when you email them. If you have your newsletter sign up setup ethically, then they have given you their email address with the express wish that you send them useful information.

9. You can repurpose your newsletters.

Rather than see my newsletter as just one more marketing task I have to take on, I use these letters as the place where my newest, most up to date content is created. I then over the course of several months repurpose that content into articles for Medium, LinkedIn and my blog as well as create various posts and stories for social media. This very piece started out as a newsletter!

Rather than these emails be something that I put a lot of effort into creating, to then send to a list of which only half of my subscribers will read, I repurpose the hell out of each and every one and you can do the same. If you want the full low-down on my approach to content marketing head here.

10. You can break the rules (including your own).

My hope is that much of what I’ve shared here goes some way to showing you that many of the email marketing rules out there in the mainstream, can in fact be broken. There absolutely is no one way to do email marketing, there are many and what works for one business owner may fall flat for someone else.

The key is to do what feels aligned. To create what feels exciting for you to create and once you’ve found what works best for you and your readers don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can never change things up. Yes, you can even break your own rules.

So there you have it, 10 things I wanted you to know about email marketing. Was this list helpful? If so, leave a comment below and let me know. I’d love to hear from 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.

How To Start Enjoying The Sales Process

How To Start Enjoying The Sales Process

by | Jul 28, 2021 | Client Creation, Ethical Marketing, Selling

“Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.”

~ Siva Devaki

I had the great pleasure of being interviewed by authentic business coach, George Kao. Now if you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know that I am a huge fan of George’s work and his approach to business.

George initially invited me to share about my most interesting insights and learnings when it comes to business growth and after spending not too long thinking about it, I decided that what I most wanted to talk about was how we sell. After making just a few notes on the topic, 4 distinctions emerged that I felt called to share. Distinctions that I think can help to reframe the sales process for you, the conscious business owner.

I share these 4 distinctions as an alternative to the mainstream marketing advice you might usually find online about how to sell.

Sales and marketing present the biggest struggle for the majority of people I work with. This is I believe, a result of what they think they need to do in order to get more sales. My hope is that the 4 alternatives I present below, help you to see that sales can, in fact, feel good for you, the business owner and for the people you are selling to.

1. Create Vs Attract

I talked about this distinction in some detail in another article. If you didn’t see it then, head here now to get the full low-down. Essentially, what I mean by creating clients versus attracting them is placing a focus on building meaningful relationships with people in your network and audience versus trying to present a polished image to the world so as to attract people to your business. Mainstream advice would have us focus on things like branding, web design, professional photos and persuasive copy as a means to sell but in this alternative approach, none of that is actually essential.

Instead of focusing on how your business “looks”, it’s possible to create clients by showing up for the people you already know and serving them deeply, whether that be through your content, complimentary sessions or any other way of being generous with your expertise. An analogy I share in the video is this:

Imagine you were looking for the love of your life and rather than spend your time going out and having fun meeting people and making meaningful connections, you spent all of your time focused on your appearance, working out in the gym to have the perfect body, spending all your money on the perfect clothes and spending hours each day trying to make your hair and makeup look perfect.

How do you think that would go? Sure you might attract some people but would they be there for the right reasons? Would the connections you make be rooted in what’s important? Most of us know this when it comes to finding a partner but when it comes to our business we fall into the trap of trying to present the perfect image. Today, I’m giving you full permission to let go of that.

2. Demonstrating expertise vs describing it

As part of the mainstream attraction model, we’re often taught that in order to sell our products and services, we must become masters of persuasion. In order to “convert” our audience into buyers, we must becomes experts at describing our services in such a way that the potential client can’t wait to buy. There are many strategies touted online designed to manipulate people into buying from us. Check out the ethical move for a set of tactics we advise you avoid in favour of more ethical alternatives.

In place of trying to convince people to buy your products and services with words, I encourage you to demonstrate your expertise instead. You can do this in a number of ways including, but not limited to, offering complimentary sessions, hosting free workshops, publishing free training videos so people can see your work in action and last but not least, sharing your knowledge in your content. And with this last point, I advise that you don’t hint at what you know to get the sale, instead share generously and in doing so cultivate deeper trust with your audience.

3. Serving vs Selling

This is where our primary objective when connecting with people in our network is to serve rather than to sell. Be that to potential clients, your colleagues and peers as well as mentors and role models. Whenever you find yourself thinking about making an ask of someone, see if you can find a way to serve instead. Here are two examples of what this might look like:

Instead of writing to former clients to ask if they know anyone who might be interested in working with you, write to them to offer a pitch-free, complimentary session to gift to someone in their network. In doing so you give the gift of giving to one of your former clients, the gift of your service to someone new and at the same time, ask for nothing in return. No selling is involved, yet you get an opportunity to demonstrate your experience to someone who may benefit from working with you.

Another place this distinction shows up for me is in your content, how often do we read newsletters and social media posts that go deep into a problem we might have, only to lead us to a solution we then have to buy — which goes something like…do you have this problem? Is it causing you all of these sorts of suffering? Then don’t despair because everything you need is available in my course, e-book, program etc.

When you serve in your content rather than sell, you cultivate trust, demonstrate your expertise and allow people to get value from your work whether they buy or not. Now you might be sat there thinking but I need to sell or I can’t pay my bills. In my experience the less I focus on selling and the more I focus on serving, the more my business grows.

4. Authentic pricing vs Premium pricing

Again this is one I cover in some detail in this article but for the purposes of this post, I’ll share the distinction in a nutshell. Whilst mainstream business advice will nearly always tell you to raise your prices, I’m here to tell you that you can build a profitable business without charging insane amounts of money for your services. In fact, often adopting the premium pricing model for your coaching, mentoring or healing services can have the adverse effect of making less than money than you otherwise might.

Big prices don’t necessarily equate to big income. In fact for many people the opposite happens. The bigger the price, the harder they have to work to get the sale and the less income is being generated overall. I invite you to tune out the noise online about pricing and to tune into what feels right to you as a business owner.

I hope you’ve found those distinctions useful and if you want to hear me and George chat about them, you can watch the video of our conversation here.

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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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Are You Willing To Think About Marketing Differently

Are You Willing To Think About Marketing Differently

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Content creation, Ethical Marketing

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued.”
~ Brené Brown

Lately I’ve had a phrase that keeps playing in my head and I’m feeling called to share it:

You don’t get paid to do your marketing, you do your marketing to get paid.

I can’t tell you how often I hear from business owners that they don’t have the time, inclination, inspiration or discipline to be consistent in their marketing efforts and it pains me every time I do. I see good people doing important work in the world, not making enough money to be sustainable, because they have a really terrible relationship with marketing. Just the word makes some people retreat.

Is that you? Do you feel like your business life would be all sunshine and rainbows if you could just be successful already without having to do any marketing? If so, then I’m hoping that what you read here today changes how you feel about the M word.

Before we dive in though. Take a moment now to close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself what marketing means to you? If you have pen and paper, jot down your thoughts before reading on.

I want to share with you some common problems I see when it comes to how conscious business owners feel about marketing, along with my suggested reframes. See if you can relate.

You see marketing as inherently bad and to market your work is to be pushy, icky and salesy. It means shouting about yourself, being an attention-seeker, annoying or bothering people — being salesy.

Of course I get this, it makes perfect sense — a lot of marketing online is manipulative and unethical and nearly always focused on getting the sale. It, therefore, makes perfect sense that you would want to avoid it as much as possible, but and it’s a big but — there is another way! You absolutely can do marketing without being these things.

One of my favourite reframes is to think about connecting with people rather than marketing to them.

If you think about connecting or having a conversation with another human beings on the subject of your area of expertise, does it bring up the same feelings? If you think about that connection in the context of the Brené Brown quote at the top of this article, can you image a way to connect with people in your network that has them feel seen, heard and valued? Isn’t that preferable?

Of course traditional marketing is pretty gross and self-serving but it doesn’t have to be.

If how you connect with your people is valuable to them and helps them to overcome difficulties or struggles in their life, why wouldn’t you want to do more of it?

Think about the people you admire in your industry, the newsletters you look forward to reading. For sure they will be few and far between but my guess is that there are some blog posts, newsletters, Instagram feeds that add to your day and how would you feel if the people behind those pieces of content suddenly decided to stop sharing their wisdom on the regular because they don’t want to “bother” you.

Marketing is only a nuisance if it’s spammy, manipulative, fluff. Don’t put out spammy and manipulative fluff and you’re good to go.

You don’t always enjoy marketing and and only feel able to show up when you feel inspired to do so.

I was talking to a client about recommitting to her content schedule and her plan to do weekly FB lives. The problem, she complained, was that she didn’t always feel like going live and so often that meant she didn’t. To her it seemed logical that if she didn’t feel like showing up, she shouldn’t push herself to do so.

So I asked this question: What do you do when you have a client session booked in that you don’t feel like doing? She didn’t miss a beat in telling me that she would of course show up anyway.

Can you relate to that? Does showing up for your clients feel different to showing up for your audience? I get it AND, I think that this is something it would serve you well to shift. This is where the idea that “we don’t get paid to do our marketing but instead do our marketing to get paid” comes from.

In my mind it’s a mistake to separate out the marketing of your business and the delivery of your services. It seems short-sighted to say I will give my all to my clients and show up powerfully for them and then be flakey and unreliable in your marketing. Why? Because if you show up inconsistently to the very people who might be considering investing in your services, then why would they think things would be different once they’ve paid you? How are your prospective clients going to trust you enough to hire you if they see you only showing up when you feel like it?

It’s clear to me that these two are related. If we see marketing as the devil’s work then of course we’re not going to feel like doing it or imposing it on to our people.

So it follows that we have to redefine what marketing means for us.

Allow me to share a little of my behind the scenes to show you what conscious marketing can look and feel like.

Writing my weekly newsletter is my most important marketing activity of the week. Its contents now becoming this blog post. I’ll also repurpose it for my Medium profile, LinkedIn profile as well as Facebook and Instagram. In short, if I didn’t write the newsletter, I wouldn’t have any of my other marketing materials.

Here’s how I created the newsletter behind this very piece. One morning after my husband and little ones left for work, school and nursery, I had breakfast and a shower. I then made a tall cup of hot chai with oat milk (my new favourite beverage with which I’m obsessed!) and headed to my office.

The first thing I do these days is burn my favourite incense (it reminds me of my days of living in Thailand) and play a track of windchime and birdsong sounds on repeat. (One of my lovely clients has actual windchimes in her home and when we have sessions the sound of them feels so calming that I decided to recreate it).

Then I opened up my Mailchimp and started the email. I should mention that I block off the whole of Monday mornings from 9am — 12.30pm to write my newsletter. It takes time to create valuable content and I want to honour that.

Usually I’ve thought about the topic ahead of time. I like to mull it over when I’m in the shower and at other points in my day — I also believe that when I come up with the topic ahead of time, my subconscious mind works on it when I’m not even thinking about it.

Before and as I write, I hold the intention to serve. I truly want my weekly letters to help the reader (you!) so I’m mindful to give as much as I can in support of your business growth.

There is nothing about this marketing activity that feels icky to me. I love writing, so for me the task itself is enjoyable and I love the topic of “conscious business” so I’m super inspired to share about it and my setup feels calming and nourishing, like I’m sitting down to my craft. To make art even.

Sometimes I also share something about what I have on offer and other times I don’t. I always separate out the content of the email from the selling of my services so as not to muddy the water. I want what I share in my content to be of value to you even if you don’t buy what I’m selling.

Can you feel the difference between this and how you might have approached marketing in the past?

The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s possible to do marketing in a conscious and compassionate way and for it to feel good. I truly believe it’s possible to fall in love with marketing if you’re willing to see it in a whole new light.

So now over to you, what could you change about your relationship to marketing that would have it feel good to you and to your people? What could you change in how you approach your marketing activities to make it feel more soulful? If you feel called to share with me, feel free to leave a comment below.

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.