Grow With Soul: Ep. 93 - Marketing & Business Q&A #3
Today I have lots of your questions that you submitted on Instagram that I’m going to answer. It is perhaps a sign of the times that there seemed to be a trend of uncertainty through all your questions - just a hint of worry and feeling stuck - so I hope today can be a comforting episode that gives you a few new jumping off points. I’m covering overthinking, email sequences, decision-making, channel planning, and our old favourite, Why How What.
Here's what I talk about in this episode:
What to do about overthinking everything
Creating email sequences
Making decisions when you feel stuck
Do you really need to do all the channels?
How I found my why
How to book clients
Staying motivated
Overcoming the fear of no one buying your course
Links I mention:
Get 50% off Flodesk email provider (this is an affiliate link which means I get a commission if you sign up and no extra cost to you)
Read the full episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 93 of Grow With Soul. Today I have lots of your questions that you submitted on Instagram that I’m going to answer. It is perhaps a sign of the times that there seemed to be a trend of uncertainty through all your questions – just a hint of worry and feeling stuck – so I hope today can be a comforting episode that gives you a few new jumping off points.
I’m covering overthinking, email sequences, decision-making, channel planning, and our old favourite, Why How What. Let’s dive in.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT OVERTHINKING EVERYTHING I PUT OUT THERE? INSTAGRAM AND BLOG.
I published a blog post about how to stop overthinking last week, so I will link that in the show notes for more detail on this specifically. What’s important is what’s on either side of the overthinking – the cause, and what it’s stopping you from doing.
When you understand why something like overthinking is happening, you can better understand, accept, and work with it to get to the thing you want on the other side in spite of it.
For example, perhaps you’re overthinking about what you put on Instagram because you’re worried about what people in your real life will think; and that stops you from talking about what services or products you have to offer and posting just vague captions that aren’t engaging a buying audience. Perhaps a conversation with these people will help, or temporarily removing them from your follower list, so you can feel more confident speaking to your business’s true audience.
Or maybe you’re overthinking your posts because you want them to be perfect, and you’re worried about putting out anything that isn’t your best or professional enough – and maybe that, in itself, is a way in which your fear is holding you back from taking up space. In this way, you’re stopped from showing up at all, or at least with the boundary-pushing content you’re capable of. Perhaps a way to get around the perfectionism is intend to share the works in progress and the messy stuff, so that you can be sharing what you do in a way that you don’t have to overthink because it’s not supposed to be perfect.
HOW DO YOU CREATE AN EMAIL SEQUENCE? AND CHOOSE AN EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER?
To answer both of these questions, we need to start at another one: what do you want email to do for your business? Is it to provide a place for your biggest fans to go deeper and get more access to you? Is it to collect a vast pool of potential leads to sell into? Is it to connect to your shop site and more easily let people know about new stock and offers? When we start with the result you want to have, you can more easily look for the features and ideas that are going to help you get there.
So in terms of choosing an email service provider, think about what you need it to do and compare the features. Also, take into account your confidence and branding – do you want more flexibility with the look and feel, or do you just want to be able to use easy templates?
I was a Mailchimp user for many years, but this year I switched to Flodesk, because they were cheaper and had better design options (if you look up Flodesk and decide it’s for you, I’ll put my affiliate link for 50% off every month in the show notes).
In terms of creating an email sequence, this is again something to ask yourself – why do you want one? Email sequences are one of those things we hear people talking about on podcasts and how it’s the most important thing, and we think we’re missing out because we don’t have one. In truth, complicated email sequences are a very advanced tactic, mostly used by businesses with many thousands of subscribers who need them to be able to sift all that data.
If you have 25,000 people sign up for a freebie about course creation, and another 25,000 sign up for a webinar about becoming a coach, you can’t handle that manually and need email sequences to make sure the right message gets to the right people.
If you don’t have many thousands of subscribers, having email sequences will actually cause you more work than the benefit you receive – if you only have a few hundred subscribers or you only have one core offering, then there’s no point segmenting your data. I personally don’t have any email sequences because that’s not conducive to what my email list is for – it’s a place for me to connect more intimately with people, and not a place where I’m driving a lot of traffic with a lot of different ads.
So rather than worrying about “needing” an email sequence, think about why you want it. Think about what you want your list to do now, and then plan for the best way to get to your desired result.
HOW DO YOU MAKE DECISIONS WHEN YOU ARE FEELING STUCK? (IE, DESIGN OWN WEBSITE)
I also published a blog post on how to be decisive a few weeks ago, so I will link to that in the show notes too. But the key thing is that indecision and stickiness aren’t the problem – they are a symptom of the deeper problem of unrootedness. When you are disconnected from your core values, your self-trust is weaker because you’re not anchored to anything – and therefore you don’t trust your decision-making capabilities.
It’s important to remember that there isn’t a right decision or a wrong decision. You’re not going to pick something and then some invisible boss is going to swoop down and tell you you’ve failed and you aren’t allowed to have a business anymore. It’s just down to you – which you can either feel scared about, or let it take the pressure off. Remember also that no decision is final. You are not signing your life sentence with each decision. You are trying something, and if it works, great, if it doesn’t, you try the other option. We put so much weight on decisions when really they’re not quite as important as our fear will have us believe.
Take this question about whether to design it yourself or hire someone to do it. To take the weight out of this decision, don’t think of this as your final forever website, because it won’t be – things will change in years to come. So this is really just a version 1 or 2.
If you’re tight on cash, or you’re not sure exactly what functionality you need yet, it makes sense to design it yourself for this version. Give yourself a tight deadline and then, if you design it yourself and you hate it, all you’ve lost is a month – but you gained an understanding of what you really want to be better able to brief a designer. And, you can always hire a designer for version 3 or 4 of your website in a few years time.
DO WE REALLY HAVE TO DO ALL THE CHANNELS? WHICH IS MOST IMPORTANT?
No, you really don’t! In fact, I would say that you better off NOT doing all of the channels. When you’re trying to do everything, you are spreading your energy, time and effort really thinly and not showing up in the best possible way anywhere, and therefore not making any great headway.
Also, not every single possible channel is going to suit your skillset, your business or your ideal customer – if you’re trying to do something that you’re not very good at, or where your customers aren’t even hanging out, there’s really no point. When I first started my business I had three channels: Instagram, blog and email list. After a year, I added in this podcast and started doing more outreach, and after two years started using Pinterest. But I don’t use any of the other social channels, and I don’t do any video – start in a few places you can be amazing, and slowly add where it feels natural to do so.
As for the second part of this question – I know that all anyone wants to hear is “these are the three most important channels, just focus on them and all your dreams will come true”. But unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules – the most important channels differ from business to business. I dabbled with Facebook and it did absolutely nothing for me, whereas I know other people for whom Facebook is the cornerstone of their business. This podcast is one of my most important channels, but if you make soap, having a podcast will make little sense.
You need to figure out your most important channels, based on two factors.
1 – Where can you be the best? Is photography a huge strength? Are you great at chatting and connecting? Are you a more confident writer? What channels are the best fit for your skillset?
2 – Where are your customers going to be? The reason Facebook didn’t work for me is that none of my customers really use it – but they do listen to podcasts. It’s easier to put yourself where your people already are, than to try to convince them to join you somewhere they don’t want to be. There’s a lot more depth about exactly how to locate your audience like this in The Customer Kit, which I will link in the show notes.
HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR “WHY”?
Personally, I think it’s less a case of “finding “ a Why, and more a case of uncovering it. It’s already inside you, it just takes a little bit of scraping back to reveal it. My Why has also developed and shifted over the years as I’ve been getting to know myself and my work, so I don’t think you get to a definitive point of a “final” Why, but always just the most true one for each moment.
Where my Why is now is slightly different to when I created The Purpose Kit 18 months ago, and different again to when I first started. But it’s always been based in the reason I wanted to do this in the first place – help people get the life they want via a business.
HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY FIND CLIENTS?
Personally, I would flip this question. When we put the emphasis on finding clients, we get really finicky – every new follower or subscriber we vet as a potential client, we start to feel like we need to send creepy DMs and pitch emails, and that doesn’t really make anyone feel good. My approach has always been to be a magnet, not a spear head. So rather than ask “how do I find clients?”, why don’t we ask “how do clients find me?”.
How can you be a lighthouse for your ideal client? What problem are they struggling with or result do they want – and how can you create content that will attract their attention? Where are they already getting their information and inspiration, and how can you put yourself there so they stumble across you? What shareable content can you create, or word of mouth can you encourage, to help spread your message? Even what ads can you put out to enable your right person to find you?
HOW DO YOU STAY MOTIVATED AND STAY THE COURSE/PATH?
First of all, I think it’s important to not expect to be motivated at all times. There’s this feeling that if this is “the dream” it should feel exciting and motivating at all times, but it’s just not realistic to expect that constant level of energy from yourself. So let’s switch up this question: “how can I keep going even when I don’t feel motivated?”.
With that question, it’s all about knowing your most efficient and effective tasks. What are the things that work the hardest for you so you can prioritise them in times of low energy – for me, this is my emails and my podcast, so I will do those rather than try to push myself to get motivated to create new things if energy is low.
Sometimes, the hardest work you will need to do in your business is hold on – when you’re not feeling motivated, when things aren’t going your way. It’s really a case of staying connected to your vision – how you want to feel, how you want your life to be. Try to bring some of this into your every day to make this not feel too far away (for example, taking an afternoon off, or bringing some creativity into your day to day) – when the day-to-day gets boggy, get out of it and go back to the dreaming.
Also, never underestimate a break! Have a little check in with yourself, cut out the things you’re not enjoying and allow yourself to miss the work.
BUSINESS ‘WHY’ HAS NO LOGICAL CONNECTION TO THE ‘HOW’. HOW DO YOU MARKET – PRETEND THERE’S A DIFFERENT WHY?
With this one I would have a rethink about how true the why and the how are, because if they’re not logically connected then what’s the point in having done the exercise? The idea with Why How What is that it makes every part of your business aligned with purpose and making sense in a way that gives you flexibility; if you’ve essentially just made something up to tick that box and move along, then it’s not going to have that desired effect and you’ll end up tied up in knots down the line.
I would ask yourself here, which one is more true – did you make up a why to fit with a how you were committed to, or is your why strong but the how feels like all you’re able to do?
In the first instance, revisit why you’re so committed to that how – the truth of your overall business why may be in there. Why is this the way you’re so keen to make an impact? Or, on the other hand, is the how really right? What might happen if you took it off the table for a moment? If you suspend reality for a moment and all your beliefs about yourself, what would it actually make sense for you to do to enact your true why.
There may be something else going on here too, which is the difference between an inward and outward purpose, or why. We all, really have two Whys – what we want for ourselves, and the impact we want to have. So for example, my inward why is that I want personal freedom and stability from my business, but my outward why is for others to let go of should do’s and do what they truly want. It might be that you are thinking of your inward why as your business why, and therefore it feels disconnected from your How. Try thinking about how your How connects to the impact you want to make.
HOW DO YOU AND SHOULD YOU PUSH THROUGH THE FEAR OF NOT GETTING ENOUGH PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR COURSE?
Is this really more a fear of the unknown? If this is your first course, then you don’t have a bank of evidence built up to stop yourself freaking out – anything could happen, and your brain is going to the worst case scenario. But you don’t worry about booking enough students into a class or enough 121 clients – because you’ve done that before, so by the law of averages you know it will likely happen again. You don’t have a guarantee that anyone will buy your course, nor that any will book your services – so the only reason the fear is centred around the course is because it’s new.
In these situations, we have to disconnect from the result and focus on the action. You can’t control whether or not someone buys, you can only control what you do. Focus on making it as easy as possible for people to make that decision – think about what doubts or questions they might have, and answer them through your sales copy, create content that tells a valuable story, keep showing up throughout your launch period with what people need to see to make that buying decision and answering their questions.
And if no one buys, you know it wasn’t because you didn’t try – so maybe you then need to look at timing, price point, format and see if you can tweak it into something that will better suit your audience.
If no one buys you just know you need to try something else – no one is going to know it didn’t work except you. And if only a few people buy? Well, they get exceptional value for money with lots of attention from you and you can get some more feedback – a win win all round. So rather than let the fear stop you from showing up and think that no sales will be a disaster, try to look at all the opportunities that can come from being brave here.
