It all started with a pedicure.

On the beautiful island of Bali last week, we were busily enjoying the Inspired Business Bali Retreat. As busy mothers and business women, juggling all the balls, it was our chance to unwind, relax and rejuvenate in the tranquil surrounds of north-east Bali while taking time out to work on our businesses — and gave us an opportunity to do some of the self-care things we never get time to do back home. Staying at the beautiful Entrepreneur Resort’s Vision Villas near Keramas Beach, you could get everything you wanted — massage, poolside cocktails, yoga. But the lady who usually did pedicures and manicures was away that week. 

My colleague and I set out to do something about our ‘winter feet’ — feet and toenails that were desperately in need of some love and attention. We hired two scooters and rode them from our hillside resort down to the beach, thinking we would easily find a nail salon down there, as you would in the touristy areas of Legian, Seminyak and Canggu.

After stopping at a tiny roadside stall to fill our scooter’s tank with petrol from an empty Bombay Sapphire gin bottle, we rode from beachside village to village, soon realising that it wasn’t at all touristy in these parts. Which was refreshing and wonderful, but not when you want to find a nail salon!

We were just about to give up when we noticed a small glass-fronted shop with a sign saying ‘Nails’ on the front.

It seemed closed (it was late in the afternoon). But as we tentatively walked up to the front door and peered inside, a friendly girl (aren’t they all friendly in Bali?) inside caught sight of us, broke into a big smile and came to open the door.

We explained that we wanted to get a pedicure each. She said we’d have to wait twenty minutes while she called in a friend to help, but she could get started on one of us straight away.

Perfect, we were happy.

Customer service!

Her friend arrived on her scooter within twenty minutes as promised (she travelled all the way from Ubud) and within an hour my friend and I walked away with shiny, fresh toes that were now open shoe worthy.

As often happens, the Balinese girls chatted to us in their broken English while they worked on our toes, asking us where we were staying and what we were doing. As we were finishing up, my girl handed me a card and said:

“If your friends want a manicure or pedicure, please tell them about me. I can come to your villas”. 

The card that she handed to me had her name on it, Sandat, with the words “Nails & Massage”. 

I said to her “Oh, you do massage too?” 

It had been difficult to book a massage at our villas because there was only one girl available and available slots were limited. We hadn’t been able to have the daily massage that we’d hope for when we arrived (oh, first world problems!).

“Yes, I can do massage!” Sandat replied. “How many people need a massage? I can bring a friend.”

I told her we had five ladies at the resort who would love a massage. She gave me her WhatsApp number and we connected online straight away, with her telling me she would be at our villas the next day with her friend, ready to massage five women.

Perfect!

It was a win-win. She identified an opportunity to sell us something we wanted and she and her friend got the chance to earn some money that they wouldn’t have earned, had Sandat not been forward in offering her services.

It was a beautiful example of authentic, natural selling and I spent the evening marvelling at how well the Balinese do that.

One of the retreat guests mentioned to me that she hadn’t once felt harassed, or “icky”  or “sold to” during our time in Bali. It feels more like the Balinese are genuinely curious about your needs and finding ways to meet them. 

I’ve been to Bali many times over the decades and it’s always struck me how resourceful the Balinese people are. They have a natural entrepreneurial spirit with an ability to find ways to make money. It seems to run in their genes and as a result they ‘sell’ very authentically and naturally.

[And no, I’m not talking about the awful beach hawkers that most of know and despise! That’s the kind of selling that’s pushy and forceful and makes us want to run for the hills.]

My theory is that the Balinese know how to sell authentically because they don’t have the luxury of unemployment payments like we do and the majority of people don’t have access to quality education. They didn’t get any JobKeeper payments from their government during the tough COVID years. They all had to battle it out on their own. And it was tough. 

There’s no safety net in Balinese society. If you don’t know how to make money, you don’t survive. Simple as that. And so the Balinese have become very resilient and business-savvy people as a result, always looking for opportunities to sell.

And it got me wondering — Why is it that so many of the business owners I work with in Australia struggle to “sell”?

Learning to sell is the most critical skill you need to learn when starting and growing your own business. But inevitably all clients I work with say:

“I don’t want to be salesy or pushy”.

And I get it, because that’s how I felt in the beginning too. I’d come from a corporate consulting engineering environment in which ‘selling’ was not a skill I had to develop in the true sense.

In our culture we haven’t grown up with many positive role models for natural and authentic selling. Most of us associate selling with the uncomfortable experiences of door knockers trying to sell us things we don’t need. As Seth Godin said:

“We don’t mind being sold to, we just hate being sold to poorly.”

SETH GODIN

So how do you sell authentically and naturally?

Selling feels authentic and natural when you have the intention to serve, not sell. It’s motivated by an underlying desire to genuinely help someone to solve a problem they have. Or to add value to their situation in a way that makes their life easier. The solution you offer is truly valuable. It’s about focusing on building relationships and creating value, rather than simply trying to close deals to meet sales targets. 

Which is exactly what the Balinese do without even trying.

And I believe we can learn a lot from them.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong
Inspired Business
Helping Startups and Small Businesses Succeed
+61 424 176 658
[email protected]

Have you got your copy of The Marketing Map yet?

Essential Marketing Tactics to Grow a Profitable Business You Love.

Download it now, it’s FREE!

Last Friday morning I woke up to the news that Google Bard had just been released. It’s the long-awaited competition to ChatGPT that everyone’s been talking about in recent months.

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since late 2022 with its revolutionary ability to do things like conduct comprehensive research on different topics through to writing a whole month’s worth of social media posts in under a few minutes.

Both Bard and ChatGPT are artificial intelligence (AI) language models designed to produce human-like text and converse with people to assist with a wide variety of tasks.

I asked Google Bard to write me an 800 word blog post about how large language models (LLMs) like Bard and ChatGPT can accelerate and improve your marketing. The article it produced for me was good — in fact, very good! I could have posted its content here as a new blog post, sent it out as a newsletter and moved onto the next task on my to-do list. 

But that’s exactly the catch. 

In this new era of generative AI (meaning LLMs that have been specifically designed to help generate text-based content), producing new content is easy. Anyone can do it. Simply give your LLM clear instructions and you can have a blog, presentation, social media post, or essay whipped up in seconds — to a high standard. You can even ask it to add humour, make it more ‘Australian’ (or any other culture) or translate it into a different language.

With the advent of generative AI, there’s no excuse any more as a business owner for not writing blog posts (to increase your SEO — search engine optimisation) or posting on social media. With these tools at your disposal, creating content is super easy.

But in this new world of oversaturated volumes of content, people don’t want to read generic stuff anymore. They want highly specific information relevant to their specific interests, needs and desires. 

They want to hear your opinion, your critical thought and your unique voice. 

And that’s the part that AI can’t do for you.

  Yes, AI can help you with idea generation.

  Yes, AI can help you research your topics quickly and easily and it can curate thoughts and ideas into spectacularly well-thought-out articles.

  Yes, AI can help you write your content quickly and efficiently and drastically cut down the amount of time it takes you to produced content.

   Yes, AI can help you edit your content for grammar, spelling and clarity.

  Yes, AI can help you optimise your content for search engines by tell you the right keywords and phrases to use (this part is gold!). It can help you improve your content’s ranking in search results which can drive more traffic to your website or blog.

And yes, I used AI to generate the above list of yes items (ha!).

In fact, Google Bard tells me that AI “is a powerful tool for accelerating your marketing content creation. By automating tedious tasks and providing assistance with idea generation, research, writing, editing and optimisation, AI can help you produce higher quality content more quickly and efficiently.”

And yes, that’s true.

But Google Bard also tells me that AI is not a replacement for human creativity and judgment. It cannot:

   Create original ideas: AI can help you generate ideas based on existing data, but it cannot come up with truly original concepts.

  Understand the nuances of human language: AI can understand the literal meaning of words, but it cannot understand the nuances of human language, such as sarcasm and emotion.

  Write with a human voice: AI can generate text that is grammatically correct and factually accurate, but it cannot write with a human voice that is engaging and persuasive.

  Understand the needs of your audience: AI can analyze data about your audience, but it cannot understand their needs and desires in the same way that a human can.

  Be creative: AI can generate new ideas, but it cannot be creative in the same way that a human can. AI cannot come up with new concepts or ideas out of thin air. It can only generate new ideas based on existing data.

And so my suggestions on this are:

• Use AI to help you overcome the ‘blank page syndrome’ that results in procrastination and inaction.
• Use AI to help you generate draft content quickly and easily.
• Use AI to share great content, regularly and consistently.
• Infuse your content with your unique brand voice, with your creative thought and originality, your critical thought and your opinions.

And I hope I’ve managed to do a good job of that with this article as an example.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Drop me a comment in the comments section below if you agree/disagree with any of the above. This is a whole new conversation and I’m happy to be having it with you!

Have you got your copy of The Marketing Map yet?

Essential Marketing Tactics to Grow a Profitable Business You Love.

Download it now, it’s FREE!

In service to your success,

Kate

KATE DE JONG, PhD
INSPIRED BUSINESS
[email protected]
+61 424 176 658
katedejong.com

Words are powerful things.

When used correctly, they have the power to clearly convey an idea, thought, or message. And the reverse is also true. The wrong choice or mix of words can leave your customers feeling completely confused, or worse — repelled. 

One of the most challenging tasks as a business owner is to find the specific words that accurately reflect the essence of who you are and what you do in a way that resonates with your ideal clients.

When it comes to marketing your business, clarity is everything.

You might have heard the saying “The confused person never buys”. It’s 100% true! One of the biggest reasons why people ‘bounce’ when they visit your website or they look confused when you deliver your pitch is because they can’t figure out what you do and if or how you can help them. 

Clear, sharp, and impactful messaging makes all your marketing and sales efforts easier. Get your messaging right, and you’ll see your revenue increase seemingly with ease.

Marketing is not about convincing anyone of anything. It’s about creating resonance with your ideal clients.

As the famous Simon Sinek quote goes:

Your job is not to do business with those who need what you have.
Your job is to do business with those who believe what you believe. 

— SIMON SINEK

Your messaging needs to tap into what’s true for your clients at a belief level.

Your prospect then feels a resonance with your words. As one of my favourite mentors, Jeffry Van Dyk, says, “Your message activates something in them.”

And then the deal is done.

There’s no competition anymore.

Your message has reached into their heart and mind and they know that YOU are the one they want to do business with.

Great core messaging is not forceful or manipulative.

It’s magnetic.

So What is Core Brand Messaging?

Your core messaging describes the essence of who you are, what you believe, and what you do, boiled down to a few critical sentences or phrases. What do you want people to know and remember about your brand? It all starts with clearly defining your ‘why’, vision, mission and tagline. This then flows into all your marketing assets and the way you speak about your brand. 

To learn everything you need to know about how to develop your core brand statements, check out this article: How to Craft Your Brand ‘Why’, Vision, and Mission Statements

You’d be surprised how many businesses struggle to clearly articulate their brand core message. And they struggle to make sales as a result.

It’s not easy to develop your core messaging. It takes time and it requires a willingness to dig deep down into your beliefs and what drives you to do business.

What’s an example of core messaging?

It took me quite some time to develop my own brand messaging. When I dug deep into why I do what I do, I discovered that this is what I believe:

WHY
Because I believe that entrepreneurs will save the world.

VISION
To empower purpose-driven entrepreneurs to bring their vision to life.

MISSION
To help entrepreneurs master the craft of starting and growing a thriving, scalable business so they can make the difference they’re here to make.

TAGLINE
Grow your business with ease.

When you nail your messaging you’ll see an immediate increase in leads and conversions because people now know exactly what you’re about, who you help, and how. Here’s what my client Zina had to say.

Kate exceeded my expectations in every way. She gave me actionable and practical advice that paid off almost immediately! Her advice on my core messaging was next level and once I implemented the changes I saw an immediate increase in traffic to my website and conversion rates. I’m blown away by how much value Kate was able to add to my business in such a short time.
— Zina Le Sueur, Zina Le Sueur Photography

Do you need help defining or refining your core messaging? Reach out to Kate at [email protected] or 0424 176 658 or visit https://katedejong.com for more information.

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Discover the Essential Strategies to Market and Grow Your Business, the Easy Way!

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In service to your success

Kate

Having a high academic score doesn’t necessarily make you a desirable candidate anymore for global tech companies like Google. These days, corporate giants are specifically looking for soft skills in their new employees (Abdul S, 2022)

Soft Skills are the New Superpower

Soft skills are non-technical skills that describe how you work and interact with others. Unlike hard skills, they’re not necessarily something you’ll learn in a course, like data analytics or programming. Instead, they reflect your communication style, work ethic, and work style.

Terms like ‘soft skills’ and ’emotional intelligence’ have only become widely accepted in the past decade. Back in the early 1990s, publishers told science journalist Daniel Goleman not to use the word ‘emotion’ in a business book. The notion at the time was that emotions had no role in the workplace. Business management focused on workers’ physical productivity, not their feelings. It was believed that ‘hard skills’ drove the bottom line. 

It wasn’t until 1990 when psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer published their landmark journal article called ‘Emotional Intelligence’ that things started to shift in mainstream perception. They described emotional intelligence as “the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions as well as those of others.” They proposed that emotions serve a particularly useful function and that emotional intelligence (EQ) is not just a group of capacities or skills, but rather, it is an actual intelligence that is equally important as cognitive intelligence (IQ). 

There’s now a growing acceptance that emotional intelligence can be taught, measured, and improved.

Companies that focus on developing emotional intelligence in their employees see significant increases in staff retention, engagement, and productivity.

In other words, cultivating emotional intelligence in your workforce significantly improves business profitability (Harvard Business Review). And this is why the most sought-after companies like Google are now using EQ as the single most important metric when hiring new employees.

Emotionally intelligent people are happier and more successful.

Since the nineties, emotional intelligence and self-awareness have been studied extensively by the world’s leading academics. Results show consistently that people with a high EQ are:

More fulfilled.  

More creative.  

More competent.  

Better communicators. 

More promotable.  

More effective leaders with more profitable companies. 

More powerful and better negotiators.  

Happier and more successful. 

Perform better at work.  

Have stronger relationships. 

Are less likely to lie, steal, and cheat. [Dr Tasha Eurich] 

The Six Intelligences in Business

I’ve been fascinated by the concepts of emotional intelligence and self-awareness for decades now. I love learning more about myself and other people — and helping my clients to do the same — through behavioural tests like the Harrison Assessment (one of my favourites), the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs and DISC (you can learn all about those here). 

One of the most powerful tools available to develop greater emotional intelligence that I’ve come across in recent years is the B.A.N.K Personality Coding system which identifies six different types of soft skills that literally give you superpowers in business. 

The six intelligences are:

1. Emotional intelligence.
2. Personality intelligence.
3. Sales intelligence.
4. Business intelligence.
5. Artificial intelligence.
6. Spiritual intelligence.

These six intelligences are the engine that drives your business results. When you actively take the time to cultivate skill across these six different areas, it results in your ability to:

Be a more influential leader.

Create more powerful marketing.

Be a more profitable business.

Create high-functioning teams.

Produce high-converting sales.

In short, soft skills create business success.

Discovering and learning the B.A.N.K Personality Coding System has allowed me to:

• Increase my sales conversion rate consistently from around 60% to more than 90%.
• Produce powerful marketing messaging and assets that convert.
• Speak the language of my clients so I can work with them more effectively.
• Develop more fruitful relationships and strategic partnerships that benefit my business.

You can ‘crack’ your own B.A.N.K personality code by going to this link.

The 6 Intelligences

1. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence helps you build stronger relationships, succeed at school and work, and achieve your career and personal goals. It can also help you to connect with your feelings, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to you.

Emotional intelligence is commonly defined by four attributes:

1. Self-awareness: The ability to recognise your own emotions, strengths, blind spots and your impact on others.
2. Awareness of others: Ability to recognise another’s emotional state with compassion and non-judgment.
3. Self-regulation: Able to wisely manage your emotions and impulses.
4. Empathy: Able to identify with and understand another’s emotions.
5. Interpersonal skills: Effective at managing relationships that benefit everyone involved.

2. Personality Intelligence

The Greek physician Hippocrates, known as ‘the father of medicine’ (460—370 BC) already defined four different and distinct types of personality during his time. He defined them as:

1) Melancholic: Analytical and literal
2) Choleric: Ambitious and leader-like
3) Sanguine: Pleasure-seeking and sociable
4) Phlegmatic: Relaxed and thoughtful

Modern psychology has embraced those four different types in varying formats, and B.A.N.K is rooted in a similar personality distinction, but it’s the first time a system has been developed around buying behaviour, which is what makes it so powerful in business. When you understand why your clients buy, it’s a powerful weapon.

Personality intelligence means:

1. You understand and can identify the different types of personalities.
2. You know and understand how you’re different and similar to others. 
3. You use your understanding of another’s personality to drive your communication.
4. You know the underlying values of the person you’re talking to and you know how to speak directly to their values.

3. Sales Intelligence

In business, sales intelligence is the information and techniques that salespeople use to make informed decisions in the selling cycle. It’s about having a powerful understanding of why people buy and using that understanding to increase sales conversions.

In sales, the sales velocity equation is a well-known formula used to drive sales growth.

Your sales velocity is influenced by the number of leads you have, the deal value, your conversion rate and the length of your sales cycle. Understanding and using the B.A.N.K system helps you increase the number of leads you generate, increase the conversion rate, and decrease the sales cycle length.

4. Business Intelligence

Business intelligence is the ability to use your soft skills to drive business decisions by:

• Know the personality type of your ideal customer.
• Know how to speak to all customer types.
• Understanding all customer’s buying motivation.
• Crafting all marketing messages to appeal to specific types.
• Customised sales scripts and communications for different personality types.

The B.A.N.K system helps with all of the above which is why it’s such a powerful system.

5. Artificial Intelligence

The artificial intelligence that’s built into the B.A.N.K system is one of the most powerful aspects of the model. You can copy and paste a client’s emails, communications or social posts into their AI tool and it ‘decodes’ their personality, telling you how to speak to them in a way that resonates with their buying values.

It’s a game-changer!

6. Spiritual intelligence

The B.A.N.K methodology is the first time I’ve come across a business tool that explicitly discusses and measures the concept of spirituality in business. I’ve always been aware of my own spiritual understanding and path, but it’s not until now that it’s been discussed in a business sense. I personally find it refreshing and revolutionary. Spiritual intelligence is about:

• Seeing greater meaning and purpose in life.
• Actions are driven by wisdom and compassion.
• Viewing your business and career as an opportunity for spiritual growth.
• Your identity is not defined by your physical self.
• Feeling guided in decision-making by a higher power.
• Detecting qualities in people that transcend their physical appearance, personality and emotions.
• Seeing the potential for good in difficult or tragic situations.

 To learn more about the B.A.N.K Personality Coding Methodology, check out these articles:

Selling is Not a Numbers Game: The B.A.N.K Personality Coding System—An Overview

The Powerful Lesson I Learned from Losing One of my Best Deals Ever

How Does an Engineer End Up Becoming a Business Coach?

You can ‘crack’ your own B.A.N.K personality code by going to this link.

I hope you found this helpful! If you’d more information, please reach out.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, PhD
Inspired Business
Business & marketing coach for small business owners
[email protected]
katedejong.com
0424 176 658

If you own your own business, you’re in the business of marketing and selling.

“The ability to sell is the number one skill in business.
If you cannot sell, don’t bother thinking about becoming a business owner.” 
– Robert Kiyosaki

Thankfully, the ability to sell is something that can be learned, which is comforting for business owners to know given that it’s so critical. I’ve completed dozens of different selling courses and programs over the years, but there have been few that I would refer to as a ‘game-changer’—until I found the B.A.N.K Personality Coding System.

Discovering and learning the B.A.N.K Personality Coding System has allowed me to:

• Increase my sales conversion rate consistently from around 60% to more than 90%.
• Produce powerful marketing messaging and assets that convert.
• Speak the language of my clients so I can work with them more effectively.
• Develop more fruitful relationships and strategic partnerships that benefit my business.

The use of personality science in selling is not new. Personality science itself is ancient, with Hippocrates (460 BC) being the first that we know of who documented four distinct patterns of human behaviour. 

However, this is the first time that personality science has been applied to selling to understand what makes people buy.

So what is the B.A.N.K Personality Coding System?

Developed by Cheri Tree at Codebreaker Technologies in the USA, the  B.A.N.K. Personality Coding System is an easy-to-use personality typing system that predicts decision-making behaviour based on your prospect’s deeply held values, ideals, and worldview.

B.A.N.K helps you understand why people buy.
And we’re all different when it comes to our motivation for making buying decisions. 

I’m sure you can recall a sales conversation where you’ve been able to easily build rapport and trust and the conversation flows easily. As a result, your prospect wants to buy from you. It’s likely that your prospect was similar to you and you were speaking their language. 

On the other hand, you would have experienced a sales conversation where there’s a disconnect and no matter how you try to navigate the conversation, you just can’t seem to connect and as a result, they say ‘no’ to working with you. I wrote about a time like this when I lost a big deal in one of my articles: The Powerful Lesson I Learned from Losing the Best Deal Ever.

The B.A.N.K system helps you understand why that happens and gives you a tool to make sure every sales conversation is a fruitful one.

You’ve probably heard the saying “Selling is a numbers game”

Well, this statement simply isn’t true. You can significantly increase your sales conversion rate by learning to speak the language of your prospect.

There are four personality types in B.A.N.K Codes: Blueprint, Action, Nurturing, and Knowledge. I’ve provided an overview of each one for you below. Each one of us has a ‘B.A.N.K code’ which is the order of the different values systems that are most important to us. 

There are 24 different B.A.N.K. codes possible from four different value sets (shown below).

Use B.A.N.K’s Artificial Intelligence to ‘Crack the Code’ of your customers so you can speak their language

The great news is that you can use B.A.N.K’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to ‘crack the code’ of your prospect before meeting with them, so you can speak to them in their language from the get-go to build rapport and genuine connection.

You can also crack your own code by going to this link.

To help you start understanding the different primary personality types, I’ve provided an overview below.

BLUEPRINT — ‘Inside the Box’

The first BANK code is ‘Blueprint’. These personality types value responsibility, planning, and structure. They’re usually specific with their actions and think things through before making decisions. See below for guidance on how to deal with a customer who leads their code with Blueprint.

Typical BLUEPRINT Behaviours

• They expect everyone to follow the rules and regulations.
• They need people to keep their word.
• Their focus is on minimising risk.
• They love to set up and implement predictable systems.
• They trust proven authority.
• They see everything in the world through the lens of right and wrong.
• They learn best through memorising, recall, and drill.
• They appreciate agenda-driven, efficient meetings that start and end on time.
• They work best with systems, routines, and procedures.
• They learn from past mistakes and proceed with caution.
• They don’t appreciate spontaneity or unplanned visits.

What to do when meeting or working with a BLUEPRINT

• Be well-organized and show that you are organised in the way you work.
• Go above and beyond to show respect.
• Greet them with a traditional handshake (no high fives, hugging or over-the-top gestures!)
• Act professionally.
• Demonstrate a system for success.
• Present your offer in a way that is low- or no risk to them—blueprints don’t like risk and they’ll do everything to minimise it.
• Acknowledge their position, credibility and accomplishments.
• Provide full disclosure of costs and timelines and never go over budget.
• Give them access to special discounts or savings incentives. They love a good bargain.
• Show up on time for appointments—never show up late to an appointment with a blueprint, it will be a no-deal from the get go!
• Show them your appropriate credentials for their field of work.

Deal-breakers for a BLUEPRINT. Don’t do this!

• Don’t be late to appointments or be late with deliverables. 
• Have no structure in your process or approach.
• Make up your own rules or have no regard for the rules.
• Display informal or rude behavior or be insensitive to surroundings.
• Interrupt them or make unscheduled calls or visits.
• Fail to acknowledge their perspective or point of view.
• Use aggressive sales tactics or behaviors.
• Set unrealistic expectations or offer false promises.

ACTION — ‘Outside the Box’

Action types care about freedom, opportunity, and excitement. They’re free spirits. If you were to pitch a product to them, you’d want to demonstrate how it’d help them get ahead in life or elevate them. You also might tell them about how your product will give them greater independence in their lives.

Typical ACTION Behaviours

• They negotiate skillfully and look for their own win.
• They’re optimistic and act on instinct.
• They’re competitive and have a propensity for sports and entertainment.
• They love beauty, status and anything aesthetically pleasing.
• They recognise and go after opportunity.
• They’re always looking for a better way to do things.
• They rebel against rules, routine and structure.
• They takes risks and love getting things done.
• They’re entrepreneurial and like to lead.
• They learn best through hands-on methods: “Show me, don’t tell me”.
• They don’t like boredom or waiting.
• They don’t like abstract ideas, excessive details, and useless theory—get to the point quickly.

What to do when meeting or working with an ACTION

• Where possible, show your connections to celebrities, business executives, or other high net-worth individuals.
• Wear or carry high-end fashion accessories.
• Paint a picture of a dream lifestyle that they can achieve through working with you.
• Name other successful people you have worked with.
• Greet them with enthusiasm. They love high fives and other enthusiastic gestures.
• Notice and compliment their fashion or style.
• Convey a sense of urgency.
• Give them access to VIP experiences.

Deal-breakers for an ACTION. Don’t do this!

• Show that you don’t care about style or your outward appearance.
• Provide too much detail or get into the minutia.
• Lack confidence and courage.
• Give the impression you don’t have relationship capital or a sphere of influence.
• Fail to recognize them for their achievements.
• Be low energy or not engaging.
• Lack the ability to motivate and inspire.
• Come across as cheap or lacking generosity.

NURTURING — ‘Recycle the Box’

These are the caregivers. Nurturing personalities focus on relationships, authenticity, and personal growth. To relate to a nurturing personality, you need to demonstrate your good intent. They’re able to sniff out dishonesty and greedy sales pitches.

Typical NURTURING Behaviours

• They dislike inauthentic or fake people.
• They enjoy training, motivating, and coaching others.
• They need interaction with people, groups, and teams.
• They seek deeper meaning beyond material possessions.
• They show appreciation easily and in many ways.
• They avoid conflict, contention, and excessive competition.
• They’re genuine, kind, and thoughtful.
• They’re on a quest for self-actualization and want others to do the same.
• They believe in the greater good of people.
• They support and empower others to be their best.
• They’re empathetic and intuitively understand the needs of others.
• They’re here to positively impact other human beings.

What to do when meeting or working with a NURTURING

• Give them a warm personal touch or energy.
• Connect with them over a common background, shared interest, or mutual experience.
• Go above and beyond to show thoughtfulness and gratitude.
• Show you’re purpose-driven, not money-driven.
• Provide opportunities for charitable causes.
• Show you’re passionate about the things that are important to them (if you are of course—be genuine, they can sniff out disingenuity!)
• Create a sense of community so they can feel connected.
• Try to understand them as a person.
• Introduce them to others on your team so they feel a sense of belonging.
• Ask them questions about their personal story (e.g., family, vocation, hobbies).
• Be friendly and approachable.

Deal-breakers for a NURTURING. Don’t do this!

• Show that you care more about the money or making the sale than about them personally.
• Be rude or obnoxious.
• Be egocentric or lack humility.
• Come across as inauthentic.
• Forget important personal details (birthday, anniversary, etc.)
• Fail to demonstrate high integrity or moral standards.
• Show you don’t care about others or a sense of higher purpose.

KNOWLEDGE—’Engineer the Box’

Knowledge-focused personalities find passion in intellectual substance, in the mastery of their craft, comprehending the big picture, and in perceiving the rationality behind statements. For these personalities, you need to lace your sales pitches with analysis and facts. They need to know your claims are credible before making the decision to purchase.

Typical KNOWLEDGE Behaviours

• They trust research, facts, analysis, logic, and reason above all.
• They’re precise in their speech and they notice contradictions.
• They have a need for data and meaningful interpretation of it.
• They don’t like to make a decision quickly, they need to do their own research in their own time before deciding.
• They easily learn abstract ideas and can process several issues at the same time.
• They dislike rote learning without understanding.
• They resolve conflict logically and rationally, without emotion.
• They use diagrams and models to communicate concepts.
• They can easily recognize truths and untruths.
• They dislike chitchat and instead seek conversations with substance.

What to do when meeting or working with a KNOWLEDGE

• Display a deep understanding of your subject matter.
• Be prepared with supporting information to back up your claims.
• Give them enough information to make well-informed decisions.
• Approach everything logically.
• Offer a new perspective.
• Be an expert in your field and show that you master your craft.
• Provide accurate facts and figures.
• Demonstrate a deep respect for wisdom and life experiences.
• Come across as smart speak intelligently.

Deal-breakers for a KNOWLEDGE. Don’t do this!

• Come across as ignorant, arrogant, or unintelligent.
• Have no data, bad data, or made-up data.
• Attempt to placate a situation and not deal with reality.
• Underestimate or insult their intelligence.
• Disregard their opinion or thought processes.
• Show that you lack experience or expertise on the subject matter.
• Be defensive or debate based on emotion.
• Not giving them time to process information or do their own research.
• Nonsensical small talk or conversations that lack direction or purpose.

When you’re armed with your customer’s code before engaging with them, you’ll find that your sales or work conversations proceed so much more smoothly!

To inquire about access to the B.A.N.K. artificial intelligence so you can crack your customer’s codes, reach out to me direcly at [email protected].

And to crack your own code, go to this link.

I hope you found this helpful! If you’d more information, please reach out.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, PhD
Inspired Business
Business & marketing coach for small business owners
[email protected]
katedejong.com
0424 176 658

“We can either be pushed by pain or pulled by pleasure”
—unknown.

I heard this quote a long time ago and it’s always stuck with me because it couldn’t be more true in my experience. Like all of us, my biggest learnings and growth have been born out of loss and struggle. 

One of these painful incidents occurred in recent years in business when a prospect came my way who felt like a perfect fit. I was so excited about the idea of working with this particular client because I loved what they were doing and what they were about. I could see the potential of what we could achieve if we worked together. Her work was in alignment with my values and my experience. I knew I could add value to her growing business.

Except it appears I read her completely incorrectly.

I had made certain assumptions about her and her values that I wasn’t consciously aware of at the time. She seemed so much like me and so I spoke and wrote in a way that was in alignment with my priorities and values. In our discussions and in my proposal, I focused on outcomes and qualities that are important to me (and I assumed to her too). But as it turns out, they weren’t as important to her. And she chose to work with someone else.

I was devastated.

It took me completely by surprise because it wasn’t the outcome I was expecting at all. I couldn’t understand what had gone so wrong. It confused me for the longest time.

It wasn’t until very recently during my certification process for the B.A.N.K. Personality Coding Methodology that I finally understood what went wrong with this particular client. As I worked through the learning for each personality type, it suddenly dawned on me that even though this client had seemed so similar to me, her underlying values system was quite different from mine. I’ve been able to figure this out thanks to the incredible artificial intelligence (AI) that is a part of the B.A.N.K. system.

The B.A.N.K artificial intelligence can decode a person’s social profiles, website, and other written material to tell you what their personality code is—which means you can then speak and write to them according to their internal values system.

Each one of us has a ‘B.A.N.K. code’ which is the order of the different values systems that are most important to us. There are 24 different B.A.N.K. codes possible from four different primary value sets (shown below). You discover your B.A.N.K. code (as a preliminary assessment) by ordering the cards below in order of their importance to you. 

You see, I had assumed that this prospect was like me. As someone who leads with the ‘Nurturer’ type (my personality code is NKAB), I love to do business with people who:

• Are authentic, transparent, and genuine (N).
• Show me they are not driven by money (N).
• Connect me with their community, team or tribe (N).
• They’re purpose-driven and passionate about their cause—and mine (N).
• They’re warm, friendly and sincere (N).
• They’re smart and know their information (K).
• They can provide me with the intellectual substance behind their approach (K).
• Their knowledge or system is current and state-of-the-art (K).
• They have a sense or urgency and don’t waste time on insignificant details (A).
• They get straight to the point (A).

But based on my research since, I now understand that my prospect’s values were more in order of the list below (AKNB)—with A as her highest value by far. She predominantly wanted to do business with someone who:

• Focuses on the fun, sizzle, lifestyle, and the dream (A).
• Displays excitement and enthusiasm (A).
• Can introduce her to other successful, powerful influencers (A).
• Is charismatic, cool and dressed to impress (A).
• Loves to make money, and lots of it (A).
• Has a sense of urgency and remembers that time is money (A).

Had I known this at the time, I would have conducted my communications with her completely differently!

I could have spoken directly to her cherished values and priorities in order to build her trust and confidence in me. I could have focused my proposal directly on the things that are important to her and then worked with her in a way that met her needs and values. If only I’d known then what they were!

But as always, hindsight is a wonderful thing. And this situation taught me a very powerful lesson in what NOT to do when it comes to pitching your services to someone.

Selling and succeeding in business is all about building quick, natural rapport with your prospect and developing trust and confidence in you as the provider by speaking their language.

 The B.A.N.K system teaches you exactly how to first understand and then speak the language that is going to resonate with your prospect’s value system. 

And the best thing is, you can ask your prospects to crack their own code before you speak to them using the BANKPASS. That way you know exactly how to relate and speak to them in a way that resonates with their core values from the get-go.

This has been a complete game-changer for me in my business.

Want to know what your B.A.N.K personality code is?

Go here to find out now.

Has this article been helpful? Drop me a comment if it has! I love hearing from you.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, PhD
Inspired Business
Business & marketing coach for small business owners
[email protected]
katedejong.com
0424 176 658

If anyone had told me back in my early twenties that I would end up quitting my engineering career in my thirties to become a business coach, I would have told them they were crazy.

Stepping away from my fifteen-year-long career as a consulting engineer in my mid-thirties was one of the hardest things I’ve done. No one around me could understand it. I couldn’t understand it either—I just knew I had to.

“But you’re such a good engineer!” people used to say.

“You’ve built such a successful career!” others said.

It didn’t seem to make sense.

I’d been so passionate about my career path and I poured my heart and soul into it. Starting out with a Bachelor of Science (majoring in Biotechnology), I then went on to complete an Honours Degree and eventually a PhD in Process Engineering. For nearly ten years, I worked as an engineering consultant in Australia and overseas, helping water utilities to optimise and upgrade their large-scale wastewater treatment facilities. I was passionate about protecting the environment. I wanted to make a difference. My work felt noble, satisfying, and fulfilling.

Except on the inside, things were unraveling.

What started out as unshakable tiredness eventually turned into what could only be labeled by doctors as chronic fatigue. It was a ‘mystery illness’. I woke up feeling exhausted and unwell every day. Nothing seemed to ease the extreme fatigue and brain fog that pervaded every waking moment.

For nearly ten years, my body was giving me all the signs that I was on the wrong path. I was constantly unwell, whether it be a lingering cold or flu, a gut problem, tonsillitis or hyperactive thyroid. I felt constantly unwell and miserable. 

Still, I kept pushing through. I put on a brave face. I’d learned to wear a happy mask to hide what was going on underneath. My suffering was my secret. “I’m great!” was my standard response if anyone asked. No one knew of the hell I was living.

I struggled on until I was brought to my knees in 2010. 

I was forced to reassess everything.

In the aftermath of my life crisis (which I write all about in my bestselling memoir Seeds of a Calling), I finally realised that my career was draining the life force out of me and it needed to stop.

Making the decision to quit engineering was massive and it wasn’t a decision I made lightly. But I knew it was what I needed to do.

As soon as I mustered the courage to quit, my health started to improve. It was miraculous. It was like a ten-tonne weight had lifted from my shoulders and my energy and health started returning with ever-increasing speed.

I spent half a year reflecting, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I started my own coaching business in 2013, and I haven’t looked back.

For me, entrepreneurship has been the path to freedom, happiness, and fulfillment.

And now I help others who want forge their own way.

But still, I couldn’t figure out why it had all turned out the way it did. And to be honest, it’s puzzled me ever since.

How could I feel so passionate about my career and yet get so unwell from it?

How did I get my career choice so wrong?

What went wrong?

I’ve had an epiphany in recent weeks.

Despite all the personal growth work I’ve done over the years, I’m always learning new things about myself.

I’m currently doing my certification in the B.A.N.K. Coding Methodology—a personality typing system that predicts our decision-making behaviour based on our deeply held values. Each one of us has a ‘B.A.N.K. code’ which is the order of the different values systems that are most important to us. There are 24 different B.A.N.K. codes possible from four different value sets (shown below). You discover your B.A.N.K. code (as a preliminary assessment) by ordering the cards below in order of their importance to you. 

I’d done all the personality typing systems before—Myers Briggs, DISC, the Enneagram, True Colours, LSI etc.

But when my wonderful and talented friend and colleague Christine Thorpe introduced me to B.A.N.K., I knew it was powerful because it’s values-based personality science. It helps you understand what’s driving your decisions and behaviour. 

My B.A.N.K. code is NKAB: Nurturing (22), Knowledge (22), Action (20), Blueprint (14). 

What’s yours? Go here to find out.

Just this week, two things have dawned on me:

• Why I was drawn to science and engineering in the first place.
• Why I struggled so much in my career as an engineer.

Suddenly it all made sense. 

I’d been drawn to science and engineering because KNOWLEDGE is my equal highest value: I value lifelong learning, science, universal truths, expertise, competence, accuracy, the big picture, technology, and research and development.

But my other highest value is NURTURING which is all about people, relationships, personal growth, teamwork and service. I wasn’t able to fully express my ‘nurturing’ values in my engineering career in a way that felt satisfying.

I’m also very high in ACTION, meaning that I need a lot of variety, flexibility, freedom and spontaneity in my work. My work as an engineer didn’t tick all those boxes.

Plus, engineering requires a dominance of BLUEPRINT qualities: Structure, systems, planning, processes, predictability, stability. Blueprint is not my happy space; it’s by far my lowest value set. And yet it was a critical part of my role as an engineer. I wasn’t operating in my zone of natural genius. 

I struggled as an engineer because I was out of alignment with my core, intrinsic values.

And I’ve only just realised this now, in my late forties. 

How many other people are struggling in their careers because they’re out of alignment with their core values?

How many other people are struggling with health issues because they’re out of alignment with their values?

BANK has been such a powerful tool to help me understand what makes me tick.

My current role as a coach is in full alignment with my intrinsic values (NKAB) which is why I now love my work. I haven’t had a single significant health issue since realigning my professional work with my natural values.

I’m now living and working full-time in my zone of genius. And it feels great. Are you?

I’d love to know. You can crack your own BANK code now by going to this link. I’d love to hear how you go!

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, PhD
Inspired Business
Business & marketing coach for small business owners
[email protected]
katedejong.com
0424 176 658

As those of you who have built your own business know, the first giant challenge when starting out is to beat the statistics and establish yourself as a stable, profitable business in the first one to three years. 

It takes enormous grit, perseverance, and smarts to get through what I refer to as ‘the valley of death’ where 85% of all small businesses fail, between the verify and break-even phase (see below).

When you finally get into a phase of sustainable profit, it’s time to celebrate! You’ve overcome the odds to survive the first three years—a huge milestone. 

But most business owners don’t even have time to celebrate when they finally reach stable profit because they’re too busy working themselves into the ground trying to keep all the balls in the air. I know that place well, I’ve been there myself too. It’s not fun at all. You feel like a slave to your business and you can only dream about taking a holiday. You can’t leave your business because it can’t run without you yet.

What to do?

Start working on your business, not in it.

The next big challenge after reaching the profit phase is to find a way to untangle yourself from your business so that it can run and scale without your continuous input. This doesn’t happen overnight and it takes careful strategic planning. 

The key to growing your business to the point where it can run without you is to do these four things well:

Implement Systems and Automation.
Systems and processes are critical, especially if you want to sell your business down the track. Systems result in efficiency, a critical element of a well-oiled business. Wherever you’re doing repetitive tasks, you’ll need to find a way to automate them. There are systems available these days—many of them free—that allow you to automate your workflows and reduce the time required to do your core business.

Outsource and/or Delegate.
It’s time to start building a team around you who can do the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on high-value activities like business development and serving your clients. Whether it’s taking on virtual assistants, a contractor, or a staff member, it’s important to start delegating in order to grow. Hire people who have strengths that you don’t have so that your team is well-rounded and effective.

Marketing Powerfully.
You need to get strategic with your marketing and invest in channels that deliver a high return on investment. Have a clear marketing plan with specific goals that will generate the revenue you need. Automate your lead generation to create consistent leads and clients.

Develop a CEO Mindset.
Every new level of your business requires a new you. Your mindset needs to grow and expand to allow your business to do the same.

How do you Scale Your Revenue?

Grow Your Revenue with a Scalable Business Model.

Once you’ve covered the four key areas above that allow you to work on your business (not in it) and you’re running as smoothly as possible, it’s time to celebrate again because now you can finally take a holiday! 

Hallelujah. 

You’ve earned it.

Now (if it feels right for you) it’s time to scale your business so you can increase your profits and enjoy financial freedom and the lifestyle you deserve, without working more. And who doesn’t want that?

But firstly, what’s a scalable business model?

The term ‘scalable’ means that your business has the potential to multiply its revenue with minimal incremental cost. It’s where you uncouple your revenue from your operating expenses in order to easily expand and grow your profits without requiring more of your time and resources.

Scaling a Product Business 

If you’re selling digital products, your growth is literally uncapped if you have the right systems and automation in place.

If you’re selling physical products, you can engage a third-party logistics provider to fulfill your online orders so you can scale in an unhindered way. 

But how would you scale a service business?

Tips for Scaling a Service-Based Business

The key for service-based business owners is to stop selling your time and start leveraging your time. This can be tricky since the original business was built very much on your expertise, your personality, and your vision for serving others. How do you duplicate yourself? How do you scale up what you do?

The answer is two-fold:
1. Stop trading dollars for hours and start selling a result.
People are willing to pay good money for a specific result. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you could—aside from offering hourly sessions—also offer a package that delivers a specific outcome, perhaps like ‘Killer abs and booty in 60days’

2. Share your expertise in a one-to-many offering.
How could you develop a program or course that allows you to lead, teach and/or mentor a scalable group of clients?

In order to scale, you need to refine your service offering as well as your target customer. To figure out which of your services you should zero in on, step back and look at the problems you are solving. Look for the most difficult problem that generates the most value for the customer when it’s resolved.

Package your Service like a Product.

Products are offerings that solve specific problems. Take my Inspired Business Collective as an example. It’s an online mastermind group for business owners dedicated to growing their business with ease. After speaking to all my clients, it became apparent to me that they all needed three things to grow their businesses:

1. Knowledge of how to grow and scale with ease.
2. Build valuable relationships with other business owners.
3. Accountability to achieve their goals.

So I structure the Inspired Business Collective to deliver those three things.

It’s a service that I offer, packaged as a product.

To offer your service as a product, you need these three things:

1. A unique approach or process.
2. Articulate the problem you’re solving for your clients.
3. Articulate clearly the results your client will achieve (the benefits).

How could you package your service to deliver a scalable, one-to-many service? The difference is profound in how it frees your time and allows you to make an even bigger impact.

Look at the difference between the two images below. The first image shows how your calendar looks when you’re providing a 1:1 service only. In this case, the service provider is limited to 21 sessions per week. They’ve built free time in their schedule to work on their business, manage admin, and to recharge. As you know, it’s impossible to deliver a 1:1 service all day, every day, without burning out.

Now look at how your calendar looks when you’re delivering one high-value group program that gets amazing results for your clients. And the beauty of the group program is that, if designed right, it provides uncapped growth and revenue, all in the same amount of time input each week. How great is that?!

Do you need help to grow or scale your business with ease?

Our Inspired Business Collective mastermind group is dedicated to helping you grow your impact and profits, minus the struggle. Come on over and check it out now!

Have you downloaded your FREE copy of The Art of Business Building yet?

Discover the Essential Strategies to Market and Grow Your Business, the Easy Way!

Go here to download it now.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, PhD
Inspired Business
Business & marketing coach for small business owners
[email protected]
katedejong.com
0424 176 658

The idea of running your own business is incredibly appealing: Be your own boss, work your own hours, do things on your own terms, make money doing what you love.

But the reality is that forty percent of businesses fail within the first year and eight percent fail within five years.

Why do so many businesses fail?

In Michael Gerber’s fantastic book The E-Myth, he explains that the reason why most businesses fail is because of the big myth – or fundamental misunderstanding – in what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur.

The Big Myth:

The notion that skilful technical work and a good idea form a sufficient basis for business success.

You probably started your own business because you excel in a certain field, maybe graphic design, or personal training, coaching or counselling. Or you have a fantastic product that people need. We call the art of delivering your product or service the ‘technical work’ – and you’re the Technician who does this work. If you’re like most business owners, you’re incredibly passionate about making a positive difference using your technical craft.

But if you believe that this is enough, you’ve made the fatal assumption :

The Fatal Assumption: The mistaken belief that knowing how to do technical work means you know how to run a business

(From: The E-Myth, Michael Gerber, 2004)

The technical work is obviously essential, but it’s just one hat out of three that you need to wear as a business owner.  And learning how to master these all three hats is the key to business success.

The Technician

We’ll assume you’ve got this hat covered! It’s why you started your business, because you’re great at what you do. And you love it. You’re a technician, extremely gifted at your craft. This is all about delivering a great product or service.

The Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurial skills are absolutely essential to business success, and if you’re lacking in this area, you’ll need to find ways to consistently grow and upskill in this area. Some people are natural entrepreneurs, while for others it’s a skill set that needs to be learned. You can test your entrepreneurial potential using tests like this one.

So what are the qualities of an entrepreneur?

The entrepreneur is the innovator who looks around and sees a world of opportunities. They’re dreamers and visionaries, forging strategic relationships and collaborations, leveraging their network and pivoting to new possibilities when required. They think like a CEO, focusing on ways they can grow, scale and generate more revenue. They’re public-facing and natural marketers. They love to get in front of the cameras to spread the good word about their business. They know how to make the most of publicity and to build their brand visibility and awareness. They know they’re great and they’re not afraid to tell everyone!

Here are just some of the things you need to do, wearing your Entrepreneur hat:

• Regularly attend networking events or meet with a business connection one-on-one at least once a week. Consistently grow your network.
• Find other businesses with a similar target market and create offerings that benefit your mutual customers and provide a win-win for your businesses (collaborations/joint ventures).
• Proactively grow your brand’s visibility in the market: Seek out public speaking opportunities, be a guest on podcasts or start your own, go live on social media regularly, find creative ways to grow your brand’s visibility.
• Market yourself effectively, generate leads, close sales.
• Take risks and invest in new opportunities with a good Return on Investment.

The Manager

The Business Manager is the pragmatic one who craves order and structure. Rather than seeing opportunities, they see operational problems to fix. They love to get things organised and efficient. They want things to be streamlined and effective so that your business becomes a well-oiled machine.

Managers engage in forward planning, they set goals, measure progress, and track numbers. Consider them the manager of operations, always looking for ways to free up your time to focus on the technical work.

Here are just some of the things you need to do, wearing your Manager hat:

• Use an online platform to organise your business. Our favourite project management platform at Fempire is Trello – we run our entire business through Trello and couldn’t live without it!
• Get yourself set up with a professional bookkeeping and accounting software like Xero, MYOB or Quickbooks to manage your business finances.
• Actively track your monthly Profit and Loss statements and monitor your revenue against your goals.
• Set clear goals to drive your business efforts and measure your progress against them every quarter.
• Adopt systems, processes and automation to streamline your business operations and free up your time to focus on revenue-generating activities.

Where are You in the 6 Stages of Business Growth?

If you’re not familiar with the six different stages of business growth yet, I highly recommend you check out my article The 6 Stages of Business Growth – and Why You Need to Know Which One You’re In.

During the first four phases of business growth, unless you’re blessed with great start-up capital or angel investment funding, you’ll need to figure out how to wear all three hats – the technician, the entrepreneur, and the manager. You simply won’t have the cash flow to hire a business manager or marketer to get your products and services out to market and to cover all the activities required by the entrepreneur and the manager. Plus, you’ll need to know how to do things in your business yourself before outsourcing to someone else, otherwise you run the risk of getting over-charged by service providers who spot a naïve business owner.

It’s absolutely possible to learn how to be a great Entrepreneur and Manager, and this is precisely why we developed our programs Fempreneur and Female Entrepreneur Mastery – to teach you how to get your business from validate all the way through to profit as quickly as possible, through developing great entrepreneurial and managerial skills.

Once you hit profit, you’ll then be able to start outsourcing some of your key entrepreneur and manager tasks so that you can free up your time to work ‘on’ your business and not ‘in’ your business. Typically the first things to start outsourcing are your marketing and your business admin tasks. As you get comfortable with outsourcing, you can start to delegate more and more tasks to virtual assistants or contractors so that you can focus on doing the work you love.

Business heaven is where you have systems, structures and processes in place such that your business can run without you.

You can start working towards this ideal situation – right now – by establishing and documenting your business procedures and automating your processes wherever possible. That way, you can bring new people into the business and all they need to do is follow your clear procedures or use the systems you’ve set up. And the great thing about this is – not only can you go and take a holiday when you want to – you’re also creating a business that can be sold onto someone else, if this is what you desire.

Need help mastering the three hats required to run your business?

Reach out for a FREE discovery call and we can chat about how I can help you! Go here to book now.

Did you like this article? You might also like:

How to Start Your Own Business: 3 Things You Need to Know

How to Quickly Grow Your Business with 90 Day Goals

The Art of Content Marketing: How to Build Your Brand Credibility and Easily Win New Clients

6 Powerful Productivity Strategies that will Help You Get More Out of Your Day

The Top 10 Mindset Qualities You Need to Embrace to be Successful in Business

Are you starting or growing your own business?

Download your FREE copy of my FEMPRENEUR SUCCESS HANDBOOK to fast-track your business success! This value-packed guide contains everything I wish I knew back when I was starting my own business in 2011. Click here to download it now.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach
[email protected]
www.katedejong.com

Are you comfortable telling your prospects what makes you so great at what you do?

If not, you need to be!

When it comes to marketing and selling your products or services, people will only know why they should work with you if you tell them.

I recently learned a technique from Petar Lackovic at The Sales Insititute which I refer to as Your Three Business Superpowers.

Your superpowers summarise:

• What makes you so great at what you do.
• Why your clients choose you.

Once you know what your superpowers are, you should tell people about them! Market them across your social media channels, write a blog or video about them, and get them onto your website for your prospects to see.

Learn how to succinctly describe your superpowers to your prospects during sales conversations and watch how your conversion rates increase easily and effortlessly! 

[mashtweet tweet=”Your superpowers allow your prospects to quickly and easily identify if you’re a good fit to work together and if they resonate with you and your brand.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

There’s a format you need to follow when articulating your superpowers. Be sure to keep it clear and succinct (and the rule ‘less is more’ applies here).

Here’s the format:

1. A ‘green brain’ (i.e. emotional/powerful) name.
2. The background or story that makes your superpower important.
3. Your superpower.
4. The result for your client.

To give you some inspiration, I’ll share my personal business superpowers, as well as the Fempire superpowers. I hope you’ll use these examples to develop your own descriptions.

My personal superpowers: Kate De Jong, Fempire Coach

My three business superpowers are (based on what my clients have told me):

1. I’m a lightning-fast strategic thinker and problem solver.
2. I’m kind and compassionate while also being results- and action-oriented.
3. I easily cut through the noise to focus on what matters most in your business.

If you’re not sure what yours might be, ask your clients!

Here’s an example of how you would break down one of these superpowers further for your clients, using the format I’ve given you:

[‘Green brain’ name] I’m a lightning-fast strategic thinker and problem solver.

[Background/story] Business is a constant game of problem-solving and strategising. You need to constantly troubleshoot your marketing strategies, develop compelling ways to sell your products or services, and come up with innovative ways to serve your clients to get results. This is where my first superpower comes in handy, which is my lightning-fast ability to solve problems.

[My superpower] I have a highly technical background, spending four years completing my Ph.D and then 15 years as a consulting engineer on large water projects worldwide. My highly analytical mind allows me to diagnose your business quickly.

[The result for you as a client] What this means for you is that I help you cut straight to the core of what needs to be done to generate profit as quickly as possible. No more spinning wheels or wasting time or money, I help you get on the straight and narrow quickly and easily.

Do you get the idea?

To give you some more examples and inspiration (if you’re like me, you might learn best through examples), here are Fempire’s three business superpowers and a breakdown of one of them.

Fempire’s Three Business Superpowers

1. We’re unapologetically a female-focused brand.
2. We have a 12-step Business Breakthrough Formula that provides a business-building roadmap for you.
3. We have a Sisterhood Community for success.

Breakdown of superpower #1.

[‘Green brain’ name] We’re unapologetically a female-focused brand.

[Background/story] Our experience has shown us that women learn differently, run our lives differently, and we think differently. And the only person who really gets this is another woman. 

[My superpower] Because of this, we are unapologetically a female-focused brand. All of our business coaches are women. We intimately understand how women achieve and how they need to be supported to thrive in business.

[The result for you as a client] What this means for you is you feel fully understood and supported as a woman in business, which allows you to business success more quickly and easily.

So what are your business superpowers and how will you articulate them succinctly to your prospects?

I urge you to take the time to brainstorm your superpowers because this level of clarity will greatly accelerate your sales conversions.

And let me know how you go!

Did you like this article? You might also like:

15 Great Books that Every Female Entrepreneur Needs to Read

How To Boost Your Revenue Quickly With Google Reviews

How to Craft an Irresistible Offer that your Prospects Can’t Refuse

How to Quickly Grow Your Business with 90 Day Goals

Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE Fempreneur Success Handbook and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2014!

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach
https://katedejong.com
[email protected]

Have you ever tried to launch something and it flopped? 

Did you pour your heart and soul into an offer that you were super proud of and yet no one seemed to want it? 

We see it all the time with new businesses. And it’s heart breaking when that happens. 

But the good news is that it can be completely prevented with a comprehensive, powerful launch strategy.

Where Do Launches Go Wrong?

Launches go wrong when there’s no thought or strategy put into the build up period prior to the launch. Most people tend to put all the thought into creating the actual product or offer itself, without the same thought and care applied to the launch process.

Have you been guilty of putting something out to market without implementing a carefully considered launch process? I know I have, especially in the early days. And then we wonder why it doesn’t convert.

A launch is when you’re going out to the market and asking people to buy something from you.

Let’s think of a dating analogy. Just like you can’t ask someone to sleep with you before you’ve been on several amazing dates, you also can’t ask someone to buy from you when you haven’t spent time romancing them or allowing them to get to know you.

You might have heard of this quote or similar before. 

One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is they’re walking around trying to sleep with complete strangers.

– Sabri Suby

It sounds a bit harsh, but this quote is metaphorically very true with any marketing strategy and it’s especially true for launching!

[mashtweet tweet=”Did you know that most people need at least 7-20 touch points with you before they’re willing to buy?” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

That’s because of the extremely important concept in the world of marketing known as The Customer Value Journey (read all about it here: How to Win More Clients with a Powerful Customer Value Journey). The Customer Value Journey leads your prospects through a series of touch points that are designed to ‘romance’ and warm up your prospects. The different touch points help you to build a relationship with your audience, establish trust and credibility, and generate a willingness and desire in your prospects to buy from you. 

[mashtweet tweet=”People need to know, like, and trust you before they’re willing to buy from you. And a great launch strategy will help you do just that. ” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

If you launch to an audience that hasn’t been warmed up appropriately, they won’t want to buy from you.

So How Do You Make Your Launch a Spectacular Success?

There are a series of steps to follow to maximise the chances of your launch’s success. You should start your launch preparation around 30-40 days before you intend to launch, to launch like a Queen!

Here are the steps we recommend you follow.

1. Set a Launch Date.

It’s essential to have a launch date to work towards. Like everything in business, you need a specific goal that keeps you accountable and helps you avoid procrastination. Choose a date that’s realistic but also stretches you a little. Most people work more efficiently with a little pressure!

2. Grow Your Social Followings, Your Email List & Establish Promotional Partners.

You don’t want to launch to an empty theatre! Put a concerted effort into growing your social platform followings and your email database before you launch so that you’re launching to as big an audience as possible. Find colleagues in your field who are willing to promote your offer to their audiences on your behalf and set up a simple affiliate arrangement where they get a small percentage of the sale if the prospect comes from their list. This will get your offer out to much larger audiences.

3. Start Building Anticipation.

Make a public announcement across your social profiles and your email database about when you’ll be launching your product or service offering. Be specific, tell them the exact date and be sure to launch on that date! 

Start to romance your audience with high value content related to your business or product so that you continue building anticipation. Provide content that piques curiosity and teases your audience so that they’ll want to see what comes next!

4. Release High Value Content Piece #1: ‘Why’

You’ll need to prepare a series of content (blog posts, videos, social media posts, or infographics) that answer that question ‘Why?’ 

• Why should your audience care about your product? What’s in it for them?
• Why should they listen to you? 
• What’s the transformation and the result you will offer them? Why do they need it?
• What do you believe? Remember, your job is to do business with those who believe what you believe (see Why You Need to Know Your Business ‘Why’, Vision and Mission).

You don’t need to give your audience any details of your offering at this stage, simply explain why they need it, and let them know you’ll be providing all the details in upcoming posts.

5. Release High Value Content Piece #2: ‘How’

Now you need to educate your audience about how you will deliver the transformation that you promised in your first piece of content. Present a short case study or demonstrate how your offering works. Answer common questions, which is a way to address any objections they might have. Help your audience to see the big picture and how it can impact their life. Let them know you’ll be explaining the offer in detail in the next post and to ‘stay tuned’; this keeps building the anticipation.

6. Release High Value Content Piece #3: ‘What’

Now you get to announce your offer and let them know all the details they’ve been waiting for! Tell your audience exactly what your offer is. Teach some key concepts related to your offering so that they can see the benefit of your offer. Explain how your offer is different to your competitors. Give them a tip or trick that is really valuable and that they can implement right away. What can you give them or teach them that will make an impact and make them want more? 

7. The Countdown

For the final seven days before you launch, continue to build the anticipation and excitement by doing a countdown with your social media posts or emails. For example you could post a big number 7 with balloons and champagne one week before launch, and continue with the countdown 3 and 1 day before launch. Send an email to your database to get them excited about the impending launch.

8. Launch Day

This is when you finally ‘open your shopping cart’ and announce that your product is now live and available for purchase. Your offer should be irresistible, meaning, your audience perceives it as high value for a great price – which it absolutely should be! It should seem like a ‘no-brainer’ for your audience and an easy ‘yes’,  because it is. To learn more about crafting irresistible offers, check out this article: How to Craft an Irresistible Offer that Your Prospects Can’t Refuse.

If you have a sales page, give your audience the link to your sales page where they can go to purchase your offer. Or tell them clearly the process they have to follow in order to work with you. Tell your audience exactly which action you want them to take to engage with your offer. Be clear and specific. Remember, the confused person never buys! 

9. 7-10 Day Launch Period

You’ll want to keep your offer open for 7 – 10 days, and then close it down. People need a deadline to make a decision, it’s just human nature! That’s the beauty and power of launches, it creates anticipation, builds tension, opens the offer, and then closes it down. It provides urgency and scarcity, the key ingredients to successful sales. People feel the FOMO (fear of missing out) if they choose not to engage with your irresistible offer, which motivates them to buy now.

[mashtweet tweet=”With a legitimate sense of scarcity and urgency, you’re helping people to make a decision that you know will positively benefit them.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

Hopefully now you can clearly see what it takes to successfully launch a product. It’s a lot more than just putting your offer out to the market. It takes a lot of work, but the results are well worth the effort. If you can develop a process and templates for your business, then it becomes a matter of rolling out the same process over and over again each time you go to market with a new offering.

Give it a try and watch how your conversion rates drastically increase! And please reach out if you have any breakthroughs, I’d love to hear about them!

Did you like this article? You might also like:

How to Speak Transformationally So You Can Sell More

How to Drastically Increase Profits with a Product or Service Ladder

The Confused Person Never Buys: How to Make Your Offerings Clear so You’ll Never Lose a Customer Again

How to Sell More with Your Three Business Superpowers

How to Become a Profit Queen (Part 1): Growth Strategies to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE Fempreneur Success Handbook and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2014!

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Professionals
katedejong.com
[email protected]

If you want to win more clients in your business, you need to learn to speak in terms of the transformation you provide.

Are you selling the end destination or the aeroplane?

Try it and see for yourself.

Do you need more clients? More leads or sales?

If so, it’s likely you need to optimise your Customer Value Journey.

One of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is they’re walking around trying to sleep with complete strangers.
– Sabri Suby

This might sound harsh, but metaphorically it’s very true.

Has this happened to you before? You go to a lot of trouble to create a great product or service offering that delivers value and transformational results for your client, and you’re super excited to put it out to the market. So you send your great offer out to your email list and post it all across your social media channels multiple times. And then you wait with bated breath for the clients to start rolling in.

Except all you hear is … crickets.

If that’s happened to you before, you’re not alone. It’s a very common problem that first-time business owners encounter. And it’s completely normal that no one responds to your offer if you haven’t yet taken the time to move your leads and prospects through a powerful Customer Value Journey.

In this article, I’m explaining what the Customer Value Journey is and why you need one.

[mashtweet tweet=”A Customer Value Journey is a step-by-step process that attracts and converts prospects into paying clients and keeps them coming back. It’s an invaluable digital marketing tool that helps business owners improve their conversions, their sales, and their Return on Investment (ROI) – definition by ViralSolutions.net #digitalmarketing #sales.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

Marketing and selling is all about building relationships

[mashtweet tweet=”People only buy from people they know, like, and trust.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

When was the last time you bought something from someone who you don’t know or trust? I’m guessing you’re like the rest of us, and you’ve never done that.

It takes time to build a relationship and there are roughly eight different stages.

You know how it goes when you meet someone you like. You might first invite them for a coffee, and if that goes well you might invite them out for dinner, and if that goes well you might do that a few more times before inviting them back to your place, and so on.

[mashtweet tweet=”If you were to invite someone back to your place before you even know them, that would be creepy! You need to build the relationship slowly. And the exact same is true for marketing. You need to give people time to get to know, like, and trust you before you start asking them to buy from you.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

The diagram below shows the eight different stages of a human relationship, which coincides with the eight different stages of the customer value journey in marketing.

Both are a process of building a relationship naturally and organically. If you try to skip a step, it feels weird for everyone involved.

Figure 1: The 8 Stages of Relationships & Marketing

So how do you apply this to your marketing?

You’ll need to provide different types of content during each different phase of the customer value journey with the intention to move them one step further along.

Below is an overview of how you might apply the different steps to your marketing strategy (courtesy of Caffeinate Digital).

Figure 2. The Customer Value Journey – courtesy of Caffeinate Digital

Phase-Relevant Content Types

Here are the different stages and the different types of content you can use to organically move prospects along the customer value journey. The content is divided into ‘top of funnel’ strategies, ‘middle of funnel’ strategies, and ‘bottom of funnel’ strategies.

Figure 3: Content Marketing and the Customer Value Journey

Now let’s look at the eight different stages of the Customer Value Journey in detail.

The 8 Stages of the Customer Value Journey

(adapted from Digital Marketer’s Customer Value Journey)

Step 1: Make Your Prospects Aware

The first step is to make your customers aware that you exist and that they have a problem that you can solve. During this phase, you’re simply educating, entertaining, and inspiring your audience. It’s all about giving value with no strings attached. You’re not asking them to spend any time or money with you, you’re simply giving lots of value for free.

In terms of human relationships, this is like the ‘romancing’ phase (see Figure 1).

The types of content to offer during this phase include blog posts, free events, social media posts, podcasts, video, etc (see Figure 3).

Step 2: Get Your Prospects to Engage

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, engagement is defined as “emotional involvement or commitment”. During this phase, you’re still continuing to show up and offer great value with no strings atttached, because your prospects are still trying to figure out if they know, like, and trust you. If they’re liking what they see so far, you’ll see your prospects engaging with your posts and your content, either through clicks, comments or shares. They’re starting to trust you.

If you can prove your value during this phase (by giving lots of great value), then they’re more likely to want to spend time or money with you, which comes during the ‘subscribe’ phase (next).

Your goal in this phase is to keep giving great value and informing your audience about how you solve the different challenges they may have so they’ll feel more compelled to get involved with you and your brand.

Step 3: Ask Them to Subscribe

As Digital Marketer says: “When someone likes their experience with your brand, trust begins to build. Once that happens, it’s time to ask for a small commitment – subscribing – and giving you permission to email them.”

In this phase, you offer them a lead magnet (something of high value that they can download for free), in exchange for their contact details. This allows you to continue marketing to them via email, further nurturing the relationship with them, and further building the trust and confidence in your brand.

[mashtweet tweet=”You offer something they want, they fill out a form to get it. It’s that simple.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

There’s just one problem. Today, people are careful about giving out their email address. You have to offer something valuable that makes it worth their while. Think webinars, free samples of a product or chapters of a book, demos, reports, and guides.

You offer something they want, they fill out a form to get it. It’s that simple.

Step 4: ‘Convert’ – Make Them a Customer

As the team at Digital Marketer says: “If your free offers have enough value (answering questions and solving problems), your prospects are often eager to deepen their commitment. They just need to know how.

The best way to do that is through an entry-point offer—a high-value, low-risk offer that lets them sample your wares without putting too much skin in the game.

To be clear, an entry-point offer is not designed to make you a profit. Its only purpose is to create a smooth transition from subscriber or follower to a paying customer. You can focus on profits later in the customer value journey.

Now, in this phase, you only need to ask for a small commitment: say, $8–$20. Your goal is simply to cover your costs in acquiring the customer.

Step 5: Get Them Excited About Your Brand

This is all about creating memorable experiences for your new customers.

As Digital Marketer says:

Buying generates warm fuzzies. It’s a scientific fact. The dopamine from a new purchase gets people excited—which is why the fifth stage of the Customer Journey is to build on that excitement.

How do you do that? By giving your new customer a memorable experience.

Consider offering a quick-start guide… bonus features that surprise and delight… quick wins… any content that makes your new customers happy.

Step 6: ‘Brand Advocate’ – Turn Your Customers into Multi-Buyers

At this stage, your goal is to generate repeat buys and real profits. While your entry-point offer was designed for conversions, your ‘ascension’ phase offers should be geared for profits—because if you’re serving your customers well, they’ll want to buy again and again. Your ‘ascension’ ladder is how you can upsell your existing customers from your core offer into higher ticket items with you.

[mashtweet tweet=”As a general rule of thumb, the profit margin increases with every upsell you generate, because you have no cost to acquire the customer. They’re already a brand fan and advocate.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

Ascension offers may be simple upsells made after that initial purchase… bigger, better solutions… or “done for you” add-ons.

Step 7: ‘Referrals’ – Ask Them to Spread the Love

Happy customers love to share their experience, but sometimes they need some encouragement to do so. The cool thing is, once they do, they become even more loyal to your brand.

So, at this stage of the Customer Value Journey, ask people to share their positive experience with your brand by writing a review, by sending referrals your way, or sharing social media posts with their audience.

Step 8: ‘Promote’ – Make Them a Promoter

Up until now, any “promotion” your customers have done has been passive. But in the promotion stage, your customers actively spread the word about your brands, products, and services. They tell stories, make recommendations, and share your offers because they truly believe in them.

Active promotion may be an affiliate or commission relationship—or just a free offer for sending some new customers your way. The point is, it’s a win-win for both of you.

How to Help People on Their Journey

Digital marketing is about helping customers move along this journey faster. That’s why you can’t use just one tactic or an ongoing series of unfocused marketing campaigns.

You need a plan that addresses every stage of the Journey. And you need to think in terms of optimising that journey.

Did you like this article?

You might also like:

The Confused Person Never Buys: How to Make Your Offerings Clear so You’ll Never Lose a Customer Again

How to Sell More with Your Three Business Superpowers

How to Become a Profit Queen (Part 1): Growth Strategies to Take Your Business to the Next Level

How to Become a Profit Queen (Part 2): Growth Strategies to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Are you starting or growing your own business?

Get your FREE copy of The Fempreneur Success Handbook: How to Start & Grow Your Wildly Successful business and discover everything I wish I’d known back when I was starting my business!

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Entrepreneurs
[email protected]
+61 424 176 658
www.katedejong.com

Google reviews are an extremely powerful tool to attract clients and boost your revenue quickly.

Did you know that Google reviews help you to rank more highly in Google search results than businesses who use paid advertising or advanced Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

It’s true!

Google reviews are an underestimated tool that can drastically increase your visibility and credibility, bringing you a consistent flow of leads and clients. In this article I’m going to explain how and why Google reviews are so powerful and how you can use them to your advantage.

In order to get Google reviews, you’ll first need to register your business with Google Business (go to this link to do so: https://business.google.com/create).

If you haven’t already registered your business with Google, I highly recommend you do so as quickly as possible.

There are many advantages of registering your business with Google.

A Google Business profile…

1. Shows that you’re a ‘real’ business.
2. Gives you instant credibility.
3. Allows Google to easily match searches to your business.
4. Boosts your SEO organically (this is worth its weight in gold!)

Google Reviews form part of your Inbound Marketing strategy. Before we get into how it all works, let’s first recap the difference between inbound and outbound marketing, and how Google Reviews fit into your overall marketing strategy, so that we’re on the same page.

The difference between Inbound and Outbound Marketing – and Why You Need Both

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is anything you ‘push’ out to a wide audience to promote and sell your products or services. e.g. via social media marketing, blogging, advertising. 

Your audience is not always actively looking for solutions when you’re engaged in outbound marketing (often they’re scrolling on social media late at night and they might not be interested in your promotions).

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is how you magnetise people to your website through search engines. It’s how people find you when they’re actively searching for a particular product or service. Inbound marketing includes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Reviews (which help boost your ranking in search engine results, as you’ll see below).

Inbound marketing allows those who are actively looking for online solutions to find you. Those prospects are very ‘warm leads’ because they’re actively looking for a product or service that you provide.

Both inbound and outbound marketing strategies drive people towards your website (see below). And once they get to your website, you’ll need to have a very compelling offer that entices your visitors want to engage with you and your brand. I call these ‘irresistible offers’. To discover how to craft an irresistible offer, check out my article How to Craft an Irresistible Offer that your Prospects Can’t Refuse.

So How do Google Reviews Enhance Your Inbound Marketing?

You might have noticed in Google search results that the first results that show up are paid ads. Google Ads are a form of paid advertising in which you can pay Google to have your business shown first when people are searching for a product or service that you provide. You can recognise Google Ads by the words ‘Ad’ that’s in front of the search result (see the screenshot below).

Examples of Google Ads when searching for ‘business coach’

After paid ads, the next thing that shows up on Google search results is the ‘maps’ section. These are businesses that have a physical Google-registered address in the area close to you. And the businesses that get shown first in the maps section are those who have the most reviews. This is why you need to start building your Google reviews!

[mashtweet tweet=”Latest research shows that the maps section of Google results gets at least 20% more clicks than paid Ads or SEO generated search results!” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

To see some of the latest research on Google, check out Hursh’s videos here: https://tradesignaus.com.au/sales-accelerator-resources.

The maps section of Google results get more clicks than paid ads and SEO-generated results. And the businesses who feature highest in the Google maps section are those who have the most Google reviews.

Here’s what the maps section results looks like for a search on local carpet cleaning businesses.

Google search results in the ‘maps’ section

[mashtweet tweet=”The important take-away message here is that Google reviews help you to get listed first, above paid advertising results and organic SEO results. So start building your Google reviews fast! #googlereviews #SEO #googleads #digitalmarketing” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

How to Request Google Reviews from Happy Clients, Past or Present.

The easiest way to start building your Google reviews is to reach out to your happy clients, past or present, and ask them to leave a 5-star review for you. They’ll need to have a Google account (e.g. a Gmail account) to be able to register a review for you. Or they can create a Google account for free if they don’t already have one.

To make it as easy as possible for your clients, send them the direct link to leave a review. The direct link can be found in the back end of your Google Business account, and looks like this (below).

When you click on that link, you’ll be shown a link that you can copy and paste into a message to your clients to ask them to leave a review for you. The link will look like this (see below).

Set yourself a challenge to get 20 Google reviews in 20 days and when you reach out to your clients you can say “I’m on a mission to get 20 Google reviews in 20 days and I’d love your support.” You might be surprised at how happy your clients will be to help you out!

I hope this article has helped you to understand how important Google reviews are, and how instrumental they can be in helping you to build your business.

If you have any questions, please reach out at [email protected]. I look forward to connecting with you!

If you liked this article, you might also like:

How to Craft an Irresistible Offer that your Prospects Can’t Refuse.

Why You Need to Know Your Business ‘Why’, Vision and Mission.

How to Quickly Grow Your Business with 90 Day Goals.

3 Important SEO Trends You Need to Know About in 2020.

How to Use SEO to Skyrocket Your Business Growth on Autopilot.

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Professionals
[email protected]
www.katedejong.com

Have you ever wondered how some businesses have the time and energy to show up on social media with great content, consistently?

I used to wonder that too.

Back when I first started my business, several coaches advised me that I needed to ‘put myself out there’ and be posting on social media daily, as well as doing live videos at least once per week. So I dutifully started doing this, only to realise within a few months that this was all I was doing. 

I didn’t have time to focus on anything else and I felt like I was spinning my wheels.

So much of my time was taken up with:

• Trying to figure out what I was going to post about each day (and changing my mind countless times).
• Trying to figure out how I was going to talk about the topic I’d finally chosen (and maybe change my mind one more time).
• Creating the content, revising it, refining it, critiquing it, deleting it, procrastinating, and finally pulling something together to post.
• Spending half a day trying to record a five minute short video.
• Spinning my wheels with indecision and self-doubt.

Needless to say, this was all extremely time consuming and it was stressful knowing that I wasn’t spending any time doing the things required to actually grow my business like:

• Getting out and having real conversations with people.
• Following up with warm leads and getting them signed up into my coaching programs.
• Creating, testing, and refining the content for my coaching programs and offerings.

[mashtweet tweet=”As a business owner, it can feel frustrating spending too much time on social media trying to market yourself, knowing you’re not spending enough time on client- and revenue-generating activities.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

A large part of this is a normal part of being a new business owner and being new to social media and the world of ‘content creation’.

But the other major factor contributing to this never-ending, pointless hamster wheel is a complete lack of organisation or strategic plan around your social media presence.

If you’ve been in business a while, you’ll know that it’s critical to build trust and confidence with your audience so that they feel safe spending their money with you. 

You build credibility by:

1. Creating compelling content to share your ideas and knowledge, consistently (i.e. content marketing).
2. Develop social proof so others know you’re credible (testimonials, reviews, awards etc).
3. Build a network of brand advocates who spread the good word on your behalf.

And it’s point number one that we’re talking about here – Content Marketing.

So firstly, what is Content Marketing, and why should you bother doing it?

My definition of Content Marketing is:

Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of digital information (blogs, videos, workbooks, social media posts etc) to stimulate interest and build awareness of your products or services. It builds trust, credibility and confidence in your brand. Its purpose is to provide value to the customer, and ultimately to turn your followers into paying clients.

Content Marketing runs on the philosophy that you should provide free value to your customer about 80% of the time (as a way of building trust and confidence), and then you pitch (sell) your services around 20% of the time.

This is distinct from Direct Response Marketing, which is a sales technique designed to evoke an on-the-spot response and encourages a prospective customer to take action on an offer being advertised (like all those Facebook and Instagram ads you see coming through all the time).

Direct Response Marketing uses paid advertising to deliver fast results.

Content Marketing is free and takes longer to see results, but allows you to build up a catalogue of great content and followers and establishes you as a leader.

Since Content Marketing is free and gets results, why wouldn’t you apply it in your business? 

Here are the benefits of Content Marketing – all for free!

• It builds brand awareness.
• It generates website traffic.
• It grows your email database.
• It gives you a competitive advantage.
• It increases client engagement.
• It generates leads and conversions.

Different Types of Content

Content is any information you put out into the world to inform, educate or sell to your audience. There are different types of content as shown in the graphic below.

1. Long form content (high effort, less frequent)
   This includes things like longer blog posts (800- 2000 words), 30-60 minute videos, or a podcast. They require effort and time to research and pull together and they demonstrate depth of thought and expertise.
2. Short form content (medium effort, more frequent)
   This includes infographics (i.e. images that demonstrate a concept graphically, e.g. a health coach showing how gut nutrition works), or short form blogs (400-600 words), or a short video (< 10 minutes).
3. Social media posts and curated content (low effort, frequent). These are posts that contain an image and short text description or they can be content shared from other experts in your field (curated content).

So how do you implement a Content Marketing strategy that allows you to be consistently visible, but doesn’t consume all your time?

You need to find a system that works for you and that you’re able to implement consistently.

[mashtweet tweet=”To build trust and confidence in your brand, consistency is key. How would you feel if your partner showed up for a week and then disappeared for three weeks? Your audience feels the same. Consistency builds trust.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

7 Steps to Building Your Consistent Content Marketing Strategy

1. Set Your Intention and Business Goals

There’s no point implementing any kind of marketing strategy without being crystal clear about what you want to achieve with it. How do you want your content marketing to serve you?

My personal content marketing strategy has several goals:

• To grow my email database consistently with 20 new warm leads per week.
• Generate 5 Free Business Strategy Sessions per week.
• Consistently build my brand visibility, credibility, and awareness through weekly live videos and a consistent, high-quality social media presence.

What is it you want to achieve with your content strategy? Do you have the digital infrastructure in place to achieve those goals? If not, how will you implement it? (Please reach out here for a free strategy session if you need help with this!).

Be sure you have solid goals in place before you proceed.

2. Decide on a Content Strategy that You can Stick to Regularly. 

[mashtweet tweet=”Consistency and planning is key. Don’t commit to a frequency of content creation that you can’t keep up with and always plan in advance.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

Consistency and leverage should be your key goals with any marketing strategy. If you create a blog post, be sure to get maximum leverage out of it by creating multiple social media posts on your blog topic across all your different platforms, and create videos on your blog topic too.

Here’s the strategy that works for me (and works for many of my clients too).

You create one piece of long form content (per week, per two weeks, or per month, depending on the frequency you can commit to consistently). Then you turn that long form content into multiple social media posts that can be scheduled out over time using a social media scheduler.

I personally generate one piece of long form content every week (but I also have a backlog of content now that I can draw on and recycle if I don’t get time to create a new one).

As you can see in the image above, you can generate 23 social media posts to go out across your different social media channels, just from that one piece of content.

We’re certainly not recommending you get across all of these different platforms (we usually recommend that you master 2-3 platforms first), but once you have a long form piece of content, it really isn’t too much work to turn those into short social media posts or videos.

What are you going to choose as the central piece of your long form content? A blog? A vlog? A podcast?

And which social media platforms are you going to focus on to leverage your long form content?

Write it down and commit to it. You might need to try several different strategies before you land on one that works for you and that you can stick to consistently. It took me several years to finally land on my strategy that now works for me. Be prepared that this will be a process of trial and error initially, but commit yourself to finding what works for you!

3. Determine the Frequency of Content Creation

Now you know how you’re going to approach your content marketing, you need to figure out how often you’re going to create your original content and the leveraged posts that you create from that content. 

Here’s what you need to do:

• Decide how often you can commit to creating one long form piece of content.
  Will it be once per week? Once per month?
• Decide how many social media posts you want to create from your single piece of long form content.
  To leverage your long form content, you should generate at least 4-6 social media posts from one blog/video/podcast.
• Determine your frequency of social media posting based on your content creation frequency.
  For example, if you only blog/vlog once every two weeks, and you only want to create 6 social media posts from that content, you’ll be able to schedule your posts to go out every 2-3 days.

Now that you have a plan to follow and a frequency to stick to, you can get busy creating your content on a consistent basis!

[mashtweet tweet=”Once you have your content plan in place, you then need to create a database of content ideas that you can draw from.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”] 

4. Develop Your Ideas Database: Determine Your Content Categories.

When you’re not clear about what you need to write or post about, it’s easy to get into procrastination and time wasting (I’m sure you can relate).  A game changing strategy for me has been to develop a large database of topics and ideas for my blogs that I can choose from and plan out for each month, so that I never have to worry or think about what I’m going to write about.

Here’s how you can easily develop a huge database of content topics and ideas.

Hint: If you take the time to do the following exercises, they will transform your business!

Choose how you’re going to break down your business into different umbrella categories.

For example, for business coaching, my categories are as follows (what are yours?):

• Business Strategy & Growth
• Mindset & Personal Growth
• Marketing & Selling
• Websites
• Social Media 
• Time Management & Productivity

5. Develop Your Ideas Database: Use Content Multipliers to Expand Each Category into Multiple Topics.

Once you have your categories, it can still be difficult to break it down into multiple posts. This is where ‘content multipliers’ come in extremely handy, which are different ways to present the same or similar content, or at least help you generate ideas to maximise your content.

Different types of content multipliers you can use:

• How to’ article: Tutorials or walk-throughs, e.g. How to Build Your Email Database.
• Listicle: List-based articles, e.g.  5 Apps that will Help You Easily Streamline Your Business Processes.
• Editorial: Standard type of blog post, e.g. The 6 Stages of Business Growth
• Curated: A list that brings together great content from other influencers in your niche, e.g. 10 Books that Every Business Owner Needs to Read
• Interview: Interviews with clients, colleagues or other leaders in your industry (e.g. How Natasha built her six figure business within twelve months)
• Personal Story: Write about your personal experiences, e.g. How I grew my email database from 50 to 2,000 in six months.
• Case Study: Write about a client’s experience or journey. 
• Fun post: A post with the goal being to entertain, e.g. My favourite 10 social media ‘faux pas’
• What post: A post that explains a concept, e.g. What is a Profit & Loss Statement?
• Why post: A post that explains the importance of a concept, e.g. Why you need to understand the six stages of business growth.
• Resources: Create a list of helpful resources, e.g. My favourite five books to help you master your money mindset.
• Reviews: Write a review on a particular product or service, e.g. A Review of the Best Email Database Managers.
• News-jacking: Leverage a news-worthy topic that people in the industry are talking about, as long as it relates to your audience.
• A Presentation: You can use PowerPoint or Google slides to visually showcase your topic in a way that gets a lot of engagement. Presentation Geeks have some great ideas for you in this article: 12 Digital Content Strategies to Elevate Any Brand.

6. Develop Your Ideas Database: Create a Matrix to Map Out Your Topics.

Use the content multipliers above to create 10+ topics for each of your content categories and then get those ideas into a matrix.

I love to use Trello for this, as it’s a great way to capture, store, and organise your ideas while also giving you the flexibility to easily change or move things around if you change your mind (as I do all the time). An excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet will also do the job fine.

 Below is a screenshot of my Topic Database stored in a Trello board where I map out my topics using the content multipliers.

This means I never run out of ideas to blog about!

7. Schedule Out Your Topics so you Know Exactly What You’ll be Writing About, and When.

Now that you have a database of content topics to draw from, you can schedule out when you’re going to create a long piece of content for each one of them. 

As mentioned, I create one blog post per week, which I then turn into 3-4 social media posts one each platform (which means I’m posting every second day).

Once I’ve created the blog article, I store the blog link in a Trello card and attach the social media images to go with it too. That way I can schedule out the social media posts straight from Trello.

8. Block Time in Your Calendar to Prepare Your Content.

It’s all well and good to map out a content calendar, but if you don’t block the time in your calendar to create the content, it will never happen!

The most effective way to create content without letting it take over your life is to batch your time. Which means scheduling time in your calendar to create all your content in one sitting.

I work on a weekly basis, so I spend half a day each week preparing and scheduling my content (I’m very fortunate to now have a Virtual Assistant to help me with the scheduling, but for years I did it myself!). 

I highly recommend that you block at least half a day each week to create your content (if you create content weekly), or block out a whole day or two days each month if you like to prepare a whole month’s worth of content.

[mashtweet tweet=”Please don’t try to prepare your content on the fly, this is ineffective and time-inefficient. You must get into the habit of batching your time and preparing all your content in one sitting. This is how you escape the trap of spending all your time on social media and not having time to spend on growing your business.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

9. Schedule Your Prepared Content

Now that you’ve prepared your content (your blog/vlog/podcast and all your social media posts and videos), you can schedule them out to go out consistently over the period of time you’ve chosen.

My favourite scheduler is Hootsuite because you schedule across all the different social media platforms (including LinkedIn), and they provide you with a dashboard so that you can see a clear overview of where and when your content is going across the different platforms. You can move scheduled posts around or spread them out to get an even, consistent presence in the way you want.

10. Review and Refine Your Content Marketing Strategy

You’ll have to monitor how your marketing strategy is working and whether the quantity of work required is manageable for you. As I mentioned, it took me a long time of trial and error to find a strategy that I could implement consistently.

If you’d like to talk through different options for your business, please reach out!

As I’ve said many times, commit to showing up consistently!

Make your content deadlines non-negotiable. And watch how your leads start to grow.

Did you like this article? You might also like:

This was a Complete Game-Changer for My Business: The Fempreneur Business Mastery Formula

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog

10 Essential Things You Need to Have on Your Website

The 6 Stages of Business Growth – and 3 Important Reasons Why You Need to Know Which One You’re in.

3 Important SEO Trends You Need to Know About in 2020

Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE copy of The Fempreneur Success Handbook (see below) and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2012!

I hope you found this helpful, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions to [email protected]. I love hearing from you!

In service to your business success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Entrepreneurs
[email protected]
katedejong.com

Back in late 2017 I was feeling really frustrated in my business. 

I’d spent tens of thousands of dollars on different business programs and I’d worked with lots of different coaches to grow my business. 

There was so much conflicting advice and information out there and every program and coach promised that they had the solution to my business challenges.

But nothing had helped me to get the traction and momentum that I needed.

I’d had some success. I’d developed a coaching program and rolled it out to many women who’d gotten transformative results with it. I’d run my first online group program with great engagement and results.

For a couple of years I’d made a reasonable amount of revenue, but certainly nothing I could live off. 

I’d reached and helped all the people who were the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in my network, i.e. those people who knew me and needed my programs.

But then I’d hit a huge roadblock.

How could I get my message out to people beyond my network in a powerful and compelling way?

How could I start making decent money? (I was hardly breaking even).

How could I turn my business into a thriving, profitable venture that felt fun and exciting instead of feeling like a frustrating and draining ‘hobby’?

It was around that time that I saw a Facebook Ad for women in business, asking “Do you want to start making the money and impact you deserve?”

YES! That was me.

It was a free event hosted by the powerhouse founder of Fempire, Marnie LeFevre, and I signed up straight away.

The event was incredible and I came away with so much new practical, grounded knowledge and insight that I felt could actually (finally) make a difference.

I signed up for the 3-day Fempreneur program to continue the journey with Marnie, together with a great group of other women (who are still my close friends today).

It was the best decision I’ve ever made.

During our three day Fempreneur workshop, Marnie unpacked her Fempreneur Business Mastery Formula, which is the exact formula she’s used to build multiple successful businesses and to become a multi-award-winning CEO.

It’s the formula I now use as a Fempire Coach to help female business owners to start and grow their profitable businesses.

The Business Mastery Formula contains two essential components: the inner work (mindset, confidence etc) and the outer (strategic, practical) work. 

And the formula works.

Once I went away and started applying the Mastery Formula in my own business, things started to improve quickly. I finally started feeling the momentum and satisfaction I’d been craving all those years. 

My coaching business started to take off.

And this is why I decided to become a Fempire Coach, because I’m passionate about helping women to apply this Business Mastery Formula in their own businesses.

I want to see more women succeed in business.

Because I believe that when women take their rightful place as equally successful and impactful business owners globally, the world will be a better place.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve now taken our 3-day in-room workshop into the online space and it’s now being run over 6 weeks – starting on the 27th April (and again on the 11th May 2020!).

The price has been massively reduced so that we can help more women in business during this time of need.

We’re passionate about giving as many women as possible the tools and strategies for business success during this time, because we know you need them more than ever.

You can take advantage of this amazing offer now!

Click here to schedule a time to talk with me to see if the FEMPRENEUR program is right for you.

Here are some of the areas we cover in the program.

The Inner Work

• Your passion and purpose.
• Your personal and business ‘why’.
• Your mindset.
• Embracing authenticity.
• Harnessing your intuition.
• Growth & confidence.

The Outer Work

• Powerful and compelling branding, marketing and messaging (this is so critical!).
• Packaging of your products and/or services.
• Positioning yourself powerfully in the market to stand out from your competitors.
• Money and pricing strategies.
• Promotional strategies (content and social media marketing, inbound marketing/SEO).
• Selling and converting leads into clients.

Once you get all of these elements right, things start to flow.

Here are just some of the things we workshop in our time together.

• Accurately and powerfully identify your target market and avatar so you can reach the right people.
• Getting you armed with powerful branding and clear marketing messages that you gain curiosity and sell more.
• Your elevator pitch workshopped to perfection.
• Developing your compelling ‘brand why’ that magnetises the right people to you.
• Mindset tools for women CEOs to 10x their business profit and impact.
• Price setting, packaging of products/services to reflect your true value.
• A full social media strategy and content marketing plan.
• How to sell and close more clients.
• How to build a solid foundation then scaling for success.
• Online and offline marketing templates and blueprints.
• Email marketing templates, blog matrix, testimonial questionnaire, cash flow forecasts.
• Full social media sales funnel mapped out for your business.
• How to turn your website into a powerful marketing tool that generates new clients.
• Creation of a mini marketing plan for you to action straight away.
• Positioning statements to help you stand out from the crowd.
• Business planning and goal setting so you can get where you need to be in the shortest time.

The New Online Format for The Virtual Fempreneur 6-week Experience

The Fempreneur program will now be delivered online over SIX weeks, giving you time to digest the content and do the homework.

You’ll receive:

• One comprehensive training module per week delivered online via pre-recorded video so that you can watch it at a time convenient to you.
• One LIVE Q&A Zoom session each week with Marnie and the Fempire Coaches. This will be a chance for you to ask any questions you have about the training, clarify the information and tasks, make connections and bond with your new sisterhood all over Australia, share your progress with the group and gain feedback, and to work through the challenges you may have.
• Pairing with an accountability partner. Together you’ll help each other stay on track with the materials and support each other through any stumbling blocks.
• The detailed Fempreneur workbook posted to you beforehand (this is stil my go to ‘Bible’ for business growth!).
• A private Facebook group to connect and bond with your Fempreneur sisterhood.

We truly believe that this format will be a very powerful way for you to learn everything you would normally receive in the in-room format, in fact, we believe it might prove to be much, much better!

We can’t wait for you to receive all the value and support you need to up-level your business during these challenging times.

Click here to talk to me. Are you ready to take the next step?

We’d love to have you on the journey.

Are you ready to finally get your business where it needs to be?

What is it costing you to stay stuck? 

Come and join our sisterhood of successful, impactful business owners and finally get the support you need to make the money and impact that you deserve!

Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE copy of The Fempreneur Success Handbook (see below) and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2012!

Did you like this article? You might also like:

The Art of Content Marketing: How to Build Your Brand Credibility and Easily Win New Clients

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog

10 Essential Things You Need to Have on Your Website

The 6 Stages of Business Growth – and 3 Important Reasons Why You Need to Know Which One You’re in.

3 Important SEO Trends You Need to Know About in 2020

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Entrepreneurs
[email protected]
katedejong.com

These are crazy times.

Less than four weeks ago, our Fempire team was busily preparing for our big national tour of Australia which would consist of a five-city tour (Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney) to inspire, educate & empower women in business with free marketing and social media trainings.

Our live, in-room training events of 100+ ladies are also the way we promote our business and coaching programs to generate new clients and revenue.

We’d had the biggest number of sign ups for all of our events. We were booked out for our Perth event, our hometown. We’d been celebrating the fact that our new Facebook advertising strategy had been working better than expected.

We were expecting over 200 ladies at The Crown in Perth on the 14th March for our free 4-hour event, where we teach a range of mindset and marketing strategies to help business women make more money and impact in business.

And then the COVID-19 disaster hit.

It was early days and there hadn’t been any social distancing measures announced by the government. But it was already starting to feel scary and we’d all been watching the disasters unfold in China, Italy and Spain.

Given the fear and chaos that was starting to ripple across the world, as to be expected, only half of the expected attendees showed up to our event in Perth after all. 

As disappointing as it was, we completely understood why. 

We’d been unsure about whether to proceed with the event, but with a lack of clear direction from Crown or from the government, we decided to show up for the hundred-odd ladies who still wanted to come.

Unsure about how the situation was going to unfold, the team decided (cautiously) to continue with the next four events over east and flew over to Adelaide. We’d put so much effort and resources into the planning of these events that form the lifeblood of our business, so we felt we at least had to try.

And that’s when things started getting really bad with the COVID-19 situation.

The government announced bans on events of over 500 people. And even though our events were much smaller, the fear was causing everyone to worry, including us.

After delivering the event to a small audience in Adelaide (only half the predicted audience showed up, same as in Perth), in good conscience we made the call to cancel the remaining three events in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, our biggest audiences.

It was hugely disappointing.

But we knew it was the right thing to do.

After returning to Perth, licking our wounds, the team took a few days to rest and process what had just happened. 

This was a huge hit for Fempire. Our client- and revenue-generating activities had come to a halt.

It took a few days to process it all.

But like everyone else, we’ve hunkered down, re-grouped and come up with a comeback strategy to survive these times.

Taking Things Fully Online

The main strategy to ‘pivot’ in these circumstances of course (like everyone else), has been to take all of our offerings online.

Our Fempire team has had extensive experience over the years with delivering coaching and trainings both in-room and online. 

However, our big ‘tour’ events, which comprise the start of our business funnel (and are the main way we generate new clients), have always been live and in-room in different cities around Australia. Fempire founder Marnie LeFevre is a renowned speaker and award-winning CEO and has the ability to attract and inspire large audiences at a time. Her free trainings are always a great entry point for our clients into the Fempire sisterhood of business coaching and training.

[mashtweet tweet=”In our experience, it’s impossible to replace the connection, the energy, and the transformation that takes place at in-room events. It’s the reason we’ve continued to stick with in-room events as the main source of our client-generating activities, because we know how powerful they are for creating space for deep learning and change for people.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

But, we’re now faced with a situation in which live events are of course not possible.

And given the current conditions, the online space is where we have to be 100% if we’re going to survive these times.

To that end, we’ve had to convert our in-room events to online events as follows:

1. Converting our live, in-person 4-hour free events into a 90-minute online webinar.
We’re now in the process of converting our live events into an online webinar of 90-minutes, with the first three being delivered this week to the Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne rooms that missed the tour entirely. We’ll be releasing more in coming weeks to the other states.
This is an exciting time as we test the validity of the online approach for generating new clients.
But we’re going all in with optimism and a can-do attitude!

2. Converting our in-person 3-day Fempreneur workshops into the online space.
Typically we run our live, 3-day Fempreneur workshops three times per year for business women in the startup space. We usually have 15-25 women in the room per workshop.
We teach them the fundamental marketing and mindset strategies they need to grow their business into a profitable enterprise.
We’re now in the process of converting our 3-day workshop into an online program delivered over six weeks. Our first online Fempreneur program will kick off in April.
We’re putting a lot of thought and attention into how we can deliver a value-packed program that delivers as much ‘punch’ as the in-room version.
And we’re confident we’ll do it!

3. Taking all of our coaching programs and in-person business trainings online.
We’ve always offered and delivered online coaching and training as part of Fempire. However, obviously now all sessions are being conducted online via Zoom. We have many clients who have always preferred to meet in person. So we’ll have to see how this goes for them during this time.

Fempire’s Experience with In-Person versus Online Events and Programs – the Pros and Cons

Part of the reason we’ve resisted the online space up until now for our tour events is because of the reasons below.

However, if anything this COVID-19 experience has taught us the need to diversity and not to have “all of our eggs in the one basket” when it comes to event delivery models.

Advantages of in-person events and trainings

• There’s no doubt that in-room, live experiences create faster connection, bonding, vulnerability, and transformation than online virtual events.
• Women form deep connections and friendships after spending time in-room together, and these connections last well beyond the training.
• Women need in-person connection with other women to feel truly supported and nurtured. 
• As coaches/trainers, it feels easier to give personalised support to clients one-on-one, in person.
• Sometimes a hug can make all the difference! And often, that’s exactly what our clients need.

Advantages of online events and trainings

• Suddenly you’re not constrained to a physical location anymore to deliver your offerings. You can literally reach anyone, anywhere in the world,and become ‘international’, relatively quickly.
• There are no costs for travel, room hire or catering, which brings costs down significantly.
• For many of our clients it’s easier for them to attend an event from the comfort of their own home rather than travel and spend time away from home.
• Due to the low cost of delivery, you can run your programs and events more frequently to generate a more steady client stream.

A major disadvantage of online trainings and events compared to in-person programs

In our experience with delivering both in-room and online programs over the years, one of the major disadvantages of online events is the lower retention of clients. Our private coaching programs run over twelve months because that’s how long it takes to establish a sustainable, profitable business.

But when the program is run online, typically it’s hard to retain clients beyond the six month mark. The human, in-person connection is critical for keeping clients engaged. Client drop-off rates are much higher in the online space. 

The big lesson learned from the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 situation has brought it home for us that it’s important to be diversified in your offerings.

We’ve realised that it’s important to offer both in-person and online client-generating models in future. 

[mashtweet tweet=”A hybrid model of both in-person and online offers the greatest resilience, long-term.” text=”” username=”katiedejong3rd”]

In a way we’re grateful that this crisis has helped us to get moving in the hybrid model direction sooner rather than later.

In every situation there’s a silver lining, right?

We hope this insight has been helpful and please leave a comment below if anything resonated with you!

Did you like this article? You might also like:

The Art of Content Marketing: How to Build Your Brand Credibility and Easily Win New Clients

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog

10 Essential Things You Need to Have on Your Website

The 6 Stages of Business Growth – and 3 Important Reasons Why You Need to Know Which One You’re in.

3 Important SEO Trends You Need to Know About in 2020

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach for Thriving Female Entrepreneurs
katedejong.com
[email protected]