Episode Summary 

When a potential client comes to your website, what do they see? Are you talking about you and all the things you know and offer? It’s so easy to talk about yourself too much. You feel the need to explain your services, your story, your background experience, etc.

But that’s not what people want to see or read when they land at your website or social media pages.  

We get it, as a business you feel like it’s your job to talk about yourself so others understand your credentials and why you could be a great fit for them…but the harsh truth is – no one cares!

What’s more important is getting down to the nitty-gritty psychology of your client. Address The Pains That Your Audience Is Experiencing instead of defining yourself and your services. Meaning, talk about the problems your potential client is having and how YOU can SOLVE those problems for them. Get emotional.

Describe a transformation: the solution to their problem from their perspective. That’s where you want to spend 80% of your efforts in your marketing.

• Think about yourself when you’re hiring someone or buying something.  
• What are your habits?
• What are you looking for in your research?
  • Immediate solutions, vetted opinions, testimony, brand value

Be a resource to nurture your audience. The only way to nurture a lead into a client is by engaging with them and providing value. You need to have something that your potential clients want. You might think that people want your product or service, but more often than not, what people really want is WHAT your product or service can provide them.

Landscaping Example:

People don’t wake up wanting to hire a landscaper, they wake up wanting a beautiful yard. Spend your time describing your client’s problem yard. Use your knowledge to become a trusted advisor on the topic of landscaping and how if they hire you they’ll spend more time with their family and less time mowing the lawn.

Wedding Example:

Brides don’t have the desire to hire a hairdresser, they just want to look good for the wedding.  

This kind of thinking is really powerful because oftentimes your potential clients don’t even know to look for your services.  They are just living their lives and find themselves needing a solution…market the SOLUTION, not a general list of what you offer.

So, think about the marketing and content you’ve been making and ask yourself…Am I just talking about myself here? If the answer is YES, it’s time to flip the script and re-work your marketing messaging.

These are the things you should be utilizing in your marketing to really connect and engage with your audience.  Think of how you can provide value for your potential clients and speak to the things they care about – themselves. 

We like to keep a Google Doc with these ideas on it so that whenever it’s time to write some marketing content, we can refer back and double-check that we aren’t just spending all our time talking about ourselves.  Hopefully this is something that you can all start to implement in your own marketing to make it a little more effective and a lot more engaging for your audience!

Quick-Wins

1. Start by listing the BENEFITS your potential clients would enjoy if they hired you or bought your product/service.  
2. List the CHALLENGES you help your clients solve.  
3. Think of the PAIN that causes your potential clients to look for your service. 
4. Think of what your potential clients might be SAYING or THINKING.

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Recommended Resources 

VIDEO: Why You Need A Brand Guide
BNI

The post Quick-Win Episode 8: Stop Talking About Yourself appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

It’s important to pay attention to the language that we use on a day-to-day basis. In this episode, we zero in on the term “busy” and discuss why it’s not a great thing to say about yourself and your business.  It’s easy to assume that busy is good, but we unpack many reasons why you should remove it from your business vocabulary and how removing it will help your personal and business mindset.

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Episode Summary 

• The term busy is generally used in a negative way.  “I’m too busy and there’s never enough time”. It makes you feel lousy, too, because it comes from a place of lack.
• It’s not a good term to use when you’re networking because it’s a conversation ender.  The term “busy” shares nothing productive about your business.
• People may assume that being “busy” means you’re unavailable, not interested, or that you can’t handle more work.
• Being busy shouldn’t be your goal, making more money while doing less work should be.

Quick-Wins

1. Remove the word “busy” from your vocabulary for at least a week. Instead use description, stories or anecdotes to describe your current situation.
2. Listen for other people saying that they’re “busy”. Pay attention to their body language, what they’re speaking about and just be present with the term.  Also, see how other people react to hearing the term.
3. Remove the goal of being busy and replace it with being efficient.  You can make the same amount of money being busy as you can while being efficient, the main difference is that when you’re efficient you earn a lot more free time and it’s less stressful.

Recommended Resources 

You Are A Badass – https://jensincero.com/

The post Quick-Win Episode 3: Busy Is Bad For Business appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this quick-win episode, we share our own story of learning the valuable lesson of separating our work life from our home life.  Early on in our career, a mentor told us to be strict about the time spent on our business and the time spent on ourselves.  As simple as it seems, this is extremely hard to accomplish when you’re working to make more money any possible way.  We talk about habits, concepts, and ways that we keep ourselves grounded and make sure that we’re bringing balance to our everyday lives.

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Episode Summary

• It’s okay to work non-traditional hours
• Make sure that you’re not always available for your business/clients
• Schedule your personal chores, hobbies and family activities just like you would business meetings
• If you end up working weekends, or nights, make sure to swap out other times in your week for your personal time
• Create weekly business goals, so that you can actually be mentally present during your personal time and allow yourself the flexibility to take personal time

Quick-Wins

1. Make a schedule for your personal time as well as your business time
2. Don’t make work available everywhere. Separate it physically from you. Commit to your scheduled personal time.
3. Make clear goals.  Weekly goals are extremely helpful to get out of the workaholic mindset.  Once you’ve hit your goals, you can celebrate with personal time.

The post Quick-Win Episode 1: Being Strict About Work & Play appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In episode six, we tackle the challenge of growing your business.  We all get to a point where we’re doing well, but we’re looking for ways to get to the next level.  In most cases, we think that getting bigger clients is the only way to make more money but as we uncover in this episode, there are many ways to scale your profits with some minor changes to your process, procedures, and marketing.  As you’ll hear in this episode, Steff and her husband Mike have been offering quality web development services for 7 years, but have been looking for ways to grow their business and make more money. We dive into developing ways for them to better showcase the services and value they provide their clients so that they can make more money and work with quality clients. 

Guest Bio – [From her website] “We are a full-service web design & development company based in New Hampshire, serving all of the United States. We’re known for our fast turnaround, insightful expertise, and exceptional service. Our clients enjoy working one-on-one with a real person – no phone directories, and no lengthy lead times. We’re a developer owned small business, which means that we build and maintain higher quality products for our clients more timely than other web companies. We can also afford to go above and beyond for our clients without needing to nickel and dime.”

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Episode 6 Summary

• Improve the quality of your client not necessarily the size of your client
• How to transition to new pricing with old clients
• Clearing your business plate to make space for the clients you want
• Defining your target audience and niching down
• Thinking about how your ideal audience utilizes your products/services
• Finding your own value and niching down your sales pitch
• Refining your process to increase efficiencies leading to profits
• How to create proposals that give you an option to make more money
• Creating value-added services 
• Providing complete solutions will allow you to make more money
• Creative ideas to maintain client relationships that lead to more work 
• Show that you are a valuable asset to your clients
• How to price yourself and get through money blocks

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Steff and Aurora Tech do a great job providing top-notch service to her clients, but she’s looking for ways to increase her income in order to grow the business in a way that stays consistent with her and her husband’s personal and business goals.

1. Audit your messaging so that you speak to the benefits that you provide.  Speak about the process and experience and less about the technical aspects of web development.
2. Offer multiple options in your proposal process.  Make your top option something that makes you uncomfortable because people will say yes and it’s the only way to gain confidence and grow.
3. Update your monthly maintenance process and mine your current clients for more business. Use your updates to cultivate your relationships with your client base.

Recommended Resources 

Aurora Technologies, LLC

https://goauroratech.com/

The post Episode 6 – How To Make More Money: Bigger Clients or Increased Efficiency? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.