In today’s episode I am going to be sharing a couple of home truths when it comes to marketing. Whilst I love marketing, I feel that often we are sold a story that doesn’t often match up when you find yourself in the industry every single day and because of this, people feel as though they’re failing. Thankfully, that’s not the case and nobody is actually an ‘overnight success’. I want to talk about what it’s really like and how we can release the pressure we put on ourselves, so join me as I share some incredibly honest opinions.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• When I look back at all the money I have spent, the one thing that has been valuable for me is having a one-to-one coach. Although I have benefited from the other courses I have paid for, having that one-on-one interaction is incredibly important to me.
• Being an overnight success is actually incredibly rare. Instead, you’re coming across people that appear to be popular and what you’re not seeing is the journey they have taken to get there.
• Although you should set goals, you need to focus on the people that are already on your list.
• No one woke up with a massive email list or a massive Instagram following.
• Try not to let the fear of failure stop you from doing what you want to do.
• Although people don’t want to hear it, social media takes time.
• People are selling the idea that you don’t need a list and you don’t need a social media following but I don’t agree. If you want people to stick with you, you need to be known for what you do.
• You need to prove why you’re the person people should be listening to.
• The people that are successful are the ones that are posting when no one is listening and they’re doing lives when no one is listening. Consistency is key.
• Be grateful for everything you have done this year and work hard to smash it next year. It will come, it just might take time.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

If you have small numbers it’s important to remember the victories you’re achieving. If people are trusting you with their money, you should be so proud of yourself.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• What Started This Important Conversation? - 04:10
• #1 Why Am I Not an Overnight Success? – 09:59
• #2 I Only Have A Small Following, Is That Okay? - 12:40
• #3 I’ve Been on A Platform For 3 Months and It’s Not Working for Me – 18:39

Transcript below

Speaker 1: (00:33)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast and Merry Christmas. If you're not listening to this, the week it came out, you might be wondering why I'm saying that, but this came out just before Christmas, so I wish you a Merry Christmas. If you're listening to this, I should imagine you're probably doing one of the many crazy activities we find ourselves doing at this time of year, whether it's wrapping what feels like a gazillion presence, decorating stuff, going to the supermarket, some godly hour in the morning so that you can fight for some brussels sprouts, all that sort of good stuff for Christmas. So maybe you aren't doing that or maybe you're not, you're thinking, I know I'm going to listen to Teresa's podcast or maybe you're listening to my podcast while in a supermarket, shopping for Christmas stuff. So either way, thank you for listening. I'm obviously not doing this at Christmas. It's actually end of November and a quick throwback to last week's episode.

Speaker 1: (01:31)

I talked about the episode being a Christmas Eve episode and it isn't Christmas Eve. I obviously got it into my head that the Monday was Christmas Eve and it's not. It's the Tuesday. That's how bad at planning I can be without looking at my calendar. I don't even know what day Christmas is. So yes, the Monday isn't Christmas Eve. It's the Tuesday. So I was wrong last week. Little disclaimer notice there. Okay. This week gets a solo episode because as I did say last week, I don't like putting on someone who's an interview over the Christmas period and the New Year period just because I can see sometimes a bit of a drop in downloads because people are busy, they've got stuff to do and yeah, that pretty much picks back up in the, in the January. But obviously I like to make a big faster than when it's, there I go. So it's going to be just me and I decided to talk about a few home truths on this one.

Speaker 1: (02:20)

A little bit nervous. Maybe that's why I've chose a Christmas Eve episode cause I think many of you won't listen to it and therefore, you know, I won't sign all negative, but it's not going to be negative. It's just going to be really flipping honest, right? Because I work in a world of marketing and a lot of it is really good marketing because it's really clever and really smart and manages to convince you to buy things that maybe you didn't think about buying. And I'm not saying it's all bad, you know, marketing's great. Obviously I love it, I made a career out of it. But sometimes, especially in the entrepreneurial space and in the business space, we are

Speaker 3: (03:00)

sold a story that doesn't necessarily actually match up to what it is like when you're in it every day. And that can have a massive, massive effect on us as business people, us as human beings that we start to feel like we're failing. And do you know what the truth of the matter is? We're totally not failing. We are probably with the 99% of people out there and it's actually only the few percent who appear as if they're overnight successes and therefore they just show up later and we think we should be like that too. So a few weeks back, quite a few weeks back now, I sent an email out to my list as I'm sure you are aware, cause I talked about it last week when I email my list, I emailed them different to what I talk about in the podcast. But having sent my email, it kind of inspired me to elaborate more on it and talk about it on this one.

What Started This Important Conversation?

Speaker 3: (03:52)

So I started off by wanting to address some of the questions at home truths that come out of sort of talking to other entrepreneurs and what entrepreneurs think of their business and where they are. And you know what started it all. As you will know, I have been in a coaching programme with James Wedmore for the past 12 months. I have done lots of courses online. I can name lots of people. Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Star, Kim Garst, Mari Smith, uh, who else have I done stuff with? Like, Oh, Sue B Zimmerman. Honestly, I can't remember off the top of my head no, but I've done loads, Brendon Burchard, and I wouldn't even like to guess how much money I've spent on all of that. And I have to say, I think I've got to a point where I have got absolutely everything I need and I don't need that anymore. And I had lots of people asked me about, you know, should I do the James Wedmore thing, should I pay?

Speaker 3: (04:48)

And I'm happy to be totally honest about what I paid. So I paid $15,000 to be part of his coaching programme. And if people want my honest opinion, depending on who that person is, I might not always say yes. And in fact, lots of entrepreneurial friends have done lots of courses going, done lots of things. And really when I look back at all the money I've spent, the one thing that really moved the needle for me was having a one-to-one coach. And although I'm absolutely happy and glad I did the James Wedmore coaching programme and there are lots of others out there, exactly the same studious tribe, Caitlin Batches Group, Tyler J McCall's doing something like there's loads of them, although I'm happy that I did it actually and I had reasons for doing it. I want to get in front of James and wants to get in a room with those same people.

Speaker 3: (05:40)

I wanted to mix with some entrepreneurs who are at the top of their game and although I did that and I'm really pleased I did that, actually I don't need to do that anymore and I feel fine not to do that. And in all honesty, it's a lot of money. Like it's a stupid amount of money. And the one thing that I've been in and consistently pay for, and I'm more than happy to continue, is The Membership Guys Membership because it's not a huge amount of money. It's, I think it's like $49 a month I think I pay and they are always in the group, which is really helpful because sometimes when you join these bigger kind of mastermind or you buy a course and there's two, 3000 people in that, you're obviously not going to get that one to one time. But what's super interesting is The Membership Guys have well over 3000 members, considerably over 3000 members.

Speaker 3: (06:30)

And yet if I put a question into that forum, Callie or Mike will respond. Other people might respond as well, but they will inevitably go, Oh yeah, so and so what they said it was great. Or they'll have their bit, they are in their membership all the time. So what I'm wanting to focus on, I'm going to go down a bit of a rabbit hole here, so I apologise. I'm coming back to it quick. But what I want to focus on in my membership is me being present, me helping you, me being that, because I know when it's not one to one, when you're in a group, your actual hands on touch of that person that you're paying to group to be in is really, really slim. So if you're doing it to have time with the experts, some of the biggest things, you just won't get it. And that's the experience I've had. And

Speaker 1: (07:18)

I hope I'm not opening a can of worms. I'm just being completely open and honest with you because I know the people who have reached out to me and I know, listen to this podcast, I would be really, I know you would be devastated if you wasted your money as I would be. And also, I know if you said to me, okay, I've got 15 grand to spend, do I do this or do I, you know, do I join this mastermind cause they're all about that amount for that level and, or do I do a, you know, focus on this thing or get a coach or do I do some Facebook ads? You know, and I, and that's what I had to do when I debated about joining anything. I was like, okay, what if I spend that in Facebook ads? What would that do to my business?

Speaker 1: (08:00)

So I just think all I'm saying is take it from someone who's done a lot of stuff. And I have had lots of these conversations recently, which is why I feel like I want to say something very gently because I'm not saying any one of these are awful and bad. Don't do them. I'm just saying that and maybe you have to go through it. Maybe you have to have done all those things to then go, actually I don't need the big stuff or I don't need, um, the big massive course because that's the other thing. I've bought courses that have cost thousands and have I done them all? No, I have not. Have I done 90% of it? No. I have done and yeah. Okay. That's my fault. That's completely my fault. But the thing that really helps me is having someone like the membership guys that will answer my question being in their Academy so that if I do have a question about something, they can inevitably go, Hey, go check out that thing. Here it is. And that's what I need. So for me, memberships work really well and I can stop it at any point. Whereas signing up for a big old year programme for over 10,000 is for me, not where I want to be any more. And I would just say think twice. That's all. So like, so I'm not, I'm trying not to be negative. It likes that they've done some amazing things for me and I have paid to play. I've been paid to be put in that room to meet those people and to build a relationship with them. And that's what I paid for. And that's what I got. But if I was thinking about did it move the needle for the business? It did in some places, absolutely. But in others, not so much. So like I said, I'm just, you know, playing devil's advocate on that.

Speaker 1: (09:30)

But that's what kind of started this. And also the other thing here is that when lots of people in our industry go into launch mode, they start talking about these kind of successes and testimonials and case studies. And sometimes they for me, are not a true real example of what's going on. Like, because like I said, what happens is we'll look at them and go, Oh man, we should be there. Or they tell us what their launch was and you think, Oh, we should be there. And actually 99% of people aren't. So I'm just going to go over a few points and just give you my opinion on it. Like I said, I'm not normally this opinionated, which is why I've maybe hid it on a Christmas episode. He watch like everyday I listened to it.

#1 Why Am I Not an Overnight Success?

Okay, so why am I not an overnight success?

This is what people are kind of coming to me. If I had some guy talk to me the other day, go in, you know, this is possible. Why am I not, you know, why am I not making it already? And when you get down into the crux of it and look at it, he's been going for like three months and you're like, okay. So the fact of someone being an overnight success is like really, really rare. Like it doesn't hardly ever happen. And what happens is you spot someone, you see someone and you suddenly discover them and you look at them and they're really popular and they're really, you know, they've got loads of people in their course and loads of people buying their stuff and loads of people going to their events and you think, Oh my goodness, Hey, did they get it? But the truth is you don't ever see the journey.

Speaker 1: (11:00)

You don't see the journey that they've taken to get there. And there's always been a journey and inevitably it's been hard or tough or difficult. So the first thing I want to say is like, don't beat yourself up. I'm five years into my business and although I hate this word for some reason, but I did kind of pivot last year because of the fact that I say last year, it's actually this year, but in the last sort of six months, because the fact I started doing the online stuff, so I had had an agency and had been had, you know, really lucky it had a good agency, lots of clients. And I decided to start taking a step back from promoting that as hard so I could focus on the online stuff and therefore it feels like I started my business again, which is a little bit scary.

Speaker 1: (11:47)

But like I said, you know, these people are normally in it for years and years and years. You just don't notice them until they start getting big. And then they seem to appear everywhere and then you think, how did they do it? So honestly that where I am right now, five years in, I am more than absolutely fine. Don't get me wrong. If I could take a shortcut tomorrow and be the size of Rachel Hollis and have an event the size of she's just put on, which was massive, I would have it in a heartbeat but I'm not angry or disappointed or you know, frustrated. I know it takes time and it's going to take time so I don't want you sat there looking at someone else thinking why aren't I at that point? Because like I said, it doesn't happen overnight. Okay. The next thing I put in the email that wants to talk about was I only have a small following, small email list or a few customers and this is something again that loads of people are striving for.

#2 I Only Have A Small Following, Is That Okay?

Speaker 1: (12:40)

I was talking to someone on a podcast episode, I was being interviewed and I said that my biggest lead magnet, the most downloads I get on all the lead magnets I have I there is how to build your Facebook following. And isn't it funny that people still want that because they waste that part of us and don't get me wrong. One of my goals on my goal list that I write every morning is I have a hundred thousand Instagram followers. Don't get me wrong. It's not like that's my only goal cause I can promise you followers don't pay the mortgage. But that kind of, that would go hand in hand with all the other stuff I've gotten there about how big I want the business and the income I want and all that sort of thing. And it would be lovely to think when I look at Jasmine Star's sort of Instagram, it'd be lovely to think that I was followed and as a mind as she is.

Speaker 1: (13:26)

So I guess that where that's where that's coming from. But people, not only do they not want their followers and their...