New Business Basics: Nurture, Not PRESSURE
Prior to YYC Fempreneurs, when I was building my financial business, I made many short-term sacrifices so I could win the long game:
Creating a lifestyle and business that I love and can do from anywhere.
My short-term sacrifices included:
Shopping at thrift stores (only when I actually needed something)
Never going to the mall (this was easy - I hate malls!!)
Living in a super cheap basement suite
Never making a purchase over $50 unless I had waited a week to be sure it was necessary (I broke this rule a few times!)
My vision of working with awesome entrepreneurs while travelling the world helped me choose online marketing wins and creating relationships with ideal clients (long term gain) over buying myself stuff.
If you’re going to read one book to help you win the LONG GAME, this is the most impactful one I’ve read: The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. I read this one after starting my own financial consulting business in 2014 and it got me on the right track.
Dave Ramsey also has a podcast called the Total Money Makeover. I’ve listened to a few episodes and heard him tell people to sell vehicles, houses - all sorts of possessions to reduce their debt and monthly payments. If you want to make a difference in the world through your business, you may need to take a serious look at ways you can reduce your expenses now. This could mean downsizing your home and mortgage, cutting your cable and other subscription services, telling all your family members and friends you are taking a year off buying birthday and Christmas gifts, limiting yourself to dining out only once per week and selling things in your closet and garage you don’t need. Putting that money towards things that will pay you back later in lifestyle and profit should be your top priority.
Grow, Monetize, or Both?
Most Fempreneurs don’t charge enough for their services. However, if your business is brand new, this is not the time to put financial pressure on it. You need to nurture it with love, food and direction. Don’t rush your baby business to provide you with income. I’m not saying it is impossible to support your financial needs as a new business owner, but I haven’t seen many businesses that have existed for less than a year that supports $5000 per month in household bills.
As your baby business grows, you’ll be able to monetize it in new ways, but don’t be in a rush.
How you serve will constantly evolve, yet it will always involve creating and bettering offers for your people. Although it is important to know your worth and charge accordingly, you also must post some of your knowledge online for free, especially in the early stages of growing your community.
While growing my business with the LONG GAME mindset, I created three types of experiences. Some were paid and many were FREE:
1 - Group Experiences
An educational and interactive workshop or course
A fun event focused on connecting your community members
2 - One-on-one Experiences
Live face-to-face (in person or virtual) coaching/training with you
3 - On-Demand Experiences
Written material (blogs and downloads/PDFs/Ebooks)
Podcasts
Video training
Products/shopping
***If you need help with packaging your knowledge, Fempreneur Marketing School is designed to help you identify and create the best experiences you can offer your niche audience! Learn more: click here!)
Always have a FREE taste of an experience on the homepage of your website via an easy to find link. I do this with a button or tab that says FREE GIFT (check it out at yycfempreneurs.com).
FREE GIFTS DON’T WORK UNLESS…
Including clear calls-to-action in your free knowledge posts/offers is essential. A clear “call to action” is something like this: “Did you love this blog post? Want more ideas and solutions that are tailored to your business? Hop into my Marketing School - click here!”
Sprinkling in these calls to action is an art in which we’ll talk about soon. For now, you must understand the importance of your new audience members getting to know you without you constantly talking about your cleaning business. Why?
It’s because the “buy from me” message gets boring quickly. There are four types of social media posts, and promoting yourself is only one of them. Your new followers will eventually get sick of before and after photos/videos of the homes you clean. Your Instagram followers need more from you in order to buy from you. Use this tool to create your next 2 weeks of social media content today:
What can you offer your Instagram followers other than “buy from me” posts?
HINTS: What do you know how to do/create/improve that relates to your target audience? What is one common goal they all have that you can help them achieve by sharing your knowledge?
Before you put pen to paper writing your ideas, let’s get clear on why you want to push all the excuses aside and actually build some social media content.
The three greatest challenges that continually pop up on the entrepreneurial journey are:
We don’t know exactly who we serve (need to niche down)
We don’t know what our community needs from us right now (need to ask them what they want more of and their ideas for new offers you can create)
We don’t know how to communicate with them effectively on social media (we need more testimonials so we can use THEIR WORDS in our marketing.)
Setting aside time to create content is how you will win the long game. Investing time is like investing money: we only have so much, so we need to be very careful how we use it.
Creating content is time well spent for so many reasons, including the fact that it gets you in the mindset of thinking like your ideal clients. If you have never asked your favourite clients (they can be people who received your services for free) for a testimonial, that’s where I want you to begin your content creation session.
Stick with me if you want to get better at continually improving your online marketing skills. Read more blogs, watch my YouTube channel, or for the ultimate experience, join my marketing school - click here!
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Thanks for reading this excerpt from my book, We Should Be Friends, which is about building a community of people you are meant to serve! Click here to order a copy on Amazon!
