7 Steps To Attracting New Clients To Your Business
When you run your own small business, attracting new clients is often one of the biggest challenges you face. And especially so when you are in the first couple of years of trading.
But how do you go about finding new clients? And why do some businesses seem to attract new clients like a magnet and yet others slog away cold-calling day in, day out without much success?
Follow these 7 steps and you will find that you naturally attract new clients week after week. And without the need to hard sell!
Step One: Know who you want to attract. I know this sounds pretty obvious but you will be surprised how many small business owners haven’t taken the time time to decide on who they want to work with. They are so desperate to bring in the business, that they are prepared to work with everyone and anyone.
Step Two: Be specific about your target client. For a small business to survive in today’s economy, the more specific you are about the client you want to attract, the more focused your marketing will be. And the more focused your marketing is, the better results you will have. Targeting “blue chip companies” or “women in their 40’s” is not specific enough. I’m talking about writing out a personality profile outlining their likes, dislikes, family situation, career path, inside leg measurement!
Step Three: Understand what their problems are. The majority of new small businesses today are started because of someone’s passion and skills. They use their past experience or re-training to start their own business without taking the time to really understand their target clients’ pain. Without providing a remedy for their pain, it is very, very hard work promoting oneself. So stop marketing a service or product just because you think it’s a great idea. It is solving someone’s problems?
Step Four: Create solutions to the problems. If you have taken the time to really understand your target clients’ problems, it will make it far easier to create a programme, product or service that your clients want to buy. You will have a programme, product or service which is marketable – that attracts enquires and leads because it is desired rather than needs the hard-sell because you think its needed.
Step Five: Find out where your target clients hang out. It’s hard work trying to talk to one person at a time. Yes, you have to start from somewhere [and no the local telephone directory is not a great place to start!] but make it easy for yourself. Do your research and find out what media they would read, what groups do they belong to, which conferences do they attend and which online forums do they chat on. Become part of those groups and your messages can reach dozens, hundreds and even thousands of target clients at a time.
Step Six: Find out how they like to communicate. Just because you hate email, doesn’t mean that your clients will too. Just because you love to tweet every day, doesn’t mean that your clients are addicted to twitter too. Understand how your clients like to communicate and make sure you provide your marketing messages in a format they like to read and act on. If that means getting your head around email marketing, then do it. If that means spending more money on printed material, then do it. But don’t assume – because you know that will just make an ass out of me and you!
Step Seven: Make an offer they just can’t refuse. If you have followed all six steps, then you should be a position to make an offer that your target client will have to act on straight away. You’ve understand who you want to work with, you have created a solution to the problems they have, you have found out the right medium in which to communicate with them and start to build a relationship. If you have all this, then you’ve done your market research and making an offer they just can’t refuse should be easy and simple to do.
Marketing is easy and simple. Marketing is also a lot of fun. And the reason why most small business owners shudder at the prospect of promoting themselves is often because they have missed out some [if not all!!] all these steps.
Make it easy for you. Follow these steps and you should find yourself attracting clients naturally to your business. And not a hard-sell in sight!
The self-imposed glass ceiling on your income potential
Do you put a glass ceiling on your income and limit your earning potential?
I know you wouldn’t intentionally, would you? I know you wouldn’t put a “CLOSED” sign up on your website or ignore email enquires.
So why is it, that at certain times of your business growth, you cap your earning potential and create a glass ceiling?
This is a very personal story I want to share with you today. Outwardly I know I give the impression of confidence; of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. A woman with a goal and a clear plan on how to get there.
And yes, that is me … most of the time.
But in between those times, I’m just a normal, average human being who thinks way too much and talks herself out doing stuff because … well, it’s scary at times to take a leap in one’s business.
I’ve been subconsciously imposing a glass ceiling on my personal growth and business potential and because I know there are some of you who read my stuff do exactly the same thing, I wanted to open up so you, too, can really see the glass ceilings that you may be imposing on yourself.
Your glass ceiling may not easy to see (hence the name!).
But when your head bangs up against it … you feel it, that’s for sure.
Gentle knocks to begin with. Nothing painful. Easy to ignore.
But over time, as your potential and growth swells within you, you realise that you’ve stopped banging up against it and you are actually stooped over, head bent down and your vision is constrained to what you see below you.
Imagine running your business squeezed into a box with no room to move. Imagine only looking down or backwards from where you’ve come.
Well, that’s your glass ceiling pressing down on you.
Self Imposed Glass Ceiling on Your Income
I know I’m no different to you (we are all human beings after all!) so I know you may have had one (perhaps more?!) that’s come out at certain times of your business growth.
What’s been mine?
I smashed through mine last week. I registered for VAT on the 1st April (I know … a lovely day to have a joke on my subconscious!), which means my business turnover will exceed £82,000 this year.
Cripes … even just typing that sentence for all the world to read creates a knot in my throat. How funny that I feel my resistance kicking in again even though the deed is now done!
(Please note: as I tell you my VAT story, don’t take this as accountancy advice. I’m NOT an accountant and this isn’t about whether you should become VAT registered or not. This is about the stories that play around our heads and pull you back every time you are close to leaping forward. I am sure you have similar stories that pull you back from your leap forwards hence my need to share this story.)
Not getting VAT registered at the start of my business in 2004 has probably been the only business decision I’ve ever regretted. If I’d only treated it as part of setting up a business, got it over and done with at the start, I wouldn’t have had to deal with this over the past few years.
But why would I have registered for VAT when I first started up? After all, I barely made any money in my first 9 months of being a life coach.
Yet I started my business with all good intentions. I wanted to create an income that matched my part time job that I left. Thus for me to have £50,000+ as income, I would have had to invoice at least £70,000 (which back in 2004 was about the VAT threshold).
But I told myself I wanted to keep things simple and yes, doing VAT returns may have pushed me over the edge and have me running back to my PAYE world.
So I kept things simple, became self-employed and didn’t get registered.
Over the years, my income went up but just as I thought about taking my income seriously, I lost my Dad after 18 months of cancer. As you can imagine my business took a back seat and I barely made a profit those 2 years. So when I came back to work in September 2010, all I could focus on was building up my business again … registering for VAT didn’t even get on the radar.
It wasn’t until 2014 that the I found myself squashed up against the VAT glass ceiling and I realised how much not registering for VAT was capping my potential. Working with various mentors at the time I had all the support to create and build new revenue streams and raise my game. But somehow I never really upped my game sufficiently enough because it seemed I had convinced myself that by growing, I had to become VAT registered and VAT registration had created a number of stories in my head.
I know, I know. There will be some of you reading this thinking “What’s the problem here? Surely getting VAT registered is simple … just do it, make hay and let the sun shine!”
But I know in that what’s hard for me maybe simple for you … is true in reverse … as what’s hard for you maybe simple for me. For example, creating campaigns in Infusionsoft is a dream for me. I love it and would do it for fun if I could. But I know other people see this a total block; they don’t move forward with promotions or launching products because they get stuck in “I’m crap at tech” or “outsourcing this stuff is hard” stories and the like.
Stories That We Tell Ourselves
We all have stories running around in our heads that are based on our beliefs and what we’ve seen, heard and experienced. And these create glass ceilings on our income potential. These were just 3 of the core stories that I had running around VAT registration:
1. My clients won’t pay VAT as so few of them are registered themselves.
That was an interesting story that ran for years. Back when this story first started manifesting, I was charging a £30 monthly subscription to a membership site, my programmes were all bubbling around the £250 mark and my 1-2-1 fees where about £145 a session.
So yes, I had convinced myself that, at those figures, VAT on top would have been a proportional hike. But looking back, I could see I was seeing each sale in isolation. Simple maths would have told a different story if I had calculated my membership numbers on 1,000 members rather than the 100 I had at the time.
If I had decided to take the hit on the VAT, for example, and included it in the £30 a month rather than pass this onto my clients, how would have that affected my decision to start attracting 1,000 members? What different strategies would I have acted on?
Plus VAT is part of our every day lives. We don’t like paying it, but we know we have to pay it. If VAT was included in prices, then we often don’t blink an eye … it’s when you choose to buy, get excited about buying, go to the checkout and then be told “Oh, that’s another 20% please” … that’s when, as consumers, we get the bitter taste in our mouths. And thinking that this was the only way to position a 20% increase in my prices, held me back.
2. I hate financials – I want to keep things simple
OK … I know this is a story that a lot of you will resonate with. Simplicity is all the rage right now! I’ve been working on building it into my life for a number of years and I know simplicity is one of skills I have that makes the work I do with my clients so effective.
But using simple as an excuse not to understand stuff that you don’t get that would help you shift you and your business forward, is … well frankly … a crap excuse.
I am never going to try to convince anyone that VAT is simple but I know now (see how I changed my story!) that I didn’t have to be a VAT specialist to get VAT set up. That’s why I have a trusted accountant who I don’t confess to understand everything he tells me in detail, but I take his advice and move on.
As your business grows, it may not be VAT that bothers you. But there will always be stuff that you don’t understand to begin with. Marketing funnels, hiring teams, project managements and outsourcing …. all typical steps up to growing a business. But often you know very little about each of these steps until you step up … so staying on the step below and convincing yourself you want to keep things simple is often just an excuse for not stepping up.
See how easy it is NOT to see your glass ceiling?!
3. I want to stay small
Small is beautiful. Spending time in my office working with clients who I find easy to work with keeps things easy. I need a calm, simple existence because if I stay small, I can play safe.
These were all stories I was telling myself which worked fine some of the time.
And there’s nothing wrong with easy, don’t get me wrong. I see there is a big difference between work when you are in the flow and hard work. I work hard but it’s never hard work for me.
But playing safe is not always a good long term strategy, especially if your competitors over take you or you get complacent with your marketing or you stagnate or get bored.
It was last year that I realised I didn’t need to play small to stay small. I don’t want to employ a huge team. I don’t want to rent an office space. I don’t want to become an agency or a full blown consultancy. I like the freedom of working for and by myself, in the comfort of my own home.
But that doesn’t mean I have to play small; squashed up against my glass ceiling.
There have been other stories that have rumbled away in the background but these were the 3 core ones. Perhaps they have helped you seen your own stories for what they are.
What Stories Create Your Own Glass Ceiling?
Perhaps you’re now starting to see how not being VAT registered is seriously holding you back from charging more, offering a different package or programme or working with clients at a higher level.
Perhaps you’re creating a different glass ceiling.
One of my clients recently admitted to me that her reason for choosing a £45,000 income goal was because over that she’d be paying a higher rate of tax. Now I know paying out large sums of tax can be heart wrenching, but if you have a good accountant, you only pay a percentage of what you earn … you’ll always be quids in. Thus capping your potential earnings based on the fact you don’t want to pay a certain level of compulsory rates of tax suddenly becomes rather laughable. (And believe me, when you can laugh at your stories, that’s when you know you can change them!)
A good friend of mine has a wonderful way of thinking of her taxes. Every time she pays her tax bill, she works out how many life support machines for babies she’s just paid for.
And yes, I’m not naive enough to know that her tax money doesn’t necessarily go to that budget. But as it’s compulsory and you have no choice in the matter, better to have a good heart when you pay it because of the ripple effect it creates in the rest of your being.
So what I am getting at here, is that your stories you tell you yourself are going to be different to mine and the next person who reads this article.
It doesn’t really matter what the story is just so long as you acknowledge what’s really going for you.
And acknowledge that that story may be putting a glass ceiling on your income potential.
Now that I am VAT registered, I have taken a few hits. The rumble strip that I drove over last week going through the process of contacting clients, making the changes to my accounts and prices was bumpy. But the few short term financial losses are counterbalanced with a huge, massive long term gain, for both me and my clients; stepping up and taking a leap of faith will filter through to the people I work with … that’s guaranteed!
I knew those bumps were temporary and carried on regardless because I knew the road will smooth out in a very short space of time, allowing my acceleration to the next stage of my personal growth and income potential.
Now that I’ve smashed through this glass ceiling, I can’t help but wonder what my next glass ceiling will be. At least this time, I hope to acknowledge it quicker and smash through it sooner.
Your Thoughts And Comments Please
Has this story inspired you to look at what’s creating your own glass ceilings?
Perhaps you are struggling with the thought of VAT registration? Or paying a higher rate tax? Maybe it’s your feelings of guilt or shame that stop you charging the prices you could be charging for your services? Or fear of going after a new market or creating a new brand or product?
Your personal beliefs around money create a lot of energy – positive and negative – around what you take action on to grow your income potential. I’d love to know your thoughts so leave a comment below.
There’s a difference between the price you sell at and how much you pay yourself … you knew that already (didn’t you?!)
Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash flow is reality.
And then there’s gross profit and net profit; the difference between your sales, cost of sales and running costs. Not to mention all the other costs that need adding to your final end of year accounts, such as running an office from your home or depreciating assets.
OK … OK
Don’t let your eyes glaze over.
Please!
I don’t want this to be a bookkeeping lesson and, quite frankly, I am not at all equipped to be giving your tax and accountancy advice.
But one of the reasons why many clients come to work with me is because we talk True Profit.
It’s True Profit that I want to bring to your awareness today.
True Profit is much more than just figures on a spreadsheet. And as much as I would love to give you a simple formula to work from, everyone’s True Profit calculations will vary depending on your values, priorities in life and your personality.
Your True Profit is so much more than gross and net profit margins.
If you are running a service-based business, around your expertise, your day to day running costs are likely to be quite low. You don’t have retail space to rent, you probably don’t have a team of people you employ, there are no huge utility bills to be paid nor are you importing raw materials or paying distribution costs.
The running costs of your business are going to be your phone, internet, web hosting, advertising, marketing, home office, possibly travel and outsourcing such as a virtual assistant or web manager.
NOTE:If you really don’t know the exact running costs of your business, you need to get a handle on them right now. Especially look out for all those small monthly subscriptions to tech services you’ve got quietly running away from your Paypal account … they can add to hundreds every month if you’re not careful!
An important part of your expenditure is probably going to be around your cost of sales. And these are going to vary depending on your business model.
It’s these costs of sales where I want to start you on to help discover your True Profit.
Let’s take events.
If you run in-person events, your venue costs are going to be dependant on where you’ve decided to position yourself. The more expensive the ticket price, the bigger the budget you’ve to spend on your venue.
But if you’re staying cheap to keep the price of the tickets down, you could be penalising yourself in the long term. Let me explain.
Venue costs are directly proportional to the positioning of your event and thus what you charge for them.
Staying cheap and choosing a venue that only charges you £25 a head, there’s every chance you decide to charge a classic £95 per person. That’s 73% gross profit margin (before any marketing costs, etc).
Moving to a venue that charges £95 a head, the price for the same event wouldn’t only be increased by £70 … the value of the event has proportionally increased and there’s every chance you’d be able to charge £495 or more for the same day.
Not only has your total gross profit gone significantly up, but you are also up to 81% gross margin.
Taking this workshop example further, at a price tag of £495, you’d have to sell far fewer places to create far greater sales and profit.
It’s a mistake that many coaches, trainers and experts make when running training events, workshops and seminars. You believe that by setting a price at £95, this will make the event easier to sell. Thus you are forced to secure a cheaper venue to ensure you stay in profit.
And yes, I know … some will run these kinds of events as lead generation events; no profit made on the day but the profit is realised as you engage and build on that initial relationship. But let me put that strategy to one side for now, because to have a lead generation strategy like this needs to be seriously considered before you decide on your business model.
When you realise you will go through the exact same amount of effort to sell 1 place at £95 as you will 1 place at £495, it pays to pay more for your event venue to enable you to position your price better.
Plus, higher prices generally attract better quality clients. You only have to run 1 event with 40 people at £95 to realise far fewer people will step forward into other programmes with you compared to a room of just 10 paying £495.
OK … with this example, I’ve dealt predominantly with sales revenue and event costs here.
That’s just one small part of your personal True Profit formula.
True Profit also takes into account the following:
Health & Wellbeing
Some people thrive on launching and event promotion. I know I used to back when I was 10 years younger (I’ve been 12 years running my own business now). I used to love the hustle and the energy of promoting a live in-person event. The thrill of selling tickets and then running the day.
Today it’s a very different story for me. My energy levels are lower now being a “women-of-a-certain-age”. I’ll happily admit that the thought of standing in front of a room full of people all day exhausts me. I just can’t do it. Give me a day with my Academy members who I’m working intensively with over a course of a year … yippy de do. I’m a pig in muck.
But being presenter, trainer and speaker for a whole day … no way.
Thus the lead generation strategy that I mentioned earlier – sell lots of low priced tickets and then build and nurture those relationships to reap rewards during and after the event – is just not part of my business model.
Although it could be hugely profitable – and it is for many experts out there – it would affect my health and wellbeing and thus my True Profit would plummet.
Stress
There’s lot of different types of stress when you run your own business. There’s the stress of running around like a headless chicken with too much to do through to the stress that gnaws away at you slowly when you’re getting week after week after week of No’s.
Stress from not making enough money. Stress from believing you’re going to get found out one day … you’re not as good as you think you ought to be. Stress from having too many should-be’s cluttering up your to-do list. Stress from working with too many clients.
Many business owners, like you, take on work when you know you should be saying no. And many business owners create a business model based on what works for others … but just doesn’t work for them.
Stress of running live in-person events would be high for me and, of course, would affect my health and wellbeing. But for others, they love the excitement and the buzz – stress doesn’t even enter the arena.
What is not stressful for some, could be stressful for you. So make sure you take this into account when working out your True Profit.
Time with family and friends
Time is a critical part of your True Profit calculation.
Time is constantly ticking by hour by hour, day by day. It’s a resource that feels endless (there’s always tomorrow) but the reality is that it goes with a blink of your eye.
What you decide to do with your time is, of course, always up to you. And how you work time to yourself in and around your business is something you do have control over.
For me, my core objective when I first started working for myself was to create a term time business. My children back then were 3 and 5. I needed to be able to work only whilst they were in school or asleep in bed. It was the only way that my husband could carry on working full time, without the need for hiring live-in nannies or au pairs – something neither of us wanted.
It wasn’t all Easy Street straight off the bat. I was constantly frustrated by the short working days I had. It seemed I just got into the swing of doing some copywriting or arranging a couple of meetings, that I had to switch off and go pick up 1 or both of my kiddies.
But because my focus was Term Time Only, I worked hard at shaping my business model around school hours and terms. I am proud to say that I have maintained this term time approach in True Profit style 12 years on … and need it more than ever as my eldest embarks on her A Levels shortly and my youngest starts his GCSEs.
Time with family may not be your focus. You may have an elderly relative you need to care for. You may have a new love in your life that you want to spend leisurely long weekends with.
As I wrote at the start of this article, your True Profit will be different to everyone else’s. You need to clear on why time is important to you to give the motivation to go make a business to make it happen.
Holiday and days off
This follows on from time with family and friends, but I like to keep this separate because planning and booking holidays often needs long-term thinking to make happen. A member of my Academy realised last year that, although holidays were incredibly important to her, she always found herself too busy to book any because she was a self-confessed workaholic. She loved what she did, so she allowed herself to keep going month after month before getting to the end of the year and realising she hadn’t gone away.
This year, she started the year by booking holiday dates in her work diary first … and then went about creating her business strategy and plans around them.
Now that’s True Profit.
Education and personal development
Another problem I see happen is business owners “forgetting” to allow time for personal development and education. If you were an employee as an HR or accountant or legal professional, you’d probably be obliged to complete your CPD (Continual Professional Development) hours.
But work for yourself and where does this obligation come from? When you have no clients, you worry about taking time out to learn because it’s not bringing in leads. But when you get busy, how do you make the time to take out from client paid work?
Scheduling in and making education and personal development is critical if you want to keep your business growing because if you aren’t growing, stagnating is a dangerous place to find yourself.
A business model that allows this, will give you the True Profit that you need to make this happen.
Resources and hiring of a team
This is an interesting part of the True Profit equation. Hiring a team is often a critical part of ensuring your business is not ALL about you. You can’t be the expert, web designer, customer services manager AND the tea maker. At some point, you will need to hire to ensure your True Profit is realised.
Starting small with an assistant who may help manage your diary appointments and answer your phone is a good place to begin. Over time, as you learn to delegate, you will outsource more of the doing of your business; graphics, content creation, bookkeeping right through to online business managers and possibly salespeople.
However, there is a tipping point that hiring a team eats into your True Profit. A very good friend of mine found herself celebrating a 6 figure plus business. From the outside, her business was a huge success and she was recognised as one of the leading experts in her field. But pull back the curtains and there was an 8 person team working away costing her thousands of pounds every month. Her turnover was high but what she was paying herself was minimal.
Her True Profit was almost non-existent.
So hiring people works in principle but only if your business model ensures you get your True Profit.
What else have I missed?
There will be other parts of the True Profit equation that will be important to you. Perhaps it’s having one of your children come work in your business. Perhaps charitable contributions rate highly in your values.
I’d love to know what else you value and how it affects your True Profit calculation.
Want to discuss your True Profit potential with me?
There only a limited number of these available each month so if you don’t see any times on my calendar when you click through, email my assistant Alexia at Alexia@KarenSkidmore.com and ask to be put on this month’s waiting list in case we get a cancellation.
Menopause in business: The 7 rules for reshaping your business and the way you run your business around your perimenopause
Who’d have thought that there’d come a time that I would be writing an article about how to deal with the menopause in business?!
I’ve become a woman-of-a-certain, even though when I look in the mirror I get a shock each time because the face doesn’t seem to reflect the mind that’s still living as a 30 year old.
It feels like only yesterday, I was writing about juggling work around pre-schoolers and school gate pickups. But children have a habit of growing up and we have a habit of growing older.
I’m 46 at the time of writing this blog post; my children are 13 and 15 and I have been dealing with the symptoms of perimenopause for the past few years. I don’t talk much about publicly because what I share is usually focused around marketing systems, lead generation, business models and revenue streams. But I’ve realised that I need to write about my menopause in business now because I wished I had read this two years ago. And I hope it helps you if you are going through that change in life if you dealing with menopause in business, too.
Menopause in business and what it’s meant to me
Fluctuating energy flows, extreme fatigue that’s taken me to bed, flushes, body shape change … it’s made me re-think how I run my business because if I’m not mentally and physically in good shape, it directly impacts on the level of service I can deliver to my clients.
And if you run a service based business like mine – coaching, training, therapy, design, consultancy or any other professional service – you have to be on the ball to be able to deliver.
Or at the very least, make sense when you have a conversation with someone!
So this isn’t going to be an article about advice on the pros/cons of soya, supplements or whether HRT is right (there’s plenty of articles already and I’m no hormone expert, that’s for sure).
This article is focused about how to manage your menopause in business and shape and run your business around your menopause, without making yourself ill, beating yourself up with guilt or losing your mind. And because I don’t think enough women (or men!) are talking about the effects of menopause in business I wanted to share my experiences and how I am dealing with this.
If I hadn’t put these rules in place for myself, I really think I would have ended up being one of those women you find walking around the supermarket, still in her PJs, hair unbrushed and looking dazed and confused about what she went in there for in the first place!
It’s OK … Men can read this too!
By the way, if you are a man reading this, change in life can affect you, too.
You may not be building up to that last menstrual cycle (darn … I never thought I would write that phrase in a blog article LOL) so don’t click away. I’d love to know your thoughts on this as your hormones change as you get older, too. Some may call it mid-life crisis, but it’s no joke when your body changes and you feel you have absolutely no control over it.
These have been my rules for re-shaping my business around me becoming a woman-of-a-certain age.
Rule No 1 Work when you are productive, not when you think you have the time
When I first started up my business in 2004, I was full of energy. I had a young family, suffered sleepless nights and ran the home too. So, technically, I really shouldn’t have had the energy to work the hours I worked back then.
But when you are younger (in my mid 30’s back then), you can really cope with anything because your body is still performing the way it needs to.
I would get my kids to school, rush home and work until I picked them up again at 3pm. in the first couple of years, my youngest was home with me 2 days a week so I only had 3 school days a week to work. But I managed to cram in work whilst he was napping on his home days, during CBBC sessions and as soon as they were both bathed and in bed, I’d be back in the office either running a teleseminar, coaching clients or writing until 2 am.
For the past few years, my days have become longer (yeah!) but once both my kids are home, usually from 5pm onwards, and I’ve made supper, supervised homework, had a “heated debate” with a stroppy teen and done the laundry … I’m done for. Literally done for. The only energy I have is to drag myself to the sofa, put my feet up and try to stay awake until 9pm before taking myself to bed.
The thought of working evenings or taking myself out networking can’t even cross my mind.
So rather than beating myself up for not being able to capitalise on the evenings any more, I surrendered and made sure that my days were efficiently scheduled as possible.
Client calls are now only scheduled from 12noon onwards until school pick up time. Mornings are my time because from 8.30am to about 11am I am at my best. When my energy starts to wane, my clients pick me up because after all, it’s so much easier working on other people’s businesses than your own, yes?!
I don’t do London, except for special occasions. The travel knackers me. Plus the jet-setting lifestyle that once appealed to me 10 years ago is now firmly pushed to one side. I am happy being a home-bird and now that I’ve accepted that, my productivity is back on track. I’m not wasting energy with that keeping-up-the-jones feeling.
Once my chicklets have flown the nest, who knows. But for now, I want to be a mother first and foremost. And preferably one that’s not cross all the time because she’s knackered from travelling.
TAKE AWAY:Look at your diary for the next couple of weeks. How are you scheduling your week? What changes do you need to make to your routine to address your productivity levels?
Rule No 2 Create a business that works for you, not a business you feel trapped in
Your business model has to work for you because if it doesn’t, you’re just an employee. And without the employee perks of paid holiday and still getting a paycheck if you end up in bed ill one day.
If you have created a business that was once exciting, exhilarating and fun but is now exhausting and draining, then you have to change it.
I’ve spoken to dozen of women in recent years who have all experienced this. They’ve created a business that involves travelling overseas – once fun but now they are of a “certain age”, it’s taking it’s toll on them. They’ve created a business that involves lots of 1-2-1 time – once energising but now exhausting.
My first 8 years or so, I sold a lot of low priced programmes and digital products and most of my income came from working with clients 1-2-1. My workshops were affordable which meant I was filling a room of at least 20 people every 4 to 6 weeks. I created a membership site, which at £30 a month wasn’t cheap but it was a price level that didn’t need a lot of persuasion and when I have more than 100 members who stayed on average for 8 months, it was a fabulous revenue stream for a couple of day’s work once a month.
My business model back then worked for me because I had the energy levels to see it through. I thrived off the juggling of commitments and dashing from one thing to the next.
But in recent years, I realised my business model had to change.
Now I have completely turned things on their head and have a business model that works for me in my current time of life. I work with far less people but at a higher price point, which means my time is more profitable and I can give a lot more value. I work considerably less hours, I don’t rush around like a headless chicken and yet my productivity has gone up.
Please note: This change didn’t just happen overnight.
It’s been a gradual shift, both in my mindset and practical implementation of new systems and programmes. But the realisation that things needed to change was the catalyst for going out there and making it happen.
TAKE AWAY:Take a morning out – away from your screens, phones and any other distractions – and quietly review how your business model is working for you. Is what you’ve created (or creating) going to work for you and your energy levels? Are you being your very best for your clients in the way that you are working with them? What needs to change over the next year or so? And what’s your first baby step to changing things right now?
Rule No 3 Review your wardrobe
Seriously, your wardrobe is important. I know confidence needs to come from within ourselves for it to be sustainable, but the clothes that you wear, the haircuts, the handbags and shoes … the outer impression of ourselves does directly impact how you feel.
And when your success in business is almost directly in proportion to how confident you feel at the time, your wardrobe matters.
I’m very much a jeans and converse girl. Yes, I’ve been know to put on a dress for my speaking engagements but essentially I feel most me when I’ve got a good pair of jeans on.
Perimenopause has meant that my middle is now not really a middle. My top half has merged through to my bottom half so that my wardrobe of GAP jeans give me not so much a muffin top … more like a full cream tea and couple of Mary Berry cakes look.
Have you ever tried to wear stomach-flattening pants under jeans? Amazing for the first hour, but towards the end of the day you just feel like a cling-filmed wrapped chicken that’s been left out of the fridge for too long.
I began beating myself up about my weight, which only made me eat more chocolate biscuits (classic emotional eater, me!)
But realising that what I could wear 3 years ago, simply wasn’t going to work any more I sought out the advice of Gail Morgan, one of the UK’s top image consultant trainers. One look up and down and she told me, “You’re a classic triangle, turning goblet”.
Rather than running off for a good sulk for being called a goblet, I jumped for joy. I had a new rule for dressing to follow and after Gail introduced me to Marks & Spencer sculpt and lift range of skinny jeans (which are very well priced, too I will have you know), I rushed out and sorted out my wardrobe.
TAKE AWAY:Like your business, is it time to review your business wardrobe? It’s really easy to get stuck in a rut but as your body shape changes, it’s wonderful to realise that going up a dress size is not a failure.
Rule No 4 Exercise
OK, I know I said this is not an article about dealing with your perimenopause – this was supposed to be about your business. But seriously … exercise is critical at this time of your life.
And when you run your own business, you simply have NO excuse not to make the time to exercise at least 3 times a week.
This goes back to rule number two and making sure you have a business that works for you, rather than you working for it. If you have created a schedule that just doesn’t allow you to take just a few hours out a week to take up an exercise you enjoy, then your business needs to change.
I use to run and go to the gym. But with my weight gain, aching legs and joints and general knackered-ness, this wasn’t going to work. Recently I’ve taken up swimming. And yes, the proper goggles, swim cap kind of swimming. Hey, I didn’t say that style has to affect the way you exercise.
Going from drinking copious amount of chlorinated water (and god knows what other fluids!) and half-drowning with every breath, I swam my first 1 mile the other week. 66 lengths of the pool. Even my 15 year old daughter was impressed and I don’t normally get much more than a raised eyebrow from anything I say to her right now.
So exercise doesn’t have to be the classic gym session. It can salsa dancing, yoga, walking … anything as long as you are moving.
TAKE AWAY: If you aren’t exercising, what can you try out this week? Do you need to go back and read Rule Number Two again? Don’t put this off. You need to be moving (and keyboard exercise doesn’t count.)
Rule Number Five Creativity never stops; you don’t need to act on every idea
Your body may start to slow down when you hit perimenopause but if you are a creative entrepreneur like me, ideas never stop coming. A few years ago I was getting extremely frustrated that I just didn’t have the inclination or the energy to implement as much I once did.
I would push myself to do more but all that ended up doing was making me more tired, frustrated and well, menopausal! I was cross at myself, but this often came out being cross with my family. And that’s no good.
After going on a journey with the very inspiring Nicola Bird who taught me much about simplicity last year, I’ve been shown that ideas are simply trains of thought that keep on coming, no matter where or what you are are doing.
Realising that I didn’t have to implement everything that came my way because I now trust that there are plenty of other ideas all queuing up behind each one, I can keep focused on the current project, without getting frustrated by my tiredness.
It’s why I see so many business owners flip flop from one new shiny toy to the next. There’s almost an addictive nature of acting on ideas but often never following them through because the next one comes along.
SQUIRREL!
Periscope is a classic example; an amazing piece of fun, creative and innovative tech but if you stay focused on the marketing strategy and business model that you’ve set out to create, you will see better results, quicker.
TAKE AWAY:When you get an idea, become consciously aware of what happens and how you act. Do you get frustrated? Are you bouncing from one thing to the next? Become aware of how your creativity impacts your energy levels and do something different. Sometimes just scribbling the idea onto a post-it note and throwing it into a shoebox can reassure you that you know where to find it again if and when you ever want to act on it. It’s the whirlwind noise in your head that often causes the anx, so get it out and move on.
Rule No 6 F&*% It Days are OK (and actually good for the soul!)
When you get to a “certain age”, you being to realise that you don’t need to take yourself, or anyone else, that seriously all of the time.
Perhaps this comes down to experience and having a decade of working for myself under my belt, too. But it’s incredibly freeing to realise that you can only do want you can do. And if you can laugh at your failures and shake off negative remarks and snidey comments, then running your business is really much easier to run.
Apologies for the language (and for sharing one of the all time annoying songs!) but any time you want to share a moment of F&*% It, then play this video below.
It’s very good for the soul … you just may want to plug in headphones if you are in a public place or have children in ear shot!
Rule No 7 Systemise, Delegate or Delete
To enable me to become more effective and efficient (AKA work less and earn more money), I process everything I do through the rule of systemise, delegate or delete.
I’ve come to realise that over the past few years, I am doing the same stuff over and over again. And when energy levels are so up and down, I just can’t afford to be wasting my time and energy over stuff I really need not be doing.
So becoming consciously aware of how I fill my days, I’m always reviewing and asking myself whether I could systemise, delegate or simply delete something that I find myself doing over and over, out of my day.
This is one rule I’m still working on.
I’ve got systemise working well; I’ve invested in and worked hard to figure out my marketing systems – both lead generation and conversion processes – and nothing delights me more than having appointments being booked into my diary automatically from people who really want to speak to me. (In fact, I now teach other business owners the exact system in Clicks To Clients, which I opened up the doors to this summer). It all makes a lovely change from having to rush around networking like crazy and using push-energy rather than pull-energy to bring in new business.
Delete ain’t too bad; it helps to have more F&*% Days!
But delegate is definitely a work in progress, I have to confess. I’m still a control freak at heart and let the tech side of marketing take up way too much of my time. Trouble is I love it so much, I don’t think I could bear to hand it over to someone else … but hey, I have my vices and I’m certainly not perfect. I’m only human, just like you.
So there you have it.
My 7 rules for perimenopausal women running their own businesses.
And having just read through this again before clicking the publish button, I’ve realised that these 7 rules were something I wished I had applied way before my perimenopause began. So whether you’ve hit menopause or you’ve found yourself to be a “certain age” or simply that you’ve hit a wall and you need to review and re-set your path because your business is just not set up to give you what you want or need right now, I hope what I’ve shared has helped.
I’d love to know what your thoughts are; what rules you may have and any other tips or suggestions you would like to share. Leave a comment below as I love to read them all.
There appears to have been a theme for me this week in several conversations with my clients.
“I’ve been putting in the hard work, but when will I get the results?”
It’s what I struggle with myself from time to time. I go hard at something – a new plan or trying out a different marketing strategy – and then get frustrated when I don’t achieve what I thought I ought to get.
When you follow a particular path that you believe is going to get you where you think you want to go and you have laid out your goals and targets for each step of that journey, it is tough when the goals and targets you’ve set don’t materialise the way you thought they would.
It’s tempting to throw your toys out of the pram, to want to hide under the duvet, to start thinking thoughts of wanting to give up and go do something easier; something simpler; something that doesn’t feel as hard as it does right now.
But giving up is not an option.
Sowing the seeds for future business can be unpredictable and, being human, it is usual for us to want to control and see results fast. And to throw more anguish into the equation, we often get emotionally attached to the results and blame ourselves for not performing the way we thought we would.
I know there are plenty of experts and articles on the wonderful world wide web that try and tell us differently. Automate and set up marketing funnels to bring in new leads and all your business dreams will come true … well, I can tell you that comes from a land of Unicorns pooping jelly tots!
Some seeds don’t come with exact germination timings.
And some seeds just take a very, very long time to shoot up.
Take the bamboo farmers. When they sow the bamboo seeds, they take not one, not two but five years for anything to appear above ground level. For five years, those bamboo seeds are growing their roots under the soil and it’s not until the fifth year that they shoot up 80 feet tall within just 6 weeks.
Do the bamboo farmers start blaming themselves after a year or so that the shoots haven’t started to appear? No … they know it’s a waiting game of looking after their crops.
Now, does that mean some of your seeds may take up to five years to shoot up?
Well, yes. Possibly.
But there will also be seeds that take 6 weeks. And some that will take 2 months. And some that will be even years before you harvest those business leads.
Patience is not a virtue often associated with entrepreneurial types and people who run their own businesses. At best it is over-looked or ignored; at worst it is viewed as being weak for not seizing the day and surging forth with action.
However, I see patience as being critical to your growth, both in business and personal terms.
Patience is not about cruising along and avoiding what’s needed doing to see your business grow. It’s not about being complacent or sitting cross legged on the floor asking the Universe for new clients.
To me being patience is keeping cool and calm and recognising all the little results that are telling you you are on a right path.
When I find myself in the midst of getting caught up with “I’m working hard, why am I not getting results?” storm (and it is a storm because I get buffeted around, picking up bruises and bumps along the way!), patience goes straight out the window.
I get emotionally attached to the outcomes which usually results in pushing away business.
Let the storm calm and see the journey for what it is, and I’m able to see results and the good things happening all around me.
As a business owner, it is your job to sow seeds each and every week. Some weeks there will be more seeds than others, of course. But to only sow seeds when you absolutely need the business and you find yourself on the wire, and no matter how patient you are, they probably won’t germinate in time for you to meet your harvest deadlines.
Some seeds will be ready when they decide they are ready. You simply can’t speed up seeds that don’t want to be sped up. Start forcing that seed and then blame yourself for not getting the harvest you wanted and you will be pushing business away.
Once you’ve planted, you need to nurture them. And whilst you nurture those seeds, you need to carry on and plant some more. And then some more.
There is no simple answer to when is the right time for harvesting, I’m afraid. But I hope by reading this I’ve inspired you to be patience and to keep sowing seeds and keep taking action whilst you wait for results to happen.
How do you cope with waiting for leads to convert in to business? Do you get frustrated by doing “the hard work” and not seeing results quick enough? I would love to read your thoughts so add a comment below and join in the conversation.
It was always my intention to write books. After all, how could I possibly continue to introduce myself as “Speaker, Author and Marketing Expert” if I wasn’t authoring? How long could I continue to ride the wave of the one book I had written?
Plus, isn’t that what every other successful entrepreneur did?
The big guns and gurus all had more than one book published … didn’t they?
Or that’s the story I had been telling myself over the past couple of years. As this story got told again and again in my head, it became more and more real. More and more true.
And this is exactly the topic I want to explore in this book; the stories, thoughts and expectations we bring along on our journeys to becoming “successful”. We all have them and they affect the experiences we have and, ultimately, the results we get from our marketing.
We need to be marketing our businesses; without marketing, you reduce your opportunities of clients finding you. Without clients there’s no income. And with no income … well, there’s no business. So to find out how to market your business, it makes sense to start with information out there already. Instead of sitting at your desk, twiddling your thumbs whilst asking the Universe for clients to ring you on your phone, you do what most people do – you look to experts.
Why invent the wheel when we can get information about the best, latest, cheapest, quickest ways of winning new business from other people who have done that (and got the T-Shirt).
And where do most of you start? Well, yes … the internet.
The internet is a blessing and a devil. It gives us the opportunity to create a global business from our kitchen tables and spare bedrooms. But it also gives us the opportunity to fall into Alice’s rabbit hole when seeking for ways to get new clients.
Just hang out on Facebook for 10 minutes and your newsfeed fills with ads offering live training events to learn this and free checklists to learn that.
Google “how to get clients” and you get 730,000,000 results with pages and pages full of listings offering “33 ways to get more clients”, “21 ways to bring in the business” and “the quickest and easiest way to get booked solid”.
There so much free stuff out there, you sign up for this, that and the other and before you know it … BAM you now believe you simply HAVE to be creating an online business, BAM you NEED a way of bringing in passive income because there’s no way you’d be able to work with enough clients to have the income you need to live the promised beach life and, to be any way successful, BAM you’ve GOT TO start running webinars, group mentoring programmes and sell places for a VIP retreat weekend.
The next 12 months has you continually spinning further and further down the rabbit hole until you wake up one day and ask yourself, “What business am I trying to build here? I hate what I am doing. I’m exhausted at trying to get these marketing strategies to work. Why am I not bringing in enough clients? Why am I not more successful?”
If this has happened to you, you are not alone.
Most of us who have started up a business have experienced this at some time and at some level or other. It doesn’t matter how successful you perceive yourself to be (or how unsuccessful for that matter), everyone I know has fallen into Alice’s rabbit hole at some point. Everyone I know has sought information, advice or consultative help on how to get better results from their marketing from outside sources; from other experts who done that (and got that T-Shirt).
It’s what I do, after all. I have spent the past 10 years teaching and sharing marketing strategies and tactics. And I have also spent a fair amount of my own money learning the best, latest, cheapest, quickest ways of winning new business so that I can apply to my own business, as well as then adapt and share with my own clients.
For the most part, these outside sources are credible. What they teach works for them and for some of their clients.
And yes, I know there are plenty of charlatans out there and some who may even have a good heart but just don’t have the ability to deliver or meet their clients’ expectations. This book is not about starting a slanging match or starting a witch hunt! But, on the whole, when you go out and seek information and advice on how to get new, different or better clients, you will get tried and tested strategies and tactics.
So if most of the information and advice out there is sound, why don’t most of these strategies and tactics work for you?
Why is that the information and advice you sometimes (and perhaps almost always) get from these outside influences NOT get you the results that you after?
These are the questions I want to answer in this book.
Over the past couple of years, I have begun to understand why learning more can actually mean you end up knowing less; why the “7 Steps to Success Programme” you invested in doesn’t work for you the way that it worked for the expert who claims it does.
There’s still very much a place for “how-to” learning in my opinion. After all, you wouldn’t want to have heart surgery from someone who is simply trusting their instinct and confident about their own abilities to “give it a go”. But it’s time for me to start sharing my path of understanding with you on how to reverse the outside-in process so that your marketing can become inside-out. I want to share how your marketing can feel more authentic, more you … without the need for following a 7 Step Success Formula.
Your marketing strategies and tactics can be somethings that you love to do. You know what you could be doing to grow your business and find new clients right now; it’s just that you can’t access this information because you are too busy pulling your hair out trying to implement stuff that you feel you “should-be” doing.
So stop feeling guilty that you haven’t posted for the past seven days in your 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Stop beating yourself up because you still haven’t got a decent lead magnet on your website. And stop getting frustrated because you haven’t run that webinar you promised to do because the technology is scaring the pants off you.
It’s time to throw everything you think you want to know about out of the window and start working on your marketing from the inside-out.
The above is an excerpt from the introduction of my new, upcoming book “Inside-Out Marketing: How to put a stop to your “should-be” marketing and attract client with simplicity, grace and ease.” (or the alternative title “Sod the 7 Step Success Formula – let me do what I bloody well want to do to market my own business!”)
In the meanwhile, leave a comment below and tell me what you think of what you read so far. Do you want to read more? Are you experiencing Alice’s rabbit hole? Or do you love working on your marketing strategy? Tell me your ideas and views below.
Venue costs are directly proportional to the positioning of your event and thus what you charge for them.
Time is a critical part of your True Profit calculation.
Another problem I see happen is business owners “forgetting” to allow time for personal development and education. If you were an employee as an HR or accountant or legal professional, you’d probably be obliged to complete your CPD (Continual Professional Development) hours.
