5 Tips for Gaining Traction in Your Small Business That You Can Start Today

Starting a business and making a sale all requires connecting with the right people. You might have an elevator speech memorized, business cards printed, website running online, and are on all the right social media platforms, but the question becomes how you close the gap. How do you connect with the right person at the right time? If you want to gain some serious traction in your small business, then this is the quick list for you!

If you’re ready to market your business or sell products a little more proactively, here are a few tips to consider:

1. Most people will never cross paths with you unless you help it happen.

Broadcasting your skills, products, or services needs to be done in a variety of ways, succinctly, and frequently. To be convincing you’ll need to clearly know yourself and what it is you do best and get the message across clearly. If you have a target audience in mind, your content can point out the benefits for that market.

Then you’ll need to connect with your target audience. Promote your products or services through your website, in newsletters, in person, in multiple social networks, or take out online advertising.  Be careful not to be tacky or pushy. Those you connect with will take but a few seconds to decide if they want to connect deeper with you or not.

2. People don’t know what you want them to know until you tell them.  

company culture change creator

It’s easy for a small business owner to stay huddled up in the safety zone of their office hoping to make sales. Does fear of sharing or self-promotion hold you back?

While you know what it is you provide customers, they won’t know it until they hear about it from you. It’s best not to assume they’ll come to you and ask what you have for them.  It’s best to narrow down one or two products or services to feature that will catch the attention of those that might invest in them.

It may be very easy for your connections to forget what you do or even care on an ongoing basis, so frequent online posts or tweets at various times of day can be helpful.

3. People want to know: What’s in it for me?

Not everyone will be receptive to your posts or promotions because most people are self-indulgent, or at least self-protective of the time and money they’ll devote to new information or products. Make your point in as few words as possible always from the angle of describing what’s in it for the person reading.

It’s never a good idea to bore anyone with lengthy speeches or long online posts, and it’s never wise to bombard people with constant sales pitches. Before posting online put yourself in the shoes of a member of your target audience and ask what their perception of you might be and what there take away is.

4. People will ignore you if you don’t engage.

 

It’s a good policy to listen to others.  Listen to the words spoken in person and in online social media posts, blogs comments, or forums. Listen to what is said between the words too. Enter into two-way conversation when appropriate.  Ask questions, respond to replies. Earn trust.

Engaging also offers a great way to do suggestive selling.  A bakery shop owner might respond to a reply to a comment and add, “Just made a three-layer chocolate cake with thick frosting now waiting to be purchased, interested?”  The person may not head out to the shop to buy it, but if they’re a sweets-lover, chances are the image will stay lodged in their brain until they can no longer resist.

5. You’re stronger in a tribe. so build one!

Never before has there been a greater opportunity for small business owners to learn from each other.  Gone are the days of only knowing as much as your high school teacher, college professor, in-house specialist, or textbook might have taught you.  There’s a crowd of knowledge out there and you get to be part of it.

Look for your crowd and join in. Get to know individual members.  Look for ideas.  Ask for solutions. Learn from them. Put your ego down and listen. Take advice. Thank those who respond. Promote others. Then plan what to do with your new information. If you make a good impression, your name will be first on their mind to recommend to others when given the chance.

Traction in your small business starts with creating your basic branding platform, followed by connecting, linking, and interacting with others. Once you begin to get feedback and see what others are sharing your posts, re-tweeting you, or helping to promote you, you’ve gained traction. As your brand, message, and personal story are broadcast, chances increase for you to make the right connection at the right time.

You might also like:

The Key To Winning Funding For Your Startup

Why Storytelling is so Vital to Purpose-Driven Brands

Starting a Social Enterprise and Landing Funding with Justin Goodhew (Pitch Deck Inside)

Interview with the founder of Trellis, Justin Goodhew

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

When Justin reached out to us we were enticed by the work he was doing and the steps his startup has taken so far to grow.

In this interview, we talk about starting a social enterprise and raising funding. You’ll hear why he was fired from his volunteer job (didn’t know that was possible!) and some of the key steps he took to get started. Have you heard of Startup Weekend? Well, if not, you will now because Goodhew not only found inspiration there but he highly recommends it for any aspiring or active entrepreneur.

You know you’re doing something right when you’re able to get someone to invest serious money into your startup. He put together a pitch deck, very diligently, and started shopping it around with his strategy. In just a few months, which is usually not the case, he found someone willing to put money down.

While he was looking for a few hundred thousand to get rolling, he landed $600k (an update since this interview took place).

About Justin

Justin is a technology entrepreneur and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He is the founder at Trellis.org; a social enterprise connecting passionate people to charities.

Justin started in technology by co-founding his own application development company called Biznas Innovations Inc. Biznas built large internal business apps for Fortune 100 companies and smaller B2C apps for startups in Kelowna and Silicon Valley.

Are you curious what his pitch deck looked like?

Well, he was kind enough to share it so you can learn from what worked for him. Now he can’t do the pitch for you but this is a good framework to get you started.

Review the Pitch Deck Here

Learn more about Trellis @ https://trellis.org/

You might also enjoy:

The 7 Essential Storytelling Tips for Social Entrepreneurs

In my career as a professional author and ghostwriter, I’ve learned a few elements of successful stories. For you as a social entrepreneur or business, regardless of your “give back” model, your goal is the same as any other company: earn a profit by your products and services.

You also have the additional challenge of having a customer base that is more conscientious and mindful of impact. They want to feel that they are part of the change they want to see by buying your products and services. Effective storytelling in your marketing and branding can help you create that feeling in your prospects, which will persuade them to buy from you.

Here are seven essential techniques to use in your narrative-based marketing for your impact-driven business:

1. The Basic Principle of the Power of Storytelling

In her recent Netflix special, A Call to Courage, social workers and researcher Brené Brown mentions a phrase that’s been around for some time. It starts, “the story that I’m telling myself…”.

As we’ve seen time and time again, facts and figures do not persuade as they should. Rather, it’s the story that we tell about them that shape our responses. This is a phrase we often use in our interactions with others to make sure that what we think is happening is actually what’s happening. If we tell a story that there is nothing we can do about climate change, for example (or that it’s not even real), then we won’t take effective actions needed to solve it. Transform the story, and you create the possibility for change.

If you want to advance your social enterprise, you’ll need to transform the stories that mass numbers of people around the planet have about the causes and issues that matter to your business. You’ll need to inspire them on a deeply emotional level to do what’s right, which should also look like buying your products and services.

2. To Get Started, Use A Basic Story Outline

Outlines aren’t simply a beginning, middle, and end. They must help to create dramatic tension in your story that ends with the satisfaction of victory. Of course, if you’re writing a short advert or social media post, your outline has to be short, consisting of just three parts: the setup, the struggle, and the payoff. The setup establishes the goal that your social enterprise wants to achieve and how it wants to achieve it. The struggle highlights the obstacles in the way of fulfilling that goal, whether they’re past experiences, present-day issues, or future challenges. The payoff shows how you’ve overcome or are overcoming the obstacles to successfully achieve your goal.

Longer storytelling formats – like extended blogs or books – require more to the outline, but you can apply this simple outline to marketing copy of nearly any length or format.

Check out our ultimate Storytelling Guide: How to Tell a Brand Story!

3. Show, Slightly Tell

A popular and often frustrating concept in creative writing is “show, don’t tell”. The concept is simpler than it looks: you want to write your story in a way that the reader can understand what’s happening without you having to spell it out for them. For instance, “Todd was angry at the parking ticket” is a tell phrase, while “Todd clenched his jaw and glared at parking attendant as he walked away” shows you Todd is angry without ever using the word. By using descriptive passages that are almost universally associated with one emotion or another, you can show anger, sadness, joy, fear, etc..

For business, copy of any kind, your readers won’t be able to intuitively grasp your offerings in the same way they can intuit emotion, so you’ll have to use some tell in describing your products and services. However, if you’re recounting an anecdote using descriptive language, try your best to show instead of tell.

4. Avoid the “After School Special” Effect

Anyone who was a kid during the 80s and 90s will remember the famous stand-alone “after school specials” during our favorite prime time shows. The stories, often poorly written, usually warned us of the dangers of drugs, bully, unprotected sex, and so on. They were valid messages about important issues, but look at how, years later, they’ve become a parody. That’s for the simple reason that no one likes being preached at. Often, it can cause your marketing to backfire.

If you’re writing long-form storytelling like a blog series, magazine article, or book, you’re more likely to run into this problem than if you were just doing shorter posts. Of course, you’ve got to convey important messages, but how do you do that without becoming “preachy”? Simple: let the story naturally carry the message, not the other way around.

For example, the 1992 film “Medicine Man” highlighted the need to save the Amazon while keeping the main focus on the plot, which was the discovery of a possible cancer cure in the rainforest by an eccentric researcher played by Sean Connery. The interplay of personalities between Connery and Lorraine Bracco’s junior researcher role was the central source of drama. The impending destruction of the rainforest hovered in the background, casting a shadow over the action, and the audience felt the impact without being preached at by the writers. You can use a similar approach in your storytelling.

5. Put a Face to the Statistics

In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath establish that people don’t care about numbers, they care about individuals. Citing a research study in which participants were given two versions of a donation request letter – one relying heavily on statistics about child malnutrition in Africa, the other focusing a single starving girl named Rokia who lived in an area of Mali – the Heaths showed that people who read Rokia’s letter donated twice as much as those who simply read the numbers (Heath, Chip and Dan, Made to Stick, Page 166).

As an impact-driven business leader, the numbers and data may mean something to you, and they may represent real challenges and hardship, but to your donors and customers, they are often overwhelming and come across as “theoretical”. They are, in the end, facts and figures like any other, lacking persuasive power in and of themselves. However, if you can focus on how your company is making a difference for one real-life human being who is representative of your beneficiary market, then you’re more likely to move your audiences to action.

6. Let the Reader Fill in The Blanks

Sometimes, the best way to get an emotional response from your reader is to say little to nothing. Their imaginations will fill in any gaps in your storytelling. Horror writers use this to great effect because often when the reader doesn’t know what the monster looks like, they will imagine the most terrifying specter. They will scare themselves.

When discussing the challenge that your social enterprise aims to overcome, if you want to truly have the reader register the impact, consider using implication instead of description. For example, if your business has a give-back model that supports Central American refugees, you could imply some of the actual horrors that the families faced back home without actually mentioning them.

E.g. “Miguel had heard the stories of child separation at the border, but remembering the notes that had been left on his door late at night by the local militiamen, the way they’d somehow known the names of his children and where they went to school, he knew he’d much rather face what was ahead than what waited for them back home.”

7. End with a Positive Vision of Possibility

Finally, ask yourself this question: what will the world look like if my social enterprise is successful? Yes, this is a feel-good proposition, but it is also practical. In much the same way that human beings resist diets, but will aspire to healthy bodies, you can show create a powerful, positive incentive that will inspire your target markets.

In an age of outrage culture and sensational news media, we are inundated in everything that we don’t want the world to be and have. What people are craving more than anything in 2019 is something, maybe someone, to root for, not rail against. Make sure to show your audiences, through your storytelling, the world that you want to create and invite them to create it with you.

There are many more facets to storytelling, and as with anything, your craft will improve with time and practice. However, if you’d like to get a quick start on your learning journey, these seven tips will help you not only distinguish yourself in the marketplace, but also strengthen your ability to inspire your audiences, grow your business, and ultimately fulfill on your greater commitment to leave the world and its people in better shape than how you found them.

You Might Also Enjoy:

 

Learn more about Captivate: Become a StoryMarketer

If you want to learn how to tell your story, build the one, the foundational thing in your marketing that you can’t outsource, then the Captivate Program is for you!

“What I liked the most during Captivate was learning about the different parts of a story, and how there is a framework to use in every story. I could not always join the live sessions but listened to each module (sometimes from my car!), and with lifetime access to the course, I will definitely go back over it all and spend more time on it another time. To those who hesitate to join, I would say: if you are stuck telling your own story and personalizing your marketing, joining Captivate will definitely help. There is loads of content in it, lots of food for thought and practical guidance too, so it was worth the investment.”  ~Aoife Collins (student)

Should I Become a Cannabis Entrepreneur? (Advice From 5 Experts)

We reached out to leading cannabis mission-driven entrepreneurs and asked one question: Should you jump into the cannabis industry?

Here are their answers:

1. Yes! It’s a welcoming community of entrepreneurs.

“What I would tell any aspiring pot-preneurs is that the cannabis community is welcoming and encouraging, so dive right in. Get involved locally and stay updated on current laws and issues by joining your local NORML chapter and/or other cannabis-related organizations.

Go to events, meet people and network. Find ways to make a difference in your community and don’t be shy.”

(Antonio DeRose, Co-Founder & COO, Marijuana Fitness Nutrition)

2. Yes! There’s still room for new companies.

“The sky is the limit. There is so much room for new businesses and there is a good amount of competition as well. This fact is a leading point to how professional they need to be in this industry. Cannabis is a consumable product and supporters/fans need to continually purchase.”

(Johnny Welsh, Author of Weedgalized in Colorado: True Tales From The High Country)

3. Yes, take the risk, but it’s a lot of work.

“I would pass on a few pieces of advice: follow your heart and take the risk. You will never know the outcome of your efforts unless you actually follow through and do it.

If you have made it to the point in your life where you are aspiring to be an entrepreneur in the cannabis industry you must have a vision and the desire to create it, keep your vision clear at all times. Being a successful pot-preneur takes a lot of work, vision, and perseverance.”

(Garyn Angel, CEO of MagicalButter)

Related: How Vangst Built the Number One Cannabis Recruiting Platform From Scratch

4. Yes, legal cannabis is the place to be.

“I’d say we are fortunate to be in an industry with tremendous growth and opportunities for wealth creation and social/environmental impact. For those interested in social enterprise, legal cannabis is the place to be.

The field is still pretty wide open but it is no longer a secret subculture. The primary verticals of growing and processing are becoming more saturated but there are loads of opportunities for new innovation and ancillary verticals to make things better.

The pot industry has welcomed some great social enterprises that either struggled or just couldn’t gain traction in other more traditional industries. That is, folks that had a process, service, or technology that has dual or multi-industry application, apply it to the pot industry and use it as sort of an incubator to get funded and grow into a viable business, and maybe one day they could return to their ‘home’ industry and affect change the way they originally intended. Give it a try.”

(Steven Looi, White Sheep Corp. Director of Strategy and Origination)

5. Yes, but with caution.

“Cannabis businesses need to get past the initial euphoria of the “Green Rush” and settle in for the long haul. Recognizing that medical cannabis will be the long play with the highest ROI is still difficult for most business owners.

Consider that 20-30M Americans are stoners and studies have shown potential 1-2% growth. This is untapped, but capped, market. Soon it will be saturated and a major shakeout is coming.”

(Jordan Tishler, MD is a Harvard Physician, President/CEO of the Association of Cannabis Specialists)

Over 90 Actionable Pieces of Advice from Change Creator Magazine 2018

5 Reasons Why Online Traffic Should be a Priority for Your Coaching Business

9 Proven Signs That You’re Ready to Start Your Own Business

I was a mad scientist, head down in the lab building the brand Change Creator, my second business. But this time around, there was something different.

My first business was a record label—AlterImage Recordings—and I had a co-founder. This time, I was flying solo.

During the first year, I didn’t come out of the “lab” too much using cool tools like Facebook Live. At some point during year two, I created an awkward monologue video that did a quick review of the first year.

A key takeaway I shared was that you have to be a little crazy to pursue a business on your own. But it’s the good kind of crazy. Meaning, you must be obsessed with what you’re doing because it’s meaningful to you. This will keep your motivation up and help you persist through the ups and downs.

There is no sense in going on doing something you hate, just so you can go on doing something you hate.

If I knew what I would have to do in the first year, I would have said, “You’re nuts.”

Now, we have released 26 editions of Change Creator Magazine and have interviewed people like Richard Branson, Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington, Jay Shetty and so many more.  Why? Because I was obsessed and a little crazy.

Think you can take an idea and manifest into something real that actually is meaningful and impacts lives around the world?

Can you disrupt the norm and change the status-quo?

We all have the entrepreneurial fire in our belly, but is your fire lit?

Starting your own business is a very big undertaking, but at the same time, if you’re doing something meaningful, it’s exciting and fulfilling on many levels. You can earn good money, change people’s lives, create something from nothing, be your own boss and find true freedom.

Nine Indicators: How many define you?

Vulnerability

You have to be willing to put yourself out there in the world and have people look at you like your nuts. When you have a big idea or vision but little to show for it because you’re just starting, many people will think your ideas are a bit out there. Especially if they have never started a company themselves.

But, it’s absolutely essential today to be willing to tell your story if you want to build a sustainable advantage with your impact business.

Freedom

Being hungry for freedom—the power to do what you want when you want— is a great motivator. Nobody wants to wake up each day doing something they don’t like just to pay the bills. If you’re comfortable doing work as an employee from 9-5pm everyday, five days a week, then that’s okay, but starting a business is not for you.

Purpose

Do you crave more purpose in your life? Have you ever sat with your thoughts and asked yourself, “What will I be doing in 10 years, and is my current path making me the person I want to be?” What will be your legacy?

Those thoughts are what lit my fire. There was no way I was satisfied working for someone else doing something that gave me no sense of fulfillment until I was 65 years old. I wanted to build a lifestyle where I woke up each day pursuing a mission, not a job. Do you relate to this?

Today, my work is a reflection of who I am because I took a serious self-inventory to start from the inside out. There’s nothing better than waking up each day doing something that aligns with who you are.

Deep Frustration

When you open up Facebook 10 times a day—you know you do—and cruise the newsfeed, do you ever see news from around the world that frustrated the hell out of you?

For example, I cannot stand the incredible amount of plastic pollution or deforestation taking place in the world. Maybe you have a soft spot for animals and believe in stopping factory farm abuse. Or the fact that over two billion people around the world don’t even have access to a toilet. You get the idea.

That frustration is a huge driving force that empowers entrepreneurs who innovate solutions to problems. When you start to bring a solution to life that helps address a major challenge like those, it’s darn fulfilling.

Comfortable with Risk

This has to be called out even though you’re aware of it already. You might not have a lot of money. You might have major school debt from buying a diploma. No matter what your situation is, you must plan for risk and be comfortable with taking risk. You cannot grow yourself or a business without it. One day, you’ll need to pop your cherry by taking a calculated risk that just completely fails. You will then find out that the sun will still rise the next day, and you will move forward on your mission wiser than before.

For example, Milton Hershey went bankrupt several times trying to make Hershey chocolate work. After the first or even second time, most people would have been shattered and given up. But not Milton. Nobody, banks or family, would give him money again. He didn’t care, he created a new plan, and you all know his chocolate very well today.

During the first year of Change Creator, I made many mistakes and took big risks that cost me thousands of dollars. For example, hiring a public relations team too early and hiring the wrong marketing support. Or doing heavy paid marketing without truly having product market fit yet. Live. Learn. Move on. If your risk is calculated, you won’t lose your shirt.

Willing to Work Very Hard

Don’t fool yourself. It’s a sh@! load of work, especially if you are a solo founder. Speaking from experience on both ends—co-founder and solo founder—I can tell you there is a major difference in the workload.

Being a bootstrapper, I learned graphic design, web development, video development and all the necessary skills to speed up my process—and to avoid hiring as much as possible, at first. If you’re willing to learn new skills, wake up at 4am to work before your day job and spend at least half the weekend working, you might be ready to make the push.

Personally, when my startup was a side-hustle, I would wake up at 4am in the morning to give myself a few hours before I had to catch a train from Philadelphia to New York at 7:24am. I did that for at least five years. Now, with Change Creator as my sole work, I wake up everyday at 5:30am and work until about 3-4pm. On weekends I worked from 7am until about 12pm or 1pm. I still do today. But I spend the second half of those days with family, working out, or hiking. Living the other part of my life.

Remember, the number of hours doing work is not what matters, the type of work and quality of it does.

An important lesson and tip is to schedule your success. Being successful is more than just work. I talk about that in more depth on Influencive right here.

Financially Organized

Let’s keep this simple, you don’t have to be rich, but you need to know how to manage your money if you want to survive entrepreneurship. This means being organized and doing regular audits of your spending. Know where your money is going and what you can afford to spend. There is nothing more stressful and destructive than lack of financial management.

Around the first of each month, I review all my finances using a side-by-side view of the previous month and current month to see which revenue streams are growing and which are not. This includes an assessment of all established recurring expenses. You can ask me my total net-worth any time and I know the answer, you should too.

Skills

Aside from developing yourself into an authority in your field, you must remember that you are not an employee playing a single role when you start a business. You are playing every role. Passion is important, but having the appropriate skills to manage all the various aspects is important as well.

They can be learned or delegated. When you just start out, you probably don’t want to delegate too much because it costs money. Be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses. You likely have some learning to do.

I’ve had over 18 years of professional experience doing marketing, account management, or managing teams. But I had to take on learning new skills like graphic design, basic web development, and video development. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and Youtube has a video for everything.

If you want to know some of the key tools I recommend for bootstrapping, I share them here.

Unreasonable Leadership

Do you understand leadership? What makes a good leader and what is required? As CEO, you must have a vision and be capable of strategizing solutions for fulfilling the vision. Why unreasonable leadership? Because if you have a vision that is big, people will tell you you’re crazy. This is what people said about flying to the moon or creating automated chefs and cars. But the leaders were unreasonable and that is why progress happens.

George Brendard Shaw, known for radical rationalism, wrote novels and plays in the late 1800s and was known to use them as an outlet for attacking social hypocrisy. A famous quote by Shaw said,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

At some point, you will hire contractors and then full-time employees. They follow your lead, and you need to be ready to be at the helm and intelligently lead the charge. Tactics and strategy will change and pivot, but you must stick to your vision no matter how unreasonable it may seem to others.

Conclusion

Starting a new business could be the most exciting and rewarding experience of your life if your fire is lit and you’re ready to make the leap. There are many fears and factors that hold people back from even starting—said to be the toughest part of all. You just need to be in the right mindset to overcome the fears and be persistent.

In my humble opinion, we can all do it, and if you reviewed the 9 signs I shared above and feel that most or even all describe you, your fire is lit and you’re ready to go.

5 Expert Lessons From Dale Partridge For Turning Your Passion Into a Successful Business

Strategies For Building an Authentic and Lucrative Business with Michelle Ward (interview)

Interview with creative business coach, Michelle Ward

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Michelle Ward is fun, energetic and smart. She’s also a fighter who overcame breast cancer twice.

In this conversation, we dig into important lessons from her experience and what it takes to start building an authentic and lucrative business.

Michelle has been offering dream business guidance for creative women as The When I Grow Up Coach since 2008. You may have seen or heard her in New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, Etsy, Newsweek, Freelancers Union, USA Today, the Forbes Top 100 Websites for your Career List or 150+ other media outlets.

She’s the co-author of The Declaration of You, which was published by North Light Books, and the teacher of Create Your Dream Career and Ditch Your Day Job, which was watched by tens of thousands of people live on CreativeLive.

When she’s not coaching, teaching or speaking, she can be found building a fort for her little girl, sitcom-binging with her husband, or belting out show tunes.

Today, Michelle helps hundreds of people live there best life. She knows what it takes, has a lot of experience and a track record that shows it.

This interview will offer you a lot of little gold nuggets and a big boost in motivation.

Here’s quick video from Michelle…

You can also learn more at: whenigrowupcoach.com

How to Get the Right Clients with Marketing Funnels (Even as a Solopreneur!)

One of the scariest parts of launching a business of your own is the difficult process of securing a steady stream of loyal customers. For those of us who have grown up working in the corporate world, the clients we worked with were most likely drawn to the name recognition and long-term trajectory that many large businesses and conglomerates can offer. Individual entrepreneurs and small startup businesses, on the other hand, often face the obstacle of attracting clients who have never heard of them or what they have to offer. Here’s how to get the right clients with marketing funnels (even if you are a solopreneur).

Meet Michelle Evans: Marketing Funnel Guru

Michelle L. Evans worked for several years in the corporate world for companies such as Microsoft before launching her own business that focuses on helping coaches, experts, and online business owners attract enormous numbers of clients through implementing automated marketing funnels.

We recently sat down with Michelle to talk a little bit about the challenges she faced in leaving the corporate world and starting her own business venture, along with some recommendations for how marketing funnels can work to help entrepreneurs and new business owners build their client base. Today, Michelle is working with dozens of different clients, helping them take advantage of marketing funnels to grow their business.

Her success, however, didn’t necessarily come easily.

“I wanted my own business,” Michelle tells us, “but I didn’t have a clear vision of what that business would look like…and I felt like I needed to have millions of dollars [to start it up, when] I could barely pay my rent.”

After years of working for Microsoft, she came to understand that performing a bunch of random acts of marketing was not the most efficient strategy to gain clients. Her work with a diversity of clients at her corporate job helped her to understand the importance of having a concrete marketing strategy, and a solid understanding of who she is working with and what the client’s specific problem is.

Once she came to understand her client on a deeper level, she could devise specific strategies to help them solve their marketing problems. “I really wanted to do work that mattered to me,” Michelle relates. The challenge she faced was: “How do I take these skills I have and turn it into a business that actually matters?” After some tense moments at her corporate job, she realized that she had an abundance of relevant experience, skills, and knowledge, but felt trapped in the corporate world. The path towards starting her own business offers some unique insights into what helps and hinders this process of launching out on your own. Instead of spending months or years in planning, she decided to reach out to people who had recently left the corporate world to start a business of their own in order to understand the process of going from a corporate gig to doing your own thing.

This not only offered important insights but also helped her build her confidence. Secondly, she reached out to people in her network to let them know the specific skills she had and what she could offer them. The contacts that she had made through years of working her corporate job at Microsoft essentially allowed her to step right into contracts that more than covered her previous salary. “It made it much easier to make that transition…because I knew that people wanted to hire me,” Michelle mentions.

Once she officially launched her own business and found initial jobs and contracts through her personal network, she started to discover her own niche and passion. “I could do a lot of marketing things, but what I found is that there were certain projects that I loved,” Michelle tells us. She discovered that helping people discover and create a steady client base was not only her passion but also her unique gift.

“Every new business owner struggles at first with having a consistent flow of new sales coming through the door…and I love helping people figure that out because I struggled with that, too.”

You won’t want to miss this: 5 Tips for Gaining Traction in Your Small Business Today!

The Advantages of Working with Individuals

At first, Michelle thought that the competition from bigger agencies offering similar services to what she offered would cause her problems. She quickly discovered, however, that her clients were more than willing to hire individuals over bigger agencies because of the expertise that individuals bring to the table. Her clients mentioned that one of the benefits of working with individuals or smaller businesses is the personal connections that allow them to know exactly what they are getting when they sign on the dotted line. “They want you to come in as an expert, understand the landscape, and execute,” Michelle says of some of her bigger clients.

By hiring an individual expert, this allows them to get ahead of their competition. For entrepreneurs and new business owners, not being afraid to sell your unique skills and expertise is a great way to separate yourself from the vague and often standardized world of agencies. While the people in her network allowed her to get her business off the ground, it was also a limiting factor in the long run. Budgets get cut and projects run out, and she found herself on an income roller coaster.

Creating Marketing Funnels that Gets New Clients

She realized at this stage that “I can’t rely on people to throw me a bone [but rather,] need to get a process in place to bring in a steady stream of clients.” After a disappointing (and expensive) course that she took with a supposed mastermind who essentially recommended cold calling as many people as possible, she realized that what was lacking was a process to engage with her clients.

While cold calling might be a great strategy for extremely charismatic personalities, she went back to the logic of marketing funnels. After putting together a one-page PDF that explained what she had to offer and sending it out to several contacts, she was essentially sold out within three weeks. The process of warming up her audience and inviting them to learn more about what she had to offer set the stage for why her offer was a perfect fit for each specific client. Michelle believes that initially,

“one of the problems with my message was that I was way too broad. I was afraid of missing out on opportunities…and needed to funnel down to marketing funnels.”

Through the marketing funnel business approach that she developed, she realized that not all clients want to hear the same thing. As a business owner, you need to own the process of knowing your audience at a deep level. This gives you ownership of your clientele. Her business offers helpful exercises that help small business owners understand their audience and potential clientele. To help her clients dig deep into the minds of their potential clients, Michelle’s favorite question is: “If you had a magic wand and could make everything perfect, describe to me what this looks and feels like.” The answer to this question almost always leads to their absolute marketing goals. “For the business owner, understanding what is going on in your audience’s mind and…how you can solve what your clients´ problem is…that’s where the magic is,” Michelle believes.

The biggest mistakes people make with marketing funnels…

1. Getting bogged down with technology. One of the biggest mistakes that many people make with marketing funnels, according to Michelle, is that people get too bogged down in choosing the most important technology. While she personally uses Click Funnels, she also says that she allows her clients to choose whatever works best for them. “I’ve seen people struggle with tech,” Michelle tells us, “but [the best strategy is to] choose something that gets you out there and engaged with your clients.”

2. Your funnels are way too big. Another major setback that people encounter when they first start using marketing funnels, is that they start way too big. “If you have never done a funnel, a webinar funnel is not a good one to start with,” Michelle advises. “A webinar takes a lot of time to create. It can bury you. If you start small, funnels are like Legos…you can build one layer and then build another layer on top of it.” Instead of shooting for the moon from the get-go, she advises her clients to start small with simple strategies to help them bring people into their business.

When we see the success others have had with elaborate and complex marketing funnels, temptation to mimic those grandiose strategies inevitably arises. “Not only do we get eager wanting to make money,” Michelle says, “but we see people 10 years into the process and they make it look so easy.” When you’re eventually ready for a webinar, having the basic marketing funnel foundation in place will make it easy to simply plug it into something that is already functioning on your website.

How to create marketing funnels that work.

1. Start with the assets you already have. Michelle also advises that it is best to start with whatever assets you have. Finding the fastest way to get what you have in front of the eyes of potential clients to start testing what works best is much more preferable to a massive, six-month campaign that can leave you drained of energy and resources. As you gain experience and success, you can bring other people onto your team to delegate responsibilities for future marketing tunnel strategies.

2. Start small, get small wins first before expanding. Starting small allows companies to lay the foundation and allows potential clients to learn about them and what they have to offer. Simply rolling things out onto a website and waiting for the money to roll in is a surefire failure. “You need to put in the work to see the results on the other side,” Michelle believes. Often times, pre-launch phases and small freebies on your website are other helpful strategies to lay the foundation for future business growth.

Michelle wisely states that “you have to warm people up before you invite them. You have to invite them in and then set the stage…but once you set the stage, then you can make the offer. …Trying to make that offer without the pre-work is like pushing a boulder up a mountain.”

If you want to know more about how to grow your audience, here are some resources you might like:

17 Quick Tips to Get Audiences to Love You

Understanding Content Strategy for the Social Impact Space

How to Start Creating a Brand that Matters with Mona Amodeo

(This article was originally published in Change Creator magazine, authored by Tobias Roberts.)

You might also enjoy:

Fair Trade Fashion Startup Strategies and Lessons with Maureen Dunn Fetscher (interview)

Interview with Mata Traders founder, Maureen Dunn

Subscribe to this show on  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Maureen has a lot of great experience and insight into the fashion world and has done extensive travel around the world that has inspired her.

In this interview, we talk about ethical fair trade fashion, e-commerce and startup lessons.

The Mata Traders mission is to ‘fashion a better world’ by creating designs that celebrate a woman’s originality and empower her to use her dollar for a change. We merge uncommonly vibrant style with fair trade practices to make an impact on global poverty – bringing fair wages to artisans in India and Nepal.

They partner with several fair trade organizations in India and Nepal that train and employ hundreds of artisans in marginalized communities, with a focus on gender equality and empowering women.

At the cooperatives, their garments are individually stitched in small workshops, with one seamstress creating an entire garment rather than being part of a production line.

Many Mata styles are then carefully finished with hand embroidery in the women’s own homes. Their training starts with hand sewing, moving on to simple machine patterns, like bags, and eventually mastering the sewing machine. Showing leadership skills offers the women a chance to become head of their sewing group or get promoted to positions like trainer, quality checker, materials buyer, or assistant production manager. In a country as socially stratified as India, this type of social mobility in the workplace is a rarity.

You might also enjoy:

Laura Gassner Otting: Carve Your Own Path and Live Your Best Life (interview)

Interview with author and professional speaker, Laura Gassner Otting

Subscribe to this show on  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

This was a really fun conversation. Laura is full of energy and is not afraid to tell you like it is. On top of being an author and speaker, she’s a big-time straight shooter which I personally love. If you’re feeling stuck where you are she’s got advice that will help.

What if success doesn’t equal happiness? Many of us spend our lives pursuing a singular idea of success, one that was created for us by someone else. We give votes to those who shouldn’t even have voices and strive to go faster and faster even as we find ourselves falling further and further behind. We chase gold stars, we check all the boxes, we lean in – and yet we still feel incomplete. When we don’t define success in our own terms, finding our purpose and carving our own path becomes impossible. So how do you break the cycle so that you can live your best life?

The invigorating new book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life by confidence catalyst Laura helps you discover your consonance — how you align what you do with who you are — to achieve your limitless potential.

With lessons learned over 20 years of interviewing hundreds of nonprofit, corporate, and government leaders, all of whom were in the midst of massive career change, Gassner Otting helps readers discover their greatness and encourages them to forge ahead and become the best versions of themselves.

Get our FULL feature story with Laura in Issue 27 of Change Creator Magazine”

Take the Limitless Challenge: We can set up a personalized page for your audience to take an assessment and learn what is stopping them from becoming limitless, and what they can do about it.
http://www.LimitlessAssessment.com

You can learn more at https://lauragassnerotting.com

Watch Laura’s TEDx Talk for more inspiration!

You might also enjoy:

Marketing Overwhelm? We’ve Been There. 3 Tips to Help!

Investing in marketing is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as an entrepreneur. We all know that we have to market, but many of us are flabbergasted at the thought of it.

Marketing Overwhelm?

When it comes to marketing your business, there are not too many out there that hit paydirt right away. Many of us have to dig quite a few holes before we find that sweet spot.

Nowadays, the pressure to be on every social media outlet is huge. And, it would seem that everyone these days is putting out a ton of content every day, not to mention how many people have podcasts, free downloads, masterminds, webinars… it’s a lot.

Today, there are many gurus and experts in online marketing — all with their special sauce, secret tips, and more tactics than you can confidently execute.

Far too often we can get stuck in learning mode, or even testing mode in marketing before we even get to execution. There are as many right ways to implement a marketing plan online as there are stars in the sky. You could spend a lifetime learning the latest SEO trends, polishing up on email marketing, or listening to podcasts on Facebook strategies.

For one month, I want you to do something radical with your business and your marketing plan.

I want you to execute.

I want you to master something (and do it better than your competition).

I want you to tune out all the digital noise, online gurus, and marketing geniuses out there that may or may not have something to contribute.

Your business growth is up to you.

Too many social impact entrepreneurs leave marketing to someone else, in hope that they have the key to their success, but when it comes to our personal mission business, this isn’t just business; it’s personal.

You have taken on the enormous challenge of using business to solve a social problem, to change the way our world works, and to make a social impact on people’s lives. Your marketing takes on greater significance as the fate of the world rests on you accomplishing your mission and getting your message out there.

Be brave. You can do this.

If you are facing marketing overwhelm, no need to worry, here are 3 things you can start today to take control and discover what works best for you and your company.

1. Create a 30-day plan and stick to it.

We all know what a goal without a plan is, right? A wish. Don’t wish for your marketing to improve, or for your message to suddenly go viral. Sorry, not going to happen.

Craft a 30-day plan, that you can confidently execute and go for it. A lot can happen in 30-days if you are willing to do the work and take action. Take for example. The 30 wildly successful, online entrepreneurs that Russel Brunson, CEO of Clickfunnels reached out to for his “One Funnel Away Challenge”. He asked these 2 comma club entrepreneurs a simple question:

You suddenly lose all your money, along with your name and reputation, and only have your marketing know-how left. What would you do, from day 1 to day 30, to save yourself?

In his book 30 Days.com, he gives each of the 30 entrepreneurs’ strategies. And guess what? They are all vastly different. Some find success quickly with Facebook ads, some with partner outreach — the tactics are different, but what remains the same — the plan. Each and every successful marketing entrepreneur makes a plan. 30 days is enough. Make a new plan each day and execute.

Yes, some days are going to look like this (from Rhonda Swan, 3 Weeks to Webinar Launch from the book 30 Days.com):

Day 4: Execution Day

Things are starting to come together! The early stages are the most important…

  • Film YouTube videos (record all video topics).
  • Reach out to people and businesses (ground game).
  • Reach out to potential affiliates through email messenger (online game).

And, you should plan on having some days that look like this (from Stephen Larsen, Mid-Range Info-Product Launch from the book 30 Days.com):

Day 7

I’d rest and reflect today. Smile. Serve. Meditate. Envision my goal as if it had already happened.

How are you going to plan your 30 days? It’s up to you. Make them count, make them matter and execute. For more information on the book 30 day.com, sign up for The One Funnel Away Challenge!

2. Talk to your customers again.

We ask about marketing in almost every interview we do here at Change Creator. From Seth Godin (of course!) to Jay Shetty, we want to know how to get our messages out there.

Of course, there have been many answers, some tactical and some inspirational but one of the common pieces of advice we heard over and over: talk to your customers.

This isn’t something you can gloss over, or get to ‘later’ either.

Talking to your customers and finding out how they really feel about your brand, your product, and your mission is imperative to your success. Find ways to keep the dialogue open and welcome the negative responses. They will push you to grow and think of new ways to serve.

3. Master one social media channel first.

Last year Adam and I went to a digital media event in New York City. There, we listened to a marketing and strategy expert from CNN. In her 20-minute presentation, she outlined the many ‘touchpoints’ and outlets the CNN brand reaches out to in an intense bubble chart.

While the many outlets and reach was impressive, we have to remember that we are not CNN.

It can be tempting to create touchpoints in every new mode of communication and social media we can find, but this just doesn’t work.

Yes, there are tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite that make scheduling social media easy, just putting out posts isn’t really a strategy.

Before you take to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, What’s App, Snapchat, Kik… I could go on, master one social media channel.

How do I decide which social media outlet to ‘master’?

Think about your company and what you do. Who do you do it for? Again, this is why talking to your customers is key.

Where do they ‘hang out’ online the most? What are they there for?

Generally, Instagram is a great way to grow a fashion brand, lifestyle product, or creative company, while Facebook is where people go to distract themselves at work and dream about a new day!

Dig into the social media outlet you think you should target and commit to making this part of your consistent, 30-day plan.

Don’t assume ‘more’ is better either. Consistency is key. Knowing your audience is key and finding those messages that speak directly to them works best for social media.

After 30-days, you can reevaluate your choice and see if you want to expand to another channel, but I encourage you to master one first, especially if you are the only one on the social media marketing team.

Don’t Let Marketing Overwhelm Stop Your Impact

If you are one of the brave, the bold, the social impact entrepreneur, you’ve got a lot to do. Your mission is important and so is your message getting out there. Don’t just assume that your impact and product are enough to get you noticed. You’ll have to market your company at some point if you want to grow.

The good news: there are things you can do today to start. With these three actionable steps, you’ll be ahead of your competition. Keep at it. 

You might also like:

Understanding Content Strategy for the Social Impact Space: Victoria Fine

Why Storytelling is so Vital to Purpose-Driven Brands

Secrets to Building an Audience For Your Social Enterprise