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What you’ll learn in this episode:
There is a lot of advice out there on how to build and maintain a successful business.
A lot of that advice has to do with having “a special something” or “a magic bullet” to have a successful business.
Spoiler alert: there is no silver bullet.
Today, I’m going to be giving you the five things that you need in order to build a successful business. Combining these five things will lead to greater success, more customers, and more money.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- Without an audience, you’re not going to sell anything.
- You will need a plan to find the people that will make up your audience.
- Once you find people, you need to attract them to your offer. It needs to be magnetic.
- A great idea doesn’t sell because it’s a great idea. It sells because you had a sales plan.
- Success requires a strong mindset.
Mentioned in this episode:
support@jessicamillercoaching.com
Work/Connect with me:
Consults That Convert FREE Training
Business and Rejuvenation Retreat
[00:59] Jessica: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this week’s episode of the Practical Mindset Podcast. I’m excited to have you all here, and to welcome all the new listeners to the show. Love that our community is growing and reaching new people. Today, I want to talk to you about what it takes to build a successful business.
[01:17] I’ve been seeing a troubling trend in the business coaching industry that I wanted to address. I’ve been hearing the advice that in order to be successful, you need a special something, or one thing, one silver bullet, that will make your business a success. This type of messaging can not only be misleading and one-sided, but it has people spending all of their time running around, looking for the magic bullet, this one thing that’s going to solve all their problems and propel their business to success and then to stardom.
[01:45] Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no silver bullet. There’s not. There is no magic ingredient or thing that’s going to propel you to success. In my experience, and after coaching many, many clients, I have seen that success is actually achieved by a combination of the following things, moving in unison, and sprinkled with hard work and diligence, that create success. Those things are: Having an audience, developing a strong marketing plan, creating a magnetic offer, mapping out a sales plan, and fostering a success mindset. Let’s dive into each of these five pieces today, and how to create a successful business.
[02:26] When we all start out, we think that our passion and our desire is going to carry us, and in a sense, it really does. We have so much ambition, positivity, and momentum, which is crucial to get your business off the ground. We run out of the gate, bright-eyed and ready to go, and then we quickly realize that, although we’re shouting from the rooftops with glee, if there’s no one to hear us, we will not be able to make any headway, never mind any money in our business, and thus, the first thing we need to do is find our audience. We need to find our people, the people who will not only listen to what we have to say, but that need what we have to offer, and have the problem that we’re trying to solve. In building a successful business, you need an audience, number one.
[03:10] Number one, you need an audience. Without an audience, and without building an audience, you will not have the people or the customers you need to maintain a thriving business. So, the first thing you need to do, out of the gate, is to go out, and what I say to my clients is, “you’re going to collect people that you need to help.” You can do this in a variety of ways, whether it’s on social media, via an email list, through networking, guest speaking, whatever, but you just need to make it happen. It doesn’t matter so much how you do it. The important thing is that you build a following or an audience that you can reach consistently. After that, you have to come up with a plan to market to them, which brings me to number two – a marketing plan.
[03:59] You need to develop a plan to reach these people. How are you going to stay in front of your audience? How are you going to be top of mind for them? You need to figure out where they’re all hanging out and what they care about so you can develop a strong and consistent plan to be visible in front of your audience. This includes getting your brand on point, and your messaging. Marketing can be very simple, but it needs to be sophisticated, cohesive, and consistent to be effective. There are all types of ways you can market to people – via your email list, paid advertising, on social media, going on the speaking circuit, partnership, you name it, there is an endless number of ways to market and, depending on your business and your product, some might work better or worse than others. Most importantly, you have to develop a strong plan to get in front of your audience of potential customers.
[04:51] The third thing is creating your magnetic offer. Everybody listening to this podcast knows how I feel about offers. I can’t stress enough how crucial it is that you have an offer that is compelling and magnetic to your audience. This is so important that in my 10K accelerator program, we spent an entire month right up front getting crystal clear on what your offer is so that every person in that group has a complete clarity around what they’re offering and why it is irresistible. Over and over, people come to me and share with me that their business is struggling, that they’re not making any money, or their cashflow is inconsistent, or that no one is signing up for consult calls, and they tell me all the things they think that is driving this – their price, their network, their social media account, you name it. I am here to tell you that 99% of the time, it is none of these things. It is their offer. It’s valuable or compelling, or not. If you don’t have something that is irresistible to your audience, that’s clear enough, that they can understand it so they can buy it, and it’s a value to them, and this is the key, you will struggle in your business to make money. The cornerstone of all thriving businesses is a magnetic offer. Always. It’s the solution to the problem that someone has. How do you know if you have a magnetic offer? One way – people are buying it, and people buy it if they find it valuable.
[06:32] I want to share with you a funny story about my own business. No one is immune to needing magnetic offers. Not even me. Back before I became Jessica Miller coaching, I had a coaching business called Brand New You. I thought there was this incredible idea that I had, called the Brand New You Power Shot, and what it was, was that I had this belief that people were struggling to fit in the things in their business that were important, and also manage that with their life, so I had this idea that most of my audience, who were driven, and they took care of themselves, and they believed that they were the most important asset in their business, so they would be exercising in the morning and doing different things, that what they would really like was to get coaching while they were exercising. I mean, doesn’t that sound amazing? You could be on the treadmill or an elliptical and you could be moving, and you could get coaching, and you can ask your questions. I can’t tell you how many of my family members and loved ones I shared this with, and we all thought it was an amazing idea, so I put it together. I went into Eventbrite at that time, and I put it together, and I was so excited about it, and I decided I’m going to make this really accessible for people, it’s going to be $10, and people are going to come in droves. It’s going to be so inexpensive, the price is so low, and I’m going to put it out there, and everyone is going to love it, and they’re all going to come, and they’re all going to buy it, it’s going to be amazing, we’re going to get to exercise, and do our coaching. Guess how many people bought this offer. Exactly zero people. I can’t tell you how many times I have told people this story.
[08:12] Here’s the thing – they didn’t not buy this offer because of the price or because of my coaching, or because of the business that I had. They didn’t buy it because it wasn’t valuable to them. They didn’t care about it. They didn’t have a problem of exercising and coaching, and having those things interfere with each other, so when it came to putting this offer out there, even at $10, nobody wanted it, and the most important thing that I did with this offer that sold $0.00, is I didn’t make it mean anything about me. I went back, I did my due diligence, I looked at my audience, I really scrutinized this offer, and I realized that this was not a magnetic offer. So, what did I do? I totally scrapped it and I moved on, and I created other offers that are more tailored to my audience, and are much more valuable, and they are actually much more expensive. So, it is not about your pricing. It’s not about your coaching. It’s not about your business. Your offer needs to be magnetic for people to buy it, and you need to understand your audience and where they are in the sales process in order to make sure those things match up, which brings me to the fourth thing, is that you need a sales plan and a process.
[09:39] Contrary to popular belief, you don’t just throw your great idea out there, even if it’s great. Sometimes, it’s not, and have it just fly off the shelf. It takes planning and intention to move a customer through the sales cycle so that they end up actually buying your product in the end. Sales funnels are a specific thing designed to get your potential clients to buy, and you need one in order to get your client to buy your product. Sales is also a skill and it’s something that can be developed overtime. Second only to boring offers, sales is another other huge area where I see people struggle. They tell themselves all sorts of stories about what sales is, how bad they are at it, how much they hate it, how much they don’t need it. I’m here to tell you that you cannot make any money without selling your offer. You need to know where your customer is at, how they’re thinking and feeling, and how to communicate with them about their problem, and your solution, in order to move them through the cycle. Without a plan on how to do this consistently, you will not make any money, or you will not make consistent money in your business.
[10:43] Last, but certainly not least, is that you need a strong mindset for success. I’ve said it over and over on this podcast, but success starts in your mind. It starts with how you show up and what you think about you, your business, and your ultimate success. You could have all the pieces of your business lining up, great offer, strong market, 10,000 followers, email list. Does this sound familiar to any of you? If your belief and your willingness to work through the hurdles you encounter in your business, and we all encounter it, it is unavoidable. If it is not airtight, all of your doubts, insecurities, and limiting beliefs will seep right in through the cracks. A success mindset is not something you wake up with. It doesn’t find you and no one hands it to you. It’s something you commit to, and recommit to every single day, and it’s something that grows and gains momentum the more you give it time, attention, and care. It is something that is created by the people who put in the time to foster it, and the great news is that it’s available to everyone. Each and every one of you listening to this podcast can develop a success mindset. You just have to decide, today, that you’re going to commit to it, and then you have to get clear about what you want and put the pieces in place to help get you there, both in the people that you surround yourself with, the support that you get, and the behaviors you show up with every single day.
[12:16] That’s not just true of a success mindset. That’s true of any of the things we’ve listed here today. Each and every one of you is capable of creating a successful business of your dreams. You don’t need to know how to do every one of these things right off the bat, but you do need to have them in place, and to find the help you need to construct each of them, whether it’s researching them or reading books about it, or hiring a coach to help you, you are all capable of making it happen, and it is not one shiny bullet at a time. It’s not. It is a combination of these five things, moving together in harmony, that make up a strong and thriving business, and it is that willingness to go all-in and go after that, and create that infrastructure that helps to allow your business to move with your audience, to move with you, and to move with where the market is going.
[13:13] To recap, the five things you need for a successful business are: number one, an audience; number two, a strong marketing plan; number three, a magnetic offer; number four, a sales process; number 5, a success mindset. Now, I want you to go, after you listen to this podcast, and I want you to do the following things. Number one, I want you to audit your business to see if you have all five of these pieces in place. Number two, I want you to ask yourself what’s working and what isn’t in each of these areas, and number three, I want you to identify one thing you can do for all five of these pieces that we listed above that will move you forward. Building a business is so much easier when you have a solid foundation in place, and these five pieces that we spoke about today are the solid foundation you need to run your business, not only in the short-term, but that will provide for you to grow and to have success in the long-term.
[14:15] As always, we want to hear from you, so please shoot us a quick message at support@jessicamillercoaching.com and let us know what you’ve been discovering about your business and how you’re going to take what you’ve learned today to make your business even stronger and more sustainable as a result. See you all next week.
[14:36] If you enjoyed this episode and want to dial up your impact and success in your business in a practical way, and are needing help on converting interested clients to paying customers, please go check out the consults that convert workbook at my website jessicamillercoaching.com. You can just put in your information and download it right away, and take making consults, that we sometimes have a lot of resistance around, and we think we have to get people to do something or buy something, to something that you actually look forward to, and dare I say, is actually fun. Until next week.
See y’all then
