Hey there! Glad you are listening in. Today, I'm diving into the 5 core areas of focus that are essential for any business looking to achieve success. By building a strong brand, offering a compelling product or service, effectively generating leads, executing a sound marketing strategy, and implementing effective systems, any business can set itself up for success.

These 5 core areas are all interrelated. Just like every other topic I dive into here on FEMnation, it's not what you think "should" be done...it's what these 5 represent and how they contribute to the overall potential for success in your business.

Tune in to hear my thoughts on how they play a part in your success.

 

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Episode transcript:

Welcome back FEM Nation. Let's dive into the five areas that you need to make sure that you're keeping an eye on as you grow your business, your online coaching business, or even a service-based business or any business really. There are five pillars, five areas that I want you to consider and to write down. So if you're a pen and paper person, let's get that pen and paper out and let's go ahead and write these five areas down. I'm going to dive into them a little bit and talk about what it looks like on a very small quiet scale and a very large, huge scale. They are branding your offer, your program lead, generating, marketing and systems. Now, if you're just starting out as a coach and you are working diligently to build your program, to make a difference in people's lives, to help them somehow with the service-based business or to teach them and lead them somehow in your coaching business, those five areas are pivotal, pivotal for every single one of us.

(01:20):

Now, let's talk about brand. Your brand is you. Your business has a brand, but for the majority of us, until we hit seven, eight figures, we will be the face of our brand whether we want to be or not. We will be the face of our brand. So as you embrace being the face of your brand, that means you're going to have to publicly talk about it. That's marketing. You're going to have to reach out to have conversations with people and invite them into your world. Lead generating you're eventually going to scale past being the operator of your business, not systems, and in order to have a business, you have to have an offer or program. Either way, it generates revenue and for us to be in business, we have to generate revenue. It, it's just is what it is. We're not going to talk about pricing of those offers or programs, we're just going to leave that for another conversation, but being the brand, your business's brand is you. So whether that's colors or templates or beautiful fonts or how your website's even designed or if you even have a website, the way you move about this world is your brand, the way you communicate conversations that you have, the people that you interact with when you meet others, when you have conversations, when you talk, you are representing your brand at all times.

(03:12):

When I go to the grocery store, here's, here's a funny example. When I go to the grocery store and I wear a pair of gray joggers, I know though going out there that I may not be wearing a professional outfit, but I'm still representing my brand and I'm still showing up, and as long as I'm okay with being in public knowing that I am still representing my brand, is my brand okay wearing a pair of gray joggers sometimes? Is my brand going to be okay with not having a perfected website or not having the right colors that I want yet for my mood board, for my business or my branding assets is my brand if my hair is up in a messy bun as it is in this recording, is it okay? It is because right now in this world, in the moment in time that we find ourselves in, people just want real, how you greet them, how you converse with them, how you interact with them, whether it's in depth or it's in passing, that's more important to your brand than what you wear, what you drive, where you live, or what any of those other aesthetics look like.

(04:45):

Will there be a day where you are polished and image perfect in your mind? Sure, probably so there's a place in time for it. A branding shoot, for instance, I'm not going to put pictures of me and gray joggers on my website. That's a professional branding imagery that I want to use there for what I do, but it's still okay even with my branding to be seen in public with a pair of great joggers every now and then. That's okay, and I'm okay with that. I'm confident in all of my other branding assets doing what they need to do as I create them. Over time. I did not create all of my branding assets or my colors or my website or my social media or my program visuals for that matter. I didn't create all of them overnight. They took time and as I was continuing to move in this space, I just upgraded them.

(05:53):

What do I want it to look like? But more importantly, why do I want them them to look that way? Your brand is a representation of you. Your brand is who you are at. Its very at your very core. More importantly than what you are wearing or what you are driving or where you live or what colors you use or templates, your opt-in is your brand stems from who you are as a person and if you have a heart of gold, your gray joggers aren't going to matter. How you show up everywhere is going to be the culmination of your brand and let's talk about your offer, your program, what you have to or what you're creating, what skills or what opportunity leading teaching opportunity you have for others. It's very, very important to start picking away at what it looks like on your offer.

(07:07):

If you're in business, you have to be in business and you have to offer something somewhere, and it cannot always be free. In fact, if you're an early stage business, you need to be asking for people to invest and trust you at whatever price point it is, and there is a time and place to learn the value of what it is you bring to the table and early on, you may not know the value necessarily in the moment of the transformation that you bring people through or the service that you provide. You may not know what the value is, so you may not price it according to what it could be or what it should be. You may not know. You may actually not know the worth that you bring to the table and the value of your offer. That's something that has to be worked on as well.

(08:10):

So when you go to create or you are working on creating or you have created a service or an offer or a program or anything that is going to have a financial exchange because of course we are in business, that's a progression too. You may start at a low ticket offer. That's okay, nothing wrong with it, but it's not going to be able to pay the bills as you see fit, and you will find that out in the long run if you do not have the volume or the audience to do so. So it's better to build the full transformation as something that you can exchange at a different price point than maybe it should be in the future, but you are able to start testing it out, but also able to be able to make it make sense for your business. Think in the terms of a business owner. Think in the terms of what it looks like in order to ditch that nine to five or move in a scalable fashion for your business. Your offers are that and you can create many different offers. What you create is less important than knowing what the main transformation is, the main offer from that, which everything comes from.

(09:36):

Understanding what that looks like, know, knowing what that looks like and bringing that offer to the table, bringing that offer to the table, asking, telling, owning that offer like it is the next best thing in the world. It's the newest revelation out there because it probably is. You may not see it that way yet, but that's where your impact lies is in your offer because that's where you actually have the transaction of making a difference of transforming people's lives. You cannot continue to do it for free. You cannot continue to do it for low ticket. You cannot continue to do it for a strategy that sounds good for someone else. You have to know what that is. You have to test it, you have to work with it, you have to see, but ultimately the transformation in your offer is one transformation. You just take different pieces and variables of that transformation for the other pieces and variables of your offers. Get good at knowing what the main shift, the main impact is that you bring to the world.

(11:03):

Let's talk about lead generation. We have a beautiful time when this is recorded as social media is an amazing opportunity, has been for a few years now and we'll continue to be for the foreseeable future, barring some catastrophic change. We never know what the future holds, but lead generation is connecting. It is finding those people. It is finding the people that seek the transformation that your offer delivers. It is generating leads, yes, but not in the sense of getting them to a sales call or getting them to your offer or trying to close a deal.

(11:56):

That's not what lead generation is. Lead generation is showing up and connecting with people and bringing them into your world in various forms. The most common and easily accessible is social media, but lead generation is making that connection to current short term in the moment or long term in the future. Potential clients. That's where you are sifting through to find people that are looking for the transformation that you can provide. So think of lead generation as many elements, many ways to do it. There are many ways that are being taught, many strategies, many opportunities, many possibilities to generate leads doesn't always mean you get them to opt in and give you their email. Think past that. Think forward and think outside the box. When it comes to lead generating test, new ways to do it. If it's being taught right now, go further. Do better.

(13:10):

Test the water for something else, something newer, something more edgy. It's not yet being done. Dare to lead, dare to be a front runner, dare to do it different, but lead generating is part of your brand because if you are not your brand, then people don't know who. If you're leading them and leading, even if you're generating leads is still leading, you're a leader, show up that way. Show up intentionally. Show up to lead them. Whether you decide to have them opt in with an email or opt in to a program or an offer or even many of the various forms out there, a challenge or a workshop or a masterclass, it's all lead generation, but just like branding is you at all times. Lead generation comes from you being you at all times. So let go of the technical aspect of what it means, what it's being taught to lead gen and just show up.

(14:33):

Start simply by showing up publicly on social media. I know so many business owners and amazing coaches that aren't even showing up in the most free element to generate the conversation, to generate leads, to lead people in direction, to share their truth, to tell people what they know, what they've experienced. All of that of that comes to lead generating and then that moves us right into marketing. Marketing is simply the way of communicating to those leads, to those potential people in your audience, who you are, what you stand for, and how you offer or who you are, even back that up, who you are and the transformation you can take them through. Marketing is changing the narrative by telling them what's available. You have to show up as you, the brand. You have to have a direction for them to take to get the transformation they are seeking, whether it's from you or not from you in the moment, but maybe in the future.

(15:52):

You have to market yourself to lead Jen. You have to show people who you are and in this creator economy that we find ourselves in the moment of this recording, it's easy to get lost in the crazy awesome ways that the apps and platforms and all of the places that we can show up to this world and touch many lives further than just our local or regional area. Make it simple. We don't have to follow an algorithm. We don't have to jump on the latest trends. We don't have to do all the pieces of marketing that somebody may tell us is necessary. Marketing is simply saying what's available, discussing it, telling people about it, giving them an opportunity to say yes, that's me. I want that transformation. If you do not say that you have an offer available, whether you have an audience or not, if you do not say you have an offer or program available to take them through a transformation, then you can't bring people into your business to work with you. That's simply marketing. Marketing can be so simple. The whole value ladder that the ascension model, the teachings of this time will have us going through so many strategic steps to do things. Make it simple, turn that around and bring that back into an opportunity to not overwhelm yourself with the steps or the processes or the strategies or whatever it may be that we think we've got to get done in order to solidify that we've got a business.

(17:48):

Your business is a transformation no matter what it is. It transforms something for someone, but you have to market that. You have to tell about it. Your content should be leading towards that unless you just want to get paid to put reels out there, but that's a competitive world. It takes a lot. Not that it can't be done and not that that's not for you, but if you have a program or an offer that you want to take people through a transformation, you have to mark, get you, you have to talk about it. You can't do it any other way.

(18:32):

It's simple. Allow it to be simple, and if you are someone in this moment that this is resonating, like it is hard and overwhelming and there's a lot, give yourself a moment to look and say, what is absolutely necessary for me to continue to move forward right now today? What is absolutely necessary for me to continue to move my business forward in this next week, in this next month? And where do I want to be in a year? Strive for those goals, but you have to remember that you need to show up. You have to dare to be rejected. You also have to dare to be bold. You have to say your truth.

(19:17):

You have to build your audience consistently over time, and you have to have an offer and then when you're talking about it, it's marketing. This right here could be called a form of marketing. Even if I don't pitch something, it's still marketing. It's still me and my brand, and it's still me generating an opportunity for people to come into my world bringing in leads. It's still, I have an offer. I have a program. I've done many programs and many offers, but the one thing that sets me apart from others, not all, but others, is that I will say what that offer is. I will with integrity, with intention, and with complete clarity, tell the world I have this transformation for this investment because I am in business and I have to be in business. Otherwise, it's a hobby and there's nothing wrong with hobbies, but this is my chosen path to generate revenue, and so I have to talk about it. I have to ride about it, I have to share about it. I have to put it out there. Not all the time, I'm still me. I'm still human. I am. I still want to give value even if it doesn't have a financial transaction, but I also choose to make that simple.

(20:50):

So you do need to market. You do need to give a call to action. You do need to invite people. That is marketing. We are all somehow marketing ourselves and systems. Let's go with systems last. Systems are a funny little beast because our logical brain and we all carry some form of logic, whether we're more creative and less analytical or we're an more analytical and less creative. We all have our own struggles inside of this business world, but systems have a place and time. You don't need all of them at any given moment. Systems are the thing that build on itself. When you get to the point of needing a thing, there will be a system for it. When you get to the point that you're repurposing content for your marketing and for the various channels you choose to show up in this world and establish yourself as a brand, you build a system around it.

(21:55):

Systems are designed for scalability. Systems are not here for us to put together before we've done the brand offers Legion and marketing. We need to do those first, and they are somewhat in a progressive order, and I put systems last because it's the last thing that we need to work on, but it's most commonly sold to us as a thing that we have missing. What's missing most before systems you understanding or anyone? Not necessarily you. Maybe you got it nailed. I don't know who's listening, but you understanding the transformation. You take people through you knowing unequivocally that that transformation is possible and you offering it for a financial transaction.

(22:58):

Then from there, you can build out, you can scale, you can create systems, you can evolve, but it stems from understanding the transformation that you bring to the world at your offer. So if you aren't a hundred percent clear, you have not tested that, you've not taken people through even a fraction of it, you have no business building systems. Until you've done that, then go back to your offer. Go back to your program. If you are working on a system and yet you aren't even showing up in the world yet sharing your truth, go back to the lead gen. And if you are not even showing up in this world at all yet, you don't even need to worry about a system, go back to the brand, establish you dare to be bold.

(23:58):

Those are the five pieces, five very, very, very important pieces, and yes, those are the pillars that I work with when I work with clients. Yes, those are the areas we cover, and most of the time, most of the time, the shift and the change comes about when we dive into the offer and understanding what that is simultaneously with brand and lead gen, audience building, when we bring it, then we circle in the marketing messaging. But the marketing messaging comes about from understanding the transformation. Can't talk about shifting and changing lives if we're not sure how that transformation happens. So don't worry about systems, don't worry about marketing, don't worry about lead gen. Don't worry about offers. If you don't have your brand, if you're not showing up already, even if you feel you're going to look at it in the future and feel like it's a little cringey, show up. Create that transformation. Take people through it, build an audience. It's so free guys. It's easy to do it. Start talking about your truth and then scale, but more importantly, I want to close with this always and forever. Keep moving forward. That will change the game for your business.