*Resources mentioned during the episode*
The Outsiders Business Academy – A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course
Creating content that sells
Hello, hello, there we are back for another Ask Anna #askanna episode. Now this is where I answer a question from one of you lovely listeners from someone in my community from a workshop I’ve done from wherever the question appears in my life. Always looking out for questions. If you have a question for me, please ping me a message DM me, PM, me whatever on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, wherever we’re connected. You can also email me at podcast at one step outside.com. So just let me know have a question. And I can of course, answer it on the monthly podcast episode, I might even create a video or a workshop for you. So if you have the question, I’m sure I can guarantee you that someone else has it too. And even if they don’t, I’d be really super happy to answer it for you. So please, there are no stupid questions asked Anna podcast at onestepoutside.com Or any social channel, you want to message me?
And the question I have today is do I have to sell?
So this question came up recently asking, okay, and that was in a Facebook group, in fact that I’m a member of. So I get that, you know, we have to create good content. And so is it possible? Because I enjoy that part of it? And I can relate to this too? Is it possible just to create content, do this kind of attraction marketing, content marketing, brand building personal brand that I talk about? And I’ve always talked about? And then not sell? And my response was first of all, to of course, private, deeper, you know, what, what do you mean by selling? Do you mean, the tactic of actually having a sales call? Do you mean the kind of big, emotional load that comes with kind of the sleazy salesperson approach of feeling like you have to do all these telemarketing calls and cold emails and pitching and so on? Because that’s another thing? Or do you mean, the big picture selling? Like, can I literally just market, build my brand, teach, give stuff, and then people will organically come to me.
And so again, I can relate to this, because I’m such a fan, as I hope you know, and this is what we’re talking about, of creating valuable content, being completely genuine, you can’t give too much away, my mum always in the past said or you teach so much, you know, how can it work, you’re just giving everything free. And that’s, that’s not really the case. I don’t worry about that. Because people you know, can be in my community for months, they can go to all my free things and festival get an incredible amount of value, which I love, especially if they can’t afford to work with me beyond that capacity.
And inevitably, always, some of those people will see the value, they’ll understand that they Yes, can get a lot out of those free sessions, but nowhere near as much. And they won’t get the specific things they need in terms of tailored support and advice, accountability, actual coaching, by just watching the free stuff, right?
So for me, there’s no such thing as giving too much. It’s all about attraction, marketing, and so on. However, I certainly fall into this trap. And you may to and certainly most of my clients do, especially in the business accelerator, that we forget that yes, we do need to sell. And let me tell you what I mean by that, we cannot just first of all, post inspirational quotes and go, Hey, you know, life is for the living. And, like, for me, everything you’ve ever wanted is outside your comfort zone and blah, blah, blah, you know, all this stuff, right? We can’t only do the inspirational stuff, we also and this is a bit harder for me to accept can’t just teach.
This is where we maybe fall into especially those good girls and boys among us who have this more academic approach. You know, I really want to teach people the how piece of the puzzle, it’s very easy to fall into that, by the way, as an aside, again, in my so I did brand building and marketing at a big company Procter and Gamble, when I was promoted into a digital role, and I kind of headed up the digital team. My tendency was to really focus because I was also quite Junior on the execution on teaching the how, but I missed and I learned soon enough that I wasn’t missing the piece of the why right? Simon Sinek says the why start with why understanding envisioning the big picture, look at what competitors are doing, look where the market is going, look how we could transform what we’re doing, and engage with customers and so on. So I was focusing on that Albert, people should get that they should be doing this.
So here’s just how to do it and I was missing the bigger picture.
So a lot of us will fall into only teaching. So inspiring is not enough by itself teaching. Instructing is not enough by itself. Then we have the third piece which is inviting so this is what I’m going to call selling and if you’re if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll see that I have another acronym for you or another kind of bit of alliteration, inspire, instruct, invite, and of course I had educator had teach for the middle one, but I’ve gone for three eyes so inspire, instruct, invite, all three are needed to have a compelling content strategy. So yes, I am so much about teaching and being generous and giving value and engaging and yes, sharing inspiring stories and so on. But at some point, we have to go, Hey, I have this program, it cost this much do you want to join? By the way, I have this new course it’s, you know, five pillars, self directed. It’s for this kind of person. Here’s how you join. I have the accelerator program, it’s for people who are at this stage of the business who want to up level who want to have better work life integration, we do this many calls. Here’s how you register and join, right, this is what you get in this program. I have three spots available for one to one clients. I’ve got capacity now to take on one more web development project I can do or I’m available now. Or not available. Now. I am better. I’m available next month to take on a couple of new clients. If you’ve been following along in the community for a while, you know, is this the time Hey, book a call. So can you see the difference? It’s not me going out cold calling, spamming people buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. It’s not, you know, randomly or even you know, posting every day, certainly not posting every day saying, Hey, I’m a coach, this is what I do buy from me, hey, this is my academy. Here’s the link, hey, this is my accelerator buy from me, here’s a video on the incubator buy from me, that’s not what it is. So you really need the three things, you need the Inspire, you need the instruct, and you need the in light. So my question for you is where are you on the spectrum, if you’re just starting out, maybe you haven’t started creating content at all, in which case, you can really use these three categories to have a mix. And I don’t have a magic formula. It’s not like it’s an exact 33.333% of each one. But I’m sure you’ll find that you’re leaning into one more than another. So I have clients who and people in my community who, again, only start by posting all that inspirational stuff, life is short, which is lovely. But okay, so what? Why should I work with you and I don’t even know that you have something to offer. Right? All you’re doing is sharing that big picture message. I have other clients. And again, I’ve fallen into this trap who just teach, hey, this is how you do your own logo, hey, this is how you do your website. Great. But why should I work with you because you’ve just told me how to do it. And then of course, if you only do the sales piece, and that’s not good either. So I hope you can see the power of this triangle of inspiring people. This is my message. This is my big picture.
My why, for me, it’s the reimagining success escaping the nine to five, freedom, flexibility, fulfillment.
I live by the sea. I’ve got location independence, I can work just three days a week and I’m present with my kids. And this is incredible. I love my work. I’m in my iki guy and all this stuff right inspiring with that message instructing. This is your proprietary framework, and we’ll talk about this next month. These are my five pillars talking about my five L’s have a balanced life. My three eyes I just told you about now inspire, instruct, invite, hey, here’s how you build your personal brand. This is how you develop a content strategy, and so on and then invite I’ve just launched my new business academy one step outside.com forward slash course for more information. DM me book a call whatever, right so yes, you do have to sell in a nutshell. too long didn’t read TLDR love that acronym. But that doesn’t mean we’re doing the sleazy thing. So we need to reframe our mindset they then it doesn’t mean cold calling cold emails and so on. It means inviting now. This you know, without getting into too much detail applies for b2b business to business and b2c business to consumer. It certainly applies to individuals, right? Because we’re much more savvy these days in terms of we know that at the end of a webinar, you know, certain gurus are going to be suddenly saying, Hey, I haven’t taught you anything at all. But if you want to learn the actual answer the question that you signed up for then join my real expensive program. Or you know, you know that on a sales call, somebody’s going to try to sell to you. I know that if someone’s messaging me on LinkedIn, I can see their headline, oh, helping Coaches and Consultants get to seven figures blah, blah, blah, I know they’re gonna sell to me right away. So we know that we’re very savvy. So this is about authentic marketing.
It’s about ethical marketing.
It’s about just inviting opening up mentioning saying that giving the information and then you know, here’s the next step. It’s very soft. We’re coming from a place of abundance first of all, I’m not attached to whether you work with me or not, because if you choose not to it’s not the right time. I haven’t done a good enough job to demonstrate the value we’re not the right fit. Okay to Be transparent as ever, I do find it tough if someone says you know, we have a great call and then actually they go Oh, no, sorry. Well, they ghost you and then I think okay, what am I? What can I learn from this? What can I do differently next time? And yes, if you’ve got enough if you’ve got enough conversations and your calendar. If you’re in that rhythm of creating content, promoting it having conversations, you’ll find that you can become much less, a lot less attached more detached from, from the outcome, right. So really, you know, I have followed a really nice rhythm, we talked about the three P’s of content marketing couple of weeks ago, plan produced, promote, and I followed kind of a flow of introduce the topic on Monday, Wednesday is kind of more of a how teaching piece. And then when Friday is the call to action, so that’s quite a nice thing to try. You can do whatever days you want, inspire big picture, quote, Mission beliefs, value, introducing the topic on Monday, better teaching on the Wednesday, and then the Friday is inviting. And of course, you can mix that up. But I just find it helps to have kind of that structure. So you have the split Oh, by all means you can do a week or two of inspiring a week or two of instructing, educating, teaching, and then a week or two, okay, opening up and posting quite actively, almost like a launch kind of promo period, which could be more effective. In fact, that makes me think, Oh, should I try doing that instead? So the key piece here is to look at what you’re doing right now. Are you only sharing Oh, life is to be lived and look at these beautiful logos or whatever, right? You’re only inspiring people. This is really important. And hey, check out this amazing thing and blah, blah, blah, are you only teaching are you only selling which is unlikely, I think for most of you, but if that’s what you’re doing, obviously, that’s not good either. So the three eyes inspire, instruct, invite, have a look at the content you’re doing doing, do a bit of an audit, see where you could come up with new content for the ones where you have a gap. And if you come back to the first episode this month, where we were looking at how to stand out and cross market, I talked about really getting clear on your three E’s that time your experience, expertise, eccentricities, your value proposition, your elevator pitch, and so on. And that of course, can feed into the three eyes here as well so inspiring, with your mission with your values and so on. Using your experience and expertise to instruct to teach and then inviting into your ecosystem to buy the way it’s not always to buy something right. It’s to download something, book a call, watch a free session, whatever, inspire, instruct, invite. I hope that’s useful. I’ll see you next week.
WORK WITH ANNA
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A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course
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The Outsiders Business Academy
A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5.
