One of the things I love about small town businesses is that they can just scotch tape a sign to the window when they shut down for a break. “Gone fishing… See you tomorrow.” Or “Picking up the kids from school… back in 15 minutes.”

This is my “gone fishing” post.

Last week I found out that I am soon to begin treatment for what is presumed to be ovarian cancer (presumed because the final pathology will happen during surgery). Thanks to oncologists who are utterly devoted to helping women conquer something that sneaks up with virtually no warning, I’ll say goodbye to all non-essential organs, be “debulked” of as many abnormal growths as possible, and (hopefully) soaked with some radical heated chemo to slay the micro dragons that have set up camp in my body’s core. I’m making friends with more chemo for however long it takes. As my doc said, “Surgery doesn’t cure this; chemo can.”

Can I believe this is happening? No. Just no. But here’s what I do believe with my true core: healing is possible.

Deciding to hang the gone fishing sign here while I recover from the surgery and find some rhythm with the chemo process has been really hard. Grief. Anger. Frustration. I have worked hard – and with great joy – over the last few years to build communities and projects like Courage Studio that I love. My business model has been humming.

I had just gotten my micro-biz airplane to the right altitude for me, and things were cruising. Now there is a wild terrorist on board and I need to make an emergency landing. My intention now is simply to land this plane as gracefully as possible. Rest is what optimally leads to healing, and rest is what I shall do.

If you would like to go fishing with me, you can follow my progress toward healing at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lauriefoley.

In my family we like to leave a radio playing in the house when we’re gone for a while. “Take Me to the River” is the first “gone fishing” song the radio will be playing for this trip because everything is better with Al Green.

What are you selling?

Have you ever really asked yourself that question? You might think that you know the answer to it very quickly: coaching, consulting, graphic design, writing services, etc. But those answers are “what” you do and actually have nothing to do with what you should be selling.

The question of what you are selling starts with “what would people like to buy?” because without buyers you aren’t exactly selling anything. This may surprise you, but people are not very interested in buying coaching or graphic design or any other services. They are, however, thrilled to pay for the results that they get when your service meets a need and satisfies a desire.

People buy results. It’s essential that you sell (and market!) results. Marketing the process or the “how” does not speak directly to the results that people get from working with you.

If you’re like most service providers, then you have been probably been marketing your process and not your results. It’s natural for newer business owners because they are quite enmeshed in learning and mastering the process. So let’s start from there and use mind mapping to find offers that will spur sales. The steps below will show you how this mind map was created:

Step 1: What process or service are you selling?
Suppose the answer is coaching. Write “coaching” in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry about what kind of coaching or any other details yet.

Step 2: Why would someone want your service?
Draw a set of lines coming out from the word coaching in the middle of the page and at the end of each line right a few words about why they would want coaching. For example, if you are a weight loss coach, you might write “lose weight,” “feel better,” “be healthier,” or “look better.”

Step 3: Why would someone want those results?
Draw lines from the node and write tangible reasons that your client would want the result in that note. It’s important that you create specific, measurable reasons here – not more concepts. For example, for “look better,” you could write “to attract a partner” and “to find a better job” but not “be more confident.” That’s not specific and tangible so if that’s a goal state, it needs to hang off the main process node.

Step 4: How will your client know when she has achieved this goal?
Drill down again on a certain node and create evidence that the goal is being achieved. Again, be very specific here. No bit of evidence is too small.

Step 5: What offers are inspired by the edges of your mind map?
It’s at these evidence nodes that you can begin to create specific offers.

Imagine two offers from a weight loss coach:

a) Three months of weekly coaching to help you uncover your issues with food.

Or, based on what we learned in the mind map:

b) “Date Your Way Thin”: A six-step program to help you find love and lose weight at the same time.

Which do you think more people will buy?

Let’s do it again for a graphic designer. This time, just peek at the mind map:

From this you could contrast a traditional offer like “Business cards, rush service available” to “Three Day Dazzling Business Cards, Guaranteed.”

In these examples, I drilled down on one path at a time but I recommend that you sample multiple paths and notice what would feel fun to offer and appealing to your clients as well. You might not be excited about offering three-day business cards but you might be thrilled to work your clients to create “Confident First-Time Websites.”

Evidence-based offers are the hot sauce for creating spicy sales. Next time you get the feeling that people don’t understand what you’re selling, revisit this exercise to drill down for offers that are sure to attract the attention that your services deserve.

You’ve been working on it for months. You’ve been writing, sweating, recording, transcribing, formatting, building sales pages, creating autoresponders, testing it all out, and wrestling myriad other technologies. You have probably shed a few tears. You’ve been counting down to launch day.

Like the human cannonball, you load all that you’ve got into the mechanics of your launch and you light the fuse.

KA-BOOM! You are shot from the cannon, flying through the air, exhilarated, and thrilled that you have shipped. Your very dear thing is available to the world.

And then…. fzzzzzt….. Crickets. Nothing. One or two people bought it. Or, Lawd-help-me, no one bought it.

What happened? What went wrong? IT WAS A GIANT CANNON, wasn’t it?!

Well, yes. But only to you.

To the rest of the world, it was a snap of a twig or a faint pop-gun. Or maybe someone just blowing bubbles with gum.

We live in a very, very noisy world. What sounds like a cannon to you – your cannon – simply isn’t a cannon to everyone else.

So what happens now, after your cannon is shot but no one turned to look?

Truth: most people get discouraged and even sad after a launch. Understandably so. All of that energy is draining. A post-launch letdown feeling is totally normal. Be gentle with yourself knowing that an exhausting or disappointing launch can be turned around into future success.

What can we learn from a launch that is a fizzle? Let’s go back to the circus and the human cannonball.

1. The circus tells people to expect the human cannonball long before they arrive.
The human cannonball act is a central feature, even a peak moment, of the performance. Circus goers expect the boom. How can you get the word out in advance that people can expect a boom from you at some point?

Here are a few ways to prime expectations for a boom:

• Create a first-to-know or pre-sale list for your upcoming launch.
• Start hinting about it on social media with a specific date set for the big reveal.
• Launch your item seasonally or even once a year so that over time, people will know that it is coming.
• Blog about what is coming or create a series of pre-launch videos so that people are excited to learn the background info that will create an appetite for your product.

2. The ringmaster tells everyone in the audience, “Ladies and Gentlemen, direct your attention here, please!”
There is quite a lot of chatter and anticipation as the ringmaster explains the drama that is about to unfold but he is commanding in his request. This part is tricky for solo practitioners because attention is a very scarce commodity. The ringmaster is a showman, and the audience is primed. Never underestimate the power of those factors. You too will benefit from being very specific in asking for attention.

When it’s time to direct attention to your launch, try these techniques:

• Ask your peers or your mastermind group if they will help you spread the word of the launch. No pressure, but if they usually love your stuff, then they will likely be happy to share another great product with their audience. If you have even a half-dozen other people sharing what you are doing with their social networks on launch day, it can make a big difference between a pop and a boom. (Want to know what can inspire people to share your stuff? When you share theirs… Reciprocation is a powerful motivator.)
• Create an affiliate program to offer a thank-you commission to those who help direct attention.
• Use every channel at your disposal to get the word out – and post it multiple times with helpful adjunct info each time. Only sending a link to the sales page to your email list one time or only posting it once on Facebook is definitely not going to create a boom. Make the info around the announcement generous and rich.
• Tell inviting stories as part of your launch. Stories draw people in and make them want to know more. You may not be a showman in a velvet jacket and a top hat but you surely have compelling stories.

3. Survive the launch so that you can stand up and wave to the crowd.
Part of the excitement of the human cannonball (or any other daredevil stunt) is seeing the performer rise up from their landing, no matter how clumsy or inelegant the shot – or the landing – might have been. You too must rise up and learn as quickly as possible from the launch experience. If you crumple in a heap for too long after launch day, then you are missing vital opportunities to keep campaigning for your product. The final day of sales is very often the most active day so pace yourself to take advantage of that phenomenon.

If you’ve completed the whole launch cycle and sales were still disappointing, then there are other vital questions to ask:

• Did you communicate the offer to people who actually want what you are selling?
• Did you share the offer often enough for your ideal clients to have a chance to notice it?
• Did your sales page convey the benefits clearly?
• Were you credible with your experience and testimonials?
• Do you need to do more to build your ideal audience before you try this kind of launch again?
• Did you make a strong offer that is obviously desirable and has a price that feels aligned with the value?

What you hear as the boom from inside the cannon will never be as loud to others but you can improve your chances of turning heads with a strategic approach and your own resilience.

Popcorn, anyone?

What other launch strategy suggestions do you have? How have you mustered resilience after a tough launch?

photo credit: wolfsavard

I am a nosy person. I embody the archetype of the Detective and I love that part of myself. It makes me a solid researcher, and it makes me a good listener.

Want to know when I really get nosy? When someone says they’d like to work with me. Then I get super nosy about money. One of the first questions that I ask them is how much money they want to make.

Did that make you uncomfortable? Have you really thought about what you want to earn in your business? A specific number that you would work toward each month?

Want to hear something surprising? Most people don’t have an immediate answer to the question. You may say you want to be successful or you want a business like someone else whom you know, but my question is about how you want to define financial success on your own terms.

Sure, there are lots of elements of success: autonomy, significance, recognition, fulfillment, etc. But let’s just talk about the money part today.

Everybody and their cat will tell you (and sell you) that you should be shooting for six (or seven!) figures if you want to be considered successful. That’s their definition (and I’d ask each and every one of them to be utterly transparent about how they’ve done it – if they’ve done it – before I’d buy what they are offering).

What’s your monthly earnings goal? More importantly, why do you want to make that specific number? Do you have a set of financial needs that you wish to meet? What would you do with the money if you earned it? Or do you want to prove something to someone else or even the world at large? Do you have that goal because someone else said “that’s what successful people make?”

Here’s what might shock you: it doesn’t matter what your financial goal is.

What matters is that you know why that goal is important to you. Just you.

Want to know the two secrets to attaining your financial goal? Make sure it’s internally motivated and that you deeply believe that it’s an amount that you are able to earn. I don’t know why this is true, but I’ve seen it over and over again. If you want to reach your financial goal in a graceful way, without striving and an exhausting amount of struggle, only listen to your core. It knows your worth and you resonate from that core when you share what you offer.

Letting your inner core help you set your financial goals will bring you a healthy money consciousness that creates income as a natural flow from your inner strengths. If you need help with this, Nona Jordan is my go-to coach on money and worth. She’s brilliant and gifted in this area.

All of the blueprints and marketing tricks in the world will fall completely flat without doing this fundamental work on worth and recognizing your internal goals first. Or worse, they may start to generate revenue but you won’t be able to sustain it or even retain the earnings that you make.

Next time you catch yourself thinking “I should be making…” Ask yourself “Why?” Then be your own Detective in encouraging your inner voice to answer. You’re very likely to find great relief in discovering that your true goals are something profoundly personal. When your let your core worth shine, that’s when you’ll enjoy authentic profits.

Do you offer a short consult for prospective clients? Or maybe you’d like the consult to be short but these meetings always take longer than you intend. Are you frustrated that your consults don’t become paying clients as frequently as you would like?

One way to have a stronger – more effective, more efficient – initial consult is to have an intake form that you send prospects before they meet with you.

The key to a great intake form is relevance.

Just like using a microscope, you want to know what to gather and then know what to look for.

Capture enough information to let you get right to the heart of the matter without overwhelming your prospect by requesting information for information’s sake. The more relevant your intake form is to their problem, the more confident your prospect will be that you can address their needs.

Here are my tips for creating great intake forms – and some of them might surprise you…

Your intake form is part of your brand.
Recognize that the intake form is one of the first touch points with you that a prospect has. Their experience using your intake form should reflect the experience they will have working with you. By knowing your own style and brand clearly, you can create an intake form that reflects that. For example, is your style info-rich? Is it lean? Is it luxury? Is it creative? How can you create an intake form that reflects the values of your own business?

Make it super easy for your prospect to provide the information.
Most of my consult requests come in via email or the contact form on my website so I reply with a personal email that includes an attachment for the prospect to complete and return. In the past it was popular send a PDF for prospects to write out and fax back – what a hassle! That’s not super easy, even though it might let you create a beautiful form. I’ve also sent intake forms out as Microsoft word, but as platforms have become more diversified, I find that the .rtf (“rich text format”) file type is a better choice because every computer has built-in software that can open that file and let your prospect edit it. Then they can simply return that edited document back to you as an attachment. It’s not a particularly aesthetic option but, for me,  it does reflect the direct style of my coaching and consulting.

Another option is a web form, but there are two things to be mindful of here. Web-based forms are problematic if you have questions that require a bit of thought. If the form can’t be completed easily in just a few minutes, then your prospect may lose their info before they finish the form. That is totally frustrating and a good way to lose a prospect.

If you do use a web form, include a way for your prospects to send themselves a copy of their answers, i.e., offer a “send me a copy” checkbox. You’d be surprised how easy it is for people to forget what they’ve told you. Examples of WordPress plugins that support this are Contact Form from BestWebSoft and SimpleModal Contact Form.

Get the basics, but don’t make it an interrogation.
What is the essential information that you need to have a successful initial consult? What do you need to create a contact record for follow up? For example, I request their name which seems totally obvious, but the email return address doesn’t always provide a full name, nor does their initial contact email request. Then I request phone number, location, and web address. I also ask for time zone. If someone misses a consult appointment, it’s almost always due to time zone confusion (though using TimeTradeto automate my scheduling has minimized this problem). You probably don’t need something like birthday on an intake form. Keep it relevant.

An intake form is not the same as a client background form. In some service areas, you’ll need information like medical history or financial information. But know when it is the right time to ask for it. In my opinion, this content feels invasive on an intake form before you have a working, confidential relationship with someone. Create a separate document for client background, and send it after you have an agreement to pursue working together.

Get a snapshot of where they are now and what their challenges are.
Ask for what their current status is. If you’re a business consultant, ask them the current state of their business vs. where they want to be. If you’re a writing coach, ask them what project they are working on and what they want to achieve. If you’re an SAT tutor, find out if they’ve already taken the test, what the scores were and what their target score is or what kinds of schools they are applying to.

Think about the problems that you help people with and ask questions that show you understand those problems. Be specific to the context for your niche to learn more about prospect’s situation.

Don’t just say things like “tell me about your situation” or “what are your goals?” Ask about specific areas that reflect your specialty. But keep it as short as possible.

Find out how urgent the situation is.
If your schedule books two months in advance and someone needs your help within 24 hours, then this question can save you both enormous frustration. You’ll be able to reply immediately to them to set scheduling expectations. Almost every potential client feels some urgency or they wouldn’t be contacting you.

Learn to read these replies to find out who is “urgent with a strong sense of purpose” and who is “urgent and demanding” or simply frantic. If you’re not in the business of “frantic,” then you might want to have referral partners who are. See my next tip for more on this…

Ask what has already been tried and what the outcome was.
This question is vital, in my opinion. You’ll understand a lot about whether your prospect is a tadpole, a guppy or a dolphin. It also gives you a sense of their commitment, their level of follow-through, and, if you know the other programs or methodologies they have tried, you’ll have a clear sense of how to distinguish what you do. I’m not recommending comparing (and especially not bashing) any other programs in your consult; just knowing the information is enough. This question often gives me a sense of my prospect’s frustration level, too, especially if they have tried other programs that other clients have frequently been frustrated by.

Include an open-ended question like “What else would you like for me to know?”
Even a carefully designed intake form will not cover every need. A catch-all question can help capture those extra bits.

Make their next steps simple and part of the intake form, too.
I include a link to my scheduling system, my email address, and the phone number that they will call for our consult. Every step in initiating a working relationship with you should be as easy as possible.

Don’t forget to ask how they found out about you – and whom you can thank.
This one question may be one of the most valuable question you can ask. I like to ask it as “Whom may I thank for referring you, or how did you find out about my services?” Following up with the people who share your work with others is extremely important and can go a long, long way toward keeping you top of mind with them as a referral partner. If the prospect didn’t find you by referral, you’ll certainly want to know what channels are working for you. Your blog? Google? A speaking engagement? Consider tracking this referral source information in a spreadsheet, too.

Read replies a.s.a.p.
Don’t wait until two minutes before the consult to open the document they return to you. You’ll sound unprepared, and you may have missed critical information that you needed to know much sooner.

Over and over again, prospective clients tell me that simply completing my intake form starts them on the process to improving their businesses. That’s your goal: start serving before you ever start talking.

Want to sneak a peek at my intake form for Branding From the Inside Out? Feel free to download it. Modify it for your own use, if you like. It’s direct and lean. I’m pleased to say my consults are more productive than ever since I started using it.

Did I miss anything that you think is important for intake forms? Let’s discuss it in the comment.

Every summer my mother packed me off to the Misty Waters pool the first week of June where I was shaking from fear before I even dipped a toe into the cold early morning water. It was the first day of swimming lessons. Anxious to my core, I would sleep in my bathing suit the night before the lessons started so that I would be completely ready as soon as I woke up.

The first day was always the same. The instructors lined us up and told each kid to swim the length of the pool. If we wouldn’t jump in, they would toss us in.

If you looked like you were going to drown quickly, they would haul you out of the pool by the back of your bathing suit and tell you to stand with the Tadpoles. If you could kinda sorta swim or flail to the end, they would group you with the Guppies. And if you zipped to the end of the pool with a fancy flip flourish when you got there, then you, my friend, were a Dolphin.

For the rest of the week of swimming lessons, you knew what lane to show up in each morning: Tadpole, Guppy or Dolphin. Swim lanes were the key to everyone learning as much as possible during a week of lessons.

Full disclosure: I never became a Dolphin. I’m not bitter. Really. I was freakin’ happy to even make Guppy.

Your business needs swim lanes.

If you’re struggling to engage new clients, then there is a good chance that you’re putting too much Dolphin in your marketing. By recognizing the levels of needs, then you can develop swim lanes for your business that will make it much easier to to engage new clients and grow a bigger business.

For example, let’s talk about coaches. Coaches have done a lot of personal work. They love personal development, and they are very much Dolphins in their own level of development. The problem shows up when they market as Dolphins. They’re speaking only Dolphin-y language (lots of jargon, lots of talk about thought work, highly conceptual, etc.). That would be fine if they were only speaking to other Dolphins, but they’re not. To the rest of the world, all that Dolphin-speak just sounds like “eh-eh-eh! eh-eh-eh!”

Remember the TV show Flipper? Sure, Flipper could understand Sandy and Bud, but they couldn’t exactly understand him. If you’re only speaking Dolphin language, then there is a good chance that your prospective clients are having trouble decoding your clicks and squeaks, however profound, into something meaningful for them.

The key is to think about what your Tadpoles need and what your Guppies need – not just your Dolphins. What are the problems that they are having? How can you speak their language?

How can you create clear swim lanes in your practice so that all three groups can recognize themselves in what you have to offer? Please never forget: marketing is about them, not you.

There’s another huge advantage to this approach for your practice: you will be able to provide a longer season over which you are useful to your clients, i.e., they will want to return to you and purchase services from you over and over.

If you only have services for Tadpoles, then people will move on when they are no longer newbies. If you are only marketing to Dolphins, then you are competing in a much more elite zone and may have to wait a long time before prospects are ready to work with you. If you’re a new coach, you’re also competing against much more established Dolphin providers.

Most practices grow along with the provider’s experience. Don’t be afraid to market to Tadpoles and Guppies so you’ll have a sustainable flow of clients. You’ll cultivate your own pod of Dolphins over time.

Tadpoles, Guppies and Dolphins want different things.

Let’s get the Dolphin-speak out of your marketing. Want to see some examples based on coaching? (You could easily create similar examples for everything from churches to gyms.)

A writing coach would be very Dolphin-y if she only offered full-length book coaching for those who want to complete and publish their first work of fiction. If she offered some classes to help people find their voice or a challenge program to get people journaling on a daily basis for thirty days, then she would be appealing to her Tadpoles and her Guppies, who might later become book coaching clients.

An intuitive eating coach would be very Dolphin-y if she promised everyone that they could end their struggle with food forever by changing their thoughts and only offered six months coaching packages to help clients get there. She will have to work really hard to convince people that the high-concept program will work, especially before she has strong word-of-mouth marketing working on her behalf. Instead she could offer something like a “Two Pounds in Ten Days” program, in which she teaches lots of thought work but appeals to the Tadpole’s urgent desire to start seeing changes in weight. Even in such a small change as two pounds, her new clients will be much more confident in her methods and be more willing to consider continuing to work with her in a committed way.

Another example that I love comes from my client, Lisa Alessi. She has created swim lanes in her practice for people who are dealing with a big decision (her Tadpoles) all the way through to those who want to be transformational leaders (her Dolphins). This screenshot of her homepage shows how she clearly shows the options to site visitors so that they can find quickly themselves in her service offerings. (Thank you, Lisa, for allowing me to share this here.)

Ready to create swim lanes for your business?

Trace back in your own experience.
Before you were a Dolphin, you were a Guppy and, yes, a Tadpole at some point. What did you want when you were a Tadpole? What started you on the path toward becoming a Dolphin in your area?

Discover the meaning of survival, progress and thriving among the people you serve.
In my swimming lessons as a kid, Tadpoles were thrilled to not drown, whereas Dolphins wanted to become fierce competitors. What is the equivalent of drown-proofing for your prospective clients? Where are they literally struggling for survival or to get a bit of traction into the next phase of their development? What goals do your clients have after they are more comfortable in their basic skills?

Stop being Dolphin-y in your primary marketing.
If you’re using lots of jargon from your training or your professional colleagues, knock it off. Nobody understands you but your colleagues, and they are probably not your clients. Tadpoles want solutions, not transformation. They may be open to transformation after their problem is being addressed but it’s very difficult to sell nirvana to someone who is struggling for something more basic. I’m not saying that you, especially if you’re a coach, are solving the problem for them. You will profit by speaking to their desire for a solution and providing tools for them to solve specific problems.

Chum the waters with offers that reach out to your Tadpoles and your Guppies.
In another post of mine about creating velcro offers that attract clients who stick, I spoke about how to translate problems that prospects have into offers that they find easy to buy. The comments in that post offered many more examples that show how to turn language around from problems into offers. Want to see clear offers for Tadpoles and Guppies? Read that post.

Be aware of your own resistance.
Don’t want to address Tadpole problems? Does it feel too “base” for you? Have you tried it yet? I promise you that if you’ll speak to real problems, you’ll get to do deep work with people but they desperately need a portal through which to find you. There are Tadpole problems that are very sophisticated (and profitable); the Tadpole label is in no way a comment about the innate ability, intelligence or potential of your prospects. If you’re unwilling to speak to real world problems in real world language and your goal is to make a profit, then you’ll need patience (and more time and resources) to cultivate the Dolphin clients or you may have internal work to do on your own confidence or the vision that you have of your business.

Learn from the history of Dolphin proprietors.
If you admire someone’s business who appears to be working with a lot of Dolphins, learn more about how they got started. It probably wasn’t with Dolphins! Your business will evolve with your experience. But first you’ve got to  survive the early stages in your business or you’ll never get to do the more Dolphin-y work that may appeal to you at this time because of where you are in your own personal development. Again, your offers are not about you in a healthy, thriving business.

You don’t have to shiver in your bathing suit as you face the swim lanes of your business. Be confident in your ability as a strong Dolphin to lead and serve your Tadpoles and Guppies, too. They are eager to learn from you and will help you make a splash when they tell others how valuable your services were to them.

Has your marketing been overly Dolphin-y? Want to chat about how to connect with your Tadpoles and Guppies in the comments? Let’s do it.

I have recommended this book far and wide and recently realized I have never mentioned it here: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. I believe it’s a must-read if you want to become profitable as a business owner. Some people have told me they think it’s old-fashioned (yes, it is) or too systems-y or not personal enough. All true, but then I’m pretty systems-y, too, so I kinda liked that part.

This book has one big, and I believe critical, idea about why so many solo practitioners get frustrated: internalized conflict.

Gerber points out that every business requires three roles: Practitioner, Manager/Admin, and Entrepreneur/Marketing. (I’m para-phrasing heavily here.) Most people start a business because they love the idea of being a practitioner. But that does not a business make – or a profit earn!

In non-solo biz, different people or teams typically have those roles,and they often have conflict between the roles. When you go into solo biz, you assume all three roles and the inherent conflicts. You internalize all three roles – and those conflicts. Learning to see them independently and step into each of those is HUGE in going from “I just want to do X, but I’m not making any money” to “I have a successful X business.”

If you’re not willing to learn and perform the roles other than Practitioner, you might be able to create a hobby that generates some money, but you won’t have a sustainable business. If you really, really don’t want to do those other things, I believe you could be much happier working for or with a company that is great at those things. Or you could hire people to help you with the other roles. Both great options.

But that conflict between the roles… it’s there no matter what, especially if you try to reject any of them as valuable or worth learning.

So, and this is going to sound so non-coachy of me, where would you be more comfortable experiencing conflict? Internally, where you can learn, grow, and get personally frustrated sometimes, or, externally, where you can learn, grow and get frustrated with other people? 

Either way, we get to learn and grow. I don’t believe that frustration among roles is completely unavoidable, but I do believe that we can become much better at recognizing the source of it. And that knowledge is the first step in mitigating it.

My husband loves woodworking. I’m begging him to build a little free library for our neighborhood’s community park.

Why? Because the symbol of a little free library would reflect our values, as a family and as a community. We live in a wonderful neighborhood full of thoughtful, curious people. They’re active in local causes and are advocates for education. A dozen or so have spent many weekends over the last couple of years bringing the greenspace of the community park back from the destructive brink of invasive plants. They’ve even created a creekside path for walkers to enjoy. It’s a beautiful, contemplative space, right outside my front door!

I’d love to see the books that pop up and get exchanged. Can you imagine someone discovering Richard Rohr or Zora Neale Hurston for the first time, just because someone donated a book, and we had made a space for someone else to receive it with surprise and delight?

Our values roar for more attention. Not just in our hobbies or our homes, but in our businesses, too. When I talk to people about marketing the first time, they are often so discouraged and say that they hate marketing. That almost always signals that the real issue is that they hate compromising their values for what they believe marketing means.

What if marketing started from your values? What if it started from that place of deep service and love for the people that you want to serve? What if it started with the commitment to never compromise your values?

What if we permanently release the idea that marketing is a vehicle for tricking and taking? What if it were simply an enthusiastic educational exchange, infused with grace?

What if marketing is as simple as making a space to let ideas flow into the community, like a little free library?

image credit: michael r perry

When we hear a symphony tuning up, we don’t think of it as being resonant. It’s loud and cacophonous, and the noisy sounds bounce off of each other. It’s hard to imagine that beautiful music is on the way and, yet, being in the audience during tuning adds to the anticipation of what’s to come.

If you’ve ever listened to a composer work, that process doesn’t sound very musical either. Yes, there are pieces of tunes and phrases that emerge, but it takes time plus trial and error to find the flow and the patterns that work together as actual music.

But when the orchestra of musicians follow the leadership of the conductor and interpret the composed music, we listeners do experience something glorious: it’s the resonance of music.

Developing your brand is similar to being a musician. There is a cacophonous phase followed by a (hopefully) pleasing, coordinated, melodious performance phase that you can look forward to repeating with your clients.

For solo service professionals, nothing could be more valuable to your brand than resonance. When your brand has resonance, then people recognize your message. They understand your offers in association with your (and probably their) values. Your message is more easily amplified because resonance is the result of alignment in your branding.

There is less noise and more clear signal. Your brand and your offers reverberate.

Achieving resonant branding

Inspired by my own experience as a musician, I see three primary phases that businesses go through to reach their goal of resonant branding.

First is what I call the Discovery Phase. In this process you must get to know yourself on a deep level: your strengths, your challenges, and your values. An essential part of this phase is identifying what you have to offer that is fundamentally valuable to your market. You’re tuning in to yourself and your market.

Second is the Composition Phase – and this can be the hard part. You choose which of your strengths, values, and offers to focus on so that resonant signals can be created. You learn to describe your offers in ways that align with your market’s desires, and you compose the verbal and visual language of your brand into a harmony that conveys the experience your clients can expect when they work with you.

Third, the Symphony Phase, is where everything comes together as a disciplined performance. If Discovery and Composition (and, yes, some vigorous rounds of rehearsal where mistakes are expected and refined) have been successful, focused, and creative, then the experience of the Symphony phase is well-tuned, often moving, and, ultimately, memorable. Just as an orchestra can repeat inspiring performances many times, your services can be reliably and creatively repeated to build your reputation.

Keeping that goal of resonance in mind can help you ride out the stress and frustration that tend to accompany the early phases, which can be more out of tune than in. Focusing on resonance will also help you know what to release and empower you to choose elements that are ultimately harmonious.

The cacophony pays off when your well-branded business emerges from backstage onto the main stage of performance. Eyes and ears are upon you. You strum, you drum, you bow and you blow. You play every note with delight and clear intention. You achieve harmony and resonance. That’s what a strong, clear brand feels like.

Can you hear it?

Jungian archetypes are among my favorite tools during Discovery and Composition. Please join me and Danielle Miller for an upcoming class, Resonant Marketing with Archetypes, to learn more about how you can access your own archetypal energy to create a more resonant brand for your business. Courage Studio members may register for this class at no cost as a benefit of membership.

You’re ready to take the plunge. Inspiration has struck! You’re feeling the call to deliver a group program about your favorite coaching or consulting topic. Saddle up and let’s go!

My intention here is to give you the simplest set up possible so that you can stop fretting the details and start shipping.

First, let’s break it down. You’ll want to be strategic, and then define and implement your logistics. After that you’ll start (and continue!) marketing, and, finally, relax and deliver.

Strategy

Too often people rush into logistics without being strategic first. This step can save you tons of money (and heartache) so brew some tea and think about this for a few minutes.

• Who is this program for?
• Where do they hang out so that I’ll know where to find them and let them know about my offer?
• Why do they need it?
• What problem am I addressing with this program? (Hint: you really only need to address one problem.)
• How do they know that they have this problem?
• How do I imagine that they will feel after your program?
• What are the simplest steps that I could lead someone through to achieve their desired results? (Could those steps represent the series of class sessions?)
• Why will this be valuable for them?
• How much would they be likely to want to spend for my program?
• What else do I want to deliver to everyone who participates? Recordings? Handouts? Transcripts?
• What additional services would they be likely to want along with the classes? An online group discussion? Additional personalized support?

The focus here is THEM, not you. The more you focus on the needs and desires of your ideal participants, the more you can create a clear and simple program that will speak directly to them. All of your answers above will factor into how you craft your marketing messages.There is one bit of strategy that is all about YOU, however:

What do YOU want to commit to?

Time wise, energy wise, technology wise, marketing wise. Yes, this will likely take you out of your comfort zone to some degree but stretching a little helps you master new skills and, I promise, it won’t be as hard the next time.

Don’t keep going until you look at a calendar. In my experience, it takes 4-12 hours to create one hour of content, depending on how detailed your resource materials are. As soon as you know how many sessions your program will include, start blocking out time on your calendar to create the content, create the resource materials, AND provide support while your program is ongoing.

Logistics

There are a zillion choices but I’m going to laser beam this for you: you need a way for people to sign up, pay you, receive notices about the class via email, and listen in. That’s it.

Unfortunately, logisitics is where people tend to freak out and sob (or give up) because they believe that they have to spend more on a web person to create their sales page than they might make on the program. DON’T DO IT.

At least not the first time. Because, frankly, your revenue projection is probably true, and I want you to keep your profits. You don’t want to spend more out of pocket than a new program will generate. Get a simple offer out there so that you can gauge the market and get feedback on your program.

To do this you will need three to five tools depending on what you offer in your program:

• Software to create documents for handouts, if you offer them
• Event management system
• Cloud-based file delivery
• Teleconference service for the group calls
• Online group support system, if you offer it

Documents

Don’t agonize over this. Use the tools that you already have and know like MS Word, Pages or even Google Docs. Nuff said.

Event Management

The easiest way to do this is EventBrite.

EventBrite is the best thing ever for pilot programs (and I’m a huge believer in piloting your programs before you invest a lot in expensive development).

EventBrite manages everything but the teleconference calls themselves. With it you can:

• Create the announcement/sales page
• Register people
• Collect payment
• Communicate via email with your participants

EventBrite will let you download the registrants’ contact info so that you can offer them an opt-in on your regular mailing list, if you have one. It is a feature-rich service, and it’s relatively easy to configure. For example, it can manage the number of seats you want to make available or let you create an affiliate program for your class. For multi-day teleclasses, I suggest that you hide the event date information and include that in the event description to minimize confusion about “event date” in the ticket sales part of the page because your class will be held on more than one day.

Use ideas and benefits that you gathered during strategy to write a compelling event description that includes key takeaways and benefits for participants. Include a short bio of why you’re an ideal person to lead the class. Don’t forget to include a great photo of you! The more comfortable people are with you personally, the more likely they are to buy a class from you.

If you’re offering add-ons like 1:1 coaching, then make that another “ticket” in the same event in EventBrite with the higher price. You’ll be able to contact those registrants separately to schedule their sessions.

Cloud-Based File Delivery

Before the class begins you can email pre-work or handouts to participants by sending them a link to your documents on a service that stores and delivers files for you. EventBrite lets you email participants as needed. My favorite delivery service is Dropbox. It offers you 2 GB for free, which is plenty for a few weeks worth of recordings and handouts, and it is easy to set up. Just place your docs in the Public folder on your Dropbox account so that you can share the link via email. “Public” just means that you can share the link; it doesn’t mean that anyone can browse that folder and snoop on your files.

Teleconference Service

My favorite, by far, is Nconnects. It’s well-priced, it can handle replays for you, it offers online listening which people seem to love (as well as lots of local phone numbers), Skype access, and it lets you record your calls. It’s got a great web-based panel for seeing who’s on the line and lets you manage muting individual or all lines as needed so that you get good, clean recordings. Yes, there are lots of free conference call services but, personally, I have had terrible luck with them. Many folks I know recommend FreeConferenceCallHD, if you do want to try a free service. My feeling is that if you’re charging for your program, your participants deserve a professional teleconference service.

Online Group Support

One word: Facebook, unless your audience is not on Facebook at all (in which case, they probably aren’t going to be good candidates for a teleclass in the first place). Create a “secret group” on Facebook and as people register, friend them and add them to the group. Don’t expect the online group to thrive if you aren’t “there.” The more you can participate, the more engagement you’ll see.

Are you feeling better with this toolkit in hand? The logistics do not have to be a show stopper. All you need is Word, EventBrite, Dropbox, Nconnects, and Facebook. You can do this! Now onto marketing…

Marketing

The easiest way to describe marketing is this: tell people why your program will matter to them. Marketing is first and foremost education, and then it’s all “boots on the ground” to get your message out there. Make sure your event description covers the education part in a way that clearly communicates “what’s in it for them.”

Want ideas for communicating your offer?

• Invite people by personal email
• Share it on social media
• Ask your friends to share it
• Put it in your newsletter
• Enlist affiliates to share it for you for a commission
• Offer a free preview call (on your own or with your affiliates)
• Mail out real life postcards or even handwritten notes
• Blog about similar topics and feature your program in the blog post
• Guest blog elsewhere
• Add it to your signature line for all of your email
• Rinse and repeat!

You don’t have to do all of those but know this: people will need to see your offer multiple times before it sticks that you are offering something. The more they see you doing it, the more it establishes you as the “go to” expert, as well.

Remember your calendar that we talked about earlier? Put marketing on your calendar, too. It will likely take as much or more time than the creation and delivery of the program content. Shocking but true.

Delivery

Ah, it’s time! You’ve got registrants and your materials are ready. Make sure you have a dry run with a friend using your teleconference service before the first class so that you’re feeling confident about running the phone panel and that you understand how to give your callers instructions about muting, raising hands, etc.

Before each class, use EventBrite to send a reminder emails along with the call-in info so that people aren’t always scrambling to find it. You can also email them after each class with a link to recordings on DropBox and links to new handouts.

The day of the first class is here… Make sure you have a water bottle handy and dial-in to your conference line a few minutes early to greet people by name as they arrive. Enjoy a little friendly conversation to help everyone feel at ease before you start on time.

Biggie reminder: don’t forget to hit record at start time! I always put a sticky note on my monitor or add a pop-up reminder to my Google calendar so that the recording won’t slip my mind. I’ve earned my Forgot to Hit Record badge but I hope you’ll get to skip that one. If you forget, don’t freak out. Just hit record as soon as you notice, then later record the missing content that you had prepared (try Audacity if you want a free program to do that) and put together notes about the live questions that were asked. Your participants will not hold it against you.

Most of all, relax and enjoy the conversation. Don’t overstuff the content and be sure to pause occasionally to ask questions. Wait just a few seconds longer than you might be comfortable when you ask if there are questions. People need a moment to formulate their questions but once someone starts, it gets easier for others to jump in. If you are relaxed, open and authentic, your participants will be, too.

Another tip for encouraging engagement is to recall a situation that someone might have asked about previously or on your Facebook group. Then invite them by name to ask more about that on the call so that you get the two-way conversation rolling.

Lastly, when your class has concluded consider doing a survey with something like SurveyMonkey to get feedback and invite testimonials that you can use the next time you offer the class.

Some of the links above are affiliate links that generate a small commission to me when you use them. I only recommend things that I are believe are valuable because I have bought and tried them personally. I do not ever recommend things that would cost more for you through my links. Thanks for being a reader!

What did I forget?

Let’s keep going in the comments. If you create and launch a program based on this Brand Lab, I’d love for you to share that in the comments, too. If you’d like my help as part of a supportive community that can help you create and launch your program, check out Courage Studio. It’s full of women like you who are taking action to grow their businesses.