A NEW MARKETING LEAP OF FAITH
I’ve been in a bit of a personal shift behind the scenes of my business, so this episode feels vulnerable and deeply personal to me because I want to take you there. I want to share with you how my business has shifted over the last few years and what I’m holding onto as things move forward. I want to thank you from the outset for being here.
By way of a bit of background, 2020 and 2021 was a really successful time for my business on paper. And I’ll explain why I say on paper in a minute. In December 2019 I gave up my paid employment to work on the business full time - I was starting to make consistent income that could pretty easily replace my paid employment. Most of my work was online already and then hot on the heels of that came covid and to my surprise and relief, as the pandemic came into full swing, so did my coaching business.
During the height of the pandemic I hit the ground running hard. Just so you can get an insight into the output that was going on: I ran 2 groups of my 6 month Accelerator Programmes (which is a weekly, if not twice a week coaching group), a 3 day clear and courageous challenge, a course creation masterclass, had 90+ women in my monthly membership that had coaching sessions each week, I ran my 12 week movements programme twice with wonderful groups of around 8 women, I wrote, launched and delivered a brand new month long course about creating your own online course for people who were frantically pivoting online (very meta, but very useful), I created and ran an intense 30 days of visibility programme which was super high touch and involved daily emails and 3 weekly calls, I invested thousands of pounds on my own business coaching and on programmes for my own development and had a full roster of one to one clients. I met hundreds of amazing women, all of them in the same boat of having more time to develop their business, more income to invest in coaching and it was amazing. And it was also exhausting. I have just looked over my calendar from that year to write this episode and recall this all accurately and can’t actually believe how much I was actually doing. It was insane.
So like I said, I had the benefit of having already run a lot of my work online with Zoom, so my business was prepared and set up for that method of connection and I was doing all the traditional online methods of marketing that were working well at the time by hosting free intensive challenges and large workshops that were pretty massively attended (into the hundreds) and generally, those lead plenty of people into my paid programmes. With so much uncertainty swirling around in the social landscape, I got stuck right into supporting everyone with their work and navigating the really tricky changes they were facing. No one was going anywhere, so looking into online coaching was an easier yes for most people, and my business made a lot of money.
But I was absolutely burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. My husband, also working from home, my kids, like everyone elses kids were at home attempting to do some semblance of schooling and Dave and I were literally on shifts with our work; high fiving each other as we passed each other on the stairs up to our attic office when one of our working shifts was over and we switched responsibilities to go and wrangle our kids into some sort of educational activity or snack making duty while the other started their work. We hardly saw each other, we were really tired. I’m sure many of you were in the same positions during this really strange time in the world.
I was writing courses and responding to emails and posts well into the night and getting up and doing it all the next day. Lines were blurred, I was tired but it was also thrilling to be in the first official year of running my business full time and to be seeing so many clients and earning more money than I ever had. But I paid a price for that, and it really took its toll. I finished 2021 really proud of myself for having dug deep to make so much happen but I really badly needed to simplify things and be ruthless about caring for myself.
Now we sit at the end of 2022, and much has changed. I made a concerted effort at the beginning of this year to pace myself well. I have narrowed my programmes down, culling and combining my resources into just two main offers - my Accelerator Programme - which I extended to run for 8 months and now combines the teaching from my Movements Programme. I love running my Accelerator programme and having the guts of a year to build relationships with this group and see the absolute cosmic shifts that happen for these business owners. And my other main offer is my Brand Builder Programme which is my four month coaching programme that takes the confusion out of developing a sustainable business model and helps female business owners get clear on their messaging, marketing, content, pricing and offers. I have a couple of one to one clients and have started to runs some more in-person events and retreats to try and inject some more tangible physical connection into my work - for me as much as everyone else who comes.
The other thing that I wanted to change this year was how I marketed my business. Having so many programmes running that are open and closed felt intense. I would go through these periods of having to be really visible, promoting, creating buy-in opportunities for people to get a taste of my work and then spending a few weeks heavily promoting them to get people enrolled. I never hassled anyone or felt like I was inauthentic with what I was promoting but it was a lot and it required a lot of showing up for me. With so many programmes on the go in the previous years, it felt like I never had a break to reset my own nervous system from all the launching and promoting. Once one programme was full, I was onto delivering it and promoting the next. My nervous system took a real hit and I felt not only wrecked, but once I started developing a slower way of running things, I found it hard to adjust. The hard worker in me started to wonder if I was being lazy or not giving as much to my work. This is something I regularly have to check myself with - the old narratives around worth being attached to basically running myself ragged. I have the charity sector to thank for that.
I knew that how things were running in those last two years wasn’t sustainable for me, and coupled with the opening up of the world again, things started to slow down even more.
From the outside, right now I am still very present in my work - sharing on social media, recording this podcast, sending emails, promoting my offers etc. but there has been a noticeable shift in the behind the scenes stuff of how that is all going. To get candid with you - fewer people are signing up for stuff I am offering, there is less uptake. The impact of the huge changes to how social media is working where they are now largely set up for consumption rather than connection has been difficult. I have found this year to be one of having to really hold my nerve in my own business. I have had my fair share of moments where I have wondered if this business has peaked, or had it’s moment and it’s been tempting for me to slip into scarcity, wondering if I’m doing things wrong or if my work is even relevant any more. It is really hard for me to talk about this as a business coach, because I hold myself to really high standards and whilst the standards of my coaching have only gotten more solid and impactful, the ‘on paper’ success of my business has slowed down. And it’s hard because my style of coaching is not a “come work with me and I’ll show you how I did x y and z and you can too” because I feel strongly about dismantling that kind of messaging, and bringing my coaching to you from a much more level playing field where I fully understand the difficulties of business because I’m running one (and I think that makes me an excellent coach), so I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what I’m sharing to be that I’m a business coach whose business isn’t making shitloads of money.
I guess you could say that there’s been a perfect storm that I feel like I’ve been swirling around in made up of my own decision to create a more sustainable business model and opt out of the full to the brim diary and full on marketing strategy, paired with the shifting of the landscape of the world opening up again, people being fatigued with online learning and many a world crisis to both distract us and cause us all to think more about what we’re spending our money on.
I say all of this to reassure you that if you’ve found this a bit of a disorienting year in business, please know that you’re not alone. And there will be so many variables that will have contributed to this.
And whilst all of that has had an impact on my business financially, I want to share with you that there have been a few things that I am really intent on remaining faithful to - even in the midst of a slower, smaller business. Firstly, even though the uptake in my business has been less, the quality of the clients I’m working with has been incredible. I am getting to meet and support the most amazing women, who are truly doing life-changing work. They are smart, compassionate, generous and completely aligned. I have had the opportunity to coach women that I admire and look up to and that I have been able to develop a real mutual trust and respect with. Without the panic of the pandemic, I am seeing women come into my business who are not approaching their business from a place of fear, but of love and dedication, wanting to set themselves up with the strategy and tools to support themselves fully. It has been invigorating to get to sit with them and hatch plans, talk through their self-doubt, get clear and see them flourish. To me, this beats the on paper success of running myself into the ground and serving hundreds of clients and being burnt out. I can see that my coaching practice is deepening and expanding in ways that aren’t always visible.
And I can see that the reason these kinds of women are coming to me is because I have dug down deep into my values and allowed them to guide me in how I show up. I have taken a marketing leap of faith this year to allow my business to speak for itself. To decide to lean into trust in myself and most importantly trust in my clients to find me and decide to work with me, without pushing, striving or having to come up with some coded way to bring people in. Again, to me this really feels fulfilling in ways that not too many get to see - that I’ve been able to set aside the franticness of getting clients in and practice having trust in the right people to see my work and my value and decide for themselves what makes sense for them.
I read an article last month that really sums up how I have been shifting things when it comes to my mindset around marketing and I want to share a little snippet with you here to help articulate my approach.
This article is from Rob Hardy’s Ungated Community Blog and it’s called Non-Coercive Marketing: A Primer. - it’s really worth a read. Here’s what it sums up:
““Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn’t seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that’s already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what’s behind those doors, then surrenders the outcome, trusting that the right people will step through when they’re ready. In that way, non-coercive marketing is a leap of faith, rooted in the idea that if you stop trying to control people, and encourage them to be their own authority, you can build positive sum relationships that lead to organic and mutually-enriching transactions. This relational shift is also at the heart of how we begin healing the emotional wounds lying beneath humanity’s many problems.””
This is how I want to continue to build my business; even if it means it’s slower and less financially booming than it was in 2020/2021. Even if it means I take on other work to keep my income supporting my family. Even if it means my email list doesn’t grow exponentially year on year. Even if it means only a handful of beautifully ready clients decide to work with me on their precious business. Even if it means my instagram posts only get 65 likes. Even if it means I am not sold out every time I offer something out. Even if it means this is a slow and steady burn.
And ESPECIALLY if it means I have time to live my life and nurture my important relationships and take care of myself.. ESPECIALLY if it means I have clients coming to me that are ready to be supported and known in a holistic way that honours their humanity. ESPECIALLY if it means I can be myself in my business and not resort to hustle culture or filling my time trying to convince people that my work is good and important. ESPECIALLY if it means I get to show up trusting that the right clients will find me when they are good and ready. ESPECIALLY if it means I get to fully trust my own goodness in the business building process and keep my integrity in tact. I trust in the goodness of my work and in my ability to make good, honest decisions for myself.
This is how I want to carry on into 2023. This will remain unchanged and I hope the next year will see me delve into this way of working even more. I don’t ever want to run a business that sees people as means to an end, or that isn’t truthful about the ebbs and flows that are both natural and inevitable. And I hope that there are others out there that feel the same and want to join me in exploring what that means for them too.
What this looks like in practicality is that some of my programmes will always be open to join - and I’ll be extending the invitation regularly as an opportunity for those that are ready to be part of them to join me when they are ready. My brand builder is already running in that way, and is open for anyone wanting to step into a four month container of coaching and mentoring to help them build their business in this aligned way.
Thank you for reading this - a bit of a heartfelt one that I really wanted to share because even though it’s vulnerable I know there's connection to come from it and there are a lot more of us out there feeling the shift and wanting to take the leap to do things differently and bet on themselves in a deeper way. Please as always feel free to reach out for a chat, knowing that I’m cheering you on.