Intentional Growth: Why All Attention Isn't Created Equal in Business

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Katherine Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be the Sought After Entrepreneur podcast, and here's your host, K. Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey. I am super stoked that you're tuning in this week's episode, and I cannot wait to [00:01:00] dive in today's topic because I wanna share with you something that I know is gonna help your business, but also help you.

Maintain focus, I think, on what it is you say you want and what actions are required to achieve that desire. Now, this isn't me giving you a step-by-step roadmap on how to do that. I. What I wanna share with you is where I see people get derailed on what they say they want, and then what they're actually doing in their business that's preventing them from actually achieving that.

And for me, it boils down to how we measure success and how we measure attention and visibility within our business and in my opinion. They're not all measured equally, and I want to give you some examples of what I mean by that. So. I don't know if any of you know who Chewy is on Instagram. He's an artist.

I think he was laid [00:02:00] off from his career in his fifties and I think he probably felt a little bit lost. He's very transparent about this journey on, on Instagram, but he talks about how he wasn't really sure what to do and. He was kind of feeling lost in the fact that he was in his later years in life and he had lost his career and I think his daughter had mentioned, well, like used to like to draw a dad or something like that.

And he did when he was, you know, a young boy. He loved drawing and so he basically started this int Instagram account where he documented his journey. To learn how to draw, and he grew this account to, I think it's over 200,000 people now, but he's also been very transparent that. His Instagram doesn't create financial stability for him, even though he has all of those followers.

Now, I'm sharing this story with you and I know you've probably heard this before, that like the size of your audience doesn't matter and you can have [00:03:00] X amount of followers and still not make an income. I wanna go beyond this because I know you've probably already heard this, and this is sort of the four way into that, and why, in my opinion, attention isn't measured the same.

Follower account isn't measured the same. Success isn't measured the same, and where I see a lot of entrepreneurs get derailed and something that I can spot almost instinctively in someone's business, and I've been told that what often takes most people years, sometimes decades, I can literally in a.

Very short conversation with somebody. Know exactly where there's derailment. And this is beyond business by the way. This is like in life as well. If someone's, you know, gone on a journey in their life and they're not kind of where they wanna be in a very brief conversation, I can see very quickly where the derailment is.

And it usually, well, it's not, usually it starts and ends with the fact that we have [00:04:00] this vision of where we want to go. We have this desire. For any of them, any of you listening to this podcast, it's probably to build, grow, scale a business, and create the impact that you want in that business. Have the freedom, the financial stability, whatever your goals of measurements of success are.

They can all look different, but you have this vision of what you want, and then what ends up happening is the micro steps that need to be taken to get to that and to realize that. Are not taken in alignment to that actual goal. So it's like marrying the big picture with the micro details that need to happen on that journey to realize the goal that you want.

And so when someone says, I want X, Y, and Z, and then I say, tell me how you've been trying to get there. I can instinctively spot. Right away. And sometimes it's not seen. Sometimes it's within the identity of the person, the subconscious that I'm like, Ooh, this is [00:05:00] where we've gotten derailed and here's why.

And for many people, it's their measurement of attention and influence and visibility, meaning for lots of us, when we're starting a personal brand. We can get really excited about people following our account. We can get really excited when somebody opts into our email list. We can get really excited when people open our emails.

We can get really excited if we get low cost per leads on Facebook ads. We can have the expectation that we should be getting low costs per leads on Facebook ads. And I'm gonna, you know, unpack this even more. I. And usually the excitement is a variety of a few things. It can be that addiction to a dopamine hit.

I feel really good and validated when someone opts into my [00:06:00] newsletter. I feel really good and validated when people follow me on Instagram and I feel really shitty when they don't. I don't like when I put out. A social media post and nobody engages with it. I don't like when I send an email and present an offer and nobody buys my offer.

I actually take it quite personally. This is the inner identity and ego dance that many of us encounter along our entrepreneurial journey. And again, this can vary from level to level person to person. It just depends on the evolution and the journey that you've been on and the work that you continue to do as a human being.

I've gone through this. Everybody I've worked with has gone through this to some degree, and many people are still going through this, and there are levels of my own evolution that I'm going through right now. I am now very detached from the followers, the opt-ins and that sort of thing. I'm very [00:07:00] detached from that, what that looks like, because I also know that.

The goals that I have set and the path that I'm taking to get there, there is congruency and I'm more concerned about quality over quantity. I'm more concerned about the quality of relationship of the person sitting in front of me who expresses interest in working with me. And you've probably heard me say this, that.

It all starts and ends with your offer, and if you're a business owner, it all starts and ends with your offer. Now, if you're like, I wanna be an influencer and I want to get brand deals and book deals and all the things, then your approach is gonna look differently. I. Right, which is why we can't look at influencer style businesses and compare ourselves and that, our journey to that because influencers are designed to go viral and have big follower accounts.

'cause that's how they get brand deals, [00:08:00] that's how they get booked deals, you name it. If you want to go that route, you can absolutely go that route. But what I'm trying to say here is that attention is not measured equally. Right. So someone like Chewy who has over 200,000 followers has come out and said, you know, and, and maybe his circumstances have changed, but he has come out transparently and said like, this is not creating me financial stability.

Right? Over 200,000 followers when I own my brick and mortar business. I had less than 700 people on an email list, and I was building and selling thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a month. On a 700 person email list and very little social media presence. So attention is not measured equally, which is why we can't look at things in the micro.

And where I see lots of people go sideways is, is [00:09:00] that we get excited about the opt-ins, we get excited about the low cost per leads. We get excited about. The follower count, and then we lose focus of what that vision is and where we're actually wanting to lead people. And again, if you're a business owner, that's what you're doing, right?

You're, you're moving the right people down that pathway to an offer that you're selling. And I'm gonna give you examples about my brick and mortar and the online business so that you can get a sense of. How marketing and sales is marketing and sales, and it's applicable across all platforms, across all business types, industry models, you name it.

It just might look slightly different, but the same goal is applicable across the whole thing is that you have a product or a service that you're selling. And you've got to get that product and service in front of the right type of buyers. And how you do that is gonna look different depending on who you are, your business, how you want to set it up.

And that is where the sky, in my [00:10:00] opinion, is somewhat the limit. You get to create this how you want to create it. But where people go sideways is they focus on the micro, I've gotta grow my audience, I've gotta grow my email list. I don't wanna spend that much time or effort doing it right. And so. All of these things start to get in the way of looking again at the big picture and then creating a really beautiful pathway to get there.

And it can be very simple. For example, when we opened the brick and mortar business, we looked around the city, and I've shared this on other podcast episodes. We looked around the city at a variety of different locations, a variety of different price points, and we weighed all our options and we chose a very expensive.

Strip mall area compared to some of the lower cost places we could have got, number one reason was accessibility and parking. We wanted it to be easy for people to pull up, be able to park, come into our store, make wine, be able to [00:11:00] take their wine out very easily. Right? We didn't wanna have people to pay for parking.

We didn't want to create friction there for people to have to pay for it. We also had beautiful signage on the outdoor. It was a high traffic area, so we had very beautiful storefront coverage with window stuff and different things like that so that it was very visible to people driving through the parking, parking lot people parked at the gas station getting gas.

It was a high traffic area. Now this is what I call top of funnel, right? So if you're in the online business space, your top of funnel might be your social media account, might be your website, might be Facebook ads, might be a combination of all three. For us, it's that storefront visual in a high traffic area.

So we picked location very specifically, and then we ensured that our signage was well designed. Now, I will be very honest with you, we sent ideas to various signage [00:12:00] places and not all sign places developed signs that. Would be appealing. And so this is something to consider, right? Because if you're putting out a Facebook ad or a social media post, not all things designed will be the thing that gets someone to come into your store or click on your thing or whatever there is.

An art and a science to this, and we wanted the sign big enough, right? So some of the problems we experienced was some of the designers would give us these, like really small writing, black writing. It didn't look good on the background of the building. It blended in with the background of the building.

So if you were driving by, it wouldn't, you wouldn't see it. So what we ended up choosing was this big, beautiful yellow sign with big, huge lettering that fit within the space that we had. And that popped off the building in comparison to all of the other signs up there. So that was the other thing that we considered when we were putting our sign together, was like, well, what other [00:13:00] signages on this building.

How can we look different than all of the other stores here? Now, all of the other stores were not in competition with us, but we wanted to pop off the building so that, so it caught people's attention. The other thing that we did was, is we spent about $200 a month and we had street signage, so we were tucked into this strip mall that had one of the busiest drive-throughs at a fast food restaurant, like literally right out our door.

So it was a Wendy's and it was like one of the busiest drive-throughs, so people would see our store all the time. We also had a gas station right there, so there was tons of people in and out filling gas, and then of course there was a grocery store and different things like that. So we were in a very visible space.

We were also in a strip mall with a bunch of other stores, so we paid the $200 a month to have a street sign. So that would also be considered, quote unquote, top of funnel, right? We're trying to grab somebody's attention on a [00:14:00] very busy road. Now, you might be thinking, Catherine, I've heard you say, you've gotta put the right offer in front of the right people at the right time, and that is the truth.

And so you might be thinking, well. Who's to say all of those drivers going by are gonna be the right people? Well, here's the thing about different mediums of promotion. Facebook ads, you can get very targeted Google ads, you can get really targeted. Street billboards unfortunately don't have that targeting.

However, when there's a high volume of traffic, there's a good probability that there's going to be people who are interested in what it is that you are selling. And if it showed us after 90 days. Maybe six months that we weren't seeing that return on investment, then we would try something else. But that $200 a month brought people in all of the time, saw your street sign, Googled you, saw where you were, and then came in.[00:15:00] 

So that street sign. Was prime real estate as well for a very busy throwaway traffic. People going all of the time. Now, similar to the signage on the outside of our building, that sign had to capture someone's attention quite literally in seconds because they were driving by. Right. So. High visuals that were going to capture their attention, uh, language color scheme had to capture that driver's attention.

Now, what I will say is, is that I often see people making mistakes again, if we're looking at top of funnel. They're very generic language, like, come into our store and get 50% off. Or if you want help with this, click here. You know what I mean? But there's nothing really specific that sets you apart, but also captures the attention very quickly that this thing is for me.

So on [00:16:00] that ad, I had a very beautiful big picture of a woman drinking wine, a very captivating woman drinking wine. And then I had. Get 50% off your first purchase. Right? Vintner seller. And so people would Google us because they were like, oh, wine, right? Or two for one wine I'd put on there, or something like that.

That would garner people's attention to come into the store Now. The store, and I've said this on other podcasts, when people come into the store, that to me is sort of like middle to bottle, uh, bottom of funnel, right? Because they're coming into a physical space. Now, if it's an online customer journey, funnel, whatever you want to call it, if they're clicking on your social media or they're clicking on your website, or they're clicking on an ad, then the next step of this is gonna be that middle of funnel.

Potentially bottom of funnel, depending on how you set your funnel up. But then the next step of the [00:17:00] journey is to continue to enforce why they should choose you. Why this is a benefit to them, all of those sorts of things. So for example, when someone came into our brick and mortar business, they would come in, they would start to inquire.

So like, what do I get? You said it's a fraction of re um, paying in retail. So then I'd explain the process, then hesitations would come up. Well, do I get to sample it first? Like, I'm gonna commit to 30 bottles of wine without being able to sample it. Similarly, in your online business, you're probably gonna get buyer constraint or hesitation.

And again, it's not about convincing somebody, it's not about twisting their rubber arm, it's not about manipulating them. But as a buyer, we get to be discerning. We get to ask questions, we get to. Wonder if this is the right purchase for us. And so by law in our brick and mortar, we weren't allowed to give samples.

And so we offered a guarantee [00:18:00] to help people get over that hump of a big buyer hesitation, which was, I don't want to commit to 30 bottles of wine, which is. Rightfully so of wine that I don't like. And so we gave a guarantee that if you didn't like the wine, we would either make you a new batch or refund you your money.

That was the guarantee. So that eliminated any risk that they had in investing. Now. You don't just want to put a guarantee out there for the sake of putting a guarantee to like, again, manipulate the sale. But this was a huge buying hesitation and rightfully so. So that was the guarantee we put out there was we will guarantee you that you will like it, but by law we couldn't give samples because of the way the store was set up.

We weren't a liquor store and we didn't actually have finished wine on premise. The wine that was being brewed on premise was other people's [00:19:00] wine. So we couldn't give samples of other people's wine to people that were inquiring and we couldn't have open liquor in our business, right, because we were brewing wine on premise.

So anyways. That is sort of the middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. Very quickly, they come in, they take a look at the store, they ask questions, I answer questions. They get to see the production right. We set our store up in a very, uh, intentional way where you could see the minute you walked in the store all the way to the back of the store, you could see the barrels, you could see all of the wine being produced.

And I've shared this on other podcasts that no other store had. It set up like that. When you walked into those stores, it was like you were walking into a retail store and that there was no wine production happening. So people were really intrigued when they came into our store, could see the wine, they were like excited about it, and then they were like, Ooh, you know.

I get to, I might have wine back here too. Like how exciting is that? And they would [00:20:00] get excited about it that they would have their own car back there brewing their wine. Now, this is similar to showing your potential clients in the online space. What's available to them when they work with you? Right. So if you think of middle of funnel, clients get really excited when they can see and visualize what's possible.

For the wine business, it was they could see cowboys and other people's carboys being brewed, and they're like, I want a car like that, and I want wine like that. And then when they could see a finished product with labels. Personalized labels and corks and all those sorts of things, and shrink caps and how nice the bottles looked.

'cause we had those on display, right? They were like, I can customize my own label. They could see the finished product. Similarly, if you do this in your online business, right? If you've got this top of funnel where you get visible and people. Get to see who you are and click through and go, I wanna learn more.

And then you show them behind the [00:21:00] scenes of what is possible and what they're gonna get and how it's gonna go. They're gonna get excited about that. And of course you can do that through testimonials. You could do that through a backdoor tour of if you're teaching a program or a course, you could do a backdoor tour of what's in the portal, how it all works.

You could even give them like. A teaser of it, right? You could drip out the first module of a program. That could be the first initial opt-in. You're gonna get a teaser of the first step of this process, and then you could buy the rest of the program, right? It's like giving them a glimpse into what they're gonna get.

And I think for a lot of us, we miss this step hugely. And then. Bottom of funnel obviously is selling, right? And so for us, it was done middle of funnel, bottom of funnel altogether because they were in the store and then I'd sell them on it, right? In your online business there's, there is either a sales invitation or there is a a sales [00:22:00] page.

Now, if you look at your customer journey that way, then you get very intentional about the people that you're moving through that funnel, right? If I had a street sign that just said. Hey, come into my store. I've got some really cool wine stuff. I mean, that could speak to a variety of different things.

People could come in thinking they're gonna get to buy wine accessories and glasses, and it'd be like a little wine store. When that's not what it was. Right. So it's, it's about getting really specific and contextual at the top end of your funnel so that the initial people coming through are the right people coming through your funnel.

And then I. From there. If they walk into your physical store, virtual store and they realize this isn't quite for me, then you filter them out in after top of funnel, in that middle of funnel portion, and again, this middle of funnel could be a variety of different things, right? It could be a masterclass, it could [00:23:00] be a quiz.

It could be just an invitation to a discovery call. It could be a variety of different things. Again, thinking outside of the box, it could be you speaking on stage and you promoting that. Event, top of funnel, and then they come and experience you on stage and then they realize that was a really great presentation, but like, I don't need this right now in my business, or whatever it might be, or, I'm intrigued and I want to have a conversation with you.

Right. There's a variety of different ways that you can do this, and I think. We have to be intentional about how we're moving people through and how we're doing it in specificity so that the right people come through. And if a couple of the misaligned people or people that aren't quite qualified for what you do, slip through that top of funnel, middle of funnel.

They get filtered out and then bottom of funnel, they even further get filtered out. Because the idea is, is that you want the quality people that are potentially going to invest with you to [00:24:00] be sitting with you on that sales call, right? And this is where I think people go sideways. They get really excited and they drive really low cost leads through a funnel.

And I've seen this happen and I've seen lots of Facebook specialists. Promote this, I can get you the lowest cost per lead. And the minute I hear that, I'm always like, but what's the quality of that person coming through? And then what does the sales calls look like? Right? Because I don't wanna sit on sales calls if it's not somebody that's really interested in, in what I'm doing.

And not because I don't like having conversations. But again, if we're thinking about time and effort and intention. We wanna sit with those people that are interested in actually what you're offering, not just interested in having a conversation with you. And I know the ego loves to get in there because it feels really good stroke.

That ego feels really good when people opt into a freebie that we have or they book a sales call with us and, [00:25:00] and we feel good about it. But then over time it's not gonna be sustainable. And I've seen this time and time again. And I'm trying, hopefully in this episode to deter you from. Just building things in a, from a micro perspective.

Well, I just gotta build the audience and then when I have the audience, I'll sell the offer or I'll create an offer or I, I have a freebie and this is what it is, but it has nothing to do with the offer that I'm selling. 'cause I don't even know what the offer is yet. Or I just have all of these freebies.

I've got 10 freebies and none of them really lead anywhere. Right. We've gotta be intentional, and the more specific and nuanced you are at the top of the funnel and continually nuanced throughout your funnel, the more potential there is for sustainable growth within your business and sales. The less specific [00:26:00] and the more sort of willy-nilly you are with it.

The more chance that you're going to revel in the short term success of having people opt in, low cost per leads. You're like, yeah, it's working. Woo-hoo. Which is great, but then at the end of the day, that goal that you've set, you're no closer to it. And to me, time and effort is kind of. The same thing.

I'm looking at it from the same perspective. Lots of people will say, well, I am getting way more opt-ins this way and at a lower cost than I ever did before, and so this is a better investment in my time and effort. And I'm like, cool for the short term, until there's proof that what the pivot you've made is actually giving you the results you want, which is sales, right.

Versus taking a little bit more time on the front end of that, building, that customer journey [00:27:00] and really being intentional with it. And yes, you spent time and effort on the front end of it, but you've actually built something sustainable in the long run, which to me is the goal. Whether you, me, however you measure success, I don't care how you measure it, right?

Impact sales freedom in your life, a combination of all of it. It doesn't matter at the end of the day. If you're in business, it's long-term sustainable growth is what we're all after, right? It's sustainability. It's not the quick fixes and quick results and short-term gains. It's long-term sustainable success, something building something that actually lasts, and the only way to build something that actually lasts in business is to build a system, a customer journey that.

Brings in the right people and puts the right offer in front of the right people at the right time. And when I say system, you could do this [00:28:00] manually, right? You could have a very focused. Social media presence. I've worked with eight figure brands that have just sold organically on social media, but they have hundreds of thousands of followers.

But they built that brand very intentionally with a very focused topic and a very, very, very specific niche. So everybody landing on that social media, there is no mistake what this person does. There's no generalities. There's no. It's, it's very nuanced. Very, very specific, right, and very specific of what they offer and what they sell, and always has been.

So they built this audience. Around that. Right. And they don't have paid funnels or anything like that. Right. I think this is also the misconception. It's like, oh, well the only way to grow and scale is paid funnels. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you've gotta have a very intentional message at the top of your funnel, whether that's on social media organically, whether that's [00:29:00] on your website, whether that's.

On a street sign that you put out in front of your brick and mortar, whatever it is, it's the same across all industry and platforms and types of businesses. And I've just given you an example and showed you how it's, how it crosses over from brick and mortar and how I approach my brick and mortar and my online business the exact same way.

When I came to think about the messaging, the offer. And the type of buyer I was wanting to attract into my world to sell my products to and also services. And the impact that I wanted to create and what is that goal? And to me, it's a focused journey that you take people on. Now, someone might say, well, I'm multi-passionate.

I have a bunch of passions, so do I. Right? I'm a four six manifesting generator. I. I'm multi-passionate. I've done photography, I writing marketing, sales, selling wine. I had my level one Somalia, like I am a [00:30:00] multi-passionate human being at the core of who I am. But what I will say to you is that if you can't sell one offer, like if you're having trouble selling one offer, then what makes you think selling three, four or five is going to change the game for you?

Like. I would rather focus on one thing and sell it and get good at selling it than trying to juggle 10 things and not having mastered the marketing and sales around it. And it's not about having to pick and choose. It's not about always having to box yourself into just one thing. It's about, again, looking at the long term, if you're stuck in, oh, well I like to do a bunch of things though, and I don't just wanna sell one thing.

Then you're only lurk looking in the short term in my perspective, because you could sell a hundred things over the next 12 years if you want to, but start with one. And if [00:31:00] you're not selling it the way that you wanna sell it and it's not moving. Then I would focus my energy there rather than scrapping it, trying something else or adding more layers to it.

Right? The more complexity and the more layers just adds more work, in my opinion. And maybe it is the mangen in me that's like, I don't, I just wanna cut corners. I don't, I wanna shortcut things as much as I can, and I don't wanna work for the sake of working, right? I don't wanna just do work for the sake of working.

And so there is a precision, there is a focus, there is a. Simplifying, like my online funnel, quote unquote, is very simple. It's adds to masterclass to book a call. And if you don't wanna do it that way, that's a hundred percent okay. I'm not saying that you have to do it that way, but like I said, with my brick and mortar, I mean, there has to be a top point of visibility.

Like how are people discovering you? How are they finding you? And then is that top point of focus attracting the right [00:32:00] people? And that's where I draw it all the way back to the beginning of this episode of attention isn't all measured equally, and so you could put out a post that's something about your lifestyle and it goes viral.

I. But none of the people that it, that saw it or came into your world or started following you is actually interested in what you're doing because it was a lifestyle post. So it had there nobody was interested in actually what you were selling. That's what I'm saying is it's not measured equally. So there has to be a journey that you take people on that is focused, nuanced, has context, is specific at the top end of your funnel.

So the right eyeballs are moving down that journey with you and along that journey, they can self opt out of it, right? When they, if they don't, if they don't align with it or it's not the path they want to be on anymore. They can opt out, and that is [00:33:00] great. And that's actually amazing because when it comes to actually selling it, whether you do it through a sales page or a sales call, the right people are landing on that sales page.

And so you're able to then look at the individual metrics. But also simultaneously look how they fit with the big picture. And this is the message I, I really want you to walk away with that. It's not just about, yay, I got some opt-ins. It's like you got opt-ins, but are those opt-ins moving down that customer journey to buy something from you?

And that doesn't mean everybody has to. Right. That's not what I'm saying. And I know lots of heart-centered business owners get triggered with that. Well, I don't just wanna sell to people all the time. I get it. But if you're in business, there is a service or a product that you're offering that needs to be sold.

And so there has to be a way for people to discover you. There has to be a way for people to understand what you do and [00:34:00] how you do it. And there has to be a way for people to buy and to know how to buy, when to buy, where to buy. Like that's marketing and sales. A very distilled definition right there.

They have to know where they can buy. So that they can buy from you and you being intentional about how this all sort of rolls out in your business. From emails to social media, again, it can be quite simple. I think lots of people either overcomplicate the system, they overcomplicate the marketing and sales of it by either trying to sell too many things, creating too many entry points for people.

If you saw my brick and mortar, we had a. Sign outside of our store and we had a billboard and then we had some social media presence, but it was me generally sharing clips of me in the store making wine again, showing people behind the scenes. And then people were like, this is cool. I want in on this.

And. [00:35:00] We had some paid media in the early years, but it was so expensive and did not produce the RI like radio ads and stuff like that. I'm gonna tell you, word of mouth referrals. Word of mouth, returning customers retention, like keeping people happy, producing really good wine. And that street sign and the high foot traffic in that area of location was.

The best for us in terms of creating sales in our business and then the barrel club and adding some, you know, fun things within the store that, you know, excited people and created exclusivity. The barrel club, being that there was only 10 spots in it, all of that combined played a factor for sure. But you have to think about your business in the same way.

Like how do you want to build it? Right? And, and how do you wanna get discovered? And my, my invite to you is to think outside of the box. Think [00:36:00] outside of the box of what you see, right? If you're looking at traditional funnels in the online space going, but I don't wanna build a funnel like that. I want to do a masterclass.

I don't want to do quizzes. I don't, I don't want to do those things then don't. Nobody's saying that you have to do that, and no one's saying that's the only way to be successful. I mean, there are some people that are saying that, but what I'm saying is as I've seen people thrive with setting up a website, optimizing it for SEO and then crushing it with Google, right?

I've seen that. I have a client that just started to experience that in her business where. We updated the messaging got really specific with the top of funnel messaging, which was her website. When people land on her website, they know exactly who she serves, how she serves them, and that nuanced human being.

And quite literally, within a week of us publishing in that thing going live, I got on a call with her and she's like, Catherine, three people [00:37:00] have booked with me. And the all three of them said, this website is speaking to my soul. Right. It wasn't that they clicked on the Google ad and then landed there and were like, I wonder what she does.

And this is what I'm saying with the whole system as a whole, right? And why the Congruencies matter, because you could spend a ton of money on Facebook ads or Google ads, or optimizing your website for SEO, but then the copy on your website doesn't communicate well what you do. You're now driving a bunch of traffic.

To your website that isn't ideal and it's a waste of money and time. And this is the essence of this episode. This is what I'm trying to say, is that I see a lot of people focus on the micro, I'm gonna get ads up and running, and I just want to get a bunch of opt-ins. And then they drive a bunch of traffic to a website that isn't congruent with even what the Facebook ad said.

And then [00:38:00] people land on that and then they bounce or. The ad and the opt-in page is congruent, but then they get into your world and the freebie that they're getting or the emails that they're getting, the nurture emails do not align. Right? They're more general or broad. The messaging across all points need to be congruent.

It would be similar if I had a sign outside my store that said Vintner Seller Custom Winery, and then my street sign was like. Hey, come check out the cool wine store over here. And I didn't specify that it was a brew on premise. I didn't specify, right? Or like Cool Wine Store. Now Open doesn't really tell them what it is.

They might think it's accessories, they might think it's like, I can come and buy a bottle of wine, right? So at every touch point there, it has to be congruent with what you're doing and the message has to be congruent. Now. If they walked into my store, for example, and I didn't have the production [00:39:00] area open and it was just a retail store, like a lot of our competitors, it'd be like, so you just sell wine kits here?

Like and wine making stuff right? There would be that incongruency, which is why we had a wide open store and that's. The problem. 'cause a lot of our competitors would say that. And a lot of people that went to their stores that came to ours said the same thing. They were like, I didn't even know there were wine making stores in Saskatoon.

And our competitors had been around for 13 years. And I was like, they're like, I was like, have you ever heard of these other stores? And they're like, yeah, I went in them, but they're just wine making supplies. I said, no, no, no, no. They make wine there. But there's incongruency, right? Because they would walk in and the stores, one store was called Wine kits.

So again, the sign on the store said, wine kits, you come in, it's wine kits. I gotta buy a wine kit and go home and make it. What they didn't realize was that you could actually brew on premise, but because you couldn't see the brewing area, nobody knew that. And then if your storefront [00:40:00] staff don't do a good job of welcoming people in starting conversation, asking people why they're there.

Then you miss the opportunity to, to sell and to educate, right? So everybody that walked into our store, of course we said hello to, but I didn't really have to educate 'cause they would already start asking, what are the barrels for? What are those things back there? Right? And so I didn't have to really educate.

That's what I'm talking about, incongruencies. And I'm talking about how at every touch point there's gotta be congruent. Pathways for your people to continually move down or they're gonna bounce, or they're gonna piece out or that sort of thing. And I see it time and time again where we focus on the micro and no fault to anybody, right?

We focus on the micro, but we also get really excited about micro results that don't lead to the results that we desire in our business. And that's why I wanted to [00:41:00] record this podcast episode for you because I wanted to share with you. All of the things that I've learned over my career and me owning my businesses and some of the mistakes that I've made in business, but also some of the mistakes I see people make so that you can either avoid them or you can go, oh shit, I'm doing this in my business right now.

I need to change this. That's why I recorded this. So. I hope this has been helpful and insightful for you, and hopefully giving you some insight into like where there might be incongruencies in your business, and I will leave you with this. Not all attention is measured equally, and I. Simplify, simplify.

Simplify. You can simplify this. The more complicated your pathway your journey is, the more chance there's gonna be kinks within your journey. And if. Marketing and sales isn't something you've [00:42:00] mastered yet. Then keep it simple, like absolutely keep it simple because you can have a very simple pathway like I just showed you with my brick and mortar, very simple pathway, right?

It was about where, where are we gonna have eyeballs on our business? For you in your online business, where can you get eyeballs on your business? And it could be one pathway in one portal, right? It could be Google, it could be Facebook, it could be Instagram, it could be YouTube. It could be TikTok, Pinterest.

It could be your website, whatever you want it to be. It could be speaking on stages. It could be speaking at online summits. It could be whatever, collaborating with other people, however you want to do it. But I would pick one doorway in. I wouldn't try to do all of the things because. I would wanna master the one thing and then scale from there, and then add variety from there.

Because if I try to do all the things, it's gonna be harder to sustain, especially if things aren't working [00:43:00] the way that I want them to. So that's just my thoughts, insights, and whatnot. I really hope you have a fab day, and if you've enjoyed this episode. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me over at Creatively Owned.

I love hearing from everybody and I respond to everybody. Cheers. 

INTRO: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at Creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.