Overwhelmed by All the Marketing Strategy Choices and Mixed Messaging Unpacked

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're 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're 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, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning in to this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive into [00:01:00] today's topic because I've been chatting with a lot of you lately in the DMs, on calls, and one of the biggest themes that I keep hearing over and over and over again is how overwhelmed people feel with the choices when it comes to marketing and sales.

What marketing should I use? What works? What doesn't work? There's so many conflicting messages out there and I don't know which one to choose. Or I've chosen a lot and something hasn't quite worked out and I want to dive into this topic a little bit more and unpack this because I have helped hundreds of people now and there's a common theme that I see or a common pattern that I see when it comes to number one, choosing the marketing and sales strategies that you want in your business and number two is a common theme around why things aren't successful.

And they're two [00:02:00] different themes or patterns and I want to dive into them because I think they're really going to help you. Now the first one I want to talk about is the overwhelm and the overwhelm that you may be feeling right now in your business where you're like, I don't know which way is up anymore.

I've tried all of these different strategies. I've done live launching. That hasn't quite worked. I've tried to. Make Things Evergreen. That doesn't quite work. I promote all the time on social media and that doesn't seem to work or it's not working in the way that it used to. The algorithms change, all of these sorts of things.

Now, before I dive into unpacking this, I do want to preface that everything changes. Nothing will stay the same. The only consistent thing in our life is change, right? And that goes for business as well. So if you've been in business for a few years now, and you used to be able to thrive on something like Instagram, and you get [00:03:00] a lot of people coming through that way, and now you're starting to see.

Things change, everything changes. These technologies change, the way in which we communicate on them changes, the way in which we connect changes, audience change, uh, industries change, things are constantly changing. And so that's the first thing I want us to wrap our head around because We can't stay complacent in our business, and if you're in business, and you're feeling like, well, what I've, what I've always done has worked, and it's no longer working anymore, it's likely that you've started to become complacent in your business, uh, and complacent in how you communicate and connect with your people, and, or, or, You've been doing these things and you haven't actually really seen the results.

You've been putting in a ton of effort and you haven't seen the results and you're starting to feel overwhelmed with it. Or one of the other things I often hear is, is I don't want [00:04:00] to, um, I want the guesswork taken out of it for me, right? I don't want a trial and error. I don't want to have to make a bunch of tweaks here and there.

I just want somebody to tell me what I need to do so that I get it quote unquote right. This is the biggest pattern that I see when it comes to choosing a marketing and sales strategy for your business. Here's the dealio. There is no one size fits all cookie cutter method. And if you're in my world, you likely don't want to follow one anyway.

You're here to lead and not follow, but you're also not a marketer. And so you're looking for someone to help guide you. The thing is, there is no cookie cutter, which means I can't sit here on a podcast and go. This is exactly what you need to do, and this is how you need to do it. Because of the thing I just said.

Every industry, every business, every business owner is unique in their own right. And [00:05:00] so what works for me when it comes to selling my services might not work for you a hundred percent. Because you're different, right? And your industry's different. Your customers are likely different. What makes them tick is different.

And these variations across the board impact the type of strategies that you use. But I want to unpack this a little bit more because I want to share with you the variety of different ways that I've. built my business so that you can start to identify for yourself what feels right for you and what quite doesn't feel right for you.

Because oftentimes the overwhelm that we are experiencing, I often will say, is a state of being or a state of mind, which means that you're choosing to be overwhelmed because You don't want to get your choice wrong, and so you're trying to, like, navigate all of the choices. And you're overwhelmed by all of the choices, [00:06:00] and therefore, you're paralyzed because you're not actually making a choice.

Because you're just paralyzed in indecision because you don't know which way is the right way. There is no right way. And it's going to take you trusting your gut, which I think can be difficult, or trusting a guide in front of you to help guide you. And that's what I want to offer here today for you on this podcast.

I have helped, like I said, many small businesses, startups, large corporations, not for profits. Um, I've been doing this for two decades. I've tried everything. I'm also a manifesting generator, and if you're into human design, you know, That we like to put on a bunch of different hats and try a bunch of different things.

And we become masters in a bunch of different things because we learn it quickly. I've tried it all, right? And I've tried a bunch of different strategies. I built my brick and mortar. I realized in that that that's not the business model I necessarily wanted. Um, [00:07:00] but I've also done every type of online launch you can think of, challenges, three day live, uh, events.

I've helped people build those out. I've done them. I've done live launches. I've done webinars. I've done evergreen. I've done like weekend promos and blasts. I've tried selling straight on social media. I've done it all. And One of the things that I'll often hear is, is that building a funnel in any capacity is complicating, right?

It's complicated. It's too much work. There's too many steps. There's too much effort. I just want to sell. And so I want to dive into, again, the overwhelm, and I want to share with you. What I've realized and what I've learned from all of these different methods so that you can make the right choice for yourself, right?

This is about you making a choice for yourself to help mitigate the overwhelm that you're feeling, but always remember that that overwhelm is [00:08:00] a state of being, and it's a state of mind, and it's a choice. You're choosing to live in that overwhelm because you either don't want to make the decision, or you don't want to make the wrong decision.

You're trying to get it right, and so your brain is constantly going, I need to learn one more thing, or I need to look at this other strategy, or what if this one works better, and oh my god, I have too many choices, I can't make one. Well, I've made them all, I think, or very close to making a lot of them, and I want to share with you what I've learned.

From those methods and why I chose to create a funnel and why I wish I would have created this years and years and years ago when I first entered in the online space. But at the time, again, I was probably in that state of overwhelm too of trying to choose and I was just choosing what others were saying.

Worked. And they do work. That's the thing. I do want to preface that they do work. But the reason why I wish I would have built the [00:09:00] funnel earlier is twofold. Number one is, we're often told that we need to get online and build an audience, right? That we, we need to have an audience first before we can sell anything.

And I've shared this story before, and I want to share it again because I think it, hopefully it'll land with y'all, but that would be like me deciding that I was going to open my brick and mortar. and that I was going to build an audience base before I ever decided to sell one thing of wine. My doors would have been closed in 30 days because of the rent, the overhead, all of that.

I couldn't sustain that if I wasn't selling. And the other thing of this is, is that you're in business to sell your offers and your services. You're not in business to grow an audience. And so oftentimes I'll see people spending all of their time trying to grow this audience on social media, because that's what Everybody tells them what to do, they need an email list, they need all the things, [00:10:00] and yet we don't have an offer to even sell.

What ends up happening is you run the risk of then going to sell what it is that you want to sell and it not being aligned with the audience that you've built. Because nine times out of ten, I'll probably even say ten out of ten, most of us, when we start to show up on social media, we don't actually have a plan or strategy.

So we're just sharing content and putting content out there. On a whim, so to speak, we're winging it, right? We're just putting out content that we feel inspired to share, that we feel might be relevant, all of those sorts of things. But none of that content, that ecosystem that we are throwing out into the interwebs in the early days of business is designed to move somebody from cold to sold to move somebody down that customer buying journey, because we actually don't even have an offer at the end of the journey.

We're just posting content to gain awareness, to build an audience and have followers and all of that. But the [00:11:00] risk is is that when we go to actually sell, we, we might not have an offer that's aligned with the audience. And when we don't have an offer that's aligned with the audience, it's like trying to sell wine to somebody who doesn't drink wine.

You're just going to continue to post to try and sell, which is why many people will say I'm speaking to the void or I'm being friend zoned. And the reason why that often is the case is because we actually did it backwards. We were trying to build the audience first and sell second. But if you're in a business, it's about selling the offer.

It's about having offers to sell to your people. And while you have those offers and build that journey, You're also simultaneously growing an audience, but you're growing an audience of highly qualified people who are very much more likely to buy your offer versus building an audience of people who may or may not be the right fit for your offers.

Two very different realities there, right? And I did that for the first eight [00:12:00] months of being online. That's what I did. I didn't have an offer to sell. I was just posting on social media, sharing about marketing and copy and all of those things in business, growing a team, running a brick and mortar, all of the things.

I was literally just sharing content. And then what I did was I started to build an email list. The problem with that was, is that I started to build an email list of people that were in brick and mortar, uh, people that were in service space, people selling products. So when it actually came time to sell my offer, which was an online coaching experience to help people put into words what they do, specifically heart led, soulful coaches, my audience wasn't the right people, and so I was talking to the void and being friend zoned, because people in my audience loved what I did.

When I talked about my brick and mortar and selling products and different things like that, but I didn't have a cohesive content strategy or ecosystem that was naturally leading someone to a sale. And so I would say the [00:13:00] makeup of my audience at that time on my email list and on social media. were not the right fit for my offer.

So that was eight months of effort and work that I had put in. Then I decided, okay, well, I'm gonna start doing like webinar launches because that will help build, build the right audience, but also sell an offer to the right audience. The problem was with launching was I would do a launch, let's just say I did a launch in February, I think of the first year.

I had four people sign up for my beta. I rinsed and repeated that launch, and I had a 10k launch, which was awesome, woohoo, I'm going up, right? I'm increasing, so I was like, cool, rinse and repeat. I ran the exact same launch in the fall of that year, and had I think it was like a 2k launch or something. And that was me having to like put in a lot more effort than I did the previous launch.

And the reason [00:14:00] why was because number one, launches are unpredictable, depending on the year, depending on the time of year. I didn't actually realize, I'm Canadian, so I didn't realize that the U. S. election was going to make such an impact on my launch, but it did. Ads weren't running the same way. All of those sorts of things.

And the problem with all of this was that I was relying on that launch, of course, as a business owner to generate revenue and sales in my business. So I just, I realized riding this launch roller coaster for me was very unpredictable. I also realized over time that I didn't like the hype marketing. I didn't want to show up for, you know, two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months hyping people up for one, the launch, the challenge that I was running or the webinar I was running.

Or the three part live series I was running, I didn't want to have to hype people up for that and then hold the energy around that launch to then show up live and deliver for [00:15:00] sometimes five days. My challenges used to be five days long and then have an open cart for three to four days after where you're still hyping people up to buy all of that.

I still feel it. I need to do some more somatic work around this because I'm, I still feel that in my body and there was nothing enjoyable about that. I didn't enjoy the hype about it, but I didn't enjoy having to hold that hype energy for a few months on end. And then also Be holding your breath. It's almost like you're holding your breath.

Breath for the sales to start to come in. Now, sure, I could work around mindset and all the things if you're listening to this thinging, well, you could do some like energy clearing around and all of that. All of that combined was not a rollercoaster I wanted to be on. I didn't want to, I didn't want to live on that.

And so I decided, okay, well, I'm going to go Evergreen where I'm enrolling all of the time. I have people coming into my world all the time, wanting to either join [00:16:00] Spellbound, buy my load tickets, um, wanting to work one to one with me. And that felt a lot more calming for my nervous system, right? I didn't have to hype up all the time.

I could build the machine. So to speak, I call it the machine, uh, and it sounds so masculine, but what the machine does or the funnel, it helps move people down that customer buying journey without me having to show up on social media all the time. It allows people to come into my world on their terms, right?

I'm putting out what it is I put out in an automated systemized way. And I believe in trust. The right people will come into my world and that's what's happening. And so, that feels good for me, but I know a lot of people who love launching, they love the adrenaline of it, and they love the hype of it.

That just doesn't jive with me and who I am. I also, like I said, need some predictability in my business [00:17:00] that helps my nervous system stay calm when I have that recurring revenue coming into my business that it's not I'm having to sell hard for 30 days, 60 days in a launch style to make the revenue that will sustain me for the months I'm not launching.

That never felt good for me. So I built the funnel. That's an evergreen funnel that allows me to have the consistency but allows me to step off the hamster wheel of churning out content all the time. I'm sharing this with you because when I think about overwhelm and things feeling complicated, for me, what was really freaking complicated was having to show up on social media all the time.

What was really complicated was putting out the energy, that hype energy into a launch. and having to hold that energy through it. What's really complicated to me is having to come up with a new live training all the time. You see this, right? Every two months somebody will put out a workshop that's a [00:18:00] new workshop.

That feels complicated to me. I don't want to have to do that. Like I'm having to be on all the time. That's, that feels complicated to me, but yet people will come into my world and they're like, Oh man, you know, building the funnel and, and all of that feels complicated. I'd way rather, you know, rely on social media.

Even though that, that's causing them a ton of overwhelm and that's what I want to sort of leave you with more than anything. Because overwhelm, I said, is a state of being and it's, and it's, and to me, it's a level of consciousness. It's where you're living in your consciousness at that moment. And we all experience overwhelm, like I experience it too.

But, but what I want to leave with you when it comes to the overwhelm, is like you've, we've got to tune back into ourselves and, and really check in with ourselves of what we want. And when what that actually looks like then in translation, right? If you [00:19:00] want predictability. You don't want to use hype marketing and constantly be in promotion and relying on social media.

Like to me, building an evergreen funnel system machine, whatever the heck you want to call it, a customer buying journey that allows you to come into your world every single week and month. Without having to, like I said, recreate the wheel every single time, without having to come up with a new workshop, without having to do any of that sort of stuff, that for me feels really freaking simple, and really straightforward, and allows you to sort of have the space to then you, be in your feminine around that.

But this is where I'm going to take you on the next Part of this because the pattern of overwhelm and, and things being complicated, right? Again, I say it's that state of being or that level of consciousness can be one of two [00:20:00] things. It can be. I just want to keep you stuck here. AKA, our ego just wants to keep us stuck or safe, and so.

It's telling us this story that it's complicated and it takes a lot of effort and work, which I'll often hear, this takes a lot of work, Kathryn, to build the funnel, and I'm looking at them going, well, you're putting in so much effort. By showing up on social media every day, you're putting in so much effort by selling all the time, right?

If you're not live launching or you're not doing a launch event or a conversion event as some people call it, then you're having to promote your offers all of the time. I don't sell on, on Insta, right? I'm not on Insta. However, like I said, I was doing that for a year and it was exhausting. The other side of this is, is that The sales now are a hell of a lot better than they [00:21:00] were then because most people don't want to be sold to every single day.

And It does and selling all the time to somebody is not the thing that's going to move people down that that journey with you. That's not the thing that's going to build trust, and if you're doing any sort of service where you're asking people to work with you in any way, shape or form, like you have to build connection with your people, and that comes via nurturing them, and the only way to nurture them, in my opinion, is by touch points along the journey, reaching out, Um, you know, whether that be in the DMs, or whether that invite people to a Q& A call, or whether it be a, like an event that you put together, a meditation, whatever it is that you're doing, but you've got to create, nurture content, um, and touch points throughout your business to nurture people in order to build that trust.

To me, the comp, like that showing up all the time, [00:22:00] and, and live launching, and creating new workshops, and. That, for me, is very, very complicated. And I understand that setting up the integrations and the tech of a funnel can feel complicated in the moment, but this is where the next bit of my story comes in, because it all boils down, in my opinion, to patience, and it boils down to The process that it takes to actually build the funnel and understanding and having patience with it.

And what I mean by this is, is that oftentimes we live in an instant gratification world. We don't understand or comprehend what delayed gratification is. We require something now. And if we don't have it now, then, then we get frustrated, we get bitter, we get angry, it's not happening quick enough. And that to me is just lack of patience, and probably our mindset [00:23:00] and expectation around when we think things should transpire.

It's kind of like wanting to manifest something in your life, right? And it doesn't happen, you set the intention, you might put it on your vision board, and oh my gosh, it didn't happen in, in two weeks, so I've lost interest. And I've heard that before, people will lose interest in what it is they're doing in one week, two weeks, three weeks, and I'm like, Wait a minute.

Everything that you want and what you want to create in your life will, one, take time, and it does take effort. We have to be able to put the work in, and that is probably the biggest second pattern, right, is that we want the finished product, but we're not willing to actually put the work in. And I often will say to my clients, like, business, in a lot of ways, is like a parallel to dating.

It's a parallel to, like, weight loss, right? Because we want to [00:24:00] lose the 50 pounds in 30 days. But what happens after the 30 days, right? What happens when we, when we get, maybe get those results or we don't see those results? It's why people don't stick with New Year's resolutions half the time, right?

Because they don't see the results fast enough, so it must not be working, right? Oh, I'm doing this weight loss challenge and I haven't lost 10 pounds yet, so therefore it must not be working. When in reality, it's like a compact effect, right? Which is similar to the evergreen funnel, in my opinion. We're building a customer journey that's systemized and automated, that doesn't require the hype marketing and the Now again, if you live for the adrenaline and you love that, Then stay with that, right?

The whole first part of this podcast episode was about you starting to understand and start to tune in with yourself and ask yourself, what do you want? How do you want to create it? [00:25:00] What does that look like for you? Right? Some people will say, I want to, I just want to work with people one to one, but it's not scalable.

That's bogus. Right? You can have a beautifully successful business working one to one with people. You can always change too. So you could start with a signature core offer that's one to one and then you could evolve to a group at some point in the future if you want to. But again, it boils down. The reason why people are overwhelmed is because we, there are a bunch of choices out there.

But, we're trying to conform to them. We hear this, that won't work, or this won't work, or you won't be able to make millions with that type of offer, and that's where we get overwhelmed. It's not because there's too many choices, it's because the thing that we actually want, we're not willing to listen to because somebody told us it wasn't possible.

And then the other bit of it is, is [00:26:00] that we don't have the patience. to allow that idea to come to fruition. We want the finished product now and we're not willing to put the work in to get it. And if we don't have the result in a week or two or three, we give up. And that might sound crazy, but it's true.

Literally. Most of us can't stick to something for 30 days. Most of us want the result a hell of a lot quicker. And if we don't experience it, we start to seek out other solutions that will help us get there. But what that creates is, is this vicious cycle that we're all on. Right? This vicious cycle of never actually getting to where we want to go and realizing and actualizing the thing that we want because we're stuck in this loop, this perpetual loop of [00:27:00] jumping off and getting distracted and going to try something else, right?

Well, the keto diet didn't work, so I'm going to do the cabbage soup diet. The cabbage soup diet didn't work, so I'm going to try Weight Watchers. Well, Weight Watchers didn't work, so I'm going to try only carnivore diet. Carnivore diet didn't work, so I'm going to do the Mediterranean. It's a vicious cycle.

It's why the diet culture, I think, is a vicious cycle for many of us. Because we're not willing to actually put in the work to, one, see the results and experience them and actualize them, and therefore then sustain them. over a lifetime, or sustain them over time, right? So, that boils down to expectation and patience.

It also, there's one other branch of things that I want to talk about here, it, in my opinion, boils down to, again, it's the mindset and the constructs within our mind that are telling us that there is a right or wrong way to do things. [00:28:00] or there's a, it's a black or white. If this doesn't happen by this time, then it's not working, right?

If I don't lose the 10 pounds in three weeks, it's not working. If I don't have a shit ton of clients rolling through my door in three weeks, it's not working. And there's this area within that you as a business owner need to cultivate more than anything in order to experience the success that you want.

And that is inner trust, but also the inner patience of knowing that it, that right now, You might not have experienced the success that you want, but it's coming. And there's a level of gratitude for where you have come so far, right? Gratitude and being able to sit within that and go, okay, I'm not maybe where I, where I want to be.

But I have so much to be grateful in this moment. [00:29:00] And the other big thing that I want to share is, is that there's this black or white generalization blanket way of thinking. And I think of it as like fixed mindset. It's not victim mindset, but it's like fixed. It's this like grandiose thing that we blanket state, like.

Everything isn't working. And then when we actually look at the nuance of it, it's like, wait a minute, there are things that are working, you know, you just might not have reached that big goal you want, like 10 clients every month or 50k months or whatever your goal is, or just like working with people, having people buy Consistently, right?

Whatever that goal is in your business or being able to put it into words what you want in a way that feels good for you, whatever your intention, your goal, whatever it is that you are wanting to achieve. We have to think about, we think of that as the mountaintop, but in [00:30:00] order to get to the mountaintop, we have to put one foot in front of the other.

And each step along the way, there's progress that's happening. That's what, that's the process that you're on. So you can't look at the top of Everest and go, Well, I want up there now. Like, think of those that are training to hike Everest. It's a process. It doesn't, they don't just put on their hiking boots that day and climb to the top of Everest.

I mean, they've got to acclimatize, right? So they're going to, they're at base camp one, and then they go to two, and then they go back down to one, and they go back out to two, and they go back down to one, then two, and then three, back down to two, right? Like, it's, it's month. long processes, and then they're looking at the weather, and sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.

This is business in a lot of ways. We can't look at the mountaintop and go, I want to get there, and then be pissed off that we didn't get there in 2. 2 seconds. Like, we've got to be [00:31:00] willing to do the work and put in the work and put in the time To achieve the thing that we want, and to feel like, and to contemplate this whole thing about, you know, yes, you want to hire somebody to support you in cutting out the steps, the unnecessary steps, but here's the thing, you still have to put in the effort, just because you have a mentor or a coach doesn't mean that That they're going to somehow quantum leap you again in 2.

5 seconds. I mean, the Sherpas don't sit there and guarantee, okay, well, if you work with us Sherpas who are local, we're going to get you to the top quicker. Like that's not the promise that they're making, right? They're like, I, we will help you get to the top safely, but this is how we do it. Right. So it's still the support that they need because they need a Sherpa to help them get to the top of Everest because they can't do it.

So to speak, right? They need that support and that guidance. [00:32:00] So that's business in a lot of ways as well, is that we need that supporting guidance, but it doesn't mean that you're rapidly going to get the results. Just because you hired a coach or a mentor, you still got to do the work, especially if you don't have a validated offer, you don't have an audience, an email list, or any of that sort of stuff.

We've got to be pragmatic about what is possible and, and really, again, it's that fixed mindset, this like grandiose black or white, right or wrong. And it's very much, um, yeah, very, very fixed, right? The growth mindset goes, I know what's possible. I can see all of these different things, but I also know that anything is possible in a lot of ways.

And so even though I have my mindset on this way, I'm open to all of the other ways that this can happen, but I'm also open to hearing other people's perspectives, that I don't know everything, and I'm not, I'm not a know it all, so I don't [00:33:00] know everything, and so I'm willing to open my mind up to the fact that I might not know everything, but also that somebody else might be able to give me a different perspective, insight, that sort of thing.

That's the growth mindset, right? Is this openness and it's the openness to the process and it's the openness to what will unfold and trusting that what is going to unfold is the path you're designed to take in a lot of ways. And sure, yes, we want things faster, quicker, better, all of those sorts of things.

But at the end of the day, we have to put in the work. And we, and it will take effort. And so if you're feeling overwhelmed with what marketing do I choose? Or what sales do I choose? Like, I don't want to do sales calls. Those feel too complicated, or too much effort, or too much energy. Again, tune back in, right?

Tune back into yourself. Or I just want to sell [00:34:00] directly from ads and I'm selling a 20k offer. Well, again, right? If you're selling a 20K offer, a 10K offer, a 2K offer, a 1K offer, even something over 500, again, that requires an ecosystem to some degree that people can get to know, like, and trust you. And I understand the wanting of immediacy and wanting it now and needing it now, but again, that to me is one of the biggest patterns that I feel like, Cap people on their potential or have people in this vicious cycle.

That to me in business, can look like the diet cycle that that many women are on where they're hopping from diet to diet, to diet to diet, and nothing quite sticks, right? Nothing's lasts, right? They, they lose a bunch of weight and then they put it back on. Well, the same is true in business in a lot of ways, in my opinion, where we're trying on all these different marketing strategies.

And we're seeing a [00:35:00] result, and then it's not enough, and so we, we lose it all, and then we, you know, and we're in this vicious cycle, and I'm hoping that this podcast episode has helped you, one, understand that overwhelm, in my opinion, is a mindset and a state of being that is a choice more than anything, and that it often, the underlying root of that is because we're trying to get it right, or we need some form of certainty that we're, we're gonna do it right.

And that we're looking at mentors, coaches, people on the internets, the gurus, whatever, to tell us what our path forward is and to guarantee that that path forward that we choose will be the right one for us and that we will see the success. And nobody can guarantee that. There's not a guru on the internet that can.

I know there's lots that promise that they can, but they can't. It's just not something you can guarantee, uh, ethically, in my opinion. There's nothing that you can guarantee. Sure, processes work. Strategies work that people sell. Absolutely. [00:36:00] But nothing is guaranteed in life. Nothing is. And so why would we think that business strategies and marketing strategies and any of that is?

And so That, I hope, when you walk away from this podcast, it's like, okay, it's about picking a strategy that works for me, and sometimes that might be trial and error. That was my journey anyways, it was a trial and error, and I'm well versed in marketing, but I still had to try on all the hats, right? I still had to do the live launching to realize I didn't like live launching.

And that's a Manny Gen thing in a lot of ways too, I think, right? Um, and I'm also a six line, and so that, there is a trial and error bit within that, but, It's trying all the things and realizing all the things you don't like, which is why I wanted to share with you why I chose the model that I have and why I built what I've built, because I didn't want to rely on social media.

I didn't want to be a content factory. I didn't want to be on on Instagram all the freaking time or Facebook or any of the [00:37:00] platforms. I didn't want to, I didn't want that to be my reality because for me, content creation is an artistic expression. It's a creative expression and I have to enjoy creating the content and creating a bunch of sales content and selling every day.

Never felt good to me and it wasn't creative. It was boring in my opinion. I was like, well, here's five more steps on how to whatever, like that all felt kind of boring to me. I didn't want to do that and I knew I didn't want to do that. But the only way I knew that was went by trying it. I knew from trying it and putting in the effort that I didn't want to do that.

But I also knew that I had spent eight months trying to build an audience that ended up being a misaligned audience for what it is I was offering. And so. So I, again, that was all trial and error and then trying the launches and the hype. I had to feel that in my body and I had to experience the really high launch values that I, that I achieved, but also the really low ones with the same amount of effort, the rinse and repeat model that a [00:38:00] lot of people were selling at the time.

There was lots of big names that were like, just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And when I couldn't rinse and repeat and create results that were similar or better. then I had an issue with that from a predictability perspective. And as a business owner who had come from brick and mortar, again, who'd come from helping small businesses, I also questioned the whole idea of like, why would I launch, open my doors for a few days and then shut them?

When Amazon doesn't do that, my brick and mortar didn't do that. No, most businesses don't do that because they'd sink. And so I just started to question a lot of the ways in which we were taught and that never quite felt right for me. And for me, I wanted people to come when they were ultimately ready. I think that was the other biggest thing was that I wasn't here to like shove an offer down someone's throat in four days and get them to make a decision on an investment.

I wanted them to come when they were ready, and that's them reaching out to me going, okay, I'm ready to go now, right? I'm ready to do [00:39:00] this. And it's not about me following up a hundred times. And I know that people will say, well, you're leaving money on the table and all these sorts of things, but I truly do have.

The Most Phenomenal Clients. Every single client that comes into my world is absolutely phenomenal, and I love and adore working with them, but they're ready to do the work, right? They're ready to put in the effort, and they're ready to do the work, and that, for me, all comes down to divine timing in a lot of ways, but when we use things like FOMO and urgency and false scarcity, we're, we're literally wrecking havoc on people's divine timing, because they don't know, they're going, well, I better do this now, because if I don't do this now, even though I don't feel ready, I got to do it because I'm going to miss out, and all of these things that to me wreak havoc on everybody's timing.

And everybody's timing is their own, and they have to make that choice for themselves. And so none of that felt good for me, which is why I did it. And I also didn't like live launching. So I had to feel this in my body. But for you, there [00:40:00] is no right or wrong way. It's just what's right for you. And if that means you have to trial and error some, that might be your path.

But I wanted to do this episode because I've had a lot of people come into my world going, I don't know if I'm quite ready to build the funnel, or I feel really overwhelmed with all the choices I need to make, or I don't know if this model's for me or that model, or I have tried a bunch of things and nothing works.

And then when I start to unpack this with people, I'm like, well, wait a minute. The reason why you're not choosing the strategies you ultimately want is because you don't believe it's possible for you, or you've never seen it modeled before, or somebody told you it wasn't going to work. Or, You've tried a lot of things, but you've actually never really given them time to work, or they were working in many different ways.

It's just you were looking at the mountaintop going, I didn't reach the mountaintop, so I'm ditching everything, burning things [00:41:00] down, and starting from scratch. If any of this is resonating with you, I really hope that this episode one is going to light a bit of a fire for you, but also remind you that all of the things that I've shared here today are, are Mental constructs and patterns that all of his experience.

Again, I've experienced it. Many people experience it, and I can kind of see right through them now, mainly because I've gone through them myself. But I also have worked with so many people now that I'm like, Ooh, that's a total pattern. And I'm not saying that you can't create quick results and things like that in your business.

I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is, is that oftentimes we have this expectation about what we think should be happening. And when it doesn't happen quick enough for us, we burn stuff down. And that is the whole patience piece of this. And that oftentimes we burn really great things to the ground and we don't even realize it.

And we never give ourself a chance to have lasting success. And [00:42:00] so I wanted to share that with you as a reminder, more than anything, that, again, we can create quick results, but there also is a piece of, um, misaligned expectation, in my opinion, for many, many, many, many online business owners that, um, believe that if If something doesn't happen into three weeks, and I've shared this on another podcast episode of like the length of time, it's always under 30 days, it's literally always under 30 days that people will come to me and go, my stuff isn't working, or they'll come to me in like two months and they'll go, it's not working.

And then I look at the data. I'm like, your data is phenomenal. It is working. Things are working. You just haven't You haven't reached the mountaintop yet. It'd be kind of like getting to base camp two after going to three and acclimatizing there and coming back down to two and then being pissed off. Oh man, I'm, I'm done.

This isn't working because I haven't gotten to the top of Everest yet. Um, [00:43:00] when in reality, the process is very methodical in order to get you to the, the summit. safely and a lot and then be able to come down the mountain alive, right? And so business is the same way in a lot of ways in order to create safety in your business.

And in order to be relaxed and calm in your business, there is a process that one has to take in order to do that. And so, um, what I can offer you as you walk away from this podcast episode is taking a moment to tune in to yourself. No distractions. No guru said this. The minute your brain starts to say this, well, someone said this.

Anytime somebody says that to me, I'm always like, but what do you want? And it's almost like a shock to their system. Cause they're like, what? And I'm like, I don't care what so and so big name guru on the internet says. I don't care if they say that one to one can't scale. I don't care if they say that the only way to sell is by using high pressured sales.

[00:44:00] I don't care. I don't care what they say. I get really frustrated and also equally passionate about this because I don't care. I don't care what the big names of the internets are saying. I care about what people tell me they want. And then from that perspective, I'm like, then let's build it. Because it's possible.

You can scale one to one. You can scale a hybrid group program that everybody told me I couldn't scale. You can do all of that. It's just that the reality that that that person that's offering you advice is they're offering it through their own lens of reality. And many, many mentors have a fixed mindset, even though they don't believe they do.

They believe they have a growth mindset because they're an entrepreneur. But they have a fixed mindset, because fixed mindset is right or wrong, black or white. This is how you do it. Follow the steps. I'm going to leave you with that because that to me is a, uh, a mind blower when you can actually start to see through people's own language, [00:45:00] their own sales methods, their own, all of that, when you start to see that the fixedness of what they're selling, you will start to understand the mentality that is coming to you, right?

So that you can work through that for yourself because there is no right or wrong. There is no cookie cutter. And so when you realize that from the guru telling you, that for me releases a ton of overwhelm, because there isn't a choice anymore. The only choice is the choice you want to make, and the decision you want to make.

And if you're overwhelmed, you're likely trying to get it right, and you're looking for absolute 100 percent guarantee and certainty. And there's, and That is a fixed mindset. We have to shift to the growth mindset that anything is possible, that the path that I choose to go forth is the right path for me, even if it doesn't make sense, even if I have never seen anybody model it, we have to start to [00:46:00] look from that perspective.

And then the other bit of it is, is that every single time you're like, I haven't achieved the results I want. I want you to think about the Everest. And I want you to think about the process it takes to hike Everest. Or I want you to think about the vicious diet cycles that many women are on, right? Many of us are on because We don't see lasting change after 30 days or we're never really actually taught what will create sustainability and lasting change.

But we also are never really taught how to navigate the changing essence of our bodies as a female. So the same, the same workout methods in the same way we trained when we were 20. looks different than when, maybe when we're 35 or different after post kids or different into our 40s and 50s. But we were, we were never trained that way because it's a one size fits all mentality.

It's a very fixed mindset. This is the way you lose weight. You move more [00:47:00] and eat less. It's very one size fits all. When in reality, that's not the only way to create lasting change. So I'm going to leave you here and I want you to kind of look within yourself where you're directing your gaze out and where you're going.

I'm listening to this person, this person, this person. I want you to tune out. I want you to mute the accounts and I want you to ask yourself what you want. I asked a client recently, what would their dream business look like? And they were sharing with me, but it was followed by but. But I don't think this is possible, but I don't think this is scalable.

And we all experience this. I even experience this at the level that I'm at. I was just recently chatting with a good friend of mine and a mentor of mine, and I was saying to her the same sort of thing. I'm like, I have this idea, but I don't know how to get started, which is interesting, right? Because I [00:48:00] do know how to get started, but what I wanted was a fully finished idea before I started writing.

Right? Before I actually sat down and started to write, I wanted the full idea there. But the creative process doesn't work like that. The creative process is an idea drops, and then we've got to follow that inspiration to mold it and massage it and create it. And that's the process. So even I was in that funk of like, well, I don't have the whole idea down and mapped out and all of that.

And for me, my ideas start to roll out as I take the steps forward. And I know this about myself, but I also know that when looking to grow and evolve, we can very much get stuck in this fixed mindset or we get stuck in our own bullshit, so to speak, because we don't want to take the step forward because [00:49:00] that means growth and evolution and our lovely brain of ours and our lovely ego want to keep us safe and they don't want us necessarily to evolve.

So that's a whole other podcast episode that I want to record and share for you is like the creative process and what that actually looks like so that if you're sitting on an idea right now, thinking I'm not ready for whatever reason, then that episode is going to be amazing and I'll record it at some point.

So with that, I'm going to leave you. I hope that this has been uber helpful for you. Um, and of course, if you have any questions, please pop over at Creative Lyon on Instagram because I'd love to hear them. I'd love to hear from you. Um, and with that, I'm going to leave you. Subscribe to the show so you don't miss when the next episode drops.

Cheers! Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at CreativelyOwned and online at CreativelyOwned. com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic [00:50:00] self.