Followers Don't Equal Connection

I have 21k followers on Instagram.

So guess where 95% of my clients find me? Facebook.

Having an audience isn’t the same thing as having connections.

And deep, genuine connection with actual human beings is what creates clients.

Not a large audience.

Until you're fully booked, the best thing you can do is let go of the idea of “building an audience.”

Build one-on-one personal connections instead.

As cliché as it sounds, it’s true: 10 genuine relationships are better than 1000 random followers you don’t know when you’re starting out.

But having 1000 random followers looks better, right?

People will think you’re successful.

So the question is, would you rather look successful or actually be successful?

You Actually Sell Croissants

Whether you’re a web designer, a coach, a consultant, a social media manager or any other service provider – you’re actually in the business of selling croissants.

People love croissants. They want to buy them.

They just don’t want the baker to turn up unannounced on their doorstep at 4 o’clock in the morning to force feed them one.

It’s the wrong place, wrong time.

And when we cold-message strangers offering our services, no matter how good they are, that’s what we’re essentially doing.

Stuffing a croissant into a surprised face.

How could they not love it?! It’s a croissant! 

Not a compulsory croissant in the middle of the night.

No matter what your business is, remember that you’re in the business of selling croissants.

People want to buy what you’re selling.

At the right place, right time.

Let them come to YOU.

Connect with croissant lovers in Facebook groups and networking events and supermarkets. Invite them to check out your space: your Instagram account, your email list, your bakery. Offer them a croissant.

And whether they decide to buy one today or not, says nothing about their desire for croissants.

Maybe they just ate.

Maybe they’ll come back later.

Maybe they’re just deciding how many to get.

You sell croissants. People want to buy them.

What if you believed everyone truly wants what you have to offer?

How would that change where you showed up to market your business?

How I Used to Overcomplicate Everything

I found all of these photos on my phone from 2019, when my business was barely generating any income at all.

It's really clear that I used to overcomplicate EVERYTHING to do with the marketing process.

These are just a few of the wall-sized diagrams and notebooks and whiteboards covered in flow diagrams and funnels and plans.

And the more complex it got, the less action I took – evident by the fact that I never finished any of it and made a total of $6000 in my business for the whole of 2019.

Once I discovered that there are really only three main steps to marketing your services, no matter what you do, I was able to make a full-time income with my business:

1. Connect with people in neutral spaces
   A neutral space is anywhere that neither of you own – the gym, someone else’s Facebook group, an online networking event.

2. Invite them to your space
   Your space is the place that you own – your Instagram, your house, your own Facebook group, your email list.

3. Offer to help them
   An offer could look like a valuable post (in your space) with a note at the end saying “message me to book a free consultation”.

Connect, invite, offer.

What if that was all you had to do?

(It is.)

New Belief

New belief: It gets to be easy. All of it.

Oh, This Bit Again

I'm learning to observe my experience of goal getting as a neutral pattern.

Instead of freaking out when nothing is going right, I'm able to observe my brain and think “Oh this bit. This is the bit where I feel like giving up. I always go through this bit. It's just one of the steps for success.”

Stay with the process. Don't panic. You'll pass through this level soon.

April 2021 Goals

1. Time-block all of my activities – and really, genuinely stick to the time I said I would do them.
   I tend to pile unnecessary extra tasks onto my calendar, and don’t do the things I was supposed to do on my calendar until later. Instead, this month I’m going to follow my calendar religiously. This is going to be a huge test of discipline, but ultimately, I think it will provide a lot of freedom.

2. Take my evenings and weekends fully off.
   It’s so easy to see work sneaking into evenings and weekends when you work for yourself. Not because I have to – but because I don’t prioritise my work properly during my workday.

That’s all. Last month I set 7 goals and didn’t hit them all. This month, I’m focusing only on what is important, and cutting out everything else. Simplicity is a theme that I have to constantly remind myself of, and I’m going to 100% commit to it in April!

March 2021 Goals Review

1. Grow my Impossible Girls Facebook Group to 5000 members!
   NOT DONE. I didn’t complete this and I know exactly why: I didn’t make it a priority. I didn’t focus on it, almost at all. I spent my energy focusing on all of my other goals and it’s taught me an important lesson: Don’t set too many goals at once!

2. Show up every single day in my group and add more love than ever before.
   DONE!

3. Do some of our Tony Robbins relationship course each day.
   Half done – we did it 50% of the days. Not perfect, but it’s still 15 days more than we were doing before we started the course, so that’s a win!

4. Mindset journaling every single morning, no excuses.
   This is the one I’m most proud of – because I’ve always wanted to create a habit of mindset journaling. It made a massive difference, and I had a really successful month overall.

5. Go walking 3x a week.
   DONE!

6. Join a hip hop class.
   DONE – except that instead of hip hop, I signed up to a tap class because of my shoulder injury. (Fun fact: I tap danced for 15 years and used to teach it!). Excited to go back!

7. See friends 3x a week.
   DONE!

I Still Adore Flying

About 18 months ago, I overcame my fear of flying using the power of identity. Since then, I’ve taken over 20 flights and this week, I took another two.

And I thought I would share today that I still adore it.

Even more than I adore it, I adore that I adore flying – because for more than 10 years I was terrified of it, and taken even a short flight was a miserable experience.

If you haven’t seen my video on how I overcame my fear of flying, you can watch it here.

In the meantime, you can find me celebrating 18 months of fearlessness, by eating a little packet of peanuts and drinking tomato juice from a plastic cup, at 31,000 feet.

Refining Life

With all of my clients, I’ve been working on refining.

Refining schedules.

Refining priorities.

Refining it all down to what really matters.

I am of course, my own client and I’m the one who I do all of my experiments on.

So as I refine further and further, I ask myself the question – what actually adds value?

Does this blog add value? This blog I’ve been writing from 600+ days – is it truly valuable?

I think even if a million people found it valuable, it would still be a question of if I find it valuable to write it.

Today, the answer is yes.

Time Management is Honouring Your Decisions

There are two aspects to time management:

1. Deciding when you’ll do something

2. Honouring your decision by actually doing it then

When I first heard this idea, I was blown away. It can’t be that simple, can it?

Then I tried it. It really is.

It comes back to the idea that is always on my mind, the secret to the entire universe: Getting yourself to do the things you said you’d do.