How to Ditch the Feast or Famine Rollercoaster in Your Online Business

[00:00:00] INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Catherine Thompson takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen her 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, Katherine Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive into [00:01:00] today's topic because. It is a question I get asked a heck of a lot in the DMs and in my emails. And it's part of a conversation that I keep having. So I know when I keep having these conversations and I keep getting these questions that it's something I definitely need to share with you all.

So here we are. And the question is. Is I'm posting a lot of content, I'm trying to grow my following, I'm trying to grow my email list and yet I still don't have any paying clients or I'm still not seeing consistent paying clients. So I'm getting this ebb and flow of clients, but it's definitely not consistently coming into my business.

So it's super unpredictable. I don't really feel safe and I just am lacking clarity on what to do next because. There's so many messages out there that are telling me I need to do this. I need to do this. Maybe I need to go on Tik Tok. Maybe I need to get a Pinterest account. There's all of these different gurus selling something.

And I want to [00:02:00] strip all of this away. All of the things that we Could be doing to grow and scale our business. And I want to bring it right back down to the fricking basics, because when we bring things back down to the basics, it's really easy to spot where we need to focus our energy and probably where we've been focusing on our energy.

That's just really keeping us busy. And. Leading to burnout in a lot of ways, I get a lot of people that come to me after six months, 12 months of trying in their business to make it work. And they're seeing results to some degree. But like I said, they're not consistent. And therefore, it's not sustainable over the long run, because they're not growing.

Okay. And obviously as you know, we need sales in our business in order for our business to be able to pay for our life and the things that we want to do, and also sales in our business so that we can create more impact and reach more people with what we do. I want to break it down in the most basic way shape or [00:03:00] form.

And the best way for me to do that is to give you an example of when we opened our brick and mortar business. Because when we opened our brick and mortar business, we had an idea of what we wanted to do, right? We were going to produce wine at a small scale to a consumer base of wine consumers who drank wine regularly, weekly.

Maybe even daily and they wanted an alternative to liquor store wine prices. They wanted something at a fraction of the cost that tasted good that they could still enjoy with that, you know, evening meal or on weekend with friends, but it didn't break the bank on a yearly spend basis. This is not consumers that were, you know, drinking a bottle or two a month or maybe even a year or a quarter.

Like, these are regular wine drinkers and the reason why I'm differentiating that with you right now is because it plays a factor in my story of why we don't want to spend all of our frickin [00:04:00] time growing a following and an email list. If we aren't clear on what our offer is, this is one of the biggest areas that I see, especially in the online space.

We would never get away with this in retail. We would never get away with this in brick and mortar. I'm going to share with you why. Um, but for some reason, a lot of us online business owners struggle with this in the early days of starting our business or even. Years into the business, we're still not a hundred percent certain or clear on what that offer is and how to articulate that offer in a way that attracts the right people into our business.

But we also don't know how to put that offer in front of the right people at the right time. And. This is why I shared with you the type of consumer we were looking to target when we opened our brick and mortar because I see so many of y'all growing your email list and growing your following on social media by posting content, creating freebies or lead magnets that at the end of the day [00:05:00] don't lead anywhere because I'm just going to get that out there for now.

I'm going to create the lead magnet. I'm going to create the content. I'm going to build the following. And when I'm ready, I'm going to put an offer in front of them. The problem is that when we do that, we actually don't know if the audience that we've built and the email list that we've built is the right audience.

It would be like me. Growing a following and growing an email list for my brick and mortar wine business, but not knowing what type of wine business I wanted to start. So I know I'm passionate about wine and I want to create something around wine, but I'm not a hundred percent certain yet. So I'm going to get the space.

I'm going to invest in a space. I'm going to build a social media following. I'm going to create a bit of an email list. Maybe I'll put a lead magnet out there. That's like very generic wine based and I'm going to grow this audience so that when I'm ready. I'll put my offer in front of them. [00:06:00] The problem is that if I was to open the brick and mortar wine business after having done that, there's a really good chance that a lot of the people on my list, on my following would not be in alignment with the offer that I was putting out there.

Because the offer was really specific and targeting a very specific consumer base. It wasn't targeting wine drinkers that drank sporadically throughout the year. It wasn't wine drinkers that were maybe a little bit more. Snooty when it came to their wine selection and they were buying the 80, 100 bottles of wine.

That's not who we were targeting. We were targeting a very specific group of wine drinkers who, like I said, drank regularly, daily, weekly, on weekends, and they consumed On average, 30 bottles every six to eight to 12 weeks, because that's what we sold, [00:07:00] right? We sold 30 bottles at a time. That would not go over well with somebody who drank a bottle a year or a bottle every quarter.

I mean, yes, you can sort in the basement and it would last for years down there and all of that, and we promoted that for sure. But, for our business to continue to grow, and to continue to be profitable, we needed consumers that were coming in regularly to make new batches of wine. So, if I had built an email list, And an E and a following on social media before ever opening the doors before ever introducing the offer.

Like I said, it would be a very good chance that there would be a lot of people on there that would not be in alignment with the offer. The problem with that is if I had invested in space 5, 000 a month or 4, 000 a month or three or two or one, even that's a lot of money to spend on a retail space. Just to sort of kind of guess [00:08:00] what I might be doing and to gain clarity, which is why I think in the online space, in a lot of ways, it's easier to sort of dabble.

It's easier to sit and sort of gain clarity and spend months and months and months trying to come up with the perfect offer, the perfect message, the perfect branding and all of the things because the cost and the loss This is not as high as it would be in a brick and mortar, which is why at the beginning I said we could never get away with this in our brick and mortar.

I could never get away with just building a following and building an email list without a clarity around what my offer was. I'm sharing this because I see a lot of online soulful coaches predominantly creating lead magnets, opt ins, content for social media, churning out content on social media to a point of leading into burnout and wondering why [00:09:00] maybe their audience isn't engaging, they're speaking to the void, they're being friend zoned.

And the reason all of those things happen. Oftentimes is one, we're not taking people down that customer buying journey, which I've talked about a lot on the podcast, right? So we're not moving them down that journey because we don't actually really have an offer for them or we've started to move them down that journey.

But then we changed the offer at the end of it, it would kind of be like a travel agent promoting that they're going to be releasing their next big trip. And it's going to be around food and wine, and they're really excited about it. And so they invite people who are interested in food and wine to join their mailing list or waitlist so that they can then announce.

This trip, once it becomes available for those that are interested and spots are limited. So you want to get on this wait list because you want to be first to know when we drop this, we know spots are going to sell fast, get on this list, yada, yada, yada. You know, the [00:10:00] drill people opt in and they build this list to over 2000 people.

And they've got this beautiful list of people, but somewhere along the way. They decided that they didn't want to do the wine tour food tour somewhere like France or Italy or Australia. They wanted to actually go to India and do a tour there instead. And so they open the sales to this Indian tour and only two people out of the 2000 purchase.

And they can't figure out why they're like, what the heck? Like we've got this beautiful email list. There's 2000 people on it. They obviously love travel because they opted in and sure, yeah, we changed maybe the focus of the trip, but they're still like avid travelers. So I'm, I'm just not sure why nobody's buying.

It's because you've got to put the right offer in front of the right people at the right time. And if someone raises their hand saying, I'm interested in a wine food tour [00:11:00] and you go and say, hey, now we're selling this beautiful trip to India that has nothing to do with wine or well, food, maybe, but it has nothing to do with wine and you get a couple of people that buy.

That's why. Well, the same is true. If that's what you're doing in your online business or your business in general, that you're constantly switching your offer. You're not really clear in it. And you're building this following in this list around this bigger picture idea, travel, potentially wine, holistic healing, whatever it is that you're doing.

And you're building this following, but then you realize once you go to make the offer. that you've built this following and this list of people that are actually not interested in the specificity of your offer. For example, if you're a holistic healer and you specialize in EFT tapping or something like that and they're like, well, I'm not into EFT.

I actually want to do like a in person retreat meditation [00:12:00] retreat. Right. You can see how disjointed the customer journey becomes when we're unclear about what our offer is, or when we change it all the time and we switch it up and then we try to sell to the same group of people that we've been building this community around who end up not really being interested in the thing that we're now creating.

And that's what wrecks havoc, I think, in a lot of Online coaches, businesses, consultants, businesses, or in businesses in general, I don't see this predominantly in the offline world and brick and mortar, because as I mentioned, like you're not renting a space and paying thousands of dollars in a space.

You're not ordering a ton of inventory as a product based business to then go change your mind. I mean, maybe you are, but that's like, You know, business suicide in a lot of ways, it's not going to work. If that's what you do, if you've got, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in inventory sitting there, you're going to sell it, right?

Well, the same as with your online business, just because you don't have a [00:13:00] tangible physical product and you're not locked in, let's just say to a physical space where you're paying rent. You still want to get back to the basics of a business, right? The whole essence of a business is to create an offer of some sort product or service or hybrid of the both and put it out into the world to impact more people, to have people buy it, whatever it is.

And so you have to look at what am I doing to get people to buy the offer? And if I don't even know what my offer is, that's where I need to start. And if I continually change my offer, I therefore need to change my messaging all along my customer journey or I run the risk of building an audience and a following and an email list of people that are not interested in what it is that I'm selling.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't have multiple product suites that wouldn't apply to your audience. So, for example, In our [00:14:00] winemaking business, our primary or signature offer, as we call it in the online space, was producing wine at a small scale. So people would come in, they would select the wine they'd like, we would brew it for them, and then they would walk out with 30 bottles of wine sometime in the future, once the wine was ready.

That doesn't mean that we didn't, you know, stock our shelves with wine glasses and trinkets and different things like that, that would appeal to a wine drinker, right? You can do the same in your business. But again, where I see a lot of people go sideways is they try to do all 10 of them or all five of them or all four of them or whatever, right out of the gate.

And if you're not, if one system isn't working, my guess is all four isn't going to work. Right. So when we opened our wine business, and I've shared this before on the podcast, is that we focused and doubled down on producing the wine. I didn't bring trinkets, trinkets or anything like that into the [00:15:00] business until a year in, at least.

Right. And I'm a marketer by trade, so I was selling and I knew what I was doing and I was still like, let's focus on getting this service and delivering this service exceptionally and delivering this product exceptionally before we start to add other things to it. And I get it. If you're multi passionate, you love to do a bunch of things.

I get it. I get the feeling of like, this is restricting. But if you're thinking about the long game and you're thinking about building a business for the long game, then you can always add in, in a year, two, three, five from now, right? It's when we think in the short term that we've got to get everything done now, we've got to hit that quantum leap in 5.

2 seconds and the business has to take off and the offer we're putting out there has to be profitable in a month or I'm quitting. Then, yeah, sure, you're going to stay in that sort of bit of a rat race there, but if [00:16:00] you're thinking about the long game and sustainability and I'm in this for the long term, then what does it matter if you offer something in a year or two that adds to the product or service suite, right?

Like, we knew at some point we would bring trinkets and glasses and all of that fun stuff in. But that can also sink a business really, really quickly when you're trying to leverage, you're going to leverage it because you're investing in inventory to make the product. You have a ton of investment that's gone into starting it and now you're trying to add more inventory into the mix.

Like your business has to get profitable and even some offers that get put out into the world. You won't might not see profitability right away. You might be reinvesting what you're making to grow the business. Now in the online world, profit margins are a little bit different and you've got more room there to play.

But [00:17:00] I'm just saying that just because something might not be profitable the first time you put it out there, you know, you have two, three, five people that buy, it doesn't mean that it doesn't work, right? Most businesses start out. Selling a handful and then eventually before, you know what, they've grown their customer base.

We just get so distorted in the online world because we see these big flashy numbers of like what successful businesses have done. You know, I just read something recently and I just almost, I was like, are we not done with these messages? I feel like maybe I live in my own little vortex here where I preach this and I stand on my freaking soapbox and I yell it from the rooftops.

And yet I still see these redonkulous messages out there of like, how I grew my following to a million in six days. It's like, what? Like why are we still using that rhetoric and those messages to sell? Because you didn't grow your following to a million in six days. You came with 25 years of experience [00:18:00] and A community of people that you knew prior to that then helped you grow this, right?

Like, I mean, the whole story in that message isn't told. And so we get hung up again in the online world specifically about what our definition of success must look like for us to sort of. Stick to thing. So back to the whole essence of this podcast and why I wanted to record it because I want to bring us back to the basics and I want to bring us back to where we as entrepreneurs need to focus if we want to build a sustainable business.

And I'm going to, again, start with my brick and mortar and what I focus on wholeheartedly there and what I've translated into my online business after going through the whole lack of offer clarity and doing all the things. The reason I can speak about it is because I've walked that beautiful path of, you [00:19:00] know.

Not having an offer, not really being clear, building an audience, building a following and not really having an offer that's, you know, clear and then changing it and all of that stuff. So I've been there, which is why I'm able to speak on it and share with you. So the other big basic piece of it is, is like service, right?

So you've got this beautiful offer. It all starts and ends with the offer. Don't waste your time creating lead magnets and posting on social media. If you're just trying to grow a following because the following that you're building may never buy from you because you put an offer out, they don't actually want.

The second thing is is if you have an offer and you're putting that out into the world and you're impacting people's lives and you're focusing on how do I create service and how do I be of the best service to these people that are willing to pay me and want to come into my world that in and of itself will translate into word of mouth.[00:20:00] 

People coming back, all of those sorts of things. And I think again, that's a big piece that gets overlooked in the online space. Right. We focus so much on like, what do I need to do to sell the offer? I'm going to put on this big flashy launches. I'm going to, you know, hype the shit out of what I'm doing.

And then. You know, what is the inside of your offers look like? What does that container look like? What is that experience for your people? Are you available for criticism and feedback? I know so many coaching programs that it's literally reversed back onto the client, that it's their fault. They're the victim.

They're the, whatever. When to me, an investment is a two way street, right? If I'm investing in a service. I better be able to bring my critical perspective into that experience and offer that, but I know a ton of coaching experiences that people are not available for that, right? And that then shuts off [00:21:00] any relationship.

That shuts off any type of relationship that you're going to have with people, whether you're selling a product or a service. If you had a sign on your door that was like, we don't listen to your feedback and we don't listen to what you have to say. Like it just shuts it off and energy demeanor and energy, right?

The way that we carry ourselves is an indication of that. And so what experience are you creating for your people and how do they feel within that? And how do you receive feedback, whether it's a product or a service? And what do you do about that feedback? Again, this is the basics, right? Put the offer in front of the right people at the right time, and people will ultimately buy.

But people will keep coming back into your business if you cultivate those relationships within your business. And if you create an exceptional customer experience for your people, so that they rave about you beyond your container and you working with them. That creates [00:22:00] such goodwill in the world of business that is, like I said, so overlooked.

To me, these are two really basic things. And then the other thing is, is that once you have this offer and you're reaching people and people are investing in it and you're, you've created this exceptional customer service and people are talking about it and there's word of mouth. Then the question is, how do I reach more people?

And maybe that's where you're at right now in your business. How do I reach more people? How do I get my offer in front of more people, new people? And if you're in the offer stage and you're like, I've got this offer. Now what? And I know that it's amazing. Now what? It's like, how do you drive traffic to that offer for the brick and mortar business?

We had signage on the outside of the building. We were in a high traffic area to begin with. And we picked that we had billboards. We had newspaper ads, we had social media, right? We were driving traffic [00:23:00] to our business. We had Google, we had Google ads. There were things that we were doing to drive traffic to our business.

And then once we had people that walked in the door, the service was exceptional because that's what we hung our hat on. Our product was unique. The space was unique, the way we delivered was unique and people wanted to try it. We also had customer satisfaction guaranteed that we communicated, um, where people could come back and offer feedback or they could bring us their 30 bottles of wine and say, Hey, this isn't up to par of what we would like.

Can you recommend something else? And we always rebrewed something for people. No questions asked. No questions asked. The same is true for your online business. Right. You've got this offer. And now how do you get eyeballs on this offer? How do you reach your people? One really great way is a lead magnet of some sort.

Having people opt in to a quiz or a masterclass or a free experience with [00:24:00] you or a paid workshop. Whatever you wanna do in-person, networking, whatever it is, but it's like how do you have people move down that customer buying journey? How do you get them in the door? Right? If you were looking at what we did for our brick and mortar, we had lots of things going out, promoting what we were doing.

The goal was not to sell them in the newspaper ad, not to sell them in our Google ad. The goal of the Google ad and Facebook. Ads were to get them in the door was to create awareness for what we were doing once they were in the door. I was there and I would help sell them on starting a batch of wine.

The same is true for your online business, right? So it's like, how do you create awareness about what you do not selling them on the offer? Right. Not expecting that a Facebook ad or a Google ad or whatever is going to sell them direct, sell them on the offer is going to create awareness for what you're doing so [00:25:00] that they can come into your world.

How are they coming into your world? And now that you have them in your world, how are you selling them on what you do? Is it a sales call? Are you having conversations in the DMS? What is it that you're doing to create that relationship, but also. Further create the demand for what it is that you're selling.

What things can you do, right? So a masterclass, can you get people to book a call with you? Can you invite them to drop into your DM so you can have a conversation with them? Can you do a live experience where people can jump on a zoom and ask you questions? Can you think outside of the box of how you might be able to create this experience for your people that can form that connection with you at some point in that journey?

And then once people bought from us, they bought the wine from us, then they would go away while we brewed it, and then they would come back and they would help bottle. That was part of the legalities. And while they were in their [00:26:00] bottling, again, delivering exceptional service, we offered custom labels, so that it was a fun thing for them to be able to come in, they get this custom labels, they just loved it.

While they were in the store, I would invite them to start another batch. And anybody that started a batch while they were bottling got 10 off their next purchase. People loved that. So then what can you do within your business? Say it's an online business and you're coaching somebody and maybe you have a 12 pack session, you're coaching them for 12 sessions.

Like, do you have an opportunity to offer? Board, do you get on a call with them outside of regular coaching and invite them to offer feedback, but also invite them to re sign for another 12 packages? Like, what are you doing along the journey? Once they're working with you to retain them, to keep them coming back, if that's part of the journey, right?

Again, we want to look at this, [00:27:00] like a, a lovely experience that we're creating for people and an opportunity along the way. To have those touch points, to have those opportunities to reinvest, to stay working with you, to share what you do. You know, I had a client recently saying, Hey, do you offer affiliate payout if I recommend you to people?

I said, absolutely. I honored that. She's like, great. Cause I can't, you know, stop talking about you to everybody. So I'm, I'm sending people your way and here's a list of people. And she sent me a list of like 10 people that she's already recommended. And she's been working with me for two months, which is phenomenal.

Right? So it's, it's these different touch points in your business. We also had a referral fee with the wine business. These are all beautiful things that you can add into your business. And so, and you can also get creative with it, right? I'm just, I'm just riffing on some of the things that we've used, but absolutely you can get creative with it.

I was sharing about the custom wine labels and I've shared this on past shows as well, [00:28:00] but that is a selling feature without. My people ever having to share it because they'd bring a bottle of wine to their friends and they'd have some funny saying on it or whatnot. And then people, it would drum up a conversation and then.

People would, you know, say, Hey, go to Vintners and, and buy the wine, yada, yada, yada, because you can also create a label. And then people would come in, like, I just want to create my own label. And it was just a fun thing, right? It was a conversation starter without people having to start the conversation in a lot of ways.

So again, it's getting creative with what you can do, but again, we go back to the basics. Business can be easy and simple if we allow it to. Sure, you might hit obstacles and challenges and roadblocks, but it gets to be simple. It absolutely gets to be simple. Where we go sideways is we overcomplicate the shit out of it.

We try to do all of the things we try to make everything perfect. We focus our energy on things that will actually not move the needle in your business, like creating the [00:29:00] perfect website, creating a lead magnet when you don't have an offer, right? Because now you've built this lead magnet, you spent all this time and you're driving people down this journey with you to go where to buy what.

And if you're a business, again, you have to have something to sell, right? You, there has to be something at the end of this for you to sell in a lot of ways. So. What is it? It all starts and ends with the offer or offers. And then the other thing is, is we try to create so many offers at one time when we don't even have one working unit to begin with.

Right? So for us, I could have easily sunk my wine business had I tried to Offer everything, especially everything that people were asking me for, you know, people asked me to make beer at one point and I thought about it because I had a lot of people coming in and asking me to make beer, but it wasn't our specialty.

Could we have done it? Absolutely, but it could have also equally sunk us with inventory. [00:30:00] And all of that. And if the product wasn't good at the end of it, right? My specialty was making the wine. Beer is a whole other ball game. It's a whole other ball game. And if the product wasn't good, then all of a sudden the Vintners name gets a bad rap, even though wine is our thing.

And then people start talking about it. Oh, we went to Vintners and we bought beer and it was gross. Duh, duh, duh, duh. And then the name gets out there in a negative light because the products we're serving aren't up to par. And that was a big part of our commitment was the products were, we would guarantee the product and we knew the product was phenomenal.

So the basics are really easy. What is your offer? Who are you selling it to and can you get clear on who that human is? Again, it doesn't have to be the, you know, a woman between 40 and da, da, da. Like for us, it was wine drinkers, right? We started with wine drinkers, which is very broad. And then we narrowed it down to like the type of wine drinker, like more of an identity could [00:31:00] be a man, could be a woman, could be a non binary.

It could be whatever it, you know, again, it didn't matter the gender. In any way, shape or form, it just mattered that how much they were drinking the wine and the fact they wanted to save money on wine. See how broad that is in some ways, but also very specific, but also not pointing out a certain type of person, like gender, age, demographics, that sort of thing.

It was just their wine consumption habits. You can do the same with your niche, right? What habits do your people have? What habits do they live by? What actions are they taking? What behaviors do they naturally have? It doesn't have to be, again, demographics. It doesn't have to be, I help high achieving doctors, female doctors in the United States of America.

Like, it doesn't[00:32:00] 

have to be that specific. It can be again, Really basic, right? Putting that, then putting that offer in front of those people. And so what experience do I need to create if I'm online? What do I need to create to bring this type of buyer into my world? If it was me doing the wine in the online world, if I was teaching people how to brew wine at home, let's just say.

I would create some type of lead magnet or something that someone could opt into. Maybe it's a, you know, a checklist, a home brewers checklist, everything you need and where to get it maybe. And they could opt in to get that checklist. So they're not having to Google search. The funny thing is, is that brewing wine at home, there's so much mixed messages out there.

Kind of like business in a lot of ways. But a lot of like outdated and not even like remotely accessible. I remember having to Google search a ton of things and it was like the hardest to find. And at one point I was like, huh, I could create an online business where I teach people [00:33:00] how to brew wine at home, but never did it.

But that would be maybe a lead magnet that I would. You know, create was a checklist, everything you need to brew at home. And it was a checklist with where you could actually get it best supplies, supply lists, stores, that sort of thing. Again, a lot of that information isn't super readily available. Um, Yeah.

I mean, and then promote that and have people opt in. And so then when I went to turn around and sell my eight week homebrew winemaking course, people would buy it or do it yourself, homebrew winemaking course, people would buy it, right? Because those people in that particular journey were interested in homebrewing wine.

But if I had created a lead magnet on what's your favorite wine, White, white or red or Sauvignon Blanc versus Cabernet Sauvignon. Like, that's so general and broad and then if I turned around and tried to sell them on how to make your own at home. I've, [00:34:00] I've have likely would have a big following of people that were not wanting to brew wine at home.

They would way rather just go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of wine, right? So hopefully that helps you to sort of strip down the basics and strip down what you actually need to build a profitable business. And again, I can't stress this enough. And I, I keep thinking. When will the tides shift?

Like when will they actually shift? Where we see a massive shift in the industry in terms of the belief that we have to be creating content and like so visible online and showing up online and building that following and doing those things and creating content every single day. Like when will that actually shift?

Because I've done it twice now in business. I've done it in my brick and mortar where I. Did not post any real sales stuff when I had my brick and mortar, if anything, it was like snapshots of me working in the store. As I've mentioned many times, I sent one [00:35:00] email a month to our list that would garner thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in sales.

And I've now done this in my online business where. I've I post, you know, four to seven times a month, if that, and I send an email once a month to my list and I can honestly say to you, one, I enjoy my business a heck of a lot more because it's more me, but two. I'm far more profitable and I make a hell of a lot more sales than I ever have in my online business because of this shift.

I can almost guarantee it. It was something I fought so hard in the online space, so if you're fighting it, I so, so get it. And I am so here to continue to share this message and continue to, like, you know, just inspire and encourage you that we don't need to be online 24 seven to have a successful online business.

We don't need to even be creating five posts a [00:36:00] week to have a successful online business. And if there is any hesitation of like. This feels not real or anything like that. I'm just going to keep dropping content for you to show you that it is so possible. It is so possible. If you build a beautiful customer journey that, that leads people to an offer, I can tell you right now that you will see more sales in your business than you ever had.

And you'll see more consistent clients coming through your world. If you're not seeing that right now, there's probably a disconnect between your message and the offers you're putting out there and the audience in which you're speaking to. And if you have a huge following of people or even. 500 people or 200 people.

And you've got people on an email list and you're still not seeing the sales. My guess is the offer that you're putting in front of them isn't something that they're ultimately looking for. And so it's garnering that information, doing a little bit of research to see, [00:37:00] uh, whether or not they're people on your list or the right people, um, for the offers that you're putting out there, because it might, it's, it's.

Likely not the offers problem, like sometimes we need to articulate the offer in a better way in order for it to sell, but oftentimes, like I said, it's usually the audience that we're trying to sell to isn't interested in the offer that we're putting out there because we've spent so much time trying to build a following.

Around a big brand message that is not in alignment with the offers. We ultimately ended up selling, and this is predominantly in the online world, because like I said, we would never get away with this in the brick and mortar because we would need to have an offer or a product or a service or an idea of what the heck our business is before we ever invested in the property of it.

Right? So with that, I hope this episode has been super helpful for the things that you can start to focus on now in your business or refocus [00:38:00] or let go of the things that you've been doing that are actually not really moving the needle, but yet you keep doing them hoping that You get a different result because if you've been throwing spaghetti against a wall, or you've been trying and efforting your way to success, let's just say, and you're not seeing the results that you want, then my invitation to you is, is to open yourself up to trying something different, even if it seems too good to be true or it can't be that simple, or any of that stuff that your brain's telling you.

I invite you to just be open to it. And I promise you this, that business is this simple in a lot of ways, put an offer in front of the right people at the right time, and it'll sell. And it'll even sell without the funnels and all of those sorts of things. I'm working with two really big brands right now, behind the scenes, writing copy for them.

And. When I started working with them, they didn't have funnels and yet they had built this beautiful community of people and had [00:39:00] sold their offers without even having to try to sell them because they put a specific offer in front of a specific group of people and therefore it just sold. It can be that simple where we've gone sideways in the online space predominantly and in business in general is, is we.

We've tried to put these bells and whistles and all of the things on it. Let's hype the shit out of what we're doing because that's the thing that's going to sell it. And hype doesn't sell, right? It's a really solid fricking offer and a really solid product or service that you're putting out there that's going to sell.

You just got to put it in front of the right people. And your question might be, well, how do I put it in front of the right people, Catherine? And I'm going to answer that question on next week's episode because that's another big question I get. Cool. Have an offer. And now what, how do I put that in front of the right people?

And we're going to break that down so that you can walk away from that episode going, this is what I want to try. And this is how I want to try to reach those people. So be sure to [00:40:00] tune into that show when it drops. Cheers.

OUTRO: 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 at creativelyowned.com until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.