Let's talk Sales & Marketing

What's this episode about?
In this episode of the Disobedient Business Podcast, host Pippa Parfait dives into the challenges and realities of sales and marketing for new service-based business owners. She chats about the all too common "ick"  for sales and marketing, emphasizing that effective strategies do not have to feel too sales-y or inauthentic to you.  

Pippa shares insights on the difference between marketing and sales, the importance of visibility, and offers practical advice for the folks who might be struggling to embrace these aspects of their business. 

The episode also outlines ten actionable tips for disobedient business owners on how to effectively market and sell their services without tripping into the perfectionism trap, highlighting the importance of persistence and building something special over seeking quick wins.

Key points in this episode:
00:00 Welcome to the Disobedient Business Podcast!
01:44 The Dreaded Elevator Pitch: A New Perspective
04:19 The Reality of Sales and Marketing for Newbies
10:16 Marketing vs. Sales: Understanding the Difference
14:24 Visibility and Its Importance in Business
21:40 Practical Tips for New Business Owners
39:11 Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead

🚨 BIG NEWS YOU GLORIOUS HUMANS 🚨
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A 4-day virtual summit aimed at helping newbie business owners with wtf this online biz thing is and how tf it all works!
Tickets available real soon, get on the VIP list and be the first to hear at disobedientbusinesslive.com

Our group programme The Disobedient Business® Mastermind is now enrolling - check it out.

Visit our website at disobedientbusiness.com

Come say hi at hello@disobedientbusiness.com

Come and chat on Instagram at @disobedientbusinessco

Transcript

Pippa: 0:29

Hello, and welcome back to the Disobedient Business Podcast. Hi, I am Pippa Parfait, and I am one half of the Disobedient Business Co with Lucy Parfait. And yes, we are indeed related. This is the next episode in season four, which is all around Supporting newbie service based business owners, so it's for you for sure if you are in that first, I don't know, I mean I'd love to say like first few months, but actually I've had many conversations with folks who consider themselves to be newbies over the years. sometimes even years into their business, because they just don't feel like they've created anything that looks or feel sustainable yet. So if you yourself identify as a newbie business owner, this is for you. This season is a series of, monologues from me, if you like, and some fab interviews with Brill folks. And in the last episode you would have heard from, and if you haven't listened to this, Definitely go back and listen to it first. you will have heard from Ellie Keim, and we were talking all about, your elevator pitch, or, more to the point, what can you do if you want to ditch the absolutely vomit inducing elevator pitch and do something different instead. So, in this episode, I really kind of want to chat with you about the dreaded elevator pitch. Can't believe I'm going to say this out loud, because I definitely don't feel this way about it, but I absolutely remember feeling this way about it. The dreaded sales and marketing. and I say dreaded because actually the vast majority of folks that I have worked with over the years, and it's been like eight years of coaching or so now, got into business for themselves because they They were very much over the bullshit in the business space that they had been working in, you know, working for somebody else. Or they had, and or, they had a purpose or a calling that was driving them to do something different in the world. You know, they were working perhaps in a particular industry, and they just really wanted to do something that, you know, make a difference in the world. stuck a massive fat middle finger up to that industry and did it differently, did it more ethically, did it more, more humanly, just did it in a way that wasn't the bullshit that they were being made to do, if you like, through being employed. And some people equally just wanted to do something alongside their full time role, you know, they didn't necessarily have any designs to make this, this, This business of theirs, any kind of like a big thing. It wasn't, wasn't intended to kind of replace the day job income. It was just what it was. But the one thing that united all of them, almost without exception, I would say, is that they were not natural marketers. They were not natural salespeople. Now I'll come to what I mean by that in a minute because I call bullshit, but They did not see themselves as somebody who knew how to or could market in their business. They felt like being salesy, bunny ears, was ick and undesirable and probably not surprisingly if a lot of the experience of being sold to in their lives had come in the form of fitted kitchen salesman, double glazing salesman, used car salesman, you know, you know, you know the stereotype, the trope. And they hadn't experienced consensual sales or sales with integrity or sales where somebody is equally trying to be as much of service as they are trying to take your money. So sure, you probably wouldn't be a massive fan of so called selling in that situation, right? If you'd only ever been sold to and it felt like shit. I get that completely. So I've kind of gotta, I've gotta be honest with you and I've gotta say there is a real reality check here, which is Possibly, once you've been in business for a bit of time, and you feel like you have become established or sustainable or whatever language that feels good there, there is a possibility that further down the line you will maybe spend, and probably this is what you want to be able to do. maybe 80 percent of your time in delivery or working in the background of your business creating, you know, all the stuff that you kind of got into this to do, right? And just 20 percent of that time selling, marketing, etc. But, and I feel like you know this already, so I kind of don't need to say I hate to break it to you, But you know what, I do hate to break it to you. We can want it to be different. We can, listen to the folks that are out there that tell us that it is different. You can put your income on repeat while you sleep and all this bullshit, because even if you've been around for five minutes, you will have seen some of the, the abjectly ridiculous claims that are out there in terms of what is and isn't possible. but the reality is in the early days of your business, you're actually likely to spend 5 of your time working on your business and or delivering whatever it is that your wonderful service is and 95 of the time marketing it and selling it in some way. And okay, maybe those numbers are a little bit extreme, but It really is that reality, you know, where are these people going to come from, you know, if you're delivering a service of some description or, you know, wanting to sell courses or whatever it is, where are the people going to come from, you know, without sales and marketing, you don't have a business, you just have a hobby. And I say that absolutely not to be mean, I say that because I absolutely had a very expensive hobby for the first two or three years of running my business, I would say. Did I serve some clients? Yes. Was it amazing? Yes. Did I absolutely love doing it? Yes. Did I get my act together and really suck up that truth, that truth of whatever percentage that you want to use, but that my job was to get past the perceived ick I had about particularly sales, and maybe a lack of clarity around marketing or what worked in my case because I just hadn't allowed myself to experiment enough, and market and sell the work that I do. And it took me quite, it took me quite a long time. It took me quite a long time, I'm not gonna lie. And, it's really interesting because there are so many, regardless of what you're seeing on the internet, regardless of what social media gurus are telling you is the so called right way to sell in your business. There is no so called right way. it is absolute bollocks if anyone is telling you that there is a way to sell to people, a way to market your business. There isn't. There just literally isn't. There is whatever way works for you. And that might mean work for you in the context of the type of clients that you want to work with or the kind of industry that you want, that you work in. It might mean what works for you in terms of, The way you like to show up, whether you, you know, what your particular bent of creativity is, are you great and you love writing, are you great and you love, creating graphics, are you great and you love short form, long form, you know, there's just so many different ways that you could potentially market in your business and also sell. And I definitely didn't experiment enough, and I definitely Brought into, there is one way to do it, and it was whoever was shouting loud enough at me at the time, Yeah, it didn't feel good, and I'd imagine if you've tried some stuff around marketing and selling and it hasn't felt good, that has perhaps further compounded this feeling of, I don't know very much about marketing and selling ick, right? Right. another thing that I kind of want to say I'm ashamed to say, but I'm not because why, why would I really understand this? And bear in mind, I'm going to say this from the position of having been in some senior, senior management roles in, in corporate and in public sector management. Um, where my job, a good percentage of my job was business development, so it wasn't specifically marketing and it wasn't specifically sales, but it was business development. It was making sales. It was just making sales on a capital S sales kind of way. It was like bringing in millions, you know, in some way, shape or form. And so I definitely didn't kind of perceive that. micro level of work that kind of goes in when you are, when you are everything in your business, you know, where you're the cleaner right through to the CEO and everything in between. and I truly that the, the, the slight confession is it, again, it was, it was years in the beginning of my business where I, before I really truly, I don't know why, I don't know why I'm telling you this, understood the difference between marketing and sales. And you know what? There is a lot of crossover and there's a reason that people call it sales and marketing because the two are bedfellows, right? But if you went into like a, I don't know, big design agency or something like that, and you told the marketing department that their role, you know, that the selling lived with them, or you went into the sales team and you told them that they were responsible for marketing, they'd laugh at you. So they have a really clear understanding of the difference between marketing and selling. And I guess. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter for shit, right? It doesn't make any difference because you've got to do both of them. Because unless you are financially incredibly well resourced, you are not in a position to be able to pay somebody else to take on your sales and marketing. And frankly, if you're a service based business, the chances of that ever being fully not your role, regardless of how well financially resourced you are, is pretty slim. however, fundamentally, And I'm going to share this just in case you were also in the situation that I was in and sitting there thinking, well, yeah, I kind of do use the same terms interchangeably and I'm probably not as clued up on what they mean as I might be. marketing is all about, and if there are any pals of mine out there listening that are, I have several clients that are very much experts in sales or marketing. And yeah, so I apologize to both, to them if they're listening to this, but marketing is very much around, messaging. It's all around how you talk about your business, how you communicate what it is that you do, how you communicate your brand, your values, your why, what matters to you. It's around educating, potentially educating people around you. Not just the what you do, but the why people need what you do. How do they understand and are able to translate the kind of things that are going on in their lives or businesses, depending on whether you are a, a business that services businesses or, or members of the public. and how that translates to what you offer, because if your marketing does not create a connection between. This is the stuff that you're going through in your life or business. And this is the thing that I offer. And here is the absolutely causal link between the two and how one solves the problem of the other. Then they will never make that link that there's anything going on there, right? So how do you articulate that need? how do you create a marketing is about creating an awareness of your business and awareness of all of the things that I just described and fundamentally marketing is about building connections and relationships with people. Around everything to do with educating awareness, you know, articulating need and so on and so forth. Sales, fundamentally, and if we kind of go back to my example of the design agency with, you know, a marketing team and a sales team, that their sales team would be all about closing the sale, about closing the deal, if you like. And although you might not be operating the kind of business where, you put out proposals into the world and then you have to, you know, actively close the deal, right? We've got, like, Wolf on Wall Street vibes going on. Which for the record, I haven't watched. So actually that might be the wrong reference completely. but the reality is sales is all about generating revenue, right? Wouldn't be called sales otherwise. So sales are all of the activities that are around making the ask, putting the offer or the deal in front of people and saying, here it is. This is how much it costs. Would you like it? And I have spent time in my marketing helping you get to a point where you are ready to receive that offer. Right? So one of the things that regardless of how experienced you are, to be fair, that a lot of people miss, and I can put my hands up to this one as well, is that they make the ask, you know, they finally get to that point where they're like, Oh fuck, I need to do a load of selling I've got, you know, I've got this thing, but they haven't put the marketing time in. on creating the awareness, creating an understanding of the need, creating an education around, you know, any of the elements of the things that your particular offer solves. They just then go out and go Tah Dah I've got this thing. And you know what, if I go back to what I said right at the beginning of this episode, if you are super established and you've put a lot of time into building your brand and building a new level of awareness and your business is relatively straightforward and it is so unbelievably, there is like such an unbelievable central tenet to what you do, and how you do it and the problem, you know, the so called problems that you solve, or the, you know, the aspirations that you help people achieve, then perhaps you might not need to do anywhere near as much specific marketing about a specific offer, for example. But that's once you have the, the luxury of having become fairly established for a particular thing, right? Particularly in these early days, it's, you've got to put as much effort into the marketing bit as you do into the sales bit and vice versa. So anyway, there we go. Also, you're going to see the word visibility thrown about a lot. that seems to over the last few years have become the buzz phrase for marketing and sales essentially. And like, what is it? And I mean, it's not, it doesn't take a genius to work out kind of what it means because you know, does what it says on the tin. But the reality of, of this idea of sales and marketing is that you've got to be seen. For people to be able to understand your business, understand what you do, all of the things I just described around marketing. And you've got to be seen to be able to make the ask, so to do the selling. And it's something that a lot of us grapple with hugely. Because, ah, and especially in recent months, actually, so this episode is originally going out in May of 2024, so depending on when you're listening. In, in the last six months or so, there was a massive surgence on social media of, so called nameless, faceless, promotion on Instagram and TikTok to a certain extent, so lots and lots and lots of people are creating videos, sometimes they were voiced over, sometimes they weren't, with music tracks and text and all the rest of it. And no showing of any kind of faces, what have you, what have, you know, just nothing. And sure, can that kind of, again bunny ears are plenty, content, have a place in being visible in your business and sharing etc. Yeah absolutely it can. But if you are early on in your business and you are selling a service and you will be the human that is delivering that service, so there's lots of things going on there, there is a stark reality that says people do need to be able to see you, they need to be able to engage with you, they need to be able to experience you in some way shape or form. And that is really, really challenging for a lot of us. It's particularly challenging for folks with, neurodivergent brains. It's particularly challenging for anybody that's had any kind of experience, of, challenge or drama or even trauma in their lives as a result of being visible, you know, or as a result of being out there, if you like. And actually, frankly, it can be really, really challenging for Lots of folks, you know, regardless of their life experience, it's just many things that make it somewhat more. but I've got a level with you, you know, people need to know what it is you do, you know, why they'd, why they'd give a fuck about that. You know, it's like, yay, I do this thing. Okay, so I'm, I'm the consumer of your potential service. Why would I care? You know, let's be honest, that's exactly what we want people to do. We want people to become invested in some way in and shape in us. We want to support them. We want to be of service to them because that's, that's why we're here. but they need to know what you do and they need to know how you do it and they need to know why they need it and they need to have a now reason to want to buy it. So, okay, let's use this, this podcast as an example. So this podcast episode, not the podcast generally. So I am recording this podcast. It is part of a series, that is dedicated to the new or new ish business owners, particularly service based business owners, they have self identified as new or new ish because, you know, sure I could say the first year or whatever but, you know, new is different to everybody. And its purpose is manifold. Its primary purpose is to serve you, dear listener, hi, and support you with some of the thinkings and ramblings of mine and the lovely and wonderful conversations that I have with our amazing guests, one of whom at this point you will already have heard from, Ellie. It, it's also from my business's point of view, part of the, well the Disobedient Business Podcast is an overarching part of our marketing which is about, it's about awareness, it's about reaching new audiences, it's about sharing our voices and what we stand for and you get to know as a result of listening to us whether you think we're full of shit or whether you, resonate with the way that we show up, with what we talk about, with how we help, when you, whether you resonate with our values and that kind of thing. It's, specifically this series, is about supporting new business owners and that is because We are hosting the Disobedient Business Live, the Newbie Palooza Summit this summer in June. and that's for you, you know, hello. new or newish business owner. And that summit then links on to us making the ask. So that's where selling comes in, because we are launching a business school that is specifically, so the disobedient business school, that is specifically aimed at new and newish business owners in service based industries. So can you see how, I mean, that's like major meta, right? But. Can you see how that kind of works as a, as a deliberate marketing piece, if you like, you know, it's no, it's no, I'm sure this is not news to you that podcasts are part and parcel of marketing strategy, but specifically this episode. So I'm talking to you about sales and selling and that kind of thing. You're getting to know what I'm like, you're getting to know whether you think I'm, like I said, like, whether you think I'm full of shit or not, whether or not you think our business is, you know, resonates with you, whether you like the cut of our jib, as my name would have said, lover. and also I'm hopefully providing you with some food for thought, some ideas and things that you can go away, reflect on and take action on. That is me making, so if we come back to what I was saying about, you know, marketing, it's messaging, awareness, education, articulating the need, building relationships. Can you see how that hopefully, if I haven't fucked this up massively, how that's going partway to achieving that. And then there's that link into the opportunity to further down the line, having built trust, having built connections, having built relationships to make the ask, if you like, to make an offer, which in our case at the moment is the Disobedient Business School. to you to buy something that helps you solve your problem, meet a need, achieve an aspiration, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. I just find it really, really helpful. And I wish somebody had said this to me, I don't know, seven or eight, six, seven years ago. I've been doing this for eight years now. And if somebody had explained marketing to me like that. So that journey of where I hope I'm taking you at the moment. And if I'm doing a really, really, really bad job, please feel free to come into Instagram DMs and say to me, I'm doing a really, really bad job. I mean, maybe if you can like soften it up a little bit and, I don't know, give me a shit sandwich, that would be lovely. but actually I would also say, if you're called to come into my DMs and tell me I'm doing a really, really bad job, I'm probably doing a really, really good job as well. Make me think about that. So anyway, here's the thing. If I was starting out again now, and as a coach, you know, I started as a life coach and my business has gradually evolved into what is essentially my zone of genius, and I came from that kind of background, but I spent a good couple of years working as a life coach and doing various kind of blended things and what have you. If I'm starting again now, Here's, I've made a little bit of a list. There's 10 of them. It's entirely a coincidence. Just came up with 10 because otherwise this podcast is going to be far too long. places where I'd kind of be focusing slash not focusing and things I would be giving a shit about slash not giving a shit about. So, I won't take too long to go through these because otherwise we really will be in each other's, in each other's company for far too long. So the first one. would be around leveraging who you know. Now, this is most definitely not the old boys school, it's not what you know it to, you know, type, you know, what color is my tie type nonsense. This is if you have started a business and if you have started a business in anything, I don't care how. how linked to what your, if you're sitting in a day job, what your day job is, or if you were in a day job, whatever the scenario is, whatever your unique set of circumstances are that you're trying to build a business like right now, you have people in your life already, whether you've met them on social media or otherwise, sorry, I'm laughing because we all think the answers are in social media and I promise you it isn't, that you already have people in your life who are your first handful of customers, You have already met them. They are already there. They might be people that you went to school with, that you still know on Facebook. They might be, And it depends on how long ago school was actually, of course, because for me school was quite some time ago. School might not have been that long ago for you, who knows? They might be old colleagues that you worked with. They might be current colleagues that you work with. They might be We definitely, in those early days, have a tendency to kind of try and, I don't know, what's that phrase, like, separating church and state? That vibe of, right, there's my, there's my cute little I don't want to tarnish it business over here, and then there's the stuff that I, like, the job that I do for a living, or the people that I used to work with, whatever. but the reality is that someone, extended family, extended friendship group, extended work group. Old school, whatever they are, there is your first collection of clients in there. And if you are not leveraging those connections, and that feels like ick language, but what we're talking about is going out there and talking to the people that you already know and saying, I'm doing this thing, I love this thing. I'm passionate about this thing. I help these kind of people to do this thing. And you don't have to nail that. You don't have to nail that to the wall. Just as, you know, whatever level of clarity that you have at the moment is totally fine. and talking about it. Talking to them about it. At this stage in your business, talking about it. It's, it's the thing that you need to be doing. So, which brings me on to number two. Which is Meet more people. Which I just, I hope you're laughing. I hope you're sitting there thinking, yeah, Pippa Shaw, of course it's about meeting new people. Yeah, but are you doing it? Are you, are you going out there wherever out there is, you know, whether it's in your business world, whether it's in your work, day job world, whether it's, going out into a community, going out into community groups, going, going into online groups, you know, I'm not saying online doesn't have some of the answers. It absolutely does. yeah. I'm doing a combination of talking a fuckton about, and yes that is an official unit of measurement, a fuckton about what you do, who you do it for, and the level of enthusiasm you have. And I don't mean master your elevator pitch, just have a normal conversation like a normal human being. Because I promise you, if you're in those early stages You have spent some time already trying to master the, I am this person and I do this thing for these kind of people that's going to achieve this kind of result. And nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that, even if you have mastered it. So just get used to talking to people like a normal human and sharing the enthusiasm that you have for the thing that you do with the level of understanding about that thing that you have now, which will of course grow as you talk about it more. And, important note to talking about it more, if you talk about it lots and lots and lots, listen twice as much, because people are going to share things with you if you exude that level of enthusiasm. Don't be so busy telling them that you don't listen to what they have to say. the number three is a biggie, I'm going to use a word that I don't use very often, but bear with me, which is Be prepared to be, or feel, wrong all day long. And what I mean by that is, you are gonna, you're gonna have to, and you're gonna need to, show up imperfectly. Take imperfect action. Do things before you feel like you are ready. Now that doesn't mean like stressing the fuck out of your nervous system 24 7 There are ways of doing those things that mean that you can still be grounded and well supported etc But it is absolutely gonna mean taking action before you have a polished Whatever. You know, polished website, polished social media presence, polished, polished, polished, polished, polished. We spend all of our time polishing and none of our time sales and selling and marketing, right? polishing is not going to get you clients. Polishing is not going to earn you any money. Polishing is Polishing is a protective mechanism to prevent you having to do the sales and the marketing. So, sure, you might want to have, you know, you know, basic things set up, whether you want a business card, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. The details are irrelevant. You are going to feel so called wrong, or imperfect, or not ready, like you're getting it wrong. A lot. And you still need to do it. Because I promise you, it only, it doesn't feel wrong. to anybody other than you. number four is a real quickie, and it kind of links to the first two. Ask for introductions. If there are people that you know, you know, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's in person, and you're eyeing up somebody thinking, oh my god, oh my god, if only I could work with that person. Ask for an introduction. It has worked in the circles of straight white corporate men for a very, very long time. They have traded on it for a very, very long time. Not dissing men, you know. I hope there are men that listen to the podcast. Not dissing men at all. I'm dissing that, that trope of, you know, the old boys club, if you like. ask for an introduction. Or you know what, Make yourself an introduction. Do the, you know, dinner party equivalent of sidling over and listening to the conversation for a bit. And, once you've listened for a bit, join in. Join in the conversation. Put yourself into the conversation. Not in a, hey, buy my thing kind of way. Build, you know, come back to the marketing. Build genuine connections and genuine relationships. that put you in a position to be able to make the ask further down the line. If you're somebody that's offering consultancy, coaching, that kind of, those kind of services and you're fresh, fresh, fresh new, something like, a limited number of pro bono small offerings could be a really great way to get started. certainly works really, really well for coaches. That idea of, you know, serving your first Half a dozen dozen people so maybe you're not offering them like a full on six months of coaching or something like that But you need other people to agree with how wonderful you are when you're first starting out So having some what's called social proof, which is essentially just public evidence of you know Pippa is shit hot. For example, maybe not that that's not that helpful So to get that perhaps you offer a few You free or discounted services. Another one that's really quite, cool is offering like intro calls. So rather than like a free coaching series, for example, or a free consultancy offering of some description or whatever is, you know, make a plan to book, you know, make a target for yourself, for example, to put 10 people onto introduction calls. So these are not about sales necessarily. These are about just meeting people, exploring, discussing, making more connections, right? It's more of a marketing activity than it is a sales activity. number six is do not waste too much time. I've got one or two clients that are now going to just roll their eyes at me. Do not waste too much time on fancy copywriting, clever copywriting, and smexy websites. Do you need copy that connects with people? 100 percent of course you do. Do you need a great professional looking website at some point? Yes, of course you do. but neither is going to land you your first ten clients, for example. I promise you, they just aren't. This notion that we can spend the first six months mastering our tone of voice and our language and the words that we used, and we can create a really, really sexy, incredible website, that is going to bring in hundreds of people. It's just a distraction. It's just a perfectionist procrastination avoidance tactic that we don't do intentionally. I'm not saying that you're sitting there, you know, intentionally avoid, I don't want clients. Please don't bring me clients. I'm just going to sit here and play with my website. I know that's not what you're saying, but that's what you're doing. The reality is that things like SEO to bring in clients, things like incredible websites to bring in clients, is a slightly further down the line thing. Am I saying, don't bother spending any time creating a basic website? No, not at all. If you want to have a basic website to be able to send people to, I totally concur. Great idea. But do not fixate on it for months. Do not spend, please for the love of God, do not spend a lot of money. Unless you've got a lot of money to spend, in which case, then sure, go for it. The one person that is not going to be clear about what you do, how you do it, who you do it for, Why it's really, really valuable, what problems, you know, what range of problems it solves. at the beginning it's you. So if you were to pay a tonne of money to a copywriter and, and or a tonne of money to a visual, a designer to create a visual brand, or, or a brand messaging strategist to help you with the, your language and what have you, They will, even if they do an incredible job, your brand messaging strategist, your copywriter, you know, which may or may not be the same person, your graphic designer, your website designer, they could all do absolutely their part of the job perfectly. but I'm sure you will be familiar with, and I don't mean this to be unkind at all, but I'm going to be honest, I'm sure you'll be familiar with the phrase shit in and shit out, right? So the reality is if you don't have at least a degree of grounded and anchored clarity in what it is that you do, And how you do it, and all that juicy stuff, you're wasting your time. And you're wasting their time. And I can tell you, I'm gonna speak on behalf of a few clients now, but I'm pretty certain that whilst, you know, they'd be very happy for you to pay them to do the work, there would be nothing more gutty than You know, six months after delivering a project that you were quite proud of, because you, you know, you delivered on what the client asked you for, as a brand strategist, to see that, the client just doesn't resonate with the copy that they've got, or doesn't really resonate with the brand. And that wasn't what the brand strategist didn't do right. That was that they just, you couldn't articulate to them. You, because you did not yet have enough of an understanding of that to be able to articulate to them. number seven, there is an episode on this back in series three with the lovely Liz Goodchild. So go check this out if this really resonates with you. Niching. You can hear a lot of people talk about niching. I'm not anti niching per se, but I also slightly am anti niching. niching is a bit reductive because it might be that the thing that you offer is really, really niche, but the people that you offer it to isn't. But people are going to try and persuade you that you need to spend a lot of time in the early days niching, niching, niching, niching. You need to sell blue widgets to 31 year old particular type of people that live in a particular type. It just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is reductive. There's no other way of putting it. And actually, you know what, regardless of whether you're pro niching or not pro niching, it's complete bullshit in the early days anyway, because how can you niche? How can you have the level of understanding of who your offer is for, what their so called client profile avatar, et cetera, is specific, you know, how it really, really helps them really getting down to the, like the narrow, because that is not something that you just like sit here at my desk and go, you know, I've just, I have decided I spent a lot of time. I say this because I spent a lot of time as a coach trying to. Niche, niche, niche, niche down. did it get me clients? No, I just needed to go out there and find some people to work with. And the more people that I worked with, the more I understand it, understood who I loved working with, who I didn't love working with so much, what kind of things we were working on, and it evolved, right? So don't spend a ton of time trying to work out a really, really super narrow niche. It's more a case of your niche will find you. Number eight can be addressed in one simple sentence. You do not need to spend more than 10 minutes a day in Canva. If you are spending more than 10 minutes a day in Canva, or if you are spending more than an, you know, an hour and a half a week, creating things in Canva, you are spending more, too much time in Canva. So with the exception of if you want to sell Canva templates as part of your business, there is nothing that will suck the life out of you and trying to perfect a particular format of social media template or whatever. than fiddling around in Canva. Again, this comes back to until you understand your business well, and until you can articulate that really well, like work with a designer and this kind of stuff, pick a template, just pick a template, pick some colours that you quite like, you know, maybe you know what your own colours are from the point of view of getting dressed, maybe you're a, you know, beautiful pinks and blues and lemons and things summer person like I am, Great, go with them. Wonderful. Just pick some colors that you really like, use a template that's in Canva, get it out there into the world. It is, couldn't be less than relevant. And obviously the Canva templates look professional, in, in quotes. So they're still gonna represent you well. If you have a visual, you know, brand sometime down the line, once you've been a bit more established and you pay someone to do that, if one is completely different to the other, don't care. Trust me, a Canva template is not gonna be the thing that wins you. The next client ever. Nobody is ever going to turn up to your social media and go, you know what? I loved your, your Canva template so much. I want to work with you. And if that has happened, please DM me. I'd really love to know. number nine kind of links on from that. Social media is a red herring. Now, I'm not anti social media, and could you, should you have a profile and show up and be visible, et cetera, on social media? Quite possibly, depending on what it is you do for a living, and, you know, perhaps that's the important first question, are the kind of people that I want and need to work with actually on social media for that kind of thing, because they may well be on social media, but they may not be looking for that kind of thing on social media. If they are, great, have at it. But if your entire marketing strategy is I'm going to crank out Canva templates or I'm going to make reels, and I'm just going to kind of like put them out there, scattergun, and hope for the best. The amount of time it will take you to do that is definitely better deployed elsewhere. And the final, nugget of wisdom, if you like, at the moment is, And this is a podcast as opposed to, like, an entire lecture, so hopefully you get that vibe. focus on relationship building and not audience building. And that kind of links back to the social media thing. Do not spend your time focusing on, I need this many numbers of followers, or I need this many people on my email list, or whatever that may be. Spend your time on building relationships in these earlier days with a smaller quantity of people, helps them give a shit and that you give a shit, rather than building some kind of arbitrary quantity of numbers that someone has given you the impression that you must have a certain number of people on your list or social media followers or whatever to be able to sell. They're lying, apart from anything else. and I think my last thing to say to you is around, well it's probably two things really, it's layered, damn my brain, so persistence. People are going to tell you a lot about consistency, which I think I talked about in a previous episode. it is not long enough to have tried something for a month and then fundamentally declared that it isn't working. You know, I tried this strategy on social media or I tried this or whatever, and I'm not getting any results. I've worked with newbie business owners for a long time now, and in persistence as opposed to consistency, the ability to try something for months and months and months to get traction, the ability to be brave enough, and this often means having support because let's face it, you can google the answer to most things, You know, how to create this, how to do that, and all the rest of it. How to set up your email, this, blah blah blah. But what you really need is, where you can, somebody in your corner to help you keep going. To help you be persistent. And to help you stay the, I don't know, stick with the journey. Just, you know, to know that there are very, very, very few of us that build a business in the way in a short period of time. So resource yourself. Don't, you know, be tempted to chuck the baby out with the bathwater and jack the day job in when the business is just super exciting and why would you not want to jack the day job in, obviously. and the other thing, which is definitely a PIPA piece of wisdom that, you know, if Twitter was still a thing, would be a tweetable moment. And that is try to watch out for where you are deploying a thinking solution to something that is a doing problem, because we do that a lot in the early days. We sit at our desks with our laptops and we try and, design our way out of it, create our way out of it, think about it, write another thing, make another list, whatever it is. Try to look at the so called problem that you're trying to solve and think, do I need a thinking solution for this, or do I need a doing solution to this? And I can promise you in the earlier days, the answer is going to be doing solution. Much, much, much more of the time. Anyway, that is all we have time for this week, folks. join us again next week for more disobedient business and fucking with the status quo. We will see you next Tuesday.