12 - Let's Talk Marketing Magic with Laurie Kozan!

Today, I have the pleasure of chatting with the marketing wizard herself, Laurie Kozan. We dive into why so many of us dread marketing and how to flip that fear on its head. Laurie enlightens us with her approach to marketing as an act of help, not hustle, making it a genuine part of growing our businesses.

We explore the power of the whisper - why quieter, more meaningful interactions often trump the loudest shouts in the marketing world. Laurie shares invaluable insights on how to embrace your unique story and how this authenticity can attract the right audience without feeling salesy.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to revamp your marketing strategies, this conversation is packed with tips to help you feel more confident and excited about promoting your work.

Let's get ready to make marketing feel like magic and turn your passion into impactful connections. 

Don't forget to show up and shine! Thanks as always for listening.

Powered by and edited by Mike Roberts at Making Digital Real

Transcript

Now I look at people who are married just as relationships because the way that I've changed my mindset, they are in a relationship. They may not be happy in the marriage and it may be more difficult for them to get out of a marriage than if they were in a relationship and they could just say thanks but no thanks anymore, you know. Welcome to Show Up and Shine with the UK's leading life coach Carol-Anne Rice, the podcast that is curious about what drives, motivates and inspires people to show up for success even when the clouds gather, the chips are down and the duvet beckons.

Well, hello there everybody. Welcome to my Show Up and Shine podcast. We are here because we are interested in business. 

We're interested in what keeps us going. We're interested in resilience and how people keep going when the storm clouds gather and I'm really fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by entrepreneurs and how they keep going, what they draw upon because often we work on our own so we have to be self-sustaining, self-watering, self-nourishing beings that are always kind of pushing forward and I know that one thing that my clients and my students because I train people to become life coaches really stumble on when they're starting a business and there's a unifying creed occur, a cry from the heart that says I hate marketing and I've got a wizard here with me, a marketing wizard I'm going to introduce in just a moment but on the first week of my academy, my Pure Coaching Academy, I say to the students hands up here who love social media, hands up here who hate social media and everyone puts their hands up, I hate social media and I don't want to be doing this and I say that's the only time you can say in the whole of the eight weeks of the training that you hate social media and you hate marketing because you're going to have to make friends with it. 

Well then how are you going to get clients if you don't? How are you going to get clients if you make cakes and you just leave them on the shelf to go off? You're going to have to let people know I've got some lovely fresh cakes here and that's the marketing bit of things and you might make hats, you might make shoes, you might make cakes, you might be a coach, you might do something else, you've still got to market yourself. So it's an inevitable part of being in business. Now I have got a marketing, the mistress of marketing expertise, a word wizard called Laurie Kozan. 

Welcome Laurie. Those are your words, not mine. Yeah, from source marketing and I would say sorcery marketing but you know I do think sometimes that those, the marketeers are the dark artists, they're the ones who know how to spin the web and cast the spell and pull in a catch of great interest from the public with their marketing expertise. 

Now, welcome Laurie. Tell us why it is people have such a problem with this and struggle with marketing and don't want to do it and have a fear of it and haven't a clue basically. Honestly, you are absolutely right. 

It's such a common perspective to say, I hate marketing, I hate sales, you know, they really go hand in hand and I think honestly it usually comes down to, well it comes down to words. People don't know what to say and I find when I work with people, especially when I work with a lot of solopreneurs, so it's people who are, when they're marketing, they're putting themselves out there, they're putting themselves out there, you know, it's their business but it's themselves, it's a, you know, whether you call it a personal brand or not, they're talking about their personal work that they do and they don't know what to say about it and I think as part of that, they've sort of forgotten and they're thinking of sales as being something icky, you know, they're remembering all the times when they've, someone's tried to sell them something that, you know, it was not for their benefit, they were just trying to, they were just in it for the money. Usually, especially when you're talking about, you know, people who are in your coaching academy, they're coming at it from a place of service and when you turn it on its head and remember that what you're offering is actually legitimately, genuinely going to help someone, then it becomes a whole different thing and you start to think about, you know, it feels so much better once you think about the help that that can provide the other person and then you start to kind of dig into a little bit of your story. 

You know, we hear so much about storytelling but when you get down into who are you and how are you uniquely serving your audience, the ideas start to flow and you start to get excited. I love that. So, it's helping, not selling. 

Yes, absolutely, absolutely and it's truly amazing, you know, my best conversations that I have with clients are the ones probably in the beginning stages where they start to realize that, that starts to click for them and the look and it's just a sense of relief and excitement because then that, you know, that's when they can really step into what they actually wanted to do but it takes a bit of a bridge to get there sometimes. I guess this is the distinction, isn't it, that say if you were going to a wedding and you went to a shop and you saw, excuse me, a shirt or a blouse and the sales assistant didn't say to you but I've got the perfect trousers or jacket to go with this because I didn't want to sell to you. So, you left thinking now I've got to go to 20 other shops to get the shoes, to get the jacket, to get a hat, to get a handbag and if only the salesperson was thinking let me help you because we actually have all these other things in stock and you would appreciate that. 

So, if you think that would be helping, not selling, you'd be grateful for someone to have pointed you in the right direction. So, if you could change your mindset from I'm not selling, I'm just showing you what I have on offer which may be of interest to you. But there's something about you said people don't want to put themselves out there.

What is this fear of exposure that we have that somehow we are now the brand, we are on the front line and then I don't want to be that person? Well, I think it goes down, I get it, it kind of goes back to that idea of service a little bit and just, you know, it's not so much about you. It is about creating, it's about the relationships that you're creating but that is a two-way street and it's how someone connects with you and resonates with you and there will be, there is a certain amount of, I think, self-knowledge that you need because you do need to get a bit specific about who you are and what you offer because no one is for everyone. You don't want to be because then it doesn't resonate. 

That's why we feel like there's so much noise out there now because there's a lot of generic information. When you start to get more specific, that starts to feel much better and you start to, you know, everyone will have something that they can kind of talk about all the time and when you kind of dive into that a bit, it becomes less about you and more about what you have to offer. And this is a good point and when you talk to somebody who's passionate about their business, they light up and they speak easily and fluently and if only they'd had a camera on them then, they would come across to us really representing what they do beautifully but then as soon as you say something, they'll say that to your market out there and it's, oh, I don't want to get in front of the camera. 

I don't want to speak about this. I don't want to expose myself but, you know, we are passionate about what we do as entrepreneurs. That's why we do it and I love that. 

We can't be everybody's cup of tea or a cup of Darjeeling. You have to be true to yourself and I suppose there's a journey in knowing what that niche is, what that element of you is you need to put out there to stand apart from the others. So, that's a kind of personal journey of this is who I am. 

This is my brand and when you work with your clients, is that what you have to help them do is find out who they are as well. So, it's a bit of a coaching journey too. It's definitely a coaching journey. 

I've actually been training as a coach on the side because it is such a helpful thing just kind of going through that process. So, to use coaching techniques as part of it because there is, you know, there definitely is an aspect of putting yourself, whether it's your point of view out there, you know, so it might not be and it's important to make the distinction of you don't need to be putting your whole self out there, you know. Of course, people value humanity and authenticity, such an overused word but, you know, they want to see you being real.

They don't want to see you putting on a show but you don't have to share your whole self. You know, you share the things that are relevant that you get to decide what you share. You know, if you don't want to share every single one of your wobbles behind the scenes or all of your family dramas or whatever, you get to decide what you're sharing and I think that that's quite liberating for people when they realize that they're in charge of what they put out there.

And that is a personal journey, isn't it? Knowing who you are and knowing what you want people to know about you and sometimes it takes a while to become an authentic person and to know yourself and something that I've discovered about myself recently is I'm not the extrovert I thought I was. I'm actually an introvert and once, you know, extroverts are given all the good rap because they're like, you know, everyone wants an extrovert around them because they're loud and they're jolly and good at parties. I suddenly realized I'm not that. 

I'm a quiet person. I like reading. I don't like loud noises. 

I don't like big gatherings. If I go to the theatre, I sit on the end of the aisle so I can leave quickly and it was almost like a, you know, yeah, it was like a coming home feeling of, you know, I can say now that I'm an introvert. I am a very confident introvert. 

I don't have to shout and therefore, you mentioned once when I was talking to you, the power of the whisper is you don't have to shout things. You don't have to ball into your microphone or do loud jumps, star jumps in front of your camera to get attention. You can have a powerful whisper. 

So, tell me a bit about that nuance that once you realize this is who I am and I don't shout and I'm not loud and I don't want to do star jumps and wear singly hats to get attention. How can you have that nuance? How can you harness the power of the whisper? Oh gosh, that's such a good question. And it is a journey, isn't it? I think for all of us, you know, you don't always come to those realizations just by kind of, you know, sitting and thinking about it. 

You do have to be putting yourself out there and be paying attention to what feels good. So, there is, there's definitely a part of this that is down to just taking action. But it's, you know, think about it. 

If you are at, you know, a concert, an event, something like that, where everyone is, it is shouty, everyone's on their tippy-toes. How are you going to get the attention of the person that's next to you? Are you going to shout louder? Are you going to, no, you're going to, you're going to whisper. There's also, you know, kind of a saying in parenting, if you've got like a loud room full of kids, you start to whisper something. 

And then they actually, they actually kind of lean in. You know, if you were just trying to shout over them and it just gets awful. But if you start to whisper, they think you've got something interesting to say. 

You know, so I think it's, it's just, you don't need to have everyone's attention. You know, unless you're some big like global conglomerate where you literally are for everyone. Most of us have a much more specific target audience. 

You don't need everyone's attention. A lot of us as solopreneurs could really thrive with a solid handful or a couple of handfuls of right fit clients. And you don't need to shout to find those people. 

It's much more effective if you're saying something more specific. And you're not shouting. It's, you know, it's effectively kind of a whisper. 

So it's almost like the more niche you are, the more people identify it with that specific niche rather than being all things to everybody. So if you said, I only work with people who are struggling with X, Y, Z or those people will know who you are rather than I'm a generalist. I'll take anyone on as a client.

Yeah, well, it's, it's true. I mean, it's, I mean, think about it. The kind of classic example you could think of is, you know, if you needed a surgery of some sort, if you need a brain surgery, you'd go to a brain search. 

You wouldn't go to your GP or even like a general surgeon, you want someone who has that specific expertise. So it's, you know, if you extrapolate that to other areas, when you say specifically what you're about, it gives people a more vivid idea of what you do. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you could never work with anyone else. 

But what it does is it attracts people to you and gives you, it gives them a better idea of what you can do. Because even if you think of something, something like coaching, probably talk about this all the time, is that, you know, if a coach is trying to explain to people how they could work together, they might start talking about, because, you know, because they're in it, because they've been thinking about how to structure the business, they might start talking about, you get this number of sessions and this number of packages and things. That doesn't really mean anything to the average person. 

But when you start talking about the specifics of you've been feeling like this in your day to day life, this is your obstacle. This is what it feels like when you're trying to get out of bed in the morning, where you're trying to navigate this relationship. You get into those specifics, and then you start to paint a picture of what it could look like on the other side.

We'll work, you know, we'll work together through this journey, that starts to become meaningful. So it's about, but it really just specificity, I think, is really the theme. And when you're specific, you don't need to shout, because that specificity gets people's attention.

I don't want to say that word anymore, because it's hard to say. Hi, I'm Carol-Anne. I've been a coach for 20 years, and I share all my incredible coaching tools and techniques at the Pure Coaching Academy.

If you're looking to train to be a life coach, join us. It's eight weeks of pure, fun, intense training, and everything you need to know about becoming a world-class life coach. We also show you the tools and techniques you need to set up an amazing, abundant practice too. 

PureCoachingAcademy.com is where you need to go to see how to change the world with you doing what you do best as an amazing life coach. Well, it's the right words in the right order in front of the right person, and it's bingo. You're talking my language, isn't it? It's like you understand me, you're saying the things I want to hear, and it's knowing what those words are to say to the right person. 

But you know, I've been a coach for over 20 years now, and I tried all sorts of marketing techniques. Some of them work, some of them fall flat. Who hasn't thrown money at things that don't work? But isn't it funny that sometimes it literally is down to whether it's a sunny day, a rainy day. 

You know, I remember one particularly rainy bank holiday, and I just knew everyone was going to be at home, and it was like miserable four days of rain and an Easter bank holiday. And I put a post out about wanting career change and wanting changes, and I had the biggest uptake ever. I think it's because people were at home, and they were bored, and they were looking for things to do. 

So sometimes it's just the weather. It was the weather, it was a boring bank holiday weekend, and suddenly there was a ray of light. I offered them something. 

Another time could be, you know, a Tuesday. People find Tuesdays quite hard going. Monday, you're a little bit hopeful. 

Tuesday, it falls flat again. Wednesday, start another weekend. Then Wednesday's the new weekend, and it's like Tuesday could be your captive market day. 

Do you bear those things in mind? Are there special days, special days of the week, times of the week that you would recommend to people to post more? On social media, it's tricky. Do you know what? I think those are really good anecdotal examples, and I have no doubt that that's, you know, I do think that that's a part of it. But also these days, you know, with social media, the algorithm is tricky, and you know, it's always changing in terms of like, you know, people might see things straight away when you post them. 

You know, I often see things, you know, a few days or a week later. So it's not, I think that that is a part of it, and I think the real value in that, as much as people might be seeing it in a certain frame of mind, is where you get your ideas from, and what does it make you think of? Because content is not just about when it's seen in the moment. I also like to think of content, and you need to be intentional about how you're creating it and repurposing it for it to serve this purpose, but I like to think of it as you're creating a library of things that people can use to get to know you. 

You know, almost like, you know, if you're turning them into blog posts on your website, or if you're on LinkedIn, and you're using your featured posts, or you have, you know, you're having sales conversations with someone, and you've got some links to show them specifically how you think about certain things. So I like to think of content from that perspective, and it also makes it feel much more worthwhile. I think it's really disconcerting. 

I think part of what people don't like about social media is the idea that you can spend so much time creating something, and then it just seems to disappear. But it doesn't, if there's ways to continue getting leverage from it, which feels a lot better. And then while you can take advantage of timely hooks, like what you were just talking about, there's also some longevity to it. 

So I think there's a real balance to be had. Yeah, this is the nuance of it. This is the kind of fine tuning of marketing. 

But you know, I think an interesting point that you just said is some people over obsess about doing a post for everything, everything into it, and then don't post for about three weeks. So you're just lost in the kind of tidal wave of information. So are you saying then that doing something regularly keeps a kind of brand awareness, and people get to know you because of regular posting better than one amazing one-off post that is gone? So is it kind of consistency and regular? Regularity is better than one amazing post here and there that might be the words you've ever wanted to hear, ever written, the most wise words of wisdom in one post. 

They get to have lots of little tasters. Yes, I mean, it's nice to have those fabulous posts. But I think, you know, over and over again, it's proving that what does better is that regularity, because that's what the algorithm likes. 

But also people, the value of social media is to show a bit of the person behind your work. And you can be, you know, a little bit, it doesn't mean that you're just kind of throwing things up there, throwing spaghetti at the wall, showing, you know, all of the, you know, all of the kind of details of behind the scenes, you know, whether whether they're pretty or not. There's something to be said for the humanity, but the regularity and showing consistency and also to particularly on a platform like LinkedIn, if that's your choice, there's a real value in showing up and interacting with other people and posting. 

And you can you can do a lot towards building your following just by commenting and supporting other people as well. So on the days when you know, we all have days when I just don't feel like being being out there. That's a good way, either to use that as an alternative, or just as a way to kind of get you going, get you excited. 

Because you can, you know, people are always whether it's a repost, or you're just using some, you know, bouncing off building off of someone else's idea. It's just another way to look at, you're creating a community, you're building relationships. I think that's what people don't think to do is be the generous commenter, and to like and share. 

I mean, I always think of Caesar's thumb, shall the person live or shall shall the gladiator die? All you're doing is putting your finger on a button to say like, please be generous, use that magic finger and just go like, like, share, like, add a comment, great post, like your words. Well done. You look great.

Love your love your love your offer. But so people just scroll past. Why don't you just click the like, you know, it doesn't take much. 

And I think it's kind of marketing karma, it will come back to you in a positive way. I think so. Because, you know, the liking is helpful. 

That is, I mean, if you take the time, especially if there are people that you want to get to know, or add to your network, you know, you can be seeing their posts, and then starting to, if you add a genuine, you know, semi substantial, useful comments on them, that's a way to start a conversation, just as you would, you know, you might be brave and introduce yourself at a cocktail party or something like that, you know, it's, it's, and that's actually how you start to really build relationships. And I think, you know, these days, there's so many conversations about the platform wants to keep you engaged, because, you know, it wants more eyeballs for advertising, or, you know, you always talk about the algorithm, things like that. But the way to take back a for your own benefit is to focus on actually building relationships that you can then leverage, you know, whether it's moving, you know, going from the comments to the DMS to zoom coffee to, you know, it's just actually created using that as a way to create relationships that are beneficial to you off the platform. 

I think that's the real value of social media. And it is about being generous and getting out there and bothering to read other people's posts, I think it does come back to you. And as you say, if you haven't got an idea that day, just go and be generous to other people. 

Just go and interact and create relationships. I mean, it's, it's part of your business day to do some of this, you know, it's like you have your, you have your clients, it's part of your, your working day to do this now. As long as you don't get distracted by the shopping and the cakes and the floristry and I need to make, to buy things rather than sell things, you're going to be in the deficit there.

Yes. I mean, yes, you do, you do have to put a bit of a time box around it because it can absolutely be a rabbit hole, but you know, there's a way to take back control of. Absolutely. 

So are there any current marketing trends? You know, sometimes people were doing TikTok and Instagram where they were doing like pointing one, two, three, four, five tips. That doesn't seem to be the thing anymore. So there's always little trends that people start doing.

You know, this will blow your mind. This is a mind blowing fact. Watch, watch till the end and you're like, get to the end. 

And it wasn't mind blowing. Are there, are there some certain trends come and go? Is there something at the moment that is, is kind of the current way of posting and getting attention that everyone's following? Yeah, gosh, they really do come and go. Honestly, I feel like the trend at the moment is, it's almost an anti-trend of, you know, not getting and creating content that's actually good for the people that you want to interact with. 

You know, whether it's, that could be something like, you know, not writing big blocks of text and formatting it so someone can actually skim it. A lot of people are talking about video, which kind of goes along with what you were saying, but video from the perspective of, it actually just is a chance for people to see more of what you're like. But creating content that you actually think is genuinely useful for other people. 

And that is a springboard for creating those relationships. So I think that's really the thing is people almost taking back control and a sense of ownership over their experience on, on the platforms so that they can be developing actual relationships and, and thinking about how to measure their impact in a way that's actually meaningful for their business. You know, you talk about, there's this idea of vanity metrics, and they have that name, you know, it's likes, follows, shares, things like that, which, you know, it is useful on some level to see what kind of engagement you're getting.

But really, if most of us are on these platforms, to promote our business in some level, so you need to have a longer view, and maybe a kind of broader definition of what that looks like for your business. You know, there are so many stories of people who have eventually ended up with a client or a referral or something like that, that they find out was from LinkedIn, but it was, you know, from someone that they had never actually noticed engaging with them on LinkedIn, that person had just kind of been aware of their content. And so they were top of mind, as you were saying, it's that little and often sort of approach to it. 

So they were top of mind. But it didn't, it, you wouldn't have known that from any kind of visible engagement on the, on the platform. So it's, it's, it's a long game, for sure.

It's a long game. And that's the trouble with people in business or starting out in business, they want immediate results. And anyone knows that the route to success is long, it's often draggy, it's hard work, you have to be resilient, that some are good days, some are bad days, sometimes it gets so flat, you think I'm never going to get another client. 

But it's keeping, keeping the energy there, keeping posting, keeping, keeping relevant, showing up every day and doing something. And also your audience, you don't know how they go shopping. Some people, what I call lurk, they watch you, they don't like, but they're watching you.

And because you can see on what this got 800 impressions, but it's only got three likes, you know, so a lot of people have watched you. And sometimes people decide to go shopping with you several months, even a year after seeing you. And other people, I've had someone say the other day, I didn't even need to look at the website, I just want to come straight to you. 

Brilliant. That's the kind of, you know, not mucking around, I don't need to read anymore. I'm just happy to go shopping with you. 

And then someone else, I've been getting your newsletter for years, or I saw your post a year ago and I never forgot it and I've come back to you. So you don't know how people are responding, taking their own time to process your message. Now is the time for them to step forward. 

But without posting, without doing this every day, even though it might not bring immediate returns, you don't know who's out there watching, who's getting ready, who's noting what you're doing. It may not be for now, but it's like, you might just hit the gold mine several months later, but don't do gold mining because you haven't hit the gold just yet. It takes its time to come to the surface. 

That's absolutely true. And it's also where having a bit of strategy comes into playing. There's room to inject some spontaneity, but you want to be thinking about who are the people that you want to reach? You might want actual leads for client relationships to develop in the near future, but also thinking about referrals, people who you just want to connect with for, whether it's media or speaking opportunities or whatever you want to do.

So there's different layers of people you want to connect with. And also there's different, it's big in marketing to talk about the idea of stages of awareness, customer awareness, or buyer awareness. So someone who is the very most aware of you and what your offer is, they're ready to buy it. 

But then on the other end of the spectrum, they're like, they haven't even identified that this thing that's niggling in the back of their head is an actual, it's a thing, it's a legitimate problem with a name. And then in between there, they start to realize, oh, this is a problem with a name. This actually has a potential solution. 

Oh, I kind of like this approach to solving it. This particular person has that approach and I like her style, whatever it is. So it's a spectrum and you want to be having that spectrum aware in your mind when you're creating your content. 

And you don't have control over which person sees which part of it, but if it's all out there and there's kind of an ecosystem of messages for someone to go through, that's helpful. And then at the end of that, you want to have, you know, once someone has seen your content, kind of a clear idea of what you might want them to do once they've, if they like your style, what do you want them to do next? Have you made it easy for them to learn more about you? I get you. So there's also a lot of marketing misconceptions because people think that January is a really busy time for a life coach after Christmas, like new year, new, new. 

I've never been busy in January. I know who are busy in January, that's divorce lawyers. And they've told me that. 

Ah, I've heard that. I've heard that. So they know that after, you know, a Christmas that wasn't all sweetness and joy and merriment, their clients are going to be phoning them or potential clients in January. 

Funnily enough, my busiest month of the year is September. And people say, why is that? And I say, well, because people, a lot of people say, but I'm going to go on holiday and have a fabulous holiday, throw loads of money at it. I'm taking with me my personal development books and life tracker and planner, and I'm going to sit down and work out a new life for myself. 

And of course you don't, you get on a sun lounger, you have a glass of wine, it's too soon, it's dinner. You're not thinking of reading those personal development books and coming back with a life change. And what it might be that you didn't get on with your partner when you were on holiday, it might be that the holiday didn't deliver every single wonderful thing you thought it was going to. 

So when you get back to your desk in September, it's raining, the boss hasn't got any better looking, you're living in a cramped house and you think, I really need to make some changes. That holiday has actually left me feeling worse. And that, you know, you can get post-holiday blues where you're back at your desk and thinking a week ago, I was swimming in the Mediterranean.

Now I'm in this grey desk and it's not what I want. And so September is a big time for me. People think, well, I want to change my life now. 

I've come back, I've had the summer, I get a renewed energy. It's not January, February, the new year, new you, which is what most people think the life coach is. It's usually September and leading up to Christmas that people want to make the big change. 

So it's always like, know your market, go a bit beneath the surface. What are people really getting worried about? If you were a fitness expert, you'd be saying, let's get Beachbody ready now. You don't say that in August because you haven't got time to get Beachbody ready in August. 

If you're a fitness instructor, let's say in February, then at least you've got a few months leading up. So it's kind of knowing how people live their lives, knowing trends, what will people be looking for at a time of year, the weather, kind of knowing how the human nature works, basically. Yeah, I think that's true. 

And I think more and more, I noticed this in myself. I don't know if it's part of getting older and maybe a bit more mature, but also I just hear people talking a lot more about these days. And it makes a lot of sense, just the seasonality. 

You're talking about January, new year, new you. But if that's a kind of construct that we as humans kind of made up, it doesn't actually work with nature. Nature is still sleeping at that time. 

Nature is still having rest. So I could see life coaching, for example, more towards the spring, you've got that kind of new planting seed energy. Or in autumn, it makes sense that kind of harvesting or even, I still think of it as like back to school kind of energy when you just kind of get everything back together after crazyness of summer. 

So I think there's also like leaning into your energy and how you naturally feel and not fighting it. Because we all have ups and downs and it's in the day, in the month, in the year. I always go against the grain anyway. 

And that's who I am. But January is comfort food, box sets, books. It's not green smoothies and going for a run in the icy rain. 

When your new year's resolutions are in front of you, this is not the month to do that. January and February are not the month. This is taking stock and planning. 

So I always say, drop the diet. Don't worry about the exercise. That will come. 

Enjoy your little hibernation time now while you can. Yeah. And there's value in all of it. 

We all need to have a rest. We all need to have a breather and take a breath. I actually was saying to someone the other, I actually love January because I find as an introvert, that hecticness of the festive season and December and all of that, it's fun in its way. 

But I love when you get to put the decorations away and clear up and just have an excuse to just be a little bit quiet for a while. It's hugely valuable, I think. I'm completely with you, Laurie. 

I love winter. I think summer, I always say, the summer's for amateurs. I sound such a, you know, who doesn't love the summer? But it's like a kind of annoying lapping puppy at your heels, nipping at you. 

You must go out. You've got to go into the park. You've got to do things. 

And I just think summer is so enervating. It's so destroying of energy. I don't feel energized in the summer. 

I actually feel I can't move. I'm so hot. I don't really want to go out. 

But the winter, I get energized. It's that I can stay in. I can create. 

I can do things. But it's not for everyone. But I've talked to you all day. 

It's such a deep and interesting subject. So I wonder if you could leave us with rookies starting out thinking, I don't know where to start with my marketing. And I want to start to embrace it. 

I want to start to enjoy it. I want to make it work for me. Have you got any little top tips you could share and leave with us? How do I start facing into marketing myself? I don't like it. 

I don't want to do it, but I've got to do it. How can you help them with that? You know, I think the most important question to ask yourself is what are you offering the person that you're serving that you're trying to connect with in terms of transformation? That's a big word. But really, like, what's the difference between before they would work with you and afterwards? And that doesn't have to be something big. 

You know, it doesn't have to be something huge and enormous, but it's even this, you probably know this from, I'm sure you know this from working, but sometimes the smallest shift can have a huge impact. So just thinking about what difference does knowing you make to that person in terms of the before and after, what belief might you help them change or what sense of possibility might you help them see and how does that impact their life? And I think most people would probably find that quite inspiring when they really get down to thinking about it. So it's knowing how you make a difference and it being relatable to others. 

Yeah. Yeah. And that sounds like a big, you know, kind of loose concept, but if you get down to be specific, you know, be specific in an everyday moment, I think that's where the real power lies in being very specific about that. 

You know, you're not talking about loose terms that we're seeing that, you know, a lot of in real, in real specific daily life terms, what's the difference that you make? That's the bottom line. What's the difference that you make? And if you can say that with passion and authority, that is very attractive, literally attracting people in. And that's what we should speak with passion and authority and authority and authenticity about what we do, because that's what keeps us going as entrepreneurs. 

It's been really, it's been really great talking to you, Laura, you have demystified marketing, made it manageable and added a kind of little, a little, a little twist of magic in there that makes you think, well, yeah, I do want to have the power of the whisper and I want to be nuanced, not loud. There's a lot of noise out there, but so let's think of the power of the whisper. Thank you so much, Laurie. 

No, it's been so much fun. Have a, have a great day. You are, you're a great advert for what you do.

Thank you. This has been really fun. Thank you so much.

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