Posed for Success

Today we are talking about our next C, which is: Cost. Have you ever gotten a DM or email that has no introduction or anything and just says, “What does it cost?” 

That can be super tricky. Because they are usually asking about the price. However, there are many costs associated with your product or service that are going into a person’s mind when they are determining whether or not to give you their money. 

So hold that thought while I remind you of something. Let’s talk very briefly about money in general. Money, in the actual paper sense doesn’t hold any real value until we give it value, right? It’s honestly just a piece of paper. And now with venmo and paypal and apple cash, we’ve actually eliminated physical products too. But what gives it value? And who determines it? Of course, we have centuries of social constructs telling us the value of money, and we can also comprehend that the value of money can fluctuate (hello inflation), but if we break it down to it’s basics, money only has the value that you are willing to give it. Let me say that again, “Money only has the value that you are willing to give it.” And when you are asking someone to make a transaction with you, you are actually exchanging value. If you have an apple and I have 25 cents and I go to buy that apple, what is happening is that I value the apple more than I value my 25 cents. And the store owner, or whoever has the apple values the 25 cents more than the apple, and so a transaction occurs. Get it? So I want you to remember that. 

When someone is asking you about the price of your product, they are constantly evaluating the value of the product you are providing. So when I talk about COST, in this context, it isn’t just the price of your product or service. When you are coming from your customer’s point of view, the COST is more than just the price, it’s everything that goes into making a value exchange decision. It could be the cost of their time to implement your product. It could be the cost of brain power to understand how to use your product. It could also include the cost of them understanding how beneficial a product is or not.

I know this may sound a little nebulous, but I want you to start thinking like your customer. What additional costs are associated with your product and how can you make that easier for the customer to want to make a transaction with you?

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an advertisement for a crazy deal on flights. Sometimes I’ll get a random email or ad that says, “$29 round trip airfare.” Sounds like a crazy good deal right? I mean, if I were to say, “What does that cost?” You could technically say, well it costs $29. But is that true? As a customer, no…it’s not just $29. And I’m not just talking about the additional taxes and fees or expenses related to going on a trip, but I’m talking about all of the other costs associated with this offer. Usually the offer is only good within a certain time frame or only to certain cities. Do I honestly want to go to Cincinnati in January? Probably not. Do you see the costs that are going through my brain as a customer? Your potential customers are doing the same thing. They are unconsciously and consciously evaluating the cost…with a Capital C to determine if it’s worth the value exchange for them.

If you are struggling to sell something that is just SO amazing, then think about all of the tangible and intangible costs that your customer faces when deciding if it’s right for them to hand over some cold hard cash.

Once you have that information, THEN you can take action and do something about it. It could be creating more awareness, making it easier for them to have access, or educating them better on h

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My graduate school classes are filled with people from a million different backgrounds, and some of them don’t have any experience in marketing. This may be what you are feeling like. You own a business, you want to grow, you love what you do, but you don’t necessarily love marketing. That’s okay. It can seem like a big scary thing, but here’s the thing-

We are all marketers!

Everything you do, from the products you create, to the reels you’re dancing in, to the emails you send, to how to tell other people about your services….that is all marketing. And understand the foundation of marketing is key for your business growth. 

It’s our number one job to take care of our customers or consumers. I will use those words interchangeably, but for the purpose of this episode, we are going to just think of our customer or consumer or audience as all the same people….someone who will give us money in exchange for what we are offering.

The 4 C’s that we are going to be learning about are:

1) Customer’s wants and needs

2) Cost

3) Convenience

4) Communication

I had a great conversation with an entrepreneur this week who has an amazing product. It’s a digital CPA service that helps you get strategic about what to do with your business finances rather than just trying things out, handing your books over to an accountant, and paying your taxes.

The problem was that this client didn’t know who their customers were! And because of this they couldn’t move forward with anything else in their business. Sometimes it’s easy to say that your consumer is a mom or a teenage boy or an athlete or a foodie. But that’s not good enough. A great marketer always digs deeper. And when you think you’ve dug far enough, that’s a sign that you need to go even deeper. You need to be constantly trying to understand your customers more.

Many times you may come up with an amazing product, but have no one to sell it to. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on your target customer and create a product or offer that fills the void in their life. When you understand your customer, it becomes so much easier to create a product that they will want. Of course, if you’ve already created a product, that’s fine. It’s a great way to test your audience. If they are buying it, or if they love it, you know you’ve hit a home run. If you are hearing crickets, that may be a signal that you created something that doesn’t resonate with their needs. Don’t worry, it’s all about testing. Testing your product or audience is fine, but I find that it’s easier to learn as much as you can about your customer first and then create something amazing that will make their life better.

How to learn more about your customer?

1. Ask them? This seems simple and hard at the same time. But speaking directly to your ideal customer is incredibly valuable. This can look like sending out an email poll, or a questionnaire on your IG stories. You can even call up some of your clients and ask them if you can chat with them. This is called getting customer insights and all of the best companies do it. ALL.THE.TIME. Even long standing brands, like Hershey or LL Bean are doing this every single day. Why do you think they are still in business? It’s because they are in love with their customers and know that people are shifting their thoughts and beliefs all the time. So talk to your customers. Get them on a phone call. Take them out to lunch. Get the conversation going. 

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Megan Pyrah is a mom who loves sharing how to make money at home. Especially helping you to keep it simple, easy and FUN! She helps you take the confusion out of social media and use it to BUILD and benefit your business.

Megan knew she wanted to be a stay at home mom, but also wanted to contribute to her family income, so she began learning about running a business from home. She has made over a million dollars in sales and even has her children running their own companies. It's a family affair and she's done it all from home with the help of social media.

Megan says that one of the biggest questions we face as content creators is, "I don't know what to create!"

"It's a huge stopping point. So you throw up your hands, and walk away."

"BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO REINVENT THE WHEEL!"

Let's keep it simple. Let's reuse our content. 

What does that look like?

1. Take something and talk about it again and again. Whether it's what you're selling or an offer to make or a solution you have - make sure you are talking about the same thing. When you are jumping from subject to subject, your audience doesn't know why they should follow you. 
2. If you feel like you've talked about the same thing over and over again, try to find a different way to talk about it. Remember:

Your audience may have missed it the first time.

Someone may have just started following you. 

You may have created amazing content that needs to be 

shared again.

3. Your content will hit your audience differently each time—experiment with using the same content but switch up something simple, like the hook.

4. Use what's working well and freshen it up. Can you use it on a different platform? Or mix up the video shots? Can you change the colors and use the same quote?

5. Use third-party apps to help you schedule and repurpose your content.

"Don't be afraid if someone sees your content twice," Megan says. "They are going to see it twice. We want them to see it twice. In fact, we want them to see it a million times!"

Megan understand the power of getting out of your own way because many times we are stuck in the beginning. But by repurposing your content you can easily take content creation one step at a time and get out of overwhelm and into action.

Connect with Megan on TikTok and Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/heymsmegan/

https://www.tiktok.com/@heymsmeg

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Want to know how we get more female voices "on the stage"? It doesn't start with a mindset shift, it starts with a financial shift. Here are my thoughts on that.

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 When Kylee Ann began investing in herself and business, everything changed. And for the better. She understood that she wanted more and that the fastest and simplest way to get there was by investing in herself and business.

She says that one of the hardest things we do as women and moms is to decide to think of our "hobby" as a business.

"We get in our heads like, oh, we don't want to invest a lot of money into this. We don't want to invest a lot of time for this. This is just a side thing. We just want it to like bring in a lot of money without a lot of effort.

"But as soon as you can change your mindset from hobby to business, everything else will be so much easier for you."

When you think of your offer and what you are selling as a hobby, you don't want to spend too much money. However, if you think of the same thing as a business, it gets easier to understand that the money you are spending is an investment (with an expected return).

Kylee says as soon as you can switch your mindset to think of the money you spend on your business as an investment, "I promise those after those years, it comes back like tenfold and it's great."

And there's multiple ways in which you can invest in your business - it can be in the physical tools or products that you're using. It can also be in education or hiring help.

So where do we start investing in ourselves?

"When I first started, I was really good at investing in conferences and I was really good at investing my time in learning things, but my mindset stuff didn't catch up for years later.

"And my business didn't scale until I invested in the mindset stuff. You could have every single tool in the world, but if you don't believe that you can do it, you're not going to."

Kylee says that shifting your limiting beliefs is a huge step in moving forward in your life and business. It's also a skill that we aren't born with, so we have to spend time to develop those skills.

Everything starts in your brain.

"You have to get your mindset right. If you can grasp the part that you literally have the power to do anything, and your mind is so powerful, then the investments that you make are that much more valuable," says Kylee.

You can learn all of the tools of marketing or business, but if your mind isn't in the right place, you will not move forward using those tools correctly.

"As soon as I learned these mindset tools, I really started building a business around what I wanted out of life....my dream business."

Once you have all of this information, trusting yourself to sort through it. And that's how you're gonna be able to grow the business that you love and find the success that you define for yourself.

Kylee says the last key is that you can't do thiss alone. Having a coach or guidance is key to keeping your mindset in the right place and you action on track.

"I think as women, we just feel like we need to do it all, but we forget  a regular business has a manager, and shippers for warehouses. They have a social media person, they have someone in the front greeting people. They have all these things. And we, as women think we need to do everything ourselves and we need to just know these things and we just need to learn these things on our own, but nobody in real life is doing that. Every successful business has a team and support."

Learn more and connect with Kylee here.

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What is a brand? It’s not your logo, fonts, or colors. It’s your vibe and energy that’s uniquely YOU! 

Let’s learn more about the 4 Pillars of Building Your Brand to Grow Your Visibility

VISIBILITY - When it comes to being a brand, you have to have the mindset that it’s okay for you to show up and be seen. You don’t want to hide behind your logo or website. People crave connection. Understand that it’s important for you to show people and create connections exactly as you are. You are exactly where you need to be to add value to the world. 

Jack recognizes that there’s a lot of internal work to do in order to reach that external goal. A lot of times it’s getting over whatever insecurities we have. 

You have a message to share to the world and people need to hear that message.

Listen to the episode for all of the brand pillars or read more here.

Watch the whole interview on YouTube here.

And check out Deadline Funnel for more information.

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Mindi Rosser helps B2B business owners, thought leaders, and subject matter experts to start having great conversations with their audience, prospects, and peers based on trust, authenticity, and consistency on LinkedIn. She's worked within the agency world, with startups, and then decided to branch out to work directly with business leaders on their social presence, building thought leadership, and working with them to fill their pipelines with ideal clients using LinkedIn. As an entrepreneur, she values freedom and coloring outside the lines. She loves building systems that work on LinkedIn and testing them to generate results for her clients.

No longer is LinkedIn just for white collared, corporate job seekers, it’s a tool where you can grow your network, resources, and influence in the online world. Mindi says that you should view LinkedIn as a relationship building tool. Direct Messages are a gold mine for information and getting to understand your ideal clients

The way that we connect is so much more virtual, you can use LinkedIn to do this in so many ways.

Learn all the details and how to grab Mindi's FREE training at www.britbennion.com/117

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Have you heard the rumblings? People are stressing out about whispers (and shouts) of an impending recession. What will this do for you or for your business? How will you grow or even make ends meet? These are difficult questions to ponder on. 

I've had a number of people in my world speak on this exact topic. From mastermind groups to daily emails, podcasts and more. There’s a general trend of people in the online space that are feeling fearful. 

Because things are a little bit rocky in our economy. Sales are down across the board and people are starting to stress out. 

Whether you are reading the news or listening to people of influence saying that there’s been a slowdown for their business, don’t let this strike fear into your heart. 

Here's the bottom line. When it comes to your business, do not get stuck in the downward cycle of scarcity. 

Push pause on that rhetoric. You can choose to believe that your business will be deeply affected by a recession or you can choose to be open to the possibilities that the future will bring you. 

This is the difference between an abundant marketing mindset vs a scarcity marketing mindset.

We get to think and decide how we want to react to any situation in our business. That's the beauty of being an entrepreneur. The beauty of being able to have your own business. You get to choose how you want to think about it and the actions you wanna take in relation to what's going on.

Ask yourself: Are my thoughts and energy being scarce or abundant?

Because whatever the answer is, you are right. If you are having scarcity thoughts, you will see scarcity in your business. If you are having abundant thoughts, you will see abundance in your business. 

How does this work?

Listen to the episode www.britbennion.com/116 for all the details.

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Ceri Payne, M.Ed, is a certified life coach with The Life Coach School. She created her successful life coaching practice while parenting three teenagers, teaching special education full-time, supporting her husband in his demanding career, and serving as the President of her Church's Women's Organization.   

Ceri works with creative entrepreneurs, many of whom have ADHD, helping them streamline their priorities and goals while simplifying their business, and schedules so that they have time and mental energy to continue to grow their successful business, strengthen family relationships, and have time for themselves.

Lead with our strengths in all areas of life

When your strengths become stronger, then we are able to develop in areas in which we are weaker so we can now develop that. 

Doing the things that are strengths for us is the best way to do more of what we’re good at and will build our confidence.

The more you lead with your strengths the faster your business and confidence will grow?

How do you know what strengths you have to use?

We all have talents, but sometimes it may take a while to figure out what you have. You can start out by just believing that you have them. Ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I enjoy doing?
2. What do other people say that I’m good at?
3. What do I get complimented on?
4. What is something that I can easily do for hours?
5. What is something I enjoy learning about?
6. What comes easily to me?
7. If I had to talk to a group of people for 30 minutes, what would I talk about?

The answers to these questions will help you know what actions and what topics you like. They will also help you to understand what feeling you like to have when using those strengths.

Don’t confuse inexperience with weakness. One of today’s biggest challenges is to perform well right now and not be willing to fail. We can develop a new strength if we give ourselves the space to grow. Don’t let fear stop you. You can be scared to do something, but still work on it and develop it into a strength. 

Hire Out or Do Without

If you are able to hire out some part of your life then it frees up time to do more of what you love. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re paying someone to do something, but rather that you assign someone else to take on that task or you perform a trade. 

This allows you to do more of what you love and less of what you don’t enjoy. When we look at spending money as an exchange to do more of what we love, that’s empowering.

Also, recognize what the “needle movers” are in your business. What are the things that are making you grow and do more of that. So many times we focus on things that we think we “have” to do, but they aren’t helping us. Those are the things we can do without.

You could take all of the business courses, tips, and tricks to be successful, but if you don’t believe in yourself, those things will be of no value to you. Build your confidence and recognize the value of believing in yourself. It will make all the difference in what you are learning. 

If we are growing a business or doing something different that we've never done before…What if we just expected that we could learn what we didn't know?

It isn’t because you are talented that you can succeed. It’s that you have the ability to believe in yourself. 

Connect with Ceri at www.britbennion.com/115

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Lisa says that growing beyond your audience is vital to the life of your business.

Clients will say, "I feel like I'm constantly creating content for social media, but I'm not seeing it convert. I'm not getting more sales. I feel like I'm doing things over and over on this hamster wheel."

Lisa tells them, "There is a huge difference between content and visibility content.

It is so important that we're showing up, that our audience can get to know us, but we have to remember that content is only seen by the people who already follow us."

Our content nurtures the people who are already there, but a visibility strategy will help us to grow and bring more people into our ecosystem.

HOW CAN YOU GROW YOUR AUDIENCE?

Lisa says that you can grow your audience using paid ads, but that can get expensive very quickly. 

Instead of worrying about FB/IG ads, you can get your name out there and be more visible by borrowing other people's audiences.

This is called "earned media". Lisa says this essentially, "leverages other people's platforms showing up with value so that you can get access to their audience.

Many entrepreneurs aren't utilizing earned media. But this is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to grow your audience. 

Earned media can be something as simple as guesting on someone's podcast or in a group, writing an article or going live with another contemporary in your field.

WHAT STEPS CAN I TAKE TO GROW MY AUDIENCE?

ABC's of Audience Growth

A: Awareness - Get in front of the person who has the ability to hand over their credit card.

B: Build Buzz - Get a lot of people talking about you and your launch, product, upcoming offer, service. This isn't just you posting about it once, this is over and over again from many people.

C: Credibility - Build credibility so that your name is being said in the right circles by the right people. You want to be seen as the "go-to" person to solve their probelm.

Learn even more by listening to the episode or by connecting with Lisa below.

www.britbennion.com/114

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