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EP 18: How to Create Authentic and Sustainable Offers for Your Business
91 Plays11 months ago
In this week’s episode, Lindsay and Betsy walk through the importance of authenticity when it comes to building out offers for a service-based business. Creating sustainable offers for your business model and the life you want is key to keeping imposter syndrome at bay and ensuring your work feels authentic and confident of who you are.
We talk through ideas for building out offers that might work for people who are social media marketing lovers (i.e., packages, projects, VIP days) and a few ideas of offers you can build that require little to ZERO social media marketing on your part. The beauty of being your own boss and a service provider is that you can truly build your offers however they feel authentic to you and your life, no matter what season you’re in.
Follow The Business Playdate online & come say hi!
- The Business Playdate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusinessplaydate/
- Lindsay White's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaywhite.co/
- Betsy Moorehead's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betsymoorehead.biz/
- Learn more about Lindsay's marketing program here: https://lindsaywhite.co/
- Learn more about Betsy's marketing services here: https://betsymoorehead.com/
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Journey
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Business Playdate, a podcast hosted by Lindsay White and Betsy Moorehead, two internet strangers turned business besties. We're two marketing professionals living across the country, raising our kiddos while running our own individual businesses. We built these businesses based on our experiences working in corporate management roles with the end goal to be able to show up for our families first. And we did it. We're so happy you're here with us. Now let's get into this week's episode.
Authenticity in Business and Life
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back to the Business Playdate, guys. We are so excited you're here. Betsy and I were just talking about today's episode and where it's going to go. And it's funny because we decided the theme of the month is authenticity. It is. It is indeed feeling very authentic to finding ourselves this season.
00:00:52
Speaker
I think I'm feeling like I want to bring more authenticity to my life and felt a little out of control lately, you know, or like I'm not serving myself and maybe bringing it back to me a little bit could be good.
00:01:07
Speaker
I think that's a great idea. As you should. Yeah. As you should. That's kind of how I'm feeling, like taking ownership of my space, the things I can control, like ways of like helping me feel confident and like, you know, just good and authentic to who I am and
00:01:26
Speaker
who I'm supposed to be and the mom I am and all that good stuff.
Struggles with Authenticity
00:01:30
Speaker
All of that trickles into our businesses. It does. I don't know about it for you, but I feel like my business for me has always been this spot of like, I don't know how I feel.
00:01:45
Speaker
with it. Like some days I'm feeling really great about my business and that it's such a great extension of me and it really reflects who I am. And other times I feel like I'm like, what is this absolute mess that I've created? Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, that's imposter syndrome, right? But I couldn't agree more. I mean, there's some days where I'm just like, what am I doing? What is happening here? But then some days I feel real good. So I think it's totally normal to have those ups and downs and moments, but
00:02:14
Speaker
at the core of it, like you know what you want and you just keep working towards that. And if something doesn't feel, here we go, authentic to you and to what you want out of the whole reason why you started your business, then guess
Freedom in Business Ownership
00:02:28
Speaker
what? You're the boss. You don't have to worry about getting a text message from somebody telling you you're not doing something right and you need to get your shit together or having a
00:02:38
Speaker
email come through that says, we need to meet later today. Do you have time for a one-on-one? Do you have time? I know. I was telling Lindsay earlier that I was seeing some stuff on Instagram for my old job, and I had this little hint of, oh, that's cool that they got to do that. We didn't get to do that when I was there. That's cool that they got to do that. But then I was like, you can pay me enough money to go back and work there, but also in a corporate setting again. In a corporate setting.
00:03:14
Speaker
The cool stuff that you get to do as a business owner in the space that we're in as like a marketing service provider, just service provider in general, like you truly get to call the shots. You get to make this what you want it to be. And if something doesn't, again, kind of like what I just said, if something doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel authentic, you can shift, you can pivot. And most of the time, I mean, from my experience, my clients have pivoted with me. So that's been, it's been really cool
00:03:32
Speaker
The amount of money would have to be an insane
Creating Sustainable Offers
00:03:37
Speaker
amount.
00:03:37
Speaker
to see.
00:03:37
Speaker
Mine as well, which has been really nice. Um, so I think today what we really want to talk about is building sustainable offers. And I mean, I think you can really use the word authentic interchange with sustainable, but, you know, not the sustainable, like planting a tree. Cause I Googled it earlier. That's not what we're talking about. No, like sustainable, sustainable offers to me means something that can sustain you forever. Something that is,
00:04:04
Speaker
whenever you feel like retiring, I don't know what that goal is for each individual person, but I do think that that's something a lot of us in this online business space haven't thought about because some of the marketing tactics that people are taking for their online businesses, you might not want to be doing when you're 55. No. When do people retire these days? It's like 64. You see people working a lot older than that these days because
00:04:33
Speaker
Shit's expensive. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to be dancing on TikToks when I'm 60. No, I don't, unless I like can become some like
00:04:44
Speaker
senior influencer and you know, that's how I pay my bills. Yeah. That would be a real treat. They do exist. That's a building a sustainable offer is something that it's, what is your business going to look like through the rest of its business life?
Authentic Client Interactions
00:05:02
Speaker
You know, whether that's five years, one year, 30 years, like what does that look like? And something you can be proud of. Yeah. Something you can be proud of.
00:05:11
Speaker
something that's authentic to you that you can continue carrying out through the duration of this business, being proud of the client experience that you're putting your clients through, being authentic in your marketing. You want your business to be something that is an extension of you that you're proud of and not something that you're kind of keeping under wraps and shying away from other people with. Yeah. So what is that for you?
00:05:37
Speaker
So for me, I think that my marketing agency is very authentic to me and it's very sustainable for me. And some days I do get really frustrated with the day to day operations of it, absolutely. But at the end of the day, I know it's a business that can continue going whether I sell the agency, you know, and I'm able to bring an income through the sale of a business or it's
00:06:02
Speaker
you know, me continuing to manage and be the CEO of this agency. And whether it stays lean or it grows really big, the underlying vibes are very sustainable to me and very authentic to me. Um, and I'm proud of the experience that I put my clients through. Like they love working with me. It's a very high caliber. Like we put together amazing creative for these clients.
00:06:27
Speaker
And it's something I'm proud of. Yeah, no, I feel the same way. I think for me, it's, I am proud of working with people that I can relate to and that they're getting the whole me. And that's what I want my business to be is like an authentic experience of working with.
00:06:52
Speaker
me, the professional, but also like I'm going to be there to help you support you through your business journey as well. And so I try not to take on things that don't work with my life or don't feel authentic to my business.
00:07:07
Speaker
And I think you're really good at that because you're constantly telling me like, oh, my past client came to me and wanted me to do this. And I turned it down because it doesn't match with what I'm doing right now or where I'm going. And I think that that's really impressive because I have a hard time saying no.
00:07:25
Speaker
Same. I actually like have had a couple of people recently have like, Hey, I'm not sure if you do this kind of work, but I need like a logo or I need a landing page or I need this. And I'm like a year and a half ago, I would have said, sure, I'll figure it out. And then I would have taken forever to get it done. I would have underpriced myself and I would have been like, why am I even doing this? But I would have done it because
00:07:48
Speaker
It was hard to say no, but now it's like, Oh no, I actually don't do that, but I'm happy to find, you know, help find you somebody who would be really good at knocking that out for you. Um, I have found to that.
00:08:02
Speaker
I enjoy working one-on-one with clients and I don't at this point have anybody on my team that I work with, but I like working one-on-one with clients because most of my clients are like, you're the expert. Let's let you just handle it. I don't really care to know what's going on unless there's a problem. And so I really enjoy kind of just having that control of
00:08:29
Speaker
you know, making sure that things are going the way they're supposed to be and being the, um, authority on their marketing efforts, whether it's, you know, making sure their ads are doing what they're supposed to do or that we're like moving their marketing strategy in the right direction, um, and not wasting our time somewhere where we shouldn't be. So.
00:08:49
Speaker
You know, I think for me, the authentic thing is like a feeling. Uh, if, if it doesn't feel right, it's not sustainable for me. Yeah. No, I get that completely. And if it's not, if it doesn't feel right, you're going to feel like imposter syndrome all the time. You're going to constantly be questioning what you're putting out there, what you're being paid to do, if you're valuable and that whole thing. So let's talk a minute about the different offer types, just to give everyone a refresher. If you have not listened to episode number six, which is.
00:09:18
Speaker
the pros and cons of retainer versus project work, creating value-based offers. Go take a listen to that. But we're going to give you a quick overview in case you have not. So in my mind, there's kind of like two offer types. There's retainers, and then there's projects. Are there any, do you have any others? No, I think we talked about like intensives, but I think that goes into the project work thing. So we can talk about that. Yeah, intensives. And in the online business space, a lot of people call them VIP days. And those definitely all fall into project-based work.
00:09:48
Speaker
We were talking earlier about, you know, I don't use the term VIP day. Now I offer intensives, which is, you know, in essence, the same thing as what an online business owner would call a VIP day. Yeah. But my clients would absolutely scoff at the idea of something being called a VIP day. Yeah. Mine would be like, what? Yeah. I'm not a VIP.
00:10:10
Speaker
Well, that's the thing, right? Like knowing your audience, knowing who you are, tailoring your offer types for them, or even like what you're calling them, like your, your, your lingo, your language. I think that's huge. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So do we want to give just like a brief example of retainer and project work?
00:10:30
Speaker
Obviously, you can go back and listen to episode six to hear the pros and cons of both. I'll walk you through one of my client retainers. Perfect. I have a new client who just came on. They get 40 hours of account management per month, not rollover, and they get a $2,500 creative budget. That's $2,500 for creative projects that they can work on.
00:10:53
Speaker
with our creative team. And that's every single month. And that's a monthly retainer. So an example of project work, I'll do that. For me is I have a client that I kind of have like rolling project work with, and I did a six week project with them where it was a multi-page annual report for their nonprofit. And with that, I did everything from project management, timeline, execution,
00:11:21
Speaker
gathering all of the information from the internal sources. I did all the creative work on that. And then I like finalized it all and worked with the printer and bid it all out and made sure that they had like everything that they needed and that it was all printed. And I actually ended up helping her with like getting all the mailing and the stuffing and all of that done too. So it was an all encompassing, like large six to eight week project timeline.
Service Alignment and Business Identity
00:11:43
Speaker
And it was in and out and done. Yeah, that's a project.
00:11:49
Speaker
So another project could be something like creating a website for someone. You know, something that's not a recurring, a retainer is something that's recurring. So with that, you know, what's authentic to each of us is going to be what's different than what's authentic to you guys. But in that you kind of want to be thinking about what are the things that you're good at? What are the things you're proud of?
00:12:12
Speaker
What do you want your clients to feel when they're working with you? So things that are authentic to me are, of course, just putting together that five star client experience. I want my clients to always feel like they're a partner with me and that I'm in their back pocket. I'm going to help them when they don't know where to go. I always joke. I get the most random emails from my clients asking me the most random questions. And some people would get really upset by this.
00:12:41
Speaker
But to me, I'm like, thank God they asked me that question. That means that when they don't know where to turn, they turn to me. That makes me feel important. It makes me feel like part of the team. And that's what I want to be to my clients. I want to be part of their team. I want to be a partner to them. I want to be an authority for them in this marketing and business development space.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. That's definitely authentic to me as well. I don't, if it's a side question or like a text message or an email or something, you know, that comes through and it's a random ass question, it's like, what is it going to hurt to answer that? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Um, we did want to touch on some things that we have tried that don't feel authentic to us. So I'm going to touch on. I have some.
00:13:31
Speaker
Go first. What doesn't feel authentic to me is any type of social media management, like scheduling, coming up with the content, like saying all of that. I don't mind. I have one client that I'll make reels for, but that's fun for me. That feels authentic to me. I don't mind. They give me all of the clips and I
00:13:53
Speaker
I just create it. I just edit the video. I love that. I think that's fine for me. What doesn't feel authentic to me is, oh gosh, any kind of technical work. If anybody is like, hey, our website's not doing what it should be, can you help us out? I'm like, got a piece out on that one. That's not authentic to me. Could I figure it out? Sure. But I don't want to waste your time or my time, so let's find someone else to do it. Yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
And I've tried to do all of those things and I've tried to make them work. And it's just been a miserable experience. And then I feel stupid. And then I feel imposter syndrome. And then I want to burn it all down.
00:14:31
Speaker
I have this terrible or amazing habit of like I get super into learning something new or like learning a new system. Like nothing brings me more joy than like figuring out a new email marketing system. I'm like, yes, I love that. Like that's so fun. And I went down the rabbit hole of like learning how to make WordPress websites and I was like, Oh yeah, I can do that. And clients would ask me like, can you make this WordPress website? And like, yeah, of course. And then I'd spend,
00:14:58
Speaker
a bajillion hours building it because I am not a website designer. And if I wanted to spend the time figuring it out, I could, but that's not authentic to me. I don't enjoy the kind of trade of time for money in a website build. I like the ongoing relationship. So things like that aren't authentic to me. Now that's not to say I own an agency. And so I do have people on my team who can build a website for our clients.
00:15:28
Speaker
So I think the way I think about authenticity to me is like, where do I want me and my business to be positioned with clients? Yeah. Where like I want to be positioned as this strategic authority type of business that's their expert that they can go to. And I don't want to be positioned as like a transactional business.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. You said something that feels very authentic to me and we're kind of going back to the previous question, but relationships, like connections, like talking to my clients, being the face of the communication. I've always loved that even when I was like at my corporate days and then when I was with the ad agency, like being the like almost like account managers person that they
00:16:16
Speaker
someone can trust and rely on. That feels so authentic to me. I'm a people person. I love communicating with the person. Now, when that doesn't feel authentic, that's when you know you don't have the right client. Yes. I feel the same way and I think that's why I've ended up in this agency setting is because being in the account manager relationship role is utmost authentic to me. I love creating relationships with people. I love
00:16:44
Speaker
talking, which is why I love this podcast. This is so authentic to me. Being in meetings is honestly authentic to me. I enjoy that communication and that communication style and creating those relationships. When building my business, I was going down a rabbit hole of creating transactional based offers.
00:17:02
Speaker
email marketing newsletters. I was doing newsletters for a little while. I did social media management for a little while. I mentioned I did websites. I tried all of these different avenues and none of them were authentic to me because they weren't building relationships. And I was like, how do I sell? How do I monetize relationship building without being in a corporate sales job?
00:17:23
Speaker
And that's where building a team to help me provide the creatives, the actual like tangible services so that I could facilitate the relationship was the most authentic direction for me in my business. And I think, I mean, it's so important that you are authentic in what you do because from the client side of things, like they don't want to work with someone who's not confident in what they're doing.
00:17:48
Speaker
No, not at all. They will see right through that. So if you're not proud, you're not confident, you don't feel like that authority, you got to figure out what's going to make you feel like that. Yeah, I totally agree. I have heard from a lot of people that they're
00:18:06
Speaker
having trouble bringing in enough income or finding clients to work with. And I mean, there's so many different, that's a whole different episode, right? But there's so many things that go into that. But one of those things is going to be the confidence you're exuding. It's going to be how authentic to yourself your business is. It's going to be, you know, how proud you are of your business.
00:18:29
Speaker
And if you're not feeling authentic or building a sustainable offer suite for your clients, they're going to see right through that. Yeah. And I think most of the people listening are probably established service providers. And so if you aren't feeling those things yet, then something probably needs to shift in your business because you may not feel those in the first year of your business. It's going to take some time to find what feels authentic to you. But if you're a couple of years in or
00:18:56
Speaker
you know a year so and it's like i'm hearing this but i'm not really feeling that way and it's like okay what's in let's do some digging and searching and figure out what offers maybe do feel authentic to you. Example for me was i was offering and i still do advertising management for a couple of clients.
00:19:15
Speaker
And I was, had them based on hourly. So I was like, you know, I'll just charge you an hourly rate. It'll, and I kind of considered that like a project because while they were paying me monthly, it wasn't actually a retainer with like a package associated with it. It was just like, I'll make sure your ads are running and I'll do all of that.
00:19:33
Speaker
X, Y, and Z for this much an hour. And then I started bringing on a couple more clients and I was like, you know what? This isn't really feeling right. I don't feel like I'm like the authority here. I'm just kind of like getting by and doing a transactional thing. I'm just like making their ads work.
00:19:49
Speaker
So I decided, I think I could talk to you about this, but I decided this summer, I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to shift all of my ad clients into retainer services and I'm going to build a package around it because I'm going to be charging them a premium for this service,
Strategic Services and Client Relationships
00:20:03
Speaker
right? So I ended up emailing all of them and just say, hey guys, instead of hourly, I'm going to be shifting all of my clients into a retainer. This is what you'll be getting for that. And it includes like strategy work,
00:20:15
Speaker
uh, you know, a monthly one-on-one and like, then also like the management of all of the ads. Did you level up your services? So like from the hourly package that you were providing each month to this retainer, was it an apples to apples? No. So you were giving them more services. I was giving them more services, but I was charging them a premium, right? So instead of like, cause sometimes I, maybe I was only working like five or so hours a month on there, like, you know, a couple of hours a week in their service.
00:20:45
Speaker
But I wasn't offering like full strategy. I wasn't offering a monthly call with that because they didn't need that at the time. It was just like, we need someone to run our ads and make it work. And to me, that didn't feel authentic. There was no relationship there. There was no, sure. Like I talked to my, I talked to them, you know, like through email or text message or whatever, like, Hey, I need this, this piece of content or whatever. We need to change out the creative, but now we've upleveled the services. I've created a package, a monthly like retainer. And so I actually like.
00:21:15
Speaker
and providing more of a full monthly service that I feel is more authentic to me because we're meeting monthly where I'm having building that relationship. I'm, you know, I feel like I have more control, more authority. And that's what I wanted because I didn't want to just be a piece of the puzzle. I wanted to help create the puzzle and then help put all the pieces together. Yeah, which makes sense. No, I think that's really cool. I think that.
00:21:45
Speaker
you it's like they started with you for what they needed. And then you started there. And then you were like, this is what you know, this is what you want. And I'm gonna get you to where like, you need to go. And once you're there, I'm gonna evolve with you. And we are, you know, continuing to walk down this, this path.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, because I just, I mean, like that feels authentic to me to be a partner with somebody, not to just come in and be like, yeah, I'm going to get this, this, and this done for you every month. And you know, we're never going to talk and just, you know, here's my, here's my invoice. Like people do that. That's fine. Whatever doesn't feel right for me. I need to be like, we talk at least once a week, every Monday I send them like a, here's what's happening with your accounts update, you know, like, and it's super quick for me to do. And
00:22:33
Speaker
So anyway, that's just an example because it, it's something that can grow with you, right? So you evolved from transactional based to more relationships, strategic, like authority figure based. And now you're at like this next tier of where your business is at. And any new clients you'll bring on at that tier rather than this lower tier that you're originally at. And who knows where that'll take you when you go up. And that's how you continue to build
00:22:59
Speaker
momentum and scaling your business or growing your income. We've even talked about where I'm thinking about the next level will be, so it's constantly on my mind.
00:23:13
Speaker
I used to hear people being like, it's time to scale your business. Like you need to grow, you need to do this. And I was just always like, okay, like I'm feeling really good where I am. But there does come a time where you're like, I think I could be offering more to somebody than what I'm giving them now. And let me figure out how I can work a package in to make it usually beneficial. Because like you said,
00:23:34
Speaker
A client doesn't want to work with somebody who doesn't have that confidence. No. They can tell when you're doing something just to get by and it doesn't feel right for both of you. Authentic. Right. Authentic. We should have made a drinking game on every time we sell. Every time it's authentic. I'd be smashed. If you're still listening and you want to break out a beer or something, glass of wine. Go for it.
00:24:05
Speaker
Okay, so now I want to talk about our last episode that we talked, we spoke out social media and using
Social Media and Business Authenticity
00:24:14
Speaker
it for business. What a doozy. What a doozy. So what episode was that number 17? Okay, so that was a very interesting episode. Super raw, kind of vulnerable. And we talked a lot about social media and
00:24:27
Speaker
Right now, social media is not authentic to me. And I think at certain times in my life, social media has been authentic to me. And I think at where I am currently in life, I really need to get myself off of social media for many reasons. But social media has actually never been very authentic to my marketing agency business. And a lot of these listeners probably know me from the director of marketing program, where I am very present on social media, but it's a totally different business.
00:24:56
Speaker
So from a business standpoint, I, my agency has never really been very big on social media. Um, it's just not authentic to us. And so it's unnecessary. It's unnecessary. Um, and so that's kind of something that we'll touch on in a few minutes. But what I did want to talk about before we get where we're going is I posted an Instagram story yesterday or the day before all around like people on social media and how they're feeling about it.
00:25:27
Speaker
So I wanted to ask a poll around, you know,
00:25:30
Speaker
Are people on social media, do they want to get off of social media? Why are you on social media and why are you off social media or thinking about getting off of it? The results were astounding. I'm so excited to hear this. I had 90% of participants in my poll say, yes, they are thinking about getting off of social media. I mean, 90%. That's wild. Wild. Wild, wild, wild. And what I also find interesting is I was in a mastermind a couple of years ago and they had
00:26:01
Speaker
expressed some statistics information about how if you're speaking to your ideal audience and you get poll results of 22 people, it is considered statistically sound, which is a very small amount of people. Yeah, that's crazy. So I do want to note that my poll was statistically sound and it was 90% which is wild. So we kind of wanted to talk about some offer ideas for our listeners that can be
00:26:31
Speaker
if they are, you know, antisocial folk or if they're like a social media lover. Yeah. So do you want to just, you know, start? Sure. Yeah, let's do it. So offer ideas for social media lovers packages. Packages are great for social media lovers because you have to constantly be marketing yourself.
00:26:50
Speaker
You can't just market to four people and have, you know, packages paid for the whole year. Like a package is a small project. Maybe, maybe you are doing huge packages. Like I've had a $30,000 package before. That was great. And I did not have to be on social media for that. So I could sell, you know, four of those in a year, but I'd still have to find those four people. Yeah. Would that be considered a project packages?
00:27:12
Speaker
Oh yeah. Projects. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what else? Uh, like we talked about, uh, VIP days, you know, that's something that you do a VIP day. That's talking that on social media. That makes total sense, especially if that's where your ideal audience is. Um, I've seen people also do, um, uh, like low ticket, uh, like seminars or workshops. Like they've sold those through social media. Those seem to do really well, especially like if you have a really heavy
00:27:41
Speaker
organic audience and you don't have to spend any money on ads on that. Digital products. Digital products works really well. Anything that you can link to and you need to drive traffic. I love the work idea. I do too. Yeah. There's one girl that I follow and she like is constantly putting out new workshops and she gets a lot of sales from social media. Anything that doesn't require a discovery call.
00:28:02
Speaker
I love that. Anything that doesn't require a discovery call is probably a good social media space. Like if you're selling products, products or digital products. Traffic. We talked about this the other day. Anything that you can drive traffic to your website for that people can hit purchase on right then and there. That's good use of social media. Yeah. So those are some areas if you are like, I love reels, great, you know, now offer ideas for the antisocial folk. Retainer.
00:28:30
Speaker
retainers. I mean, if you don't want to be on social media, but you want to study income, retainers are where it's at. And you can customize a retainer. You don't have to offer the same retainer to everybody. You can customize it for the client. You can customize it for your needs, for their needs, for where you are at your season of life.
00:28:49
Speaker
I love a retainer. I like to keep four minimum four retainers a month at a certain level because I know every month I'm getting that money and I don't have to market myself anymore. Exactly. You know how much is coming in. Backtrack into it. What's your monthly income that you want to make or need to make? Divide it by four and then backtrack into what that retainer would look like and then create a retainer similar to that ideal retainer for
00:29:19
Speaker
each of your clients, but that's customized to them.
00:29:21
Speaker
I think too, when I first started, I was like, how do I ever get someone to pay what I need for a retainer monthly? And it's like, we have to find the right person. You can't offer somebody who needs just social media help a marketing strategy retainer at $5,000 plus a month. They're not going to afford that. They just need someone to do their social media. So. I think about where you're going to find those people. Like none of my clients would have ever found me on social media. Yeah. Ever. Yeah.
00:29:51
Speaker
they wouldn't find me on a podcast. They wouldn't find me on Facebook, like maybe LinkedIn. All of my retainers have come from a referral or a networking and me getting out in the community and connecting with people. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's an interesting, I don't know if dynamic is the right word, but mindset.
00:30:16
Speaker
in this space where we are moms, we work from home, we work remotely, we're work at home moms, if you will. And I think a lot of people get stuck in the mindset of like, oh, well, I should be able to do it all for my laptop at home, inside the safety of my own four walls. And I just don't think that that's always the case. Not that you can't do it, but when you're thinking about what's authentic or sustainable for you,
00:30:46
Speaker
Think about the long game. Think about, do you still want to be on reels? I know we talk about reels a lot, but I think it's because it's, it's, it's like the thing, right? It's like the thing that everyone's doing right now. The algorithm loves them, all of this, whatever. You don't have to do that.
00:31:06
Speaker
No, you don't. I mean, some people don't like doing face to camera stories. And at the end of the day, you need to think about, okay, who is your question that you just asked? Who's going to pay that for a retainer? Who's going to pay your $5,000 retainer or whatever it is that you need to be making in your retainers?
00:31:22
Speaker
Where are they going to find you? Where are you going to find them? Because I think a lot of people are on social media, like a lot of the me's and the you's we're on social media and we're talking to other me's and you's. We're not talking to clients or potential clients. And the me's and the you's are probably the clients of people who are coaches or selling digital products to service providers. That's not who I'm talking to.
00:31:50
Speaker
No. Those people aren't going to fill my retainer spots. No. So I think thinking about what's sustainable to you and your business and how to build a sustainable business, something that's going to be with you for the duration of time that you need to be making income, which is going to be different for everyone. You need to think about what that
00:32:15
Speaker
what that process, what your offer type looks like, how to market to the people who are going to fill that offer type for you and what that looks like. Because what's working today isn't going to work tomorrow and you're going to need to keep evolving and building something that's sustainable. That was beautiful. Thanks.
00:32:33
Speaker
Thanks. I don't know if we want to talk about this, um, but I've been seeing a lot about like passive income. I know you had a blog post recently come out about the subject. Um, I don't guess I really understand where it's all coming from, probably because I'm not paying that much
Passive Income and Authenticity
00:32:55
Speaker
attention because it's not really directed for me, but, um,
00:33:00
Speaker
It seems like kind of a hot topic these days, just people using like either affiliate marketing or, um, passive income strategies. And. You know, when I think of passive income, I guess I think of something that like, like a digital product, like something that you put out there. It's so funny is when I think of passive income, I think this is why I got spicy about it. I love spicy Lindsay.
00:33:23
Speaker
When I think of what's passive income, it's a rental property. It is dividend paying stocks. It is something that I really don't have to do. And rental properties still have to do work. Dividend paying stocks, the most passive thing out there. Yeah.
00:33:40
Speaker
I have a client who's got a great dividend income fund. And you know what? If you want to think about it, you let me know. But I love investing in dividend paying stocks because the money just goes into my account without me ever doing anything. Nothing. You don't have to do a single thing. Nothing. I don't have to market anything. I don't have to do anything. I just had to have the money to invest. Because I think about a digital product, passive income, you still have to market it.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yes. Right. Unless you have like excellent SEO and you're like the top of every search and it's like, okay, cool. I'm going to do that. Or you have an affiliate program that is constantly hawking your stuff for you.
00:34:18
Speaker
There's, I think passive income is kind of like a buzzword that people are throwing around because it's so enticing. It's like, I want to make money without doing anything. I want to make money in my sleep. Like not to throw under the bus, but like the Jenna Kutcher whole like, I made $250,000 this weekend when I was on vacation.
00:34:40
Speaker
That's great. Love that for you. Love that for you. But you have a team of people working for you too. You have a team of people working for you and you're also like 12-15 years in business. You weren't just sleeping during those first few years. You were building. Yeah, exactly. You were working hard building the empire that you've created. I think that that's amazing. But I don't think passive income is
00:35:07
Speaker
it's not the easiest way to make more money. And it's also not the only answer to making more money in your business. I think that you need to think about what's sustainable to you, what's authentic to you and go from there. Because a lot of like, like we were just talking about your services that you've offered and kind of where that's that lifespan that you've gone through in your business. It's like,
00:35:33
Speaker
you started with it really transactional. So if you're listening to this and you feel like you're in a transactional space and you know you want to make more money, let's elevate you to that next spot where you're offering now ad strategy plans, you know, like what is that path look like? Because it doesn't have to be offering
00:35:51
Speaker
passive income product. Right. You don't have to add something else in just because it sounds like it's going to make more money for you, but in the long run, it's not authentic and it's probably going to be more of a stressor for you than anything because it's not, the money's just not going to come. Money is a weird thing. Money is a weird thing because I think that a lot of people get blinded by it and like the allure, like, Oh, I want to make
00:36:15
Speaker
more money, which I get. I'm always, you know, open to making more money, but I want to do it in a way that's authentic to me. And 2024 is the year of authenticity, baby. It is. Let's roll. Let's do it. Well, I thought this was really good. Thanks for your, you're very insightful on this topic. I always love talking to you about like building offers. Lindsay's always been like my offer mentor, if you will.
00:36:38
Speaker
I'm fascinated with offers, and especially as it pertains to this kind of subject, because I've always been very forward thinking. I don't actually do very well just thinking about today and being present, which is a personal problem that I have, but I'm really good at being forward thinking. Oh, that's good. It's a good quality to have. Yeah. It's present cons.
00:37:03
Speaker
Well, if you loved this episode, we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple rate and review five stars. We read every single one of them. They make our hearts very happy and it helps us know that we're reaching the right people and we're being authentic to who we are on this podcast. Yeah. So leave us a review and we will see y'all next time. Bye.
00:37:33
Speaker
you