More Than A Few Words

If you're a coach you can earn a living one conversation at a time. But if you really want to maximize your revenue opportunities. You need to consider group coaching Where do you start?  Our guest Chris Williams says it boils down to four simple steps Start organically.  Don't worry about advertising till you really understand your audience Start measuring predictability. If you don't have a way to predictably generate on-profile leads you don't have a business. you're just getting lucky! Invite people to a conversation Invite them to take the next step.  About Chris Williams - in his own words.  I spend most of my time raising our five kids, exploring world communities, and trying my hand at adventures like shark diving, ice climbing, running ultra marathons, and riding electric skateboards. In my spare time, I work with entrepreneurial and business experts, speakers, coaches, and leaders helping them market, monetize, and lead their own high-ticket mastermind (or group coaching) programs.

All too often people think the word freelancer is synonymous for broke. But according to my guest, Kate Bagoy, that's not true. You can make money and live the life you want as a freelancer. Right now is a great time for freelancers as we've moved to a more remote work culture.  More are outsourcing and opportunities for freelancers growing faster than ever. Making this shift from freelancer  to building a business is a shift in mindset. Freelancers who struggle tend to do so because they're constantly hunting for jobs based on their skill set.  In contrast, business owners take the time to create a business plan, a marketing plan, a strategy and a system for finding clients.   About Kate Bagoy Kate is a senior UX designer and founder of Six Figure Freelancers, where she helps experienced digital pros build businesses they can run from the beach. A self-professed nerd with an MBA, she’s worked with more than 50 startups and coached 1000’s of consultants through starting an online business. An adventurer at he

When you come home from a networking event with a stack of business cards, you either have something incredibly valuable, or a pile of garbage. What makes the difference? It's not the cards themselves, but what you do with them. Do you take the time to sort them and pull out those handful of people who you really need to follow up with? Do you track those conversations over time, so that periodically when things get a little slow in your business, you go to your contact list and start making a few phone calls to reach out or reconnect?  Do you take the time to purge people from your mailing list.  After years of networking, I'll go through my list and find names of people that I don't really remember meeting and whom I've not had a single interaction with since the first time I met them. If you have contacts like that is is ok to let them go. If you reconnect, you can always add them back. Treat your database like a valuable resource. Take time to cultivate and curate it and you will be able to rely on it to

The next time you go to a networking event, guest Rochelle Groh suggests you should look for the four types of networking animals.  The shark, who is ready to take a bite out of every conversation The penguin who typically gravitates to the same people at every event The bee who knows everyone in the room  The lone wolf who prefers longer, more one on one conversations.   About Rochelle Groh Rochelle is the Co-Founder of Cutclass and the host of the Allergic to Small Talk podcast. Rochelle focuses on teaching first time small business owners the ABCs of business networking. This often leads to sales for their business, collaborations with other business owners, and connections that last a lifetime

These days the world feels more than just a little crazy.  As you are processing all the crazy in the outside world you have a business to run.  So how do you balance the conflicting emotions and keep your  business moving forward?  Guest, Debra Sunderland stresses that a business is only going to go as far as the leader goes.  That's not to put pressure on you, but to remind you that the first step is preparing and taking care of yourself every day. Typically leaders are focused on achieving results and taking care of their teams, so she suggests that as a leader, the first thing you need to do is give yourself some grace and take time to breathe, to work out, to go out in nature and to  fortify yourself with good foods and rest. Start your morning with a walk, a meditation or just a longer coffee without externals triggering you.  For example, avoid starting your morning by checking the news.    Debra’s genius is creating a clear vision for CEO’s and their teams – making that vision a reality. With decades

Great strategic relationships are what make your word of mouth marketing work.  These partners  have complementary businesses to yours.  Serving similar customers they are likely to bump into people who will need your services and you are likely to find opportunities for them.  So stop walking into networking events looking for your next sale.   Instead, seek out people who can be a gateway not to one customer, but to 100 customers.  

If you're looking for different results tomorrow than you had yesterday you need to make changes.  Sometimes it is a small change, but often it is a significant transformation in your business or in your life. But how do you make those transformative changes?   And more importantly, as you work with clients, what is the transformation you will make for them?  Lorraine explored the topic of Transformation  with Joe Matz a serial entrepreneur who has owned businesses in Italy, Brazil and the US. Today he works with executives, solopreneurs and micro business owners who want to develop and build a profitable, unique signature program as well as a monetizing roadmap.

So you've been creating content for awhile. You've got blog posts, images and videos.  You share it on social media and place it on your website, but that isn't enough, because you aren't creating content for fun.  The goal is to generate leads and maybe sales. In this episode, Dani Hao and I discuss how to create marketing content that actually converts. She suggests creating content specifically targeted at each stage in the buyer journey. That content should drive visitors to a specific landing page, with a call to action matched to that stage of the journey.    About Dani She doesn't believe in short-term wins - She believes in building brands, community, and real connections. To truly win customers and drive pipeline and revenue, you must first understand them as people. To truly understand people, you must learn to listen. She started her career in fashion but eventually went solo as a marketing agency owner, specializing in helping SMEs and startups build trust and authenticity. She loves telling the

Thinking about hosting a conference and wondering about which social media platforms will serve you best. While you should probably have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, each of those platforms is going to play a role at different stages. For example, in the lead up to the conference, you're probably going to get your best results promoting the event on LinkedIn. This is where businesses come to talk about business. During the conference. However, you may want to switch your energy to Instagram and Twitter for those "in the moment" photos and conversations. This is what Twitter was made for, interactive conversations with conference attendees.  And with clever use of a hashtag you will be able to collect comments and content from attendees as well. And after the event, that's  where Facebook is probably best. It's a wonderful place to post all of those photos and conference summaries.

Do you have a personal brand? Do you even know what that is and why you need one?  My guest Ian Moyse explains that while the term "personal brand" sounds illustrious, something for celebrities and influencers, everyone has a personal brand.  Your personal brand is the perception others have of you. What they think of you and what they say of you when you're not in the room.  These days with social media, it is easier than ever for people to learn about you, good and bad from your digital profile.  About Ian Moyse Ian Moyse, Chief Revenue Officer at OneUp Sales, has led numerous revenue teams, 7 in smaller firms taking 4 through to exit. He was awarded the accolade of UK Sales Director of the year by BESMA (British Excellence in Sales Management Awards) and was listed in the top 50 Sales Keynote speakers by Top Sales World in 2019 & 2020 . Ian has been a regular judge on the Women in Sales Awards (WISA), Top Sales Awards, BESMA and the UK Cloud Awards.

Your business does not happen by accident. You have to have processes and procedures in place to make sure that everything gets done when it's supposed to.  Does that sound a little overwhelming? It doesn't have to be according to my guest Brittni Schroeder.  She explains you are only one person, and systems help you streamline your activities and  create processes you can share with others. The systems help you scale and handle more clients and bigger projects to grow your business.    About Brittni Brittni Schroeder Is a Certified Life and Business Coach. She helps female entrepreneurs launch and level up their businesses. Brittni worked as Photographer for over 10 years. She also owned and operated Mozi Magazine up until 2017. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America and several publications. She has worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years and recently founded her own non-profit called The Compassion Club. She currently lives in Houston, TX.

In the age of the great resignation, business owners of all size companies are struggling with employee turnover. The pandemic had accelerated the resignations, but if you have employees, sooner or later you will need to address employee turnover. It is a natural part of owning a business. People will come and go for a variety of reasons. In some cases, there are things you can’t control (a spouse is transferred out of state or the employee is recruited by a firm that will pay 1-1/2 times what they make with your firm). The trick in reducing employee turnover is to focus on things you can control. Improve company culture One of the best ways to reduced employee turnover is to create an environment where people want to work.   Be selective about who you hire Take your time, even if it feels like forever, to find people who have the right skill and the right attitude. And if you make a bad hire, address toxic individuals head on.    Take responsibility for your team’s satisfaction Talk about the long term, even

It would be great if the rules of SEO would remain constant.  Unfortunately, SEO like most of your digital marketing is constantly evolving, as the technology evolves.  In this episode, Ryan Morgan, founder of the digital consultancy swell, Digital and an SEO training program called The SEO Cohort talks about the latest SEO trends.  These days, search doesn't begin with keywords.  It starts with a question. Ryan believes the companies that will come out on top are the ones with websites that do the best job of answering those questions.  About Ryan Ryan Morgan is a 15+ year digital marketing expert with a focus on SEO. He has led organizational and agency digital teams and has a history of driving growth for organizations using SEO.

If you're like me, you've started lots of things that you hoped would become habits. You run at them full bore for a little while and then you lose steam.  That start and stop is natural, but it doesn't have to be.  In this episode, Wendy Harris shares tips to make your new habits a permanent part of your routine. The first step is to start with one thing.  Making too many changes at once is overwhelming and not sustainable, so start with one new behavior and do it every day.  .   Podcast Host & Author  Expert telemarketer, Queen of Conversation, and natural chatterbox, Wendy Harris loves helping people to make their conversations count.   Wendy has worked in the sales and communication industry for over 30 years, and now uses this knowledge to train others in telemarketing, training them to make their conversations count.    She is the Best-Selling Author of the Training Handbook “Making Conversations Count – How to sell over the phone” host of the show “Making Conversations Count”. 

When it comes to content creation, more is not always better. I've been blogging since 2008. And I have a library filled with thousands of blog posts which I  wrote as resources for for clients and prospects and because Google loves fresh content. Unfortunately, only a fraction of those posts drive much traffic. It is exhausting to churn out three to five posts a week, only to have them sink into oblivion, buried under a sea of new posts. So, a few years ago, I switched my approach to blogging. Sure, I still write some new content every month. But the majority of my content creation time is spent reviewing and updating old posts. In addition to reducing my overall workload, I have rich content, which is better for building SEO authority. I have fresh content for social media, and an improved visitor experience because there are more in depth answers to visitor questions.

If you could have a conversation with anyone, who would you choose?” Almost everyone has a first choice and maybe a second, but who has hundreds of choices? As the host of More than a Few Words , Lorraine Ball has enjoyed the opportunity to talk with marketing and small business professionals from around the world for more than 13 years. You might think we would run out of things to talk about, but living in a digital world there is always something new. So today, in celebration of those 700 conversations, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our favorites. #172 The Brand Position - Where do you fit?   #561 The Elevator Pitch #494 The Five Most Common Web Design Mistakes #569 Welcome Readers in Three Easy Steps #694 Change Your Sales Process in Four Words

No matter what your job is, sales expert, business owner or manager working your way up the corporate ladder, you're going to have to sell your ideas.  The prospect can be a little scary but it doesn't have to be according to our guest Patrick Donadio. He shares some simple tips like opening with a hook instead of an introduction.  You can open with a question or a compelling statistic that catches their attention. Then you have earned the right to tell them who you are.   Engage the audience on an physical, mental and emotional level.  Then close with a specific call to action.    About Patrick  For the past three decades, Patrick Donadio has spoken nationally and internationally and trained thousands of leaders and their teams, in a variety of industries, from Fortune 100 companies to associations. In his desire to help C-Suite executives and all leaders “grow their people”, Patrick has taken his decades of experience and crafted a results-based process detailed in his book, “Communicating with IMPACT”. His

Have you let your brand become marketing wallpaper. You've said the same things over and over and over again to build consistency which is great but you've said it so much people no longer hear it.  If that's happened to you and your message has become so bland that it's forgettable. You need to bring your brand to the forefront again with subtle changes.   Maybe it is pulling forward a new color in your visuals, or adjusting your standard wording to focus on one specific element of your message.  The small change in the familiar will catch your audience off guard and they are likely to start  paying attention to you again.

If you have something to say, you may be frustrated as you try to get that message out to the right people. Our guest, Jonathan Milligan shares some tips on how you can rise above the noise so prospective customers hear what you have to say.  Often what prevents people from hearing your message, or taking time to figure out if they want to buy from you is the fact that they may not believe they can use your product or service.  If you want to get heard, and sell more, you need to start by addressing this  belief and out teaching the competition instead of trying to out sell them.    About Jonathan  Jonathan Milligan is an author of Your Message Matters: How to Rise Above the Noise and Get Paid for What You Know. He is also a blogger, speaker, and online business coach. He has spent the last decade guiding and directing creative professionals on how to pursue meaningful work. Since 2009, Jonathan has run his own portable lifestyle business online. Today he teaches others how to build a business with their pass

According to our guest, Ryan Sullivan, modern day marketers understand that the buying journey is not linear. so the content on your website should speak to every aspect of the buying journey.  This creates a strong network effect on your website as you align your content with the search behavior of your target audiences. It is important to remember what people say, and what they actually do are not the same. That’s why it is important to have data tools which monitor actual search behavior instead of relying just on anecdotal information to drive your content topics.