This is the build your life coaching business podcast where you can learn how to make more money as a life coach. My name is BJ Butler, an ex corporate guy who helps life coaches do more of the coaching they are meant to do. Every episode helps you get more clients, make more money, and eliminate overwhelm. But if you don’t want to do it yourself kind, contact me and I’ll lead a team to do it for you. And here we go. Welcome back. This is the fourth episode of the Build your Life Coaching Business podcast. I’m going over what I’ve talked about in the first four episodes. These are the fundamentals of what every life coach needs to be doing in order to be starting or growing their business. In the first episode, I went over how to develop your offer. In the second episode, I went over how to create the content that educates your ideal clients. In the third episode, I went over how to put that content in front of your ideal clients. And honestly, that might sound like a lot. If you were binging on this podcast, you listened to the first three. It can feel like a lot. And that’s what this episode is helping with. It’s reducing some of the overwhelm and putting it into context so that, yes, all of these things are happening at the same time, but a lot of it is create it once, set it and forget it. Incorporating technology into your business. Things like email, autoresponders, autoresponders that will deliver your content automatically. Creating content for a whole month at a time. So, for example, if you’re creating social posts, one strategy is to create a bunch at once while you’re in the groove and you’re thinking about it, and then scheduling that out for the next week or the next month, or in terms of lead generation, a lot of times we’ll use Facebook ads. We’ll send those Facebook ads. Yes, it takes some time to get those created, get the text written, get that input into ads manager. But then once it’s set up, then you let it roll, let it eat. You do need to check on it, which can be part of your ongoing process. But the amount of work that it takes to get it set up is not indicative of how much work it takes ongoing. To be very clear about something, the order at which I’m introducing this information to you is the order that I recommend doing it in. You’re first going to start with your offer, and if this is applicable to you, whether you have your offer out there already or if you’re still considering exactly what your offer is, when I’m giving you information on how to make sure you have the right offer, go check the offer first, and then go on to content marketing and then go on to lead generation. It’s the same thing for you. If you do not have an offer out there, create your offer first, create the content marketing around that, and then do the lead generation around that. I’m going to put this all in the context of a funnel. A funnel is another super buzzword that can mean so many different things. There’s different software that people use to manage, quote unquote, a funnel, but you can picture essentially a tornado shape. Something that is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. At the top, we have people that are new to you entering into your funnel. And at the bottom, people are buying from you. And there is this journey that new people coming into your world are going to go through. It’s called the customer journey. As people are coming into your world at the top of the funnel, they are just learning about you. Your goal is to get their attention and give them just enough information for them to be curious, curious to learn more about you. Often the top of the funnel is all about lead generation. You have organic lead generation, you have paid lead generation. Again, the organic lead generation is that you’re creating content strategically. You’re using SEO, you’re getting in front of new audiences, whether that’s guest podcasting, getting on someone else’s webinar, networking, whatever it is that is organic lead generation that’s at the top of your funnel. Also at the top of the funnel is using paid lead generation. Like paid ads. I’m usually talking about Facebook and Instagram ads. Those are the easiest, they’re the most common. You can be extremely targeted with them so that your ad dollars are spent efficiently. From there, we’ve piqued someone new to your world. We’ve piqued their interest. They’re coming down the funnel, literally. Think, coming lower in this tornado shape. New people, or hopefully your ideal potential clients. They are receiving your content that you are creating. The content that you create. That is all up to you. Whatever is most natural to you. Whichever is most natural to the business that you’re creating. That is definitely a question that I get asked a lot is, well, how do I determine what content I should be creating? I don’t know anything about podcasting. I don’t know anything about video. I don’t really like to write. Which one should I go create? And it really comes down to what you are most drawn to. I could say it a little more negatively. Whichever one you dislike least, this is something that you’re going to be doing week in and week out, so it cannot be something that you hate. If you hate writing. Well, writing the long form content is probably not going to be your best bet. If the thought of being on video really gives you the heebie GB’s that you’re probably not going to go do that, but you need to do something. Perhaps a compromise is jotting down some notes and speaking them into some sort of audio content like I’m doing with this podcast. Yes, I am also releasing the video that goes along with this so that if someone is on YouTube then they’ll have the availability to see my content, but it’s also fully enjoyed with just the audio alone. I have a client who for her, it is a big deal to be on video and she has to go through a long process of getting ready and getting dressed, something that she doesn’t normally do on a daily basis. One strategy that she uses that she saves up any videos that need to be created or if she needs to be on Zoom, she’ll do that all in that one day per week so that she’s only getting ready, getting dressed, hair and makeup only in that one day per week. I do have a new lead magnet that is out now or very soon. That is all about how to use AI to create content. It’s about what tools are actually available right now and will make your day to day life easier. These are not things that are hacked together. These are tools that are proven and I use and that saved me time. So if you’re looking for a way to create content easier, that’s a really great place to start. Now that content marketing in terms of the funnel, it goes down and down in the page until purchase. At the bottom of the funnel. The content marketing more towards the upper part of the funnel is things like, it’s like when you have a blog post, a video podcast, and you put it out there on social media to people who are essentially farther away in your network. That brings them in closer, brings them farther down the funnel, then they’re on your email list. Eventually, when they’re on your email list, then you’re able to send them newsletters, promotions, tell them what’s going on in your world. Education that also brings them down in the funnel, moves them along in their customer journey, gets them closer to purchasing. All of it is education. Things that they need to know in order to move them along in their journey, and also providing them the information that they need in order to become people who would buy from you. The point of me even talking about a funnel has nothing to do with saying how long someone should be in this funnel for working their way from the top of this tornado shape to the bottom of the tornado shape where they’re making a purchase. The point is really just create a framework that shows all of the different moving parts in your business. We’re not working on every single one of them at the same time. We’re building one at a time. In the order that these podcast episodes come out in 1234, this being the fourth, I am mentioning a funnel just to say that all these things are happening. Another use of the funnel is mentioning that, yes, it’s wider at the top than it is at the bottom. That means there’s more people towards the top and less people towards the bottom. Where do they go? Some people will naturally leave your email list, or they’ll unfollow you on social media because it’s a poor fit. It just means that they are not looking for what you have to offer right now. And you can also be more specific. They’re not looking for what you’re offering. The way you’re saying it right now, all of this is an evolution. We’re learning about what offers people are interested in and what offers people are not interested in. That’s why we’re always putting up new content. We’re always finding new ways of reaching your ideal client using different lead generation techniques. We’re always trying new things. The only way to fail in online business is to quit. Eventually you will find something that works. You incorporate that into your business. You do more of that, you find new ways that work. You incorporate those, and you find the right combination of tactics that all add up to your bottom line. And just for your awareness, the funnel that I’m talking about is really general for your whole business. You’ll also hear people talk about funnels in terms of an offer. There will be some sort of lead generation technique, such as a paid ad or social post or podcast or video or whatever it is out there that somebody runs into that brings them to a landing page. The landing page has a form on it. Users are able to fill out the form in order to buy something, sign up for something for free, get emailed that thing that is for free, or get redirected to that thing that is for free, or that they just paid for. It could sign someone up for a series of emails to come out over a specific period of time. That’s also called a funnel. The funnel that I’m talking about today is general for your business, and it is showing all the things that are happening in your business that you created one at a time and tweaked one at a time to grow your business. Considering this episode is really just a recap, I didn’t really introduce any new concepts. I did talk about a funnel, which I haven’t talked about before. But really the funnel is more like a map of all the activities that I had already mentioned. So if you’re looking to put into practice what I’m talking about, what you would do is go back to episodes one, two, and three. Listen to them. Try to incorporate that information into your offer, into your content marketing, and into your lead generation. That’s really it for today. Next week, I have a very special topic that you are guaranteed to have heard something about in the news. Tune in. I’ll see you next week when you’re ready to become that influential thought leader that you know you can become. Watch my free training. It is an extremely straightforward approach to building a coaching business that provides you the time and money to create the lifestyle that you’ve been dreaming of. You can find it at forward slash free training. What are the ways to work with me? Well, there’s two ways. One, I do it for you. If you’re interested in getting a quote for a new landing page, a whole website, Facebook ad campaign, project management for your next launch, and really anything else related to online business, email me [email protected] the other way is coaching. We’ll talk about your long term goals. We’ll break that down into what you need to be working on right now. In the end, with coaching, you’ll be doing the work, but you’ll get it done so much faster. You’ll have accountability along the way. And having a coach just feel feels like you are in control.