I’ve really enjoyed hosting my radio show, The Mom Biz Coach Show, on Blog Talk Radio for the last year or so. I have been approached by many mom entrepreneurs who want me to mentor or coach them on how to start their own shows, so I thought I’d put together a short podcast on one of the hottest topics: how to find and manage guests for your show.
Just click on the link below to hear my advice on the following topics:
How to find guests for your show
How to prep your guests for their appearance on your show
How to engage your guests in conversation during the interview
What to do if you have technical difficulties, or if a guest doesn’t show up
Got a Blog Talk Radio Show of your own? Share below your suggestions for newbies or how you handled a particularly challenging interview.
If you are ready to get your show started and would like someone to walk you through it every step of the way, I can help. Just click here to learn about my Podcasting Mentoring Services.
If you’re like many of the work-at-home-moms and mompreneurs I know and coach, you probably got into business for yourself despite your lack of an MBA in marketing. So figuring out how to get people to buy what you sell can be a bit like explaining what galaxies are and where they exist in time and space to an inquisitive seven-year-old.
I don’t have an MBA, either, but I’ve learned a lot from the school of “learning by doing.” Here is the methodology I teach my mom entrepreneurs to use to get more clients and make more money, without spending much of their money or time.
Make Sure Your Niche Is Narrow Enough
Most of the mom entrepreneurs who hire me as their coach are extremely resistant to choosing a narrow niche market. They want to market themselves to “moms” or to “parents” or to “middle-aged women” or “empty-nesters.” It’s always better to be the big fish in a smaller pond (“I coach mompreneurs who have been in business less than five years and are raising small children”) than a tiny fish in a big pond (“I’m a business coach for entrepreneurs.”). Simply put, you can make a much bigger splash in a little pond and get visibility you would be hard-pressed to earn in the big pond.
Identify Your Ideal Client
Once you have a narrow niche, you can focus on the individuals in it. Think of your ideal clients. How old are they? Where do they live? What do they read? What do they spend money on? Where do they shop? Do they buy for themselves or for family members? Do they hold the purse strings? Do they make enough money to afford your product/services? Are they the type people who already value what you have to offer?
Identify Their Top Challenges and Needs
Now, with as specific a person in mind as you can muster, think about their life. What’s good about it? What’s not? What do they keep tolerating? What drives them nuts? What would make their life better, easier, more fun? If you can identify their biggest problems, then you can tailor your products and services to solve them. People want to feel better, be happier, live longer, be healthier, etc. What can you and your business do to help them with this?
Create Products and Services That Solve Their Problems
Knowing this, you’ll be on your way to creating valuable content in the form of products and services your clients will willingly pay for. You’ve tailored your business solutions to meet their top needs and challenges. This isn’t just marketing—you’re listening to your market, doing market research within your specific niche, and you’re creating solutions to their problems. Your clients will pay for people and things that make their problems go away. With this understanding of your client’s needs, you’re well on the path to creating a great marketing funnel.
Go Where They Are and Share Your Powerful Message
You may be wondering why the title of this post is “How to Reach Your Target Market” when I haven’t talked at all about traditional methods and venues for finding clients. That’s not an oversight; I promise. Now that you’ve customized your offerings and made them solutions to your ideal customer’s problems, you’re ready to reach out and start attracting them to you. I’ve said many times before, “I’d rather attract my clients to me than have to go hunting for them.” Show up/present yourself, your business and your marketing message to them where they are (in the print publications they read, in the blogs to which they subscribe, in the organizations to which they belong). Do so in a way that shows you know who they are, what they need, and that you understand them. Saying: “I help families and children who struggle with chronic problems like headaches, ear infections and dizziness” is much more powerful than “I’m a chiropractor.”
Learning how to reach your target market isn’t rocket science, but there is definitely a strategy involved. Entrepreneurs who truly understand their ideal clients and who learn how to create solutions to their customers’ needs will have little trouble growing their businesses!
Want to get some more suggestions about how to reach your target market? My business coach and mentor, Rhonda Hess, has agreed to join me for a 75-minute teleseminar to share with you some of the same proven strategies she shared with me to rapidly grow my coaching business. If you are an entrepreneur in a services business, this is the information you’ve been looking for to understand how to finally get your clients to come to you! Please join us tomorrow night!
I’ve been having some great conversations with mompreneurs and work at home moms on the topic of “balance” lately, and specifically how it relates to the goal of work/life balance.
Seems like we’ve spent the last decade or so trying to achieve this balance thing, but it may be a concept whose time has past. Many think it’s unachievable, or at the very least, that it can be achieved but not sustained. Is balance what we really want? Do we want to spend equal time with work and equal time with family?
I know that certain words are “trigger words” or hot buttons for some people, but I think the idea of balance is basically a good one. I think that the more we’ve been working towards it, though, the more we are learning that there are other ways to define how we want our lives as moms and business owners to look.
When I think of words that capture how I want my life as a mom entrepreneur coach to look, these are some of the words that come to mind:
INTEGRATION
FLEXIBILITY
FULFILLMENT
RHYTHMS
SEASONS
I make my work a fully-integrated part of my life. That doesn’t mean I don’t set boundaries around it, just that I include it as part of who I am and what I love to do. How much and when I work varies from time to time, based on priorities, energy levels, moods, seasons… But my commitment to my work and my family stays the same.
What about you? Is there a phrase or concept you’re striving for that is more descriptive than “work/life balance”? How do you see your roles as mom and business owner? Are they one in the same or separate somehow? Please leave a comment below.
While my business coaching is aimed at supporting mom entrepreneurs, I came across this very inspiring article in Time Magazine recently that illustrates a trend I’m happy to see in the corporate world.
Women are different than men, and it turns out we do business differently than men. Well, I’m certain that the subset of women known as mompreneurs and WAHMs (work-at-home-moms) have an even more pronounced difference in their approach to business. (I know, I know, you’re laughing with me right now thinking about the last time you were on a business call while hoisting a naked toddler on your hip with one arm and cleaning up the accident she had on the kitchen floor with the other…. Yep, that’s a different way of doing business, alright!)
Read the article below and enjoy. It’s always interesting to me when large companies start emulating some of the results-oriented business strategies of entrepreneurs.
Reposted article from time Time Magazine, May 2009
Work-life balance. In most corporate circles, it’s the sort of phrase that gives hard-charging managers the hives, bringing to mind yoga-infused, candlelit meditation sessions and — more frustratingly — rows of empty office cubicles.
So, what if we renamed work-life balance? Let’s call it something more masculine and appealing, something like … um … Make More Money. That might lift heads off desks. A few people might show up at a meeting to discuss that new phenomenon driving the bottom line: Women, and the way we want to work, are extremely good for business.
Let’s start with the female management style. It turns out it’s not soft; it’s lucrative. The workplace-research group Catalyst studied 353 Fortune 500 companies and found that those with the most women in senior management had a higher return on equities — by more than a third.
Are the women themselves making the difference? Or are these smart firms that make smart moves, like promoting women? There is growing evidence that in today’s marketplace the female management style is not only distinctly different but also essential. Studies from Cambridge University and the University of Pittsburgh suggest that women manage more cautiously than men do. They focus on the long term. Men thrive on risk, especially when surrounded by other men. Wouldn’t the economic crisis have unfolded a bit differently if Lehman Brothers had had a few more women on board?
Women are also less competitive, in a good way. They’re consensus builders, conciliators and collaborators, and they employ what is called a transformational leadership style — heavily engaged, motivational, extremely well suited for the emerging, less hierarchical workplace. Indeed, when the Chartered Management Institute in the U.K. looked ahead to 2018, it saw a work world that will be more fluid and more virtual, where the demand for female management skills will be stronger than ever. Women, CMI predicts, will move rapidly up the chain of command, and their emotional-intelligence skills may become ever more essential.
That trend will accelerate with the looming talent shortage. The Employment Policy Foundation estimated that within the next decade there would be a 6 million – person gap between the number of college graduates and the number of college-educated workers needed to cover job growth. And who receives the majority of college and advanced degrees? Women. They also control 83% of all consumer purchases, including consumer electronics, health care and cars. Forward-looking companies understand they need women to figure out how to market to women.
All that — the female management style, education levels, purchasing clout — is already being used, by pioneering women and insightful companies, to create a female-friendly working environment, in which the focus is on results, not on time spent in the office chair. On efficiency, not schmoozing. On getting the job done, however that happens best — in a three-day week, at night after the kids go to bed, from Starbucks.
And here’s the real kicker. When a company gives employees freedom, it doesn’t just feel good or get shiny, happy workers — productivity goes up. Ask firms like Capitol One, which runs a company without walls or mandatory office time. Or Best Buy, which implemented a system called ROWE — results-only work environment — and found that productivity, in some cases, shot up 40%. Flexibility is no longer a favor to be handed out like candy at a children’s birthday party; it’s a compelling business strategy.
So we need to get rid of the nutty-crunchy moral component of the work-life balance and make a business case for it. It’s easy to do. In fact, a decade from now, companies will understand that hiring lots of women, and letting them work the way they want, will help them Make More Money.
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What about you? In what ways are you doing business “differently” from the way you did it in Corporate America? Or how is your strategy getting things done in unconventional ways? What are the benefits of being a WAHM when it comes to creating success in your business? Please share your story by leaving a coment, and help inspire all of us mompreneurs who sometimes get stuck on the setbacks that juggling work and motherhood can bring.
Get the acknowledgement, support and understanding you need from the right people.
Are you always going to your partner/husband, your sister, your neighbor, or a client trying to share something that’s important to you, only to wind up feeling let down when they don’t say what you wanted them to say? It could be that you’re choosing the wrong person to share with at that moment.
In this Five Minute Coaching MOMent for mom entrepeneurs, I share some insight on how you can avoid feeling let down when you’re up to big things in your business and life!
Who’s on your support team or “board of advisors”? Do you expect different kinds of support from the different people in your life? Please share your comments here. And if you like my “Five Minute Coaching MOMents for Mom Entrepreneurs” and want to see some more, you can subscribe to the mombizcoach channel on YouTube so you will be notified each time I add new ones.
Guest post by Susan Gunelius from Entrepreneur.com
In my book, Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps, I teach small and mid-size business owners who can’t afford to hire professional copywriters how to write effective copy that will bring the results from their marketing efforts that they want and need. However, just as there are steps you must take to write great copy, there are also mistakes you can make that can destroy your marketing messages and reduce your ROI to a fraction of what it could have been. Whatever you do, don’t believe the five myths described below.
1. Consumers care about me and my business
No, they don’t. They care about what’s in it for them if they pull out their wallets and hand over their hard-earned money to buy your product or service. They don’t care that you’ve been a member of the local Chamber of Commerce for 20 years, and they don’t care how cute your kids are (so leave them out of your commercials, please). Consumers care about having their needs and wants fulfilled. The goal of copywriting is to convince consumers that the product or service you’re selling will meet their needs and desires, even if you have to create perceived needs and desires for them. In other words, your copy must focus on the benefits consumers will receive if they buy your product or service. It’s great that your business has operated from the same location for 10 years, but for the most part, consumers only truly care about what your business can do for them and how your business can make their lives easier or better. Those are the messages your copy should focus on in order to drive results.
2. I can use the same copy everywhere
No, you shouldn’t. Your copy should change depending on the medium where you’re using it. For example, if you’re writing copy for an outdoor billboard that consumers are likely to have only seconds to view while driving 65 miles per hour on a busy highway during rush hour, your message must be short and to the point with no room for confusion. However, if you’re writing copy for a direct-mail piece that will be sent to customers who have requested to receive information about your business, your copy should be far more detailed with messages that explain, answer questions, and create a sense of urgency to boost response rates.
3. I can use the same copy for everyone
No, that’s not a good idea. Different audiences will respond to different messages depending on their demographics, behaviors, experiences and so on. For example, if you’re writing copy for a direct-mail piece that will be sent to prior customers, your messages should be very different from those that would appear in a mailing to prospects. One audience is already very familiar with your products and services, while the other has no prior experience to draw from. Clearly, the messages to both audiences must be different to achieve the maximum response rates possible.
4. I need to sound smart in my copy Not always. The language and tone of your copy should speak directly to the people who are likely to see it. For example, if you’re writing copy for teenagers, your copy should be quite different from copy targeted at senior citizens. Consider McDonald’s, which goes so far as to change references to its brand name depending on the audience. Turn on MTV and you’re sure to see a McDonald’s commercial referencing the fast food chain as “Mickey D’s”. It’s also important to omit jargon unless your copy is intended for an audience that will understand and expect it. For example, a business-to-business ad might be an appropriate place for jargon. Again, it always depends on the target audience that you ultimately want to respond to your marketing message.
5. It’s easy to write copy
Never. Writing marketing copy is like no other form of writing. It defies many of the rules you may have learned in English class, and it relies more on subtle persuasion, psychology, creativity and an understanding of your specific business and consumers than any other type of writing. Not all writers are good copywriters, and not all copywriters are good writers. If you decide to write your own copy, study the craft prior to putting pen to paper. And if you decide to hire a copywriter to help you, remember that not all copywriters are the same. Only invest in a copywriter who has experience and takes the time to understand your business and your customers.
Susan Gunelius is president and CEO of KeySplash Creative Inc., a full service marketing communications provider and branding consultancy, and owner of WomenOnBusiness.com, one of the leading blog communities for business women. Susan is a marketing, branding, social media and copywriting expert with nearly 20 years of experience in the field. Her clients include small and large businesses around the globe. She is the author of severalmarketing, branding and social media books, includingKick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps published by Entrepreneur Press.
Every mom entrepreneur I know experiences a breakdown of some sort from time to time. Maybe you lost your cool and spanked your kid. Or you didn’t get hired by that prospect you thought just loved your work. Or perhaps your husband forgot your birthday or said something that really hurt.
When things don’t go the way you want them to, that’s a breakdown. How do you handle them? What do you do to resolve them? Do you have a method to help you get unstuck, to get back on track, or do you avoid the person or the situation that caused the breakdown like the plague?
I have a simple method that helps me get unstuck and back in control after a breakdown. I share it in the five-minute video below.
Is this something you can use? Do you have another method? Please share your comments below.
If you’re looking for a silver bullet, you won’t find that sorta thing on my blog. Ever.
That said, I do believe it’s both possible and necessary for mompreneurs to find ways to make more money while working less.
I’ve been answering a lot of questions in my coaching groups lately about the idea of creating a sustainable business model for mom entrepreneurs and work at home moms. The bottom line is this: if you’re running a business that is running you ragged, stressing you out, taking up all of your time and leaving very little of you for your family to enjoy, then you (and your business) won’t last for long.
One of the best ways to make your business sustainable is to learn how to automate some of the actions and processes you do over and over. We all have to develop strategies to find new clients and keep our sales pipelines full. This takes a lot of time, effort and energy for all of us mom entrepreneurs. Think about it–if you could get these tasks that you have to do repeatedly off your to-do list, you could spend your time doing something else, like go on a bike ride with the kids, or read a magazine while the kids run through the sprinkler, or you could spend some time creating a vision for the future of your business rather than just scrambling through all the work that has to get done.
Wanna learn some tricks that will help you get your business working while you’re working on your tan this summer?
Join me on Tuesday, June 23rd, at 12 pm ET when my special guest, Rhonda Hess, teaches us “How to Automate Your Business to Attract Thousands of Ideal Clients.” Rhonda is a Coaching Business Success Strategist and founder of Prosperous Coach. Best of all, she’s MY business coach! I’m delighted to share my fabulous coach and mentor with all of my listeners.
This free teleseminar is part of my WoMEN: What Mom Entrepreneurs Need Series. You can register to receive the freebies, Special Reports and other offers my guests make available to our listeners by going to www.whatmomentrepreneursneed.com and filling in the email form at the top of the page. You’ll also be notified when I add more speakers and more topics (which I occasionally do).
I know that I’m looking for ways to get out of the office and spend the lazy, unstructured time with my family that summer always brings. Having some systems that allow me to attract exactly the clients I want will give me the freedom to do just that!
You can listen live (or on demand once the call is over) via phone or over the internet. Just go to BlogTalkRadio to get details.
Do you have questions for me or Rhonda? Leave them here and we’ll do our best to address them on the call, or you can call in live to the show (go to BlogTalkRadio to get the dial-in instructions).
Is it just me, or is the crazy busy-ness of summer all ready full upon us?
There is so much going on for mom entrepreneurs right now. What an exciting time for us to be in business, and for us to be learning and growing!
I have not one, but TWO very special teleclasses scheduled for next week to tell you about. One is about my new, favorite, hot topic: publicity for mompreneurs. The other is about one of the most important, foundational requirements for a successful life: taking exquisite care of yourself.
On Monday night, June 8th, at 8pm ET, I will host a special episode of my BlogTalkRadio Show with special guest Helen Coronato of weekendpublicist.com. Helen is a publicity guru who has created a fabulous virtual workshop in which entrepreneurs can create their very own press kits in one weekend. If you’ve been wondering about how to get the media attention you deserve without spending several thousand dollars, Helen’s tools, templates, live feedback and coaching will help you do just that. Our show will tell you all about her upcoming virtual workshop (on June 13-14) so you’ll know exactly what to expect. And there’s a special deal for Mom Biz Coach show listeners–you can’t afford to miss this, moms!
*** If you’d like to be eligible for the special discount Helen is offering to our show guests, be sure to swing by www.whatmomentrepreneursneed.com and fill in the email form. ***
And then on Tuesday, June 9th, we welcome LaSara Firefox as our guest speaker in the WoMEN: What Mom Entrepreneurs Need Teleseminar Series. In the sixth installment of this series, LaSara will share with us some “Daily Rituals for Self-Care,” something most of us mom entrepreneurs don’t get enough of. LaSara, mother of two, is a successful author (Sexy Witch a non-fiction/self help book), a life coach and NLP practicioner, and founder the Ecstatic Presence Project and Global Family Awakening: an educational, peace and humanitarian family adventure club. With all she has going on in her own life, LaSara is focused on creating support systems that support your whole self!
I feel so fortunate to be able to surround myself with such wise, supportive and generous women as Helen and LaSara. Please mark your calendars and visit the Mom Biz Coach Show on BlogTalkRadio for call-in and listening options for both shows. You can even set up an email reminder so you don’t forget!
I look forward to hearing you on the call!
If you have questions or comments for either of my guests this week, you can leave them here and I’ll do my best to address each of them.
We all have a little voice inside our head that chatters on and on in the background giving us reasons why we can’t do something: Why we can’t be successful, why we can’t earn a lot of money, why we can’t have it all… The key is to learn to hear this little voice and notice how it creates some limiting beliefs that keep us from getting what we want.
In this installment of the Mom Biz Coach Coaching MOMent, I share some of the top limiting beliefs of the mompreneurs I coach. Have you noticed these thoughts in your head? What other limiting beliefs have you identified for yourself?
I don’t have an MBA, either, but I’ve learned a lot from the school of “learning by doing.” Here is the methodology I teach my mom entrepreneurs to use to get more clients and make more money, without spending much of their money or time.
Susan Gunelius is president and CEO of KeySplash Creative Inc., a full service marketing communications provider and branding consultancy, and owner of WomenOnBusiness.com, one of the leading blog communities for business women. Susan is a marketing, branding, social media and copywriting expert with nearly 20 years of experience in the field. Her clients include small and large businesses around the globe. She is the author of several marketing, branding and social media books, including Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps published by Entrepreneur Press.
One of the best ways to make your business sustainable is to learn how to automate some of the actions and processes you do over and over. We all have to develop strategies to find new clients and keep our sales pipelines full. This takes a lot of time, effort and energy for all of us mom entrepreneurs. Think about it–if you could get these tasks that you have to do repeatedly off your to-do list, you could spend your time doing something else, like go on a bike ride with the kids, or read a magazine while the kids run through the sprinkler, or you could spend some time creating a vision for the future of your business rather than just scrambling through all the work that has to get done.
and for us to be learning and growing!
