I don’t know about you… but for me, this time of the year has always been super, extra busy. Usually, by this time of year, I’m wrapping up projects and getting ready for the new year (both for myself and for my clients.) This time of year, work, business, and life are just busy.
Is it time to build a team?
This year in my business, I’ve really focused on growth. More importantly, I’ve focused on growth for me as a business owner. So often we get bogged down in the day-to-day of the business. We forget that we should actually be spending our time on the important things and allowing our team to do the day-to-day tasks.
For me, that means leaning into the fact that I don’t have control of everything. That has been a hard concept for me to really get my head around. In fact, I hit a big wall where I was just completely burned out. To allow my business to grow, I had to step back and look at what it is I should be focusing on, instead of keeping my hands in everything and choking the life out of my business. I’m choosing to step back and allow my business to flourish and scale and allow my team to step up and do what they do best. Then, I can focus my time and energy on what I do best.
This may sound familiar to some of you, and if you’ve hit this point in your business I encourage you to take some time during this last month of the year and really assess what it is that you need to keep your hands in and what it is you can hand over to your team. And if you don’t have a team yet, it might be the right time to look at who you want or need to add to your business right now in order to continue to grow and scale.
The face of your business
Have you heard of the Era of the Creator and wondered why you should care about it? That little rabbit hole we just went down was my way of focusing on what it is in my business that I need to be a part of. As the face of my business, there are some things that I just can’t outsource. Most importantly it’s my content, which means this podcast, any videos that we create, the images, and copy – all of those things are my voice and reflect me. The reality is as business owners we get to choose who becomes the face of our business, and if that is us, we get to step up and actually do that job.
For coaches, 99.9% of the time, it is just you doing your coaching model. That means the people who want to work with you need to see you out there being visible.
In the last couple of months, I’ve heard the term the Era of the Creator a lot, so much so that I added it to my 2022 predictions blog post. Since then, I’ve had some questions about what the Era of the Creator is and how it’s really going to affect their marketing in the coming year and beyond.
First, what is the Era of the Creator: Basically it’s the advent of social media in general. YouTube really started this process a long time ago. So many people consume content on YouTube now that some of the younger generations never even watch TV. and people have made millions of dollars from their YouTube channels. In the last couple of years, we’ve had the advent of TikTok and now Instagram Reels.
Honestly at this point just about all of the social media apps have jumped on board with this concept. So now people are used to watching and getting information from the short videos we see on Instagram and TikTok. This means people are now able to really create their own massively successful business by unleashing creativity. It really enables anyone to earn a living or build a brand around an audience.
Here are some insights into what you need to know and do in order to be successful in the Era of the Creator:
The tools
What we have seen in the last year is social platforms really beginning to create more and more tools to help you – as the creator – engage and interact with your audience on their platform. Let’s be perfectly honest here, ALL THE social platforms want to keep their users on the platform and engaged with it. It’s how they make their money. However, the benefit to you is that YOU are also able to create and engage with your audience.
Look at yourself as a creator
What I really want to highlight is that if you’re wanting to grow your business online you need to start looking at yourself as a creator. In order to attract an audience and build your brand, which is the foundation of growing your business online, in order to really grow that following, you are going to have to be creating more engaging content and really showing up as the face of your business.
That’s going to mean creating more video content, Reels, Stories, Tik Toks. Really being creative with your content. This needs to be part of your overall 2022 strategy (and beyond) if you want to stand out, attract an audience and continue to generate leads and sales. Keep in mind that it’s not enough to just put random content out there and hope that it will connect, you really need to create a strategy of providing value to your audience and giving it to them in a way that makes it easy for them to digest and engage with. Honestly, this whole Era of the Creator is exactly what the flirting stage of our Dating Your Ideal Client is all about.
Moving your audience off the platform
Here’s the thing to keep in mind. You want to use these platforms and the creator aspects of them to build your audience, however, in order to really create the income and impact you want to create, you’re going to want to own your audience and not just rent space on the platform you’re using.
What does that mean exactly, you have to get your audience off of the platform so that you can control how, when, where, and what of how you’re actually connecting with your audience. The idea isn’t to ditch Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, and all of the platforms. It’s to use them to your advantage and really be able to connect with your audience on multiple platforms and in multiple ways. While also connecting with on a more personal level via email.
The ways you can go about moving them from a social media follower and onto your email list are really wide and varied. The goal is to move them off the platform at the least cost to you and then to nurture them through the Dating Your Ideal Client process so that they are ready to make that commitment to work with you.
One final thought…
The Era of the Creator really does allow you to be creative and have fun with it. Show off your personality! Be authentic! That’s exactly what people are looking for when it comes to buying, especially higher ticket coaching packages. They need to be able to connect with you in a way that is unique.