This is the first thing I got wrong in my business.
I had heard all about audience building. So I was on a mission to build this “audience”. This group of people that knew I existed because we went to similar events, worked with similar clients or studied similar thing.
This seemed like the best thing until I got a life-changing phone call in June 2019. My biggest contract was not being renewed. My business went from 6-figures to barely 5-figures in a 15-minute call.
This when I realised that having an audience was useless. I reached out and everyone was kind but no one was able to give me work. No one had clients I could help, and I started to realise.
I WAS HARD TO REFER
And this no NOT something you want your business to be.
I decided to change my business completely. It becomes more specific about what I did. So I niched into stratgey. That’s good enough I thought! So I could build people strategies, learning strategies, business strategies, sales strategies and the list went on.
I started to get a bit more work but something still wasn’t working. Then I started working with a coach in early Feb 2020. She gave me 1 piece of advice that blew my mind.
“Do one thing, become the best in your industry at it and be specific about who you help”
My mind was blown, during my corporate life, it was drilled into me that everyone needs a product suite to be taken seriously. I had never known any different.
So what changed?
Instantly I got it, I trying to be everything to everyone. Instead, I had to be the one person to someone.
I got off that call and narrowed down my audience. I would only work with micro and small business owners that are starring up or have a new idea or program they want to launch.
And not only that I will only work with them in ONE way. Knowing that I understand what they need, I set out to create my 12-week group coaching program.
As I started to do this, I started talking about it on my social media. I quickly noticed that people started to pay attention.
And that is when it happened.
Why a community?
The community started to form. The people that would comment on my posts, reply to my emails, show up to my live webinars. And eventually buy my course.
Most of those people are still with me a year on in my membership, growing the most kick-ass businesses.
Side note last week we closed Q1 with a celebration call and just a few wins from this amazing group of people:
- Took just under £8000 in March
- Lined up £13k in April
- Featured in The Times
- Signed 2 dream clients
- Built a new website
- Pickdc the date to resign from their job to go full-time in their business
- Signed their first 3 clients in their business (all in 48 hours)
- Took 2 months off to get married and walk straight back into orders for new products.
I could go on forever, but this is the community. And this is what it’s all about.
When you build a community people actually care. They care about you, your life, your business, your dreams. They are invested in the journey emotionally, and a lot of the time will end up investing money as well.
But the only way you do this is by sharing pieces of you, your life, your business, your dreams. You can’t expect people to get invested if you give them nothing.
How do I build my community?
My favourite 3 tips:
- Consistency
- Be real
- Help them
Consistency
Being consistent is not only good for the algorithm online, it also helps your community know what to expect. If people know you go live on a certain day, they can tune in. Or if you drop a video, blog, or podcast once a week.
This helps people get into a rhythm with you and show up when you are around.
So pick something you can stick to. One blog a month, 3 posts a week, 2 emails a week. It can suit your life and business, but you need to show up consistently. And build that trust with your community and yourself.
Be Real
The word authentic is thrown around WAY too often at the moment. And I see too many people trying to fake what they think authentic looks like. Which is totally missing the point!
This is about showing up as you. Be proud of who you are. And trusting that you have something valuable for your community.
Your belief in yourself will help others believe in you.
The right community will be attracted to you if you are just you. So when people follow me, they soon see that I’m straight talking and I care about my clients deeply, however, I will still push them and kick their arse to get the results. I also swear, shimmy on live calls, get SO excited when my clients succeed (think crazy voice notes and dancing gifs). My cats sometimes join calls, I always talk about traveling, adventures, warm weather, and journaling.
And my favourite thing is that when people start working with me, they are never surprised by what they get. Because I am real online. I’m real in my stories, captions, blogs, emails even my paid ads are ME all over.
And that is important when building a community that trusts you.
Help them
Last but not least, maybe even most important! Add value to your community.
If you are going to become the go-to expert in your area of expertise… well you need to add value and show people what you know.
This is really important because it deepens the relationship with your community.
Now, this can be fine in a few ways, you can write fire captions, amazing blogs, do mini training videos or stories. You can create free downloads like eBooks, checklists, templates. I’ll go into this in WAY more detail next week here in the blog! But for now, always think how am I adding value? Am I teaching, entertaining, connecting, or inspiring my community.
If you always focus on one of those four you will be on a roll to building your own community.
Now what?
If you are running a small business, and feel like you want some more help, come and join my community. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, but more importantly, I have something HOT off the press just for you!
Free Access to my eBook, the 7 secrets of business success. Having built an in-person 6 figure business and translated that online, there are seven questions I WISH I knew to ask sooner. They’re in this PDF. Number 7 changed the game for me, but my client Stacey said number 3 was the catalyst for her.
Let me know which one is your favourite and I’ll see you back here next week for a little more juice on building your business.