Why All Successful Businesses Have a Laser-Focused Vision

by Roy Varner

Folks often come to me as Video Maestro wanting to master video to compete online, since 85% or more of their competitors are putting videos regularly online.

They come to me specifically for a “Video Makeover,” where I work with them to eliminate all the distracting things they do on camera and then master the handful of professional techniques that create authority and trust.

Yet videos are only as good as the clarity and emotional power of your message.

If your message doesn’t connect with your ideal prospect’s needs and push their emotional hot buttons, looking and sounding great on camera still won’t get you where you want to be.

In fact, most online entrepreneurs waste most of the time and money invested in their marketing videos because they aren’t focused on a clear vision that results in a workable plan.

Imagine that a super wealthy businessman sent you out into the desert of the U.S. Southwest on a treasure hunt, but you’re not given any clear, specific clues or guidelines before you take off, such as…

• What exactly you’re looking for…
• Where exactly it may be…
• How you’ll know when you find “it”…
• How to get “it” safely back to your home…and
• What value “it” might be to you.

Who in their right minds would undertake such a blind, wild-goose-chase adventure and ever expect to find anything of value, or to make a single Lincoln penny for all the effort and expense?

And yet SO many people jump online and wander from program to program, guru to guru, spending tons of money and literally years looking for secrets to that pot of gold that will pay their bills and give them a leisurely life from now on.

When they do it without the right plan, most of them fail.

You can’t execute a detailed plan that’s just the right approach for you if you don’t have one clearly in mind and on paper.

In the “big picture” of making money, here’s what I see as the three main steps to succeeding online, and all of them rely on video as a major tool for sharing their vision:

ONE – Laser-Focused VISION for Your Ideal Path to Thriving

TWO – Transformative VALUE of a Core Program/Service That Actually Delivers the Promised Results

THREE – VISIBILITY to Expose Your Life-Changing Value to Your Ideal Prospects

Let’s focus on VISION in this post – because without it, we’re all flying blind with little chance of competing online.

Max De Pree, an expert in leadership and business building, said that the first question for a leader of any venture is “Not ‘What are we going to do?’ but ‘Who do we intend to be?’”

The “Why” of your life’s endeavors should dictate what to do, and not the other way around.

Let me break the critical foundation of VISION into its practical parts:

1 – What do I love to do, and what is my authentic style of doing? If you don’t love your work, you won’t bounce out of bed to do it every day, and you won’t last through all the problems over time.

2 – Who exactly do I want to serve and help? If you’re trying to be everyone’s solution, you’ll be nobody’s real solution.

3 – What is my ideal customer’s major challenge, in his/her words? If you’re marketing with all your own clever words and not the ones your ideal prospects use to search the Net for a solution, you’re not engaging with your ideal customer.

4 – What is my unique solution that makes me an expert in my niche? If your solution doesn’t sound like the ONLY one that will work, you won’t stand out from the crowd.

5 – What are the elements of my signature brand that will attract my ideal customers? If you don’t have a magnetic brand, you’ll be hearing crickets instead of getting sales.

6 – What is my specific business plan for success?  Shy away from a detailed, measurable, traditional business plan and you have no realistic, dependable way to get where you want to be.

When you can answer each of the six questions above with laser-focused clarity and certainty, you have a VISION that will motivate and drive you day by day to achieve your specific goals.

Now you’re in the driver’s seat.  You’re in charge of a process you understand and really love doing. Your video messages have clear focus, connect with your ideal prospects’ needs, and are effective funnels to bring in new business.

That’s when it ceases to be work and becomes a life you love.

Video is the #1 tool to HOOK your ideal prospects’ interest…ENGAGE with them as a trustworthy authority…RELATE with your “hero” story as someone who’s been there and figured it out…PROVE it works with key testimonials of social proof…and DRAW into your sales funnel to get them to buy and be in your tribe.

Before you get on camera again or record video to attract new business, be able to answer the six questions above so your work will count.

Then you’ll be ready for my makeover process, to get you looking and sounding like the go-to expert in your niche every single time you’re on camera.

Just sayin’.

Crank Your Sales Faucet WIDE OPEN With “Brand Stacking”

by Roy Varner

You may be locked out of over 80% of your potential sales.

Recently I talked with a business coach who complained that his marketing just wasn’t bringing in enough business to live on, in spite of several years of expensive programs and doing everything he thought he was supposed to do.

He explained all about sending daily emails to his list…spending a lot of money on his website…tons of social media posts…online ads that weren’t getting much response…and so on.

It was looking as though he’d have to give up and go back to a 9-5 job.

When I took a look at samples of his marketing outreach – and especially how he looked and sounded on camera — the root cause of his failure to attract new customers became painfully obvious.

Some startling statistics will set the stage for what I’m sharing with you today.

• Only 3% of your ideal prospects buy on the first contact with you (Type A risk takers and impulse buyers).
• The other 97% need the assurance of seeing you and your promos multiple times before they can give themselves permission to trust your solution.
  Finally, a full 80% of your prospects will NOT buy until they have seen at least 5 or 6 positive, consistent communications from you about your product or service.

That last stat in particular is HUGE to your success in online marketing.

Think about it.  If your prospects see your brand 5 or 6 times – but each time you look and sound different, some things you do on camera are off-putting, and they never quite “get it” about you – you’re blocked from selling to at least 4 out of 5 of your potential customers.

What businesses can even survive, must less thrive, marketing to only 20% of the people who should be jumping through hoops to get your solution to their painful, and sometimes emotional, main problem?

And with an inconsistent and hazy brand, you’re losing most of that 20% as well.

Not encouraging.

So let’s think through exactly how to get your brand (i.e., how you present yourself in all communications) laser focused and consistently attractive to your ideal prospects.

First ask yourself, “What major problem am I trying to solve? 

Your succinct problem description and image (your “hook” to stop them from surfing past you) must specifically identify their major challenges, so they say to themselves, “Hey, they’re talking about my big problem!”  (Remember it’s not about you, but about stopping their surfing.)

If your “hook” reads and looks different each time they see your promos, then you don’t get any cumulative credit for previous contacts. 

Each new contact is like finding you for the first time, instead of building on previously positive contacts.

Second, ask yourself, “Specifically what type of person do I have the most passion to help with my time and experience?”

The most common mistake is to think your solution is the answer for everyone…when in fact, something that fits everyone is not seen as a specific solution for anyone.

You want people to instantly recognize that you’re talking specifically to them, so they’ll start thinking your solution is also exactly what they need.

Third question, “What words are my ideal prospects using to describe their needs and to search online for their ideal solution?”

Way too many entrepreneurs are in the rut of their own point of view, rather than their prospects, and thus they take it upon themselves to choose words and names for programs, the business, etc. that make them feel good.

Your business is not your feel-good playground.  It needs to be all about what your ideal prospects think, feel, want, and will buy.  It’s all about them, not about you.

And the Fourth question to answer to fix your problem of inconsistent and less-than-desired attractiveness of your marketing is this:

“What do I call my solution to make it obviously the ONLY choice to solve their problem?”

If you’re just another talking face promising a generic solution, there’s no reason to stop and check you out.

So if you can answer the above four questions consistently in a compelling way in every communication you put out there, you will achieve what’s meant by this phrase I coined:

“Brand Stacking”

When you’ve answered the above questions consistently and professionally in all your communications – your website, social media posts, online ads, and especially every time you’re on camera – then wonderful cumulative things happen:

1. People resonate with you because you obviously understand their major problem.
2. They see that you look and sound like the trustworthy go-to-expert in your field, someone they feel they can trust to take care of them.
3. Your solution sounds consistently unique, promising, and just what they’re seeking.

Then each time they see another message from you, they get the same good feelings and sense of trust.

Each similar feeling, positive contact “stacks” on top of the previous ones until they reach the magic range of 5 or 6 layers that trigger the emotional approval to choose you and buy what you’re selling.

That’s Brand Stacking… and it works ONLY when ALL of your communications are consistently presenting your positive, compelling brand look, feel, and message.

IT ALL STARTS WITH YOUR ON-CAMERA IMPACT

Nothing is more important to building your consistent, professional, unique brand that how you look and sound on camera.

That’s because of the power of visuals and body language to connect people emotionally.

There are 4 steps to being seen as that compelling go-to expert in your niche.

STEP ONE: Stop the Distractions.

Uncover things you do on camera that are off-putting and amateurish, things that distract from fully engaging with you and your message.

Examples: Talking about you instead of your prospects problem…bad camera angle with too much headroom or shooting up your nose…bright lighting behind you from windows or lamps that darken and fuzz your face…sounding like you’re in a big empty barrel…and so on.

In fact, I wrote down 30 common distractions, and still counting, that you’ll see often just about any time somebody is on camera.

STEP TWO: Embrace a Professional Set-Up and Techniques. 

It’s not your fault, since hardly anybody has been trained as an on-camera expert.

Yet it’s critical to have a proper set-up of your camera so you look naturally (not awkwardly) framed and at a comfortable distance from the camera…

It takes a pro approach to lighting to make your skin look good and focus attention on your eyes (eye contact is a huge engager) and your message…

You need clear and natural sound reproduction of your voice so you’re pleasant sounding and easy to listen to…

Work to declutter your background to focus all the attention on you, while color-coordinating the background to your skin, hair, and clothes to feel good to your viewers…

And there’s much to consider in how you look – your choice of clothing, color, jewelry, hair, glasses, etc. – and your body language, all of which contributes to connecting with your ideal customers.

STEP THREE: In that super-attractive, consistent brand, Nail your “Position Statement” that says, “I help (niche of ideal prospect) solve (major pain, fear, need, or want) with my (unique program/method/formula etc.), guaranteed.”

Without the clarity of a well-considered Position Statement, what you’re projecting is too vague to hook people to stop surfing and get them emotionally engaged in your story and solution.

The lack of this clarity, in fact, is a major reason why so many people fail to make serious money online.

Nail your Position Statement and you give all the right people all the right reasons to become part of your tribe and help pay your bills.

And then…

STEP FOUR: The final critical Brand Stacking process.

Clone the Look and Feel of Your On-Camera Presence in All of Your Public Communications.

• Your Website – in all still pictures and video clips of you, what you wear, your color background, Position Statement clarity on Home Page, and so on.
• Your Social Media Posts – same consistency of pictures, colors, and message.
• Your online ads in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc.
• Your blog post messages in line with your Position Statement, and quality visuals.
• Your every live / guest appearance on podcasts, live presentations, etc.

And all other communication – every time your ideal prospects sees or hears something positive and consistent about you, that’s another stackable contact that compounds to get them past the doubt threshold and into becoming a buyer.

These four steps together are arguably the most critical change you could make to permanently crank your sales faucet wide open and finally thrive financially and personally on the Internet.

Remember that you need the synergy of all four of these Brand Stacking^TM steps to open up the biggest possible audience for what you do.

But don’t try it alone – find your pro coach to guide you there, one step at a time.

Now you know how to stand out from the crowd and make it happen.

Let’s do it!

Wanting Everyone to Like and Admire You

by Roy Varner

Older readers remember Aesop’s Fable about the man and his son going to market with their donkey.

A neighbor saw them walking beside the donkey and berated them: “You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?” So the man put the boy on the donkey.

Each time they passed someone, they were shamed and told to do something different…let the old father ride…both should ride…and finally, carry the donkey between them tied to a pole.

Finally, as they crossed a bridge over a stream, the donkey kicked lose, fell into the water, and drowned.

Aesop’s moral to the story: Try to please everyone, and you will please no one.

Now, almost 2,600 years later, we’re still drowning our donkeys.

I’m talking about thinking our entrepreneurial service or product is a perfect solution for everyone, resulting in our broad, generic messaging that appeals to almost no one.

I know a bright person who has amassed a huge following in social media with interesting articles on a wide variety of topics. Yet she can’t get people to buy her programs.

She’s become everything for everyone…but not the only thing for anyone.

With so much competition online today – and with the old methods not working like they did before – the big online gurus are now talking about niching WAY down, down, down…

…and when you think you’re there, then keep going down some more…

…to a specific category of pain and need that is the super-sensitive pain point in the center of your ideal customer’s emotional core.

Apparently, laser-niching is the way to make yourself truly the only solution in town…and thus you become the clear go-to expert in your niche.

“WHAT?” you say, “My audience for such a tiny niche will be miniscule!”

Not so fast.

There are 5 billion people using the Internet…growing 200 million a year. You don’t need them all. One millionth is still 5,000 people, and that’s more than enough to fund your business over time.

OVERCOMING YOUR FEAR

Public speaking is usually listed as the number one fear of people, edging out even death.

We grow up afraid that people will laugh at us and think we’re stupid, useless, if we’re not the perfect silver-tongued speaker on stage.

Fear of failure leads to procrastination and non-action. Trying to please everyone leads to that very failure we fear…and we lose our donkeys.

Here’s the true solution to that fear: Realize you don’t need everyone who’s hearing your message to respond…only your ideal customer.

If you can niche now to the right person in need, with the right emotional trigger, those who resonate with the need will come to you.

We don’t care about the others who aren’t motivated. They aren’t your prospects anyway, and even if they bought, you’d lose them as unmotivated dropouts along the way.

The goal is to draw ONLY your ideal customer to you, so you can enjoy an extremely high transformation rate with a tribe of folks for whom you are truly the ideal and only answer.

NICHING TO ELIMINATE

Think of niching down to your ideal laser spot as weeding out everyone who isn’t going to be a great user of your product or service.

Like chiseling away all the block of stone that isn’t your statue, every step down in your definition of ideal customer eliminates another layer of people not right for you.

Now think about speaking live to a big group of entrepreneurs – all of whom you formerly assumed were ideal prospects.

Only now you see that the vast majority of them really are of no interest to your business. When they don’t run up to the stage or back of the room with credit cards in hand, that’s not a problem, that’s part of your plan.

NICHING TO SEGMENT

Say you start with “helping people sleep better.” Right off the bat, you lose the portion of folks who are sleeping well or well enough.

Niche down…”helping over-worked people sleep better”…now you lose another batch.

“Helping mothers of young children get enough sleep”…there goes another bunch…and so on.

If you surveyed the first broad group about their sleep-related needs, you’d see patterns forming into what’s called “segments” or “buckets.”

It’s in these more focused needs that you begin to niche down.

The first set of specific sleeping buckets might include having difficulty going to sleep…waking up several times at night…being groggy in the morning and finding it hard to wake up…and lacking energy all day.

You have four specific areas of need to choose from for further niching.

Now find buckets for “waking up several times at night”…could be prostate issues for men…maybe can’t turn of the mind from the mental activity of the evening…perhaps the bed and/or pillow are not working for you…and maybe you’re worried about your morning appointment or big presentation.

You see the process of niching down. There is a needy group of people urgently seeking a solution to their pain in each of the second level of buckets.

This process is similar to what’s called Root Cause Analysis, the process of sorting through all the symptoms of a problem by continually asking “Why?” until you get down to the actual root cause of the pain and frustration.

As a coach, you don’t fix the symptoms…you find the root cause and fix the source.

Niching down, therefore, is diving deeper and deeper through the general symptoms until you find the one specific issue at the very heart of the problem.

Hello…guess what? The niche has landed. You have cleared away the hillside and found your vein of pure gold.

Now you know where to aim all of your marketing and communications, and you can be confident in knowing you’ll get your fair share of ideal customers drawn to the only real solution to their unique need.

ASK ONLY YOUR LASER-TARGETED PROSPECTS

The surest way to get bad advice and aim in the wrong direction is to ask the wrong people.

Your friends and relatives don’t understand niching down. Their criticism of your best ideas has killed many a program.

Surveying your close peers online usually turns into a guessing game of clever titles that appeal to them, maybe…but they’re usually not your ideal clients.

Direct your specific questions ONLY to those in your narrowed-down bucket who actually have the pain and the fear to be handled.

Gather your ideal customers’ words to build a golden core library of content to repurpose.

Use that ideal body of their own language to talk back to them in all your communications – email, social media posts, podcast talks, you name it.

If that’s what draws the right peeps to you, why would you ever use any other language?

Now every message you put out there is exactly what the ideal, specific group of people are looking for.

Hopefully, now you can give yourself permission to let go of the vast majority of audience out there, and instead niche down and down until you’ve found the perfect, highly responsive group to build your loyal tribe.

When Being Too Casual Can Hurt Your Brand

by Roy Varner

It’s amazing how a mindset can spread across the country, even around the world.

Viral shutdowns changed how we all live and work our businesses. We all swapped in-person meetings, workshops, conventions, and get-togethers for online video. From eating out to dining in…from going to a movie theater to watching at home…and on.

What a change in our culture in such a short time!

In the process, we also shifted to a super casual mindset in online videos…from completely unstructured selfies to live coaching videos with little concern for being businesslike.

Now we see even experienced coaches and other gurus show up in t-shirts with silly slogans on them… sloppy backgrounds in messy offices or even bedrooms…

Speaking of bedrooms, I even saw a night-time bedroom Zoom session where the spouse walked through the background au naturel and climbed into bed.

The selfie craziness is a result of everyone having access to a powerful video device, but without any particular training on how to use it. Thus all the distractions – wiggly scenes, lots of headroom showing ceilings or clouds, and many others.

The super-casual mindset and behavior in business videos and live events…well, that’s a trend that isn’t working well for most entrepreneurs.

Entertaining to some, perhaps, but not how a coach builds authority, credibility, and trust.

As a self-named Video Maestro (4 decades of producing videos should count for something), I coined the name “Video Voodoos” to describe things people do on their videos that distract from their brand, their message, and their sales results.

Most entrepreneurs’ videos and live presentations have 10 or more voodoos cursing their conversions and haunting their brands.

A lot of the distractions are from a casual mindset, not committed to businesslike results.

You see, when we look for a coach to help solve a major problem (like our online businesses are not bringing in the bucks), we need someone who is clearly an expert and thriving at the level we want to reach.

That’s not the guy next door, or the guy in the silly t-shirt and sloppy office.

It’s not the coach who’s fumbling to get the live show going, wasting time talking about himself or herself, or having us type “Amazing!” in the chat room every 5 minutes to show we’re awake.

We want the pro, the been-there-done-that expert, who understands our specific pains and needs and has helped many others escape and thrive.

So how can you tell whether someone is the real deal, or just following a formula and a casual mindset about your needed transformation?

First, look for the distracting “Voodoo” behavior – anything that comes across as salesy, wastes time, fluffy with no real value, or otherwise turns you off.

Reality Check: These distractions, like scary symptoms of illness in your body, are serious red flags that should warn you that this person’s model and methods are focused on taking your money, not mentoring you over time to a higher mindset and results.

Super casual is a strong red flag.

Second, look for accessibility – can you actually get a response if you email the coach? Will you get any 1:1 instruction and look at your specific work? Or is this just “faux” coaching that overloads you with lots of information but no real coaching?

When coaches choose to abandon 1:1 (too much work, irritation, and time they say) in favor of the 1:many online info model, they’ve abandoned transformations. Including yours. Ever.

We all need a coach we can look up to, admire, want to emulate, and trust to seriously help us personally. Not someone on long, talking-face videos of overload that then send us home to try to learn things self-study on our own (doesn’t work).

A third way to tell if a coach is a real deal is to ask for his/her transformation rate.

I’ve wasted so much money and time on big gurus’ highly acclaimed programs, only to find months (even years) later that they never gave me real, personal coaching overtime to get me to that higher, more productive mindset.

My files are full of their information still.

SAD FACT: The big gurus are mostly sitting on a 3% transformation rate.

I’m not kidding.

The top coach of one incredibly rich and successful guru told me that 97% of the people spending thousands on the guru’s programs never even finish the overwhelming course materials… never get the personal coaching to swap their old limiting assumptions for better thinking and behavior…and thus neither mindset leap nor thriving occurs.

So the vast majority of online “coaching” and “learning” programs are really just expensive info core dumps and rah-rah stuff.

You need a game-changer, a real coach committed to helping you.

A real coach will give you a number, or rough percentage, of transformations because a life-changing coach knows every client personally and is committed to mentoring each one all the way to the promised thrive level.

I’ve personally found only a handful of real game-changer coaches in 4 years of looking.

So…when you recognize the casual mindset…when you see all the resulting distracting voodoos…when it’s the same-old sales message…when there’s no clear commitment to personal 1:1 transformation…run for your life!

Get my free “5 Top Video Voodoos” here.

Take care of yourself and your business – get a real coach, committed to your success!

5 Essential Elements of a Powerful Brand

by Roy Varner

Millions of entrepreneurs are competing online for attention and money.

Is it possible then for you to actually stand out from the crowd and get your share of customers and ongoing income?

Think about your brand – your unique public identity that represents your value to people who are urgently looking for your solutions.

Is your brand working for you?

• Are you drawing the right people and enough of them to sustain your business over time financially?
• Are you generally known to your contacts as the go-to expert in your field?

Clearly it takes a lot of work and time to establish a brand.

Let me share with you what I consider to be the 5 essential elements of an attractive and sustainable brand for your business success.

BRAND ESSENTIAL 1:

You must be doing what you love to do, are good at, and should be doing as leader of your business.

BRAND ESSENTIAL 2:

You must have clarity about, and commitment to, your chosen ideal prospects.

BRAND ESSENTIAL 3:

You must use your ideal customers’ own words in all your communications with them.

BRAND ESSENTIAL 4:

You must run a coordinated, carefully orchestrated marketing campaign that repurposes and repeats your core concepts.

BRAND ESSENTIAL 5:

You must learn to embrace the winning mindset of those thriving at the level you hope to achieve.

Now let’s dive into the details of each of the essential parts above: 

1) You must be doing what you love to do, are good at, and should be doing as leader of your business.

You’re swimming against a rip tide if you choose a business that you don’t truly love to do, and especially if you’re not an expert at it.

Successful businesses are based on long-term, daily persistence.  When your heart isn’t in it, you won’t be able to stick to that discipline and hard work over time.

When you’re doing what you truly love and are good at:

• You’re going with the flow. Fulfilling your dream.  Having fun and not feeling like it’s all work.
• You’ll bounce out of bed every morning because you can’t wait to get back into it all.
• Work won’t be work anymore – it will be living and loving your dream life.

Yet there’s another step that’s critical to make your love fest work – and that’s to embrace and focus on ONLY the roles needed to be a leader of the business, and delegate the rest.

I used to call it “wearing 9 hats” – a good way to ensure 80-hour weeks and become the master of none.

For example, I knew a smart, educated business owner who was determined to control  every single thing that went on in his business.

He loved doing it all – especially IT tech stuff – and had trouble managing employees because he decided nobody could do things exactly the way he wanted. 

That right there is the quintessential fear of delegating.

His micro-management of everybody’s tasks resulted in bad morale, low productivity, loss of creative solutions of his staff, and completely missing numerous opportunities to build strong relationships with his customers.

It was truly a leaderless business…the top hat was missing.

Soon the business folded, and he was at a loss for why.  So I told him he got lost in what he loved to do and forgot to be a leader.

Only when he realized what he had done (his “AHA!” moment) was he able to get help and start a new business the right way.

I use a detailed analysis form with my coaching customers that helps them discover the handful of skills and roles they love to do and should be doing as leaders of their businesses.

• The challenge is to focus their time and attention on those few choices, while delegating all the others.
• Delegating means giving up control in trade for having others do 90% of the work – freeing you to be an effective business leader. You still have control of the final outcomes.

Divide all the non-leadership tasks and roles into two groups:

1 – Highly skilled tasks, done by trained staff, hired coaches, and professional resources.  Leaders set aside time to monitor these regularly.

2 – All the rest of the tasks you delegate others to manage, checking only for any problems that need your decisions.

The trick is to give up “control” and embrace the role of delegating. Hire and train the right people, and your team will step up to the plate and hit home runs for you.

The major choice of loving what you do and are good at will work only if you bite the bullet and delegate everything except your key leadership roles.

2) You must have clarity about, and commitment to, your chosen ideal prospects.

So many entrepreneurs don’t have clarity about who they want to serve, nor what their real pains, fears, needs and wants may be.

Some make the mistake of assuming they know already, since they went through a similar problem-solving process.  You’re likely, however, to NOT be your ideal customer.

Others just logically list what seems important to them and assume for their prospects.

Such assumptions lead to low response to your marketing.

It takes research and survey time to get a handle on a group of people.

• Get key words from “hyper-responsive”….
• Find the high-search words…(QUICK TECHNIQUES)
• Know your ideal customer like you know your close friends – real people who desperately need your solution to stop the pain and/or meet their needs.

3) You must use your ideal customers’ own words in all your communications with them.

Always remember WIIFM – your potential customers surf the Net with the abiding question, “What’s in it for me?”

They’re looking for their major pain, fear, need, or want.  Nothing else grabs their attention and makes them stop to check for a solution.

They will resonate like a tuning fork if you talk their challenges in their words.

So create a CORE data base of the words you gathered in your research.  CORE words become the titles, headers, program names etc. for everything you offer them.

• These ideal customers’ words are your bright and shiny stars of attraction for all your communications.
• You fish using bait attractive to the fish you’re seeking, not something tasty to you.
• Too many people use their own favorite words or check with their fellow coaches for what they think.
• Big mistake. Asking the wrong people.  You already have all the right answers at your disposal.

Your business name?  Use the words they use to describe the solution they need.

Same goes for title of your major programs…titles and headers in ads…even names of events and services.  Use their words!

Part of a clear “expert” identity is a compelling elevator pitch of 25 words or so…a great customer-oriented name for your business…and your signature formula, roadmap, etc. (using their words, remember) to guide them along to thriving.

And finally, VIDEO is a major tool in resonating with your peeps – because it’s the powerful combination of emotional words with compelling visuals that enhance the emotional reaction.

• Research shows that spoken words and matching visuals are 22 times more powerful than words alone.
• Avoid the talking face videos (they were never effective) and use most of your video time showing exactly what you’re talking about in the script.
• Constantly ask: “What will my ideal customer want to see when I’m saying this?”

80% of ads now involve video, so get your powerful message out there!

4) You must run a coordinated, carefully orchestrated marketing campaign that repurposes and repeats your core concepts.

It takes as many as 8 exposures of your message to prospect before you get your full potential of buyers.

• That’s why you want a variety of ads, videos, etc. out there working together to give people enough contacts to be comfortable to buy from you.
• That’s also why you need a robust email follow-up and relationship-building system to automatically reach people where they are in that process and nudge them onward.
• A major tool in your campaign is video, since as I mentioned, 80% of today’s ads online involve video.

Think of every time you appear on the Internet (on camera or just audio) as a “live” contact that can resonate powerfully with your ideal customers.

Your biggest challenge is to answer this question:

• How am I going to create video that stands out from millions of long talking-face videos and rah-rah bells and whistles?

 How will I create video that makes me look and sound like the go-to expert to solve my ideal customers’ problems?

 The answer is to use the same consistent, customer-word-based messages in your videos as you do in your live presentations.

KEEP IN MIND:  Long-winded, talking-face videos are part of info core dump and don’t change people.  Your messages need to be succinct, focused on one main problem,  and presented using the power of both spoken words and related visuals that show what the words mean.

If your message is concise, compelling, and consistent every time they come in contact with you, that’s building a brand.

5) You must learn to embrace the winning mindset of those thriving at the level you hope to achieve.

You can’t get way up there with the thinking and habits that got you where you are now (thanks for that thought, Albert Einstein).

I’ve had students of my learning programs resist my approaches and word choices, etc.  They are focusing on what they are familiar with in the past…not remembering that such thoughts have not gotten them where they want to be.

Functioning at a higher level means two things:

1. Commit to letting go of your old, unproductive assumptions and be willing to openly embrace the thinking of those at the level you want to achieve. It’s ego and programmed bias, my friend, that would try to convince you to stick with what’s familiar.  We all have to let that go to change.
2. Drop the old coping habits that protected your limited assumptions (such as procrastination). Be ready to try new habits that got others where you want to be.

Here’s where a coach is essential to helping your peel back the layers of your onion self (yes, limited thinking stinks) and build your self-confidence so you can and will embrace new ways.

You can’t get that winning mindset on your own.  It’s not in your vocabulary or experience yet.  Get help and trust the one who’s been there, done that, and is thriving as a result.

So those are the 5 essential steps to your powerful, sustainable, magnetic, and financially emancipating brand for the business you love to pieces.

Imagine what life would be like if you mastered these 5 steps!

• Only your ideal customers convert and become raving, loyal fans
• Lots of people know who you are and what problems you solve.
• You get to mix and JV with major influencers (the big gurus get 80% of their millions that way).
• Your name and face appear daily in live broadcasts, podcasts, summits, etc.
• Sustainable financial independence is no longer an issue.

 Give these steps the time and attention they need, so you can reap the life-changing benefits of being recognized widely as the go-to expert in your field.