The 15 minute blog post

You know those days when you’ve thrown your content calendar out the window, you’re feeling less than inspired but you know you HAVE to write a blog post to keep your fans in the loop and your subscribers happy? Well, don’t just write any old junk, or worse yet, write nothing. Both options are bad for your reputation. I get that you’re time-poor and not always feeling like JKK Rowling, so I’m going to show how to write a quality blog post fast. In fact, you could do this process and get one out in less than 15 minutes.

Here’s how.

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From BLISS to BLACKOUT; counting my lucky stars

How life can change in an instant…

Just wanted to say a few quick words about my past 7 days. For those who don’t know, which is probably quite a few, I had a terrible car accident last Monday night. It happened on a local freeway, at high speed, and I sustained a head injury. The good news is, it only knocked some sense into me.

In short, I’m bloody lucky to be alive.

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Gifts for absent husbands

I was buying a present for my husband for this birthday this morning from one of his favourite stores. I felt a bit rushed and somewhat perplexed about what to buy him. Normally I don’t struggle at all but this year it’s a tad different. There was an added element of complexity to the ordinarily joyous process of gift-giving. The gift had to be small and light and not contain anything ‘tricky’, so that it could make its way effectively overseas to where my man is currently living.

I was staring at all the stuff, beautifully displayed, hoping something would jump out at me. The woman working in the store came up gently and said “you look like you need a hand”.

I explained my situation and as a I did she slowly nodded and leaned in with this look of ‘knowing’ on her face.

During the course of her ‘recommendations’, she spoke to me about how her husband spent 30 years travelling overseas for work, how it took time to reconnect when he returned (but that it did get easier), how her children were often wary of their dad and where he fit in to the scheme of things when he got back, how she encouraged immediate bonding with the kids and their dad by disappearing for the weekend with girlfriends, and how she used to cope with it all. She joked about how she always struggled with gift-giving when he was away, so eventually they simply celebrated when they were next together. She told me how now, in semi-retirement, they travel back and forth to Noosa more often (the place they would take family holidays) and enjoy each other’s company in different surrounds. She runs her own interior design business and he consults in the city, but they allow themselves breaks after a big project. She spoke of the simple pleasure of the perfect small leather travel bag which she keeps packed with only the essentials, so that she’s ready to join him wherever and whenever their fancy takes them. And the big lesson… she spoke of how she’s come to realise that a marriage is about quality not quantity.

The strategies she imparted were wonderful and her gift ideas were spot on. The way she relayed her experience touched me deeply, as it was emotive, personal, yet helpful, and therefore highly powerful. I bought more than I intended to because I was so intrigued by her story, I just wanted to keep listening. I believed in her and the ideas she proposed, so I chose them all. I wanted to breathe in her experiences and make them my own. Hell, I want to be her in 15 years time!

Again, the lesson is clear. Be relatable to your prospects.

Tell your story in a way that matters to them. Find some common ground. Help them with their predicament. Make your story interesting, intriguing. And they will ask for your help. They will buy.

Go and be you. Unapologetically you. And tell your stories to those who need to hear them.

Email marketing platforms in review

Email marketing isn’t dead. Let’s just put that out there first. It is VERY much alive and well. Email marketing is also one of the most cost-effective marketing tools out there. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. So, as part of your overall content marketing plan you need to be considering how and when you harness email marketing.

Email marketing is a proven strategy with which to promote your business. It helps you attract new customers and maintain close relationships with existing loyal customers. You can manage your contacts by simply keeping a list of names and email addresses, or you can create a complex database full of subscribers segmented by demographic slices and engagement levels. The challenge is knowing what will work for you and what choices you need to make. Which method you choose, and what tools you buy, really just depends on how big your budget is and how sophisticated your business is at this point.

The first step is to know WHY you want to do email marketing

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Overwhelmed? You Need A Creativity Retreat

I believe that business ownership is a creative endeavour. But sometimes it can feel more like a task factory, more like a ‘job’ (you know, like the one you ran away from??), than a creative outlet.

And the problem is it kind of gets worse as you get better and more experienced at what you do, which feels counter-intuitive but it’s often very true. As you become a business-building machine, it’s easy to lose touch with your passion, your vision, your BIG WHY, and it’s possible to even lose that genuine connection with the people you love to serve.

What a tragedy!

But it’s all too real for many business owners, especially as they grow from being a solo-entrepreneur or micro-business to one that is consistently driving profit and also supports others, not just the business owner. The kicker is that your passion and creativity and the way that you express that is what really draws prospective clients in. It’s what people loved about you in the first place. Heck, it’s what you loved about you too! And if you lose touch with it, then your prospects and fans do as well.

That passion and creativity is why you set up shop to begin with, right? (You didn’t do it because you thought it would be easier than having a job, did you??) So it’s time to reclaim your calling and your creativity.

But how?

Attend a creativity retreat.

It’s SO important to get away from your endless To-Do list, your everyday activities, and reconnect to your creative energy. Giving time and space to you creativity, and actively working on the projects and ideas, will move you toward the future. It’s the juice that fuels your vision.

Don’t consider this a luxury. It’s a necessary practice for entrepreneurs and leaders. Seriously.

So I urge you to either find the time and place to have your own, personal creativity retreat, or better yet, come to mine!

There are some biz babes and bros I know who literally check themselves into a hotel room, turn off their phone, and stay there for a couple of days. Writing, filming, creating. Or the really lucky ones jump on a plane and go somewhere exotic, away from everything they know. This is awesome if you are highly self-motivated, not easily distracted and have the time to research what’s going to work.

With a group or guided experience however, you get the benefit of structure, expertise on hand, peer support, and collaborative energy. Being around other people on a similar mission often makes it easier to get into the creative flow. (Being given a gentle nudge by a coach when you get stuck also helps!)

Regardless of what way you choose to go, your creativity retreat should include these components:

Physical Separation

Remove yourself from all distractions – clients, employees, kids, housework, day-to-day activities. Creativity and writing require a high level of focus that is often impossible in our normal environment.

Go somewhere different, away from what is ‘normal’. It doesn’t have to be the other side of the world, unless you have the means and the inclination of course. A mountain or coastal retreat works well because of the natural inspiration the surroundings offer.

Separation also means technological separation. Where possible, don’t be calling in to the office or home to see how things are without you; and ask ‘your team’ to respect the same boundaries. Being far away isn’t useful if you keep being interrupted by phone calls, texts, updates, etc.

Creating physical space away from your norm will allow the creativity to flow more easily.

Creative Inspiration

Your retreat should incorporate things that support your creative side – and everyone is a little different on this front. Some people need the beach, others may need an adrenalin fuelled activity, still others might love the funky vibe of an urban neighbourhood.

Moving your body definitely helps to improve focus and creativity, so ensure your retreat includes regular breaks for yoga, stretching, walks, swims, dancing.

Other inspirational activities may be listening to mantras or music, trying something new, colouring in, listening to an inspirational speaker, cooking in a new style.

Enough Time

Habits and patterns are hard to break. Unwinding from your normal routine takes time. Don’t expect you can go away for an afternoon and slip into super-creativity-retreat-mode. To really gain the full benefit of an intense creative time, you need sufficient time. I recommend a minimum of 36 hours, but take 2 or 3 days if you can.

Tangible Results

Before you go on your creativity retreat, set some specific outcomes, but be sure to have a flexible mindset that allows room for new ideas as well. My retreat participants spend up to two hours with me planning what they want to achieve and why. This is then condensed into a formal Retreat Plan that they pledge to follow by signing it on night one of the retreat – accountability always works best!

If you don’t have a plan, and are simply interested in ‘going with the flow’, you may find yourself floundering. Time is precious – don’t go wasting it.

Setting yourself a goal to complete X amount of blogs, or write your book outline, or create 6 months worth of Facebook posts, means you will come out the other end of retreat having accomplished something! You will have a body or work that can make a real difference to your business and carry the retreat experience forward.

Do you need to get out of your rut and shake things up?

Perhaps it’s time for a creative, entrepreneurial retreat!

Chasing Sunsets

I had coffeee this week with a guy I haven’t caught up with for a while.
He’s a photographer and videographer who does really great work.

When I asked him how he’d been going, how business was ticking along, he surprised my by saying ‘just ok”… and then he qualified it by saying that it was probably because he’d been busy chasing sunsets.

I thought ‘chasing sunsets’ was a metaphor, you know, for being distracted by shiny things like most entrepreneurs are. But no, he’d LITERALLY been off chasing sunsets, with his camera, trying to get the perfect shot!

I laughed at the fact that my brain went straight to the metaphoric reference. But he’s a dude and dudes are mostly very literal creatures. So I dug a little deeper. What I found out was that he’d been spending over an hour every night for over a week trying to get the perfect sunset shot….just for his own amusement, oh, and to dish up some Instagram gratification. Really? Yup. To get likes.

And yet he had been moaning about the fact that he wasn’t charging what he was worth, that people were taking advantage of his generous nature, that he was spending the most time with the clients paying the least, that he hadn’t increased his database for ages….

Had he spent those 10 hours getting his podcast out there to grow his audience….
Had he spent those 10 hours creating that free video series optin to grow his database….
Had he spent those 10 hours refining his packages and communicating those….

…he may have felt a little differently about his business. A little bit better than ‘just ok’.

Chasing sunsets is absolutely delightful. I get it. And at the moment, they are stunning where we live. It’s great for the soul. It may also be great for getting likes on Instagram. But is it what you do FIRST, when the other stuff is undone?

Prioritising business growth activities is often a struggle for creative business owners, especially if they’re not things you love to do. BUT, your business won’t flourish by chasing sunsets.

What sunsets have you been chasing lately?

Losing your voice – literally or metaphorically

I’ve lost my voice. My actual voice, not my writer’s voice, has just disappeared.

Well, truth be told, the word ‘just’ is incorrect. I knew it was coming for 3 days. There was that telltale tickle, the waves of heat, the loss of strength, the lack of energy. And this morning it was gone. No sound. Nada.

I’ve been using my voice a lot lately, more than usual and more fiercely. Coaching, speaking gigs, presentations, networking, parenting, daughtering. And I’ve been speaking for so many other people too: voicing their fears, propping them up, going in to bat, celebrating them, fighting for them. A change in domestic circumstance has meant I’ve had to tell the story over and over again, and I think I’ve literally run out of words. I’ve exhausted myself by prioritising everyone else’s emotions and interests; my own have slipped by the wayside.

And so I instinctively knew that my voice was bound to give way at some point. It’s my body’s way of saying “ssshhhhhhh…” It’s time to listen. Continue reading →

3 Quick Ways to Stay Visible During School Holidays

It’s school holiday time (in Vic anyway)…and you know what that means?

It’s the juggle struggle of running a business whilst running the social lives of your children at the same time!

Being visible in school holidays comes down to planning

And even if you don’t have kids, you’ll probably experience that deafening silence when you email one of your clients or that cagey low-talking when they answer the phone. Because chances are they’re dealing with a child tugging at their attention, wanting to be fed, wanting a cure for boredom, wanting to make noise the minute they get on the phone. It happens to the best of us, even with the most well-intentioned children and the most carefully organised activities – they just NEED you when you are the phone.

So, how do you deal with this predicament? How do you manage to do all the things you have to to keep your business ticking whilst you have the kids home from school? You can’t always take weeks off every time the school holidays roll around, nor can you palm your kids off the entire time (or can you???) Continue reading →

Perfect content? Are you kidding?

Do you get nervous whenever you have to send something out, worrying that it won’t be exactly right?

Do you cringe every time you’re about to press publish on Facebook?

Do you muck around with your sales pages, your marketing materials, your emails to the point of spinning in circles? Or even worse, to the point of not sending them out at all?

It’s time for a perfection intervention!

You know that there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to creating content for your business, right? It is simply impossible to get to this mythical point called ‘perfection’ because the truth is that you can continue to make changes and improvements for ever! Creative work will never be perfect, but at a certain point, you must just decide that it is done.

An old CEO of mine once said: “Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.” I didn’t realise how true that was until I started my own business. You see, it’s always easier to let go of the content when it’s not your baby that it relates to. Not that I was ever sloppy or slapdash with my content previously, but when I was writing for other brands, the attachment simply wasn’t as high as it is with my own; it was easier to let it go at ‘really good’ versus ‘outstanding’.

It’s perfectly normal and understandable for any business owner who has vested endless energy and effort into getting every little detail of their business just right, to want to get every single word perfect. What I’m going to suggest however, is that you may need to lower your standards a bit. Now, I’m not saying to put out low-quality content by any means, but if your standards are so high that you never actually reach them, you are in fact inhibiting your own growth. How will anyone get to know, like and trust you if they never hear from you? How will prospects understand where you position your services if you don’t talk about them? It is important to strike a balance and have standards that are achievable.

Perfection paralysis is a real thing. But it’s not a good thing if you want your business to expand.

Here are 4 considerations that may help you to embrace imperfection.

Just start creating

Author, Brene Brown, summed up this irony beautifully in her book Daring Greatly: “Perfectionism crushes creativity – which is why one of the most effective ways to start recovering from perfectionism is to start creating.” Perfectionism can cause us to stop creating before we even get started simply due to fear that we won’t live up to our own standards. Ridiculous but true! And the more we do this, the more it continues to occur. The reality is that self expression and creativity are inherently messy and imperfect.

Take the example of painting. In our culture, most adults refuse to pick up a brush and paint a picture because they think they can’t create something worthwhile. Head to any kindergarten or preschool however, and the room will be filled with enthusiastic painters, all creating their own masterpieces freely and excitedly. They have not yet learnt the meaning of perfectionism. Their messy, imperfect paintings are beautiful!

Conversation and connection

Building relationships with people is the primary purpose of business content, therefore, when creating content it may help to think about it like a conversation. When you talk to someone you don’t plan every word you are going to say ahead of time. You may hesitate or struggle for words but that doesn’t reduce your ability to connect with that person. In fact, showing some ‘humanness’ and imperfection often makes you more relatable. Remember the old saying ‘nobody is perfect’? Well it’s true! So stop trying to be. If you’re aiming to provide a flawless image in your business comms you may actually be doing damage to your brand. Why? Because you raise questions and concerns amongst your readers about the possibility of perfection. You alienate them by making them feel less than worthy, which is the opposite of what you want to do with your content.

Consider the stats

Short-term content pieces, such as emails and blogs, unfortunately don’t get read all the way through by up to 70% of viewers. Sad but true! Most readers skim read these pieces of content. So, as far as perfection goes, it may help to realise that your audience is NOT nit-picking your content nearly as much as you are!

Everything is a test

As business owners we should always be trying and testing and measuring new things. As entrepreneurs and innovators – that’s what we do! Inevitably, it won’t all land perfectly. Viewing this as ‘failure’ however, is not useful to anyone. Rather think of it as R&D – research and development. The more you try things out, the more information you uncover, which helps you to do it better or differently next time. And since nothing is ever perfect, everything is a test!

Stop aiming for perfection, and start seeking out the beautifully imperfect. It is there that you learn and grow.

Let me know if you struggle with perfection….I can help.

Are measurable results the only ones that matter?

Did you know there’s a new version of the ‘star chart’ in schools? The digital-age version called Dojos. You do a good deed you get a Dojo, you do something dodgy, one could be taken away. Standard action-reward stuff, just now in an app for all to see.

We’ve all come across these before. Perhaps you rememebr the chart that had your name on it, either on the fridge, comparing you with your siblings, or on the school wall, highlighting your actions compared with your school mates’. There was your name, in neat handwriting down the left with a hopeful blank column, waiting to be filled with stars.

In the class Dojo system, there is currently a predictable distribution of ‘points’ — nothing unusual amongst an average population of 9 year-olds. Most have earned two or three Dojos. One girl is streaking ahead with six. Then there is Tom without a single star to his name. There’s always a Tom.

Everybody, including Tom, knows he’s at the bottom of the Dojo pile. And nobody, including Tom, really knows why. Dojo-less, Tom now bears the label of ‘the naughty one’ because he can’t seem to get to grips with performing at a Dojo-worthy level, of doing the measurable Dojo-worthy things.

And so it is in business, where most success is defined by what it’s easy to put a number on.

Revenue, sales, profits, visitors, growth, impressions, likes, database size, event numbers, open rates, page views etc. All the things that fit neatly on a spreadsheet. And yes, they’re important, and the truth is spreadsheets – like Dojo apps – don’t lie.

The problem is, they don’t tell the whole story. There’s no measurement for the intentions we have, the effort we made, the impact of our work and the difference we will make over time—not just this term or this quarter.

Interestingly the people with the most Dojos, or gold stars, or numbers on their spreadsheets, don’t always win.

In fact, sometimes they lose. They’re often so busy reaching for the stars to stick on the chart, doing the Dojo-worthy deed, that they forget to really see the brightest stars or the daring deeds outside the Dojo.

I hope you’re spending some time NOT measuring your success on an app or a star chart.