901: My Story of Bravery and Coming Out From Behind The Curtain
This is a really interesting time for me in my business. I feel like I’m finally coming into my own, and giving myself permission to do what I want to do the way I want to do it.
And that takes a lot of courage. Bravery. And self love.
Here’s the funny thing. I’ve never been a marketer. I’m a creative. And I often get lumped into the “marketing bucket,” which is much my own doing in that I always had a hard time clarifying what I do for clients. So ironic, right? Especially since I’m so awesome at clarifying that for my clients. Reason why is because I lack the objectivity I need to isolate what it is, and end up bouncing all over the place. And everyone has that about their own business. It’s human and it’s okay.
I came up with the theme for this season as a result of my own journey in coming out from behind the curtain of doer for others. What I mean by that is last year I realized I was sort of hiding from the world. Much of it was unconscious because I’d always performed my work for companies who used my talents and creative for their marketing or business development purposes. I was hired to do a task, create an asset, and thankyouverymuch haveaniceday.
When I started my business in 2006, I just kept operating the same way, but with clients instead of bosses. I did the work, gave it to them, they paid me and I went on my way. Thankyouverymuch haveaniceday.
It’s always been a challenge for me to market myself, believe it or not. I’ve never been great at promoting my services—in fact, my first ten years in business was all referral based. I was spoiled rotten and naive about what I had to do to keep my business running and earning income to support myself. Over time, however, the referrals started dwindling, getting less and less. I had to figure out how to get new business and that was a bit of a challenge.
See, the problem with how I was getting referral business was almost every referral was coming in for a website. I could do a lot more than just build someone a better website. To keep them as clients I started offering other services. Everything from qualitative customer experience research to shooting video interviews. I was making shit up just to keep income coming in, which further widely distributed my business offerings and obliterating any niche because I’d become a generalist. These are the things I did to keep my business afloat. Was it smart? Not really. Was it reactive? Absolutely. But it did birth a smarter business strategy, thankfully.
Things are different today in what I offer and how I go about getting business. I developed a solid product offering about 5 years ago that I still use today, and it works great for my clients. It includes done-for-you with tactical coaching and gets great results.
But the products and strategy I developed for my business, although effective, still wasn’t getting me to step out and be more visible. I really resisted doing that. I had a very quiet social media presence, and although I can create profuse amounts of valuable content, I wasn’t making offers. I wasn’t inviting people to engage. I was all push, and no pull.
In the business world today, you have to pull—or attract—people into your world. That’s the philosophy of HubSpot, who coined the term inbound marketing. I was doing inbound a little, but not enough. As a result, my prospect list stayed small and I relied on guerrilla marketing and traditional in-person outreach to meet prospects.
I simply didn’t like the pushy, salesy side of selling, which is another factor in why I wasn’t putting myself out there strongly. I saw what other solopreneurs were doing and frankly, I didn’t like it. These are just some of the reasons I stayed hiding, and also as a result of never needing to market myself when I worked in the corporate cubicle world.
Now, all that said, where I’ve been traveling over the last year has been about forcing myself to change that. I say force because as you can tell by my track record, I have really sucked at doing it for my own business. This podcast episode right here is an example of how I’m being more vulnerable and putting the real Terry out there splat right in front of you.
So what I’m examining more closely is what it is to build a business of you for ME. This comes from one of my products, my Business of You Generator, which is for all intents and purposes a done-for-you solution of deliverables that include a branded conversion website and inbound marketing lead generator with an email nurture series. Plus, anything else a client would need, such as setting up their podcast or helping them start a new blog or some form of content marketing strategy.
What I mean for it to represent is to design a business that fits YOU, reflects YOU, and expresses YOU. This is why I am using the “1000% you” idiom more liberally, to drive more strongly the meaning of a business that truly is designed around and through you. It’s your creation. It’s your work. It’s your emotions, ideas and communication expressed. It’s how you co-create and collaborate with others. It’s how you are inspired and are inspiring. It’s everything about you and what makes you, 1000% you.
So this season is going to be an exploration into making your business 1000% you, because that’s what I’m doing for myself. I’m not sure what it will yield, but what I am discovering is that I’m no longer going to force myself to do what everyone else is doing to be successful in business. I’m not going to do the tactics or manipulations that pretty much the entire marketplace is savvy to and often ignores. I’m going to find new ways of being me, showing my real self more, and having more fun. And make more offers because I want to continue to serve until I can’t serve any more.
I know I have value, as I have proven that I can help a client transform their entire business into something they love, experience as a joy and happily make money from. In fact, their businesses always take off as a result of work we do together. I respect that we each create and attract what we need, and trust how it will continue to show up in my life.
This is going to be exciting, scary and fun, and I’m glad you’ll be along for the ride. Let’s go together and see what unfolds!
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