Full Transcript

Jen Liddy
Here we go. You know, sometimes when you put your head down and you're just working in your business so much and then you pick up your head and you're like, okay, it's time to work on my business. You might realize that your business feels diffuse, that this energy is leaving. Time is leaving money is leaving resources or leaving like, things are kind of flying out the window, and you're not really sure how to get them back. Or you're doing a lot in your business, but something's not working, and usually, people blame themselves.

But really, there are holes in our business, and this happens to every one of us. So today I'm talking with Claudia Shocks, who is my favorite marketing expert. And she and I work very closely together. And today we're going to talk about how do you how do you know if you have holes in your business, how do you find them? What do you do about them? So that's what we're talking about today. If you ever feel like there's holes leaking out stuff from your business, listening.

Hi, Claudia.

Claudia Schalkx
I'm sweetheart. How are you doing? Thank you for, because it's my marketing philosophy. But let me answer the first question because that's the shortest to answer. How do you know if you have holes if you don't have money in your bank account or what if you have some money.

Jen Liddy
But you don't have all the money that you want?

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. So if you don't have what you want out of your business, you have holes in your business. So you're doing you want clients or certain type of clients, or you want to do a launching and it doesn't work well. Or you have a website and it's not helping you to grow your business. Or then you have holes in your business. So whatever you have as a goal for your business and it's not working, you have goals in your business, and most probably those whole starts with how you market your business because you have several areas in your business.

You have marketing, you have sales or sales calls. In the case of Solopreneurs, right. Then you have the people you need to make your business work. Then you have the systems and at the end of that chain, you have your finances. So normally you see it in your finances where your business is not working because you're not making the money you want, you don't have the freedom you want, whatever is that that you want. But the signs are much earlier in the process. It's only that we see it in the bank account.

If you see that marketing, essentially, marketing is what you put in place to reach your business goals. Okay. It starts with marketing your business. It starts with telling the world that you are there to solve a specific problem in a specific way with a very concrete result. So what you have to do is connect your marketing to your business growth and not having business goals here and marketing there, they have to connect. So when you see marketing, I would like that you picture like a circle and in the center you have the customer who is your ID apply.

And around that customer, you would have, like, possible pieces of what do you say? Which is your message, how you attract clients? Right? Where do you say it? Which would be your website, social media or whatever platform you use to share your message? What do you do to be found? Because that's going and what you do to grow the relationship. So being found is, for instance, your message keywords search engine optimization, distributing your content that's being found. Growing the relationship is content is creating products and services that are further down in the funeral for your client free things.

You do everything that helps to grow the relationship from being liked to by these four areas. They move around your customer. You know, the moment one of this is not working, then your whole thing won't work. So then where did you look? How do you know if it's your message or it's your website or your social media or what it is? So I would say if you could I always dream of a way that people put out to diagnose what they have so that they can go for the right solution rather than try doing everything right?

Yes.

So, for instance, you know that you have problems in your customer or in our favorite topic. Then, for instance, you can describe the pain in the customer works. Okay. So if somebody says, what is the problem your clients have and you start and use all this yard, you are already there. You have a problem because that means that not being able to describe the problem in their words, you are not connecting. Okay. Are you solving the problem you have to solve? Are you solving the right problem because you have the ability to solve different problems in a given area.

For instance, in my case, marketing, I can solve websites. I can solve the marketing fundamentals. I can solve different things, but I need to fight what is the problem most urgent problem? My ideal client has to establish a relationship. So if you are solving a luxury problem, it might be nice to have, but it's not something that will move the needle and have this person to connect with you. So you need to make sure and you know that you're not solving the right problem because people and ask for a refund or they have too many questions or they say, I thought you were doing this or I thought I was getting this out of the service.

So when you play have different expectations. Another thing is, for instance, if your customers are price-sensitive, then you know you have a problem in the customer area. What else? The other thing is you know what you have. And I love this one is if you have low cash flow in high season. So, for instance, the low season for me is the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays because I mostly work with mom or nerves. So when the school holidays are there, they turn their attention somewhere else.

Okay. The other side should be high fees for me. So if I have a low cash flow during the high season, that means I'm not doing what I have to do. So, for instance, if you can say what makes you different from other people rendering similar services, then you have a problem in the customer area there.

Jen Liddy
So yeah, it's a lot of clarity issues. It's a lot of understanding the stuff that we talk about all the time, understanding your customers, how they speak, understanding how they describe their needs, understanding what they want. Right. And then are you putting the things in place to get the cash flow? And so these are the things that we're always talking about. But what I find is that when somebody find something wrong with their business, they try to change all the things at once and what that does to them, then they can't narrow down what the problem was.

For example, if you had a landing page for a free and it wasn't converting, what people will do is they'll change the freebie. They'll change the verbiage on the landing page. They'll change how the optin form works, like they'll change all the tech rather than just focusing on one thing at a time to see what needs to be tweaked. And that is another place that steals our time and energy.

Claudia Schalkx
And for instance, similarly, in that case, you have to see where the process starts and where people who off your process. So the thing is not converting. So if you're having traffic, but there is no converting, then you can see if it's the language, which is not because you're getting traffic to the freebie. So it might be the call to action, or it might be something in the freebie itself. So you don't need to alter the process before downloading the freebie. If you after the free, we have, like, three or four automatic email messages and people hook off after a third.

Then you know, there is something in the secret. You just outer the secret, you know, and then go to the people who have downloaded your resource and ask them and say, you know, I saw that you downloaded. You haven't opened it. Maybe it flew over your head, maybe whatever. Here it is. So, you know, do very concrete things to go to the source. Don't go let you say to everything, because maybe you're screwing up what's working.

Jen Liddy
Yes. Yes. Because if the call to action is good and you have done everything else and change all of it, you'll never know which piece works. I find that that's just a huge waste of time. And energy for people, definitely.

Claudia Schalkx
And, you know, marketing is the freebies, for instance, a very good example of that. Marketing is so many speakers moving like in a system. So when you change one, you will see a triple down to the rest of the system. If you change all of them, you may be creating worse damage than you had before intervening. Then switch no one thing. And it's also you will have less headaches because you say, okay, then you can say, okay, it isn't a message because people is coming. There is something in my ad that is attracting them.

But then there is something in the deliverability that is not working. So go check your, for instance, check your call to actions. Check what happens if the links are working because so many times if we plaster the wrong link up behind the cold drive, right. It's a technical thing. It's a tiny little same thing that everybody overlooks, and it's so easy to fix. But then you have to go and see one by one instead of going like with a tractor do the whole effect.

Jen Liddy
I would love to give an example of this. I have this very popular downloadable freebie called the Customized Content Planner. I think it's how you and I found each other. And then my Facebook ad guy suggested that I put on the thank you page. I put an upsell to online workshop that I have called batch or content code. The thing was no, it got zero conversions on. That's what I said. So I had to really go in and look at all the data that I have people get into that I have a three email welcome sequence and I overtly say in that welcome sequence, I'm not going to sell you anything here.

All I'm going to do is offer you other solutions and examples. That's it. So I want them to know up front I'm not going to sell to them, but they've already gotten the thank you page where they've been sold to. So they're already a little depression. Yes. And the second thing is what I found about my people when I really went in and did some researches, my people come to me so overwhelmed because content is so oppressive to them and helping them with more Sal. Yes.

And to offer them another solution when they're really hoping that this planner will be their solution. And for many people it is. But for many people, they need more, but they're not ready for that. At that point, they're full. That's all they can take. So thinking that, oh, my content sucked or my email sucked or my thank you page sucked or that the workshop was bad. Those were all be mistakes that I would make if I had not gone to the source like you said and find the whole and the whole is that those people are just so overwhelmed at that point, they can't handle anything more that's true.

Claudia Schalkx
And you know, when you have a look at your by persona, you will know that they are overwhelmed, that they don't see anymore, the forest through the trees. So your solutions have to be quick, clear and short. So you were like stepping on your own toes by adding to the complexity of the situation. So you need to everything you put out there, everything you put up there, you have to bounce a tumble. It against your buying persona. How is this contributing to making the life samples? Is this the moment when they are ready for that?

But you see it's in your by persona where the mistake was.

Jen Liddy
Which is always is if you go drill down to your buying process. Yeah. We've been talking about holes with money. Do you ever get a client who has holes with, like, they're spending too much time on things?

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. Marketing. You know, we tend to lose a lot of time because we want results very quickly. So we said automation, and then we never the automation. And then we do this, and then we do that and we don't necessarily complicate things. So there you lose a lot of time because you first need to learn the systems you need to learn the technology you need to put it for you. And that is a lot of time unless you're thinking of different.

Jen Liddy
No, I think that there's this thing that people will, like waste a lot of time on something that they think is going to be the silver bullet. Like you're saying, like, for me, I wasted a lot of time on that sales page on the Think. Good morning, Liz. I wasted a lot of time on that sales page or on the thank you page to do an up sell, which was a suggestion. I wasted a lot of time because I was hoping that that would save me time.

But ultimately, I have learned I need to cultivate a relationship with my audience on my email list and in my socials. And that takes time. So I wasted time doing one thing that I thought was going to save me time rather than just putting the time where it really would have been more beneficial.

Claudia Schalkx
Well, then again, go back. You should have gone back to your bi persona or your ID appliance and say, okay, is this really contributing? And if it's really contributing, then the next question is, how is this in line with how I connect with people? You know, because, for instance, you you are very good at connecting also with faceless audiences, because you have the courage of doing videos talking to yourself. You know, I couldn't visit for me. This is the formatted. Org, but it is because I connect in a one on one situation.

So my marketing is to create situations that I can have these conversations one on one. So in your case, if I would have been doing that freebie, I would have asked myself, Is this contributing to one on one or this is giving this person more tools that is putting this moment we meet further down the road.

Jen Liddy
Well, I love this aspect of the conversation because my whole philosophy is keep people out of content overwhelmed. That's my whole platform. I just want to give them bite size the minimum amount that they need to get to the next step. But having an upsell on that thank you page was out of alignment for me. It didn't work. That was a whole for me that I couldn't see clearly because I was working with somebody who's an expert in Facebook ads. And that's just what's done in the so it took me standing up and saying, no, I'm not doing that.

I'm not going to do that. And him saying, okay, that's fine. The journey is just going to be slower. And I'm okay with that being slower.

Claudia Schalkx
Definitely. You know, very interesting that you say that because a choice I made on purpose is to remain general, a marketing general that I could help my clients with every aspect of their business. And if I can solve them, I do it. But if I cannot, I can redirect them to the specialist, not the person but the specialist that's going to have them, for instance, Facebook ads or whatever or design or whatever. But in the end, it's us to know our business. It's us to know our clients so we can't lose that out of site.

We need to ask ourselves, how does this align with who I am? And then again, this goes back to a conversation we had recently in one of your workshops, the personal brand. It's a personal brand for us. Sort of. It's personal. So we always have to ask ourselves, Is this really who I am? I would I like this. Would I like to be upset so self or upsold?

Jen Liddy
Yeah, that's a good question. And the thing is, I have been upsold before, and I've bought things on the thank you page, but I'm a quick buying persona. I'm a quick decision-maker. My people, when they come to me, they're so freaking beaten down by all the bullshit that's been spewed at them that they're not quick buying personas. It's a much longer journey. And again, it goes back to knowing yourself, knowing your buyers and then knowing your customer journey.

Claudia Schalkx
So if, for instance, in the case, you and I have where we have slower. So you need to put all things in place to keep the conversation going without overwhelming them. So, for instance, what you do online, which is solo conversations that you have, as I called up here, you clarify a point or where you tell something about yourself or whatever, you're showing your face, you're giving something else value, but you are not pushing them, and you're giving them the space to process. But on the other hand, I think you are very good at a call to action.

Your call to action is really very good. And you also know what to say. The call to action and you also know where to place it. It helps a lot. But yet the still frustrating thing about marketing is that it's not linear and you have so many moving parts. So, you know, I really understand that people lose their sites out of the marketing and they say, you know what? I am going to do a clean slate and they move everything and they start from zero and let us all some time.

I see it is in fact.

Jen Liddy
Liz actually just asked the question. I'm not sure if you can see it on your and she said, how about the time and money for the guru courses? To be told, I'm doing it wrong. Is this me? And I think that one of the things we can do when we have bought a guru course because I have several guru courses. I'm living on my computer that I've never been finished. I wonder if we can ask ourselves, like, what can I take from each of these that feel good to me and just implement?

Jen Liddy
Because all of the step by step stuff doesn't work for everybody. Or does it work for every audience number?

Claudia Schalkx
It's a tip. How do I want to buy a guru course or not? Good. I got you normally or don't give you context. The conversation is strictly focused on a part of the process, like Facebook apps, and they only talk about Facebook app and what happens when your Facebook at work. But they don't talk about what you need before getting to Facebook, right.

Jen Liddy
Okay.

Claudia Schalkx
And they don't say what happens after you have textbook. So if you don't have a kind of a road map or a signature system where you can see where the solution falls, an overall thing, don't buy it because probably you will need something after or before that. You don't have or you're not ready or you don't need to make that even clearer.

Jen Liddy
If you still can't say this is my audience. This is exactly my audience. This is my buyers persona. This is how they solve their problem. This is the solution that they're looking for. If you're struggling with those three things, you're not ready for any of the guru courses.

Claudia Schalkx
Actually, the other thing, Coral itself doesn't say, you know, to have Facebook ads, you need to have this preparation, and I'm giving you the preparation. Okay.

Jen Liddy
Right.

Claudia Schalkx
It's like parachuting. Girls, things are parachuting. The folks into a point in the map entering don't see what is around for that landing point that we need to find the landing points. For instance, when people say, you know, I use this example before because it's so good. If you create a community, you know, you will have a target you can sell to qualify them. Okay. Sounds very good. Tell people tell you how to create a community. So they say you need to buy a persona. You need this, you need a product, you need a service, you need a topic, but they don't touch.

How are you going to grow a frame?

Jen Liddy
That's great.

Claudia Schalkx
And that is after you said the base. So they should say, for instance, I am not going to help you to grow a community. I am going to help you to set state is the foundation for a community, right? They say I will help you grow a community. Bullshit. You are not going to help. Sorry. You're not going to help me grow a community. You are going to help me set up for one. Yeah.

Jen Liddy
So you really have to understand what the problem is and where the whole is. For example, there's a big course about how to start a membership site, for example, from start to finish. Create a membership. And people love to buy that big course. It's like hundreds of people are taking this course at the same time as you, but they never tell you once your membership is created, how to market in and fill it. And then what to do about the churn of people coming in and out.

Right. So those are just the things that we are forgetting to ask ourselves because we're so in that deep end of the pool just paddling along and we think we read the marketing to be like, oh, this is the fantasy. It's going to take care of everything. So that's why cloudy and I always talk about all of these foundational things. The problem is these are the boring parts of the business.

Claudia Schalkx
But going back to the example of the membership, what I see this will illustrate. My point is these people selling this membership, they don't tell you what which stage of your business are you ready for share? So everybody's talking about do courses online because the money is in the online. The money is in the mass. The money is here and you need to start one on one. You need last yourself. You know what is important for me? Because for me it's important that I work with you, that I understand war you.

What is your problem? What is your dream? How are we going to make that happen? I can do that if I am in a mass of people. So I don't say never. But online course is not. I don't think it's as easy as everybody makes it sound like I am asking myself the very harsh question. Is there where I want to go? Is that something for me and not being lured by the idea that the money is in the math and then you will have more free time is full shit to go back to your essence and who you are.

And then again, if the girls are not telling you what you need, where in your business you need to be the best use of this.

Jen Liddy
Don't buy it like this is appropriate for someone who has done XYZ and is at this point and knows that the ABC is next after that. So these are such good questions to think about. The thing that I know Claudia actually does help people with is creating their framework to know where in your business are you? What do you need first? What do you need back? So if you are looking for that kind of support, where are the holes in my business or if you're somebody struggling with buyers persona, understanding your own framework.

Jen Liddy
Claudia really can help you. I've worked with her personally, and she really can help you. In fact, I actually suggest a lot of my clients go work with her because she has a very specific expertise that I don't. I'm going to put your link in the comments to your Claudia, but anything else you want to say about this topic of the whole or business?

Claudia Schalkx
Yeah, I have to laugh. My website as a whole. In my business.

Jen Liddy
The Cobbler's children.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. But, you know, I think what you were mentioning about the signature system is so interesting because that's exactly the tool you need that tells people what is the whole roadmap with you and then they can see what it's before or what it's after. So, yes, that will. Definitely. We have to add that then that will definitely set you apart from the words.

Jen Liddy
Yes, it really will. And then it gives you this confidence to talk about your business in a way that you have never been able to talk about it. My business is a fishing that I don't know who that is because it won't show me. But I'm wondering what that means. My business is a fishing net. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know if they mean rather than like a line. It's like a net. I don't know what that means. Is that good or bad.

Claudia Schalkx
Of working with a lot of personas got you gathering everything, and then she doesn't know what to do with it.

Jen Liddy
I bet that feels really like a lot of paralysis and a lot of spinning around. Yeah, the whole yes, the hold.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. Yes, yes. Claud, you got it. I did it.

Jen Liddy
Claudia got it.

Claudia Schalkx
Claudia, as usual.

Jen Liddy
Thank you for a great conversation. I think this gives people a lot to talk about. Bye, everyone. Thanks for showing up. Let us know if you have any questions. Tag us in the comments. We'll always come back to them and answer them for you.

Claudia Schalkx
Bye-bye.