by Angella Johnson | Nov 15, 2018 | Biz Tips, Free Resources, How-tos |
You know you need help, but what do you give someone to do for you? I tell my clients to hire a VA for even just five hours a month. This does two things: It gets you out of “I-have-to-do-it-all mode” and gets you in the habit of having support It gets you in your zone of genius and into the tasks that actually make you money You can Google lists of stuff your VA can do for you. Things like this: https://www.chrisducker.com/25tasks/ are really great lists. Here’s a list of what I have my team members do: Assistant #1: Scheduling and managing all appointments in Acuity, which is the scheduling system I currently use Website updates Email System: Sends newsletters (I write the content and a lot of the times I send the newsletters but I’d like to remove the sending of emails off of my plate completely. Sets up reminder emails for live calls Sets up email sequences Tags people accordingly sets up forms Shopping cart sets up products connects the purchase to the membership system if applicable sets up coupon codes processes payments Handles all customer service emails, including questions people have about their login info, access to programs, etc. Figures out technology glitches and escalates issues to my web person if she can’t solve it Assistant #2: Event and retreat concierge and research Communicates with the venue and vendors for all event details Researches event details then provides the details to me so I can confirm decisions Content Repurposing: Manages videos and audios on all channels Posts one meme per week to my FB group and page...
by Angella Johnson | Nov 15, 2018 | Biz Tips, Free Resources, How-tos |
What is truly required to grow a business without over-spending your time or money? What support do you actually need? In the coaching world, there are lots of folks (I used to be one of them) who say, “You need a coach.” My point of view now is that statement can be a great system for coaches to convince people to work with them. I now don’t believe that everyone needs a coach. I’ve certainly hired people when I thought I “needed” a coach and what I really needed was clarity on what I was creating and IMPLEMENTATION support. Time and time again, I have seen clients and a LOT of entrepreneurs struggling with taking action and getting results from the plan and strategies they hire. I’ve seen my own clients struggle with this. If you’re not getting results, consider this: Hiring another coach may not actually help you get results. You may not have a mindset issue. You may not even have a money issue. So what will create results? And where is the real problem? In a lot of cases it comes down to two things: Lack of clarity. Clarity in what? I’ll get to that in a second. Implementation. Most entrepreneurs I know of pretty much suck at implementing. They are great at the visionary stuff but when it comes down to actually getting the details DONE, no bueno. So what do you do if the implementation is not your zone of genius? Maybe technology isn’t your thing. Maybe setting up your website isn’t fun for you, in fact, maybe it’s a train wreck. I was...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Biz Tips, Events and Workshops, Free Resources, Live Events and Tips, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events, Uncategorized |
Did you catch the intro, part 1 about Speakers and part 2 about selling in this series? Part 3: Hosting Yes, there are speakers who don’t care and their focus is to get as many sales as possible, whether it’s a fit for someone or not. I’ve been behind the scenes at enough multi-day events to hear the conversations about how to GET as many sales from people and it doesn’t matter who the person is, what they really need, or if what they’re being sold is actually a fit for them. In my experience, there are a LOT more people who actually care then don’t care. Remember in the very beginning of this article series and I shared that one of my events called THRIVE was more salesy than I was comfortable with? How did I let that happen? Why did I let that happen? The answer is simple: I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Fear or Out of Alignment? When I expressed my concern that it was too salesy to my mentor, I was met with “Oh that’s just your fear talking. I promise this will work.” That was one of the many experiences I’ve had that taught me the difference between being out of alignment and fear. At the time, I was experiencing both fear and that something was WAY off for me. I didn’t know how to discern it and I was paying people lots of money to tell me what to do and no one was asking me what was true for me. I now make very different choices when...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Events and Workshops, Live Events and Tips, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events |
If you missed the intro to this article series, check it out here. Part 1 about speakers is here. Part 2: Selling at Events At one of my conferences, I allowed my speakers to sell something less than $200 and they could use the last five minutes of their 50-minute presentation to “pitch.” A friend of mine later told me that she “heard” my event was just a big sales pitch. Clearly, they had never been to a true pitch fest. I was happy to let my speakers sell and felt confident that they were focused on providing value. Even though that was my experience, some people felt that was just too salesy. I share this because I learned that I can never make 100% of the participants happy. One person will criticize the event or speaker while the next person is elated with joy. Is victimizing event participants the solution to putting more value and integrity into events? The real problem with these pitch fests isn’t the pitch itself, it’s the participants. How could I possibly say something so absurd??? After attempting to change the way events hosts were hosting and speakers were selling to be more authentic and getting nowhere, I realized that I cannot change events from the top down. I gave event hosts feedback. I asked= my coaches about their strategies that were more pitch fests than events and was met with a nice pat on the head. It was clear my feedback wasn’t going to change the way these events were being done. I had to go from the bottom up and from the...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Biz Tips, Events and Workshops, Live Events and Tips, Speaking and Events |
If you missed the intro of this series, go here. Part 1: The Speakers In 2009, my vision of hosting transformational women’s conferences came to fruition with my first Ignite Your Spark conference. Since then I’ve had over 100 speakers on my stages and many more on my virtual stages for telesummits and podcast. Why am I mentioning this? Speakers vary and while there are speakers out there like Leonie’s article mentions, there are amazing speakers too. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the ugly side of speakers at events. Speakers who… … threw a tantrum (literal tantrum) because I didn’t have the right kind of tea in the speaker break room. … flat out lied on how much they sold so they didn’t have to pay me my percentage… … at the last minute changed their offer to a $20 offer from the stage so they only had to pay me my 25% of the sales and then quickly upsold people to their higher-priced programs but since the upsells weren’t technically sold at the event, I didn’t receive a commission on those sales. I’ve seen the absolute delight and integrity by speakers too, which is what I experience most of the time. The difference between the dramatic and the delightful? There is a big difference between speakers who want to speak to my audience to GET something vs speakers who genuinely desire to contribute value and CO-CREATE something with me. Get vs co-create. Do you get the difference there? Guess which speakers I have on my stage? Tip: when speakers ask me what my vision is for the event and how they can contribute...
by Angella Johnson | Oct 22, 2018 | Live Events and Tips, Marketing, Overcoming Blocks, Resources and Invitations, Speaking and Events |
What inspired this article series: Leonie Dawson, a woman I’ve authentically admired for years, posted a fantastic and brutally honest blog about attending a 1-day Gary Vaynerchuk event that you can read here. A friend of mine shared her blog on Faceboook and I commented: It’s why I started teaching how to do events differently. This is not just Gary but I can name dozens of events I’ve been to like this. I started hosting my events with more of a sales focus as this was ALL I saw where people actually made money. But I changed things. You can make great money by hosting events and they don’t have to be a pitch fest! And my hope is that consumers wake up and powerfully choose what’s aligned for them. No one forces anyone to use their credit card and it can feel that people have “no choice” and have buyer’s remorse. But we’ve got to speak up and choose what works for us! It’s the second paragraph that I want to emphasize here. Is anyone truly forced to buy something? While it’s great to educate people that events like what Leonie describes actually happen, I feel that it’s important to empower people to exercise their intuition and to learn how to say no. This goes far beyond being slimed or “forced” into buying something. No one is forced. Convinced? Yes. Coerced? Yes. Shamed? Yes. Persuaded? Yes. But actually forced, as in someone MADE them pull out their credit card? No. It can sure feel forced though, can’t it? Am I preaching to the choir? I think sharing experiences like Leonie...
