Creators Academy Bridge to Business Success May 24 Monthly Call - Your Brand Identity

Let's go. Welcome to Bridge to Your Business Success, part of the Creators Academy world. It's so exciting to have you here as part of this masterclass. Now, as most of you know, I love sharing information on social media and I love finding hacks on how to do that. And one of the hacks that I've seen consistently being used and have used over the last 2 years is using AI to generate content, get information out there. But more and more and more what I'm seeing is the same stuff. Obviously everyone else is out there and they're just putting out drivel, to be honest. It's not engaging. I don't even feel like clicking the link. I feel like scrolling past it. And quite honestly, there's just no connection. There's no awareness. I don't see any consistency of what people are saying from one week to the next. I'm thinking that they've just like generated something and whacked it out there. And so when I was considering what to talk about and who my special guest would be for this month's Bridge to Business Success, my mind went straight to Sally Curtis. So Sally and I have known each other in an elite marketing networking group for a couple of years. And, you know, she's just the bomb when it comes to understanding not just who you're speaking to, but how you're speaking to them and your brand and understanding your identity. So we look at, you know, all this content and all this narrative out here to get people to your sales and what you're trying to do. There's this steps below, which is turning up as a human, engaging and being authentic. And that's really what I want us to talk about today. And hence why I invited Sally. Now, Sally, I'm going to allow you to also come in and talk a bit about your background. Welcome to Creators Academy.

Thank you so much.

Sally actually has a content generation agency. So she has people who go and create content for her clients. And she has such a depth of understanding and experience there that, you know, I really wanted her with her oversight to bring that into the conversation for us. And you know what I've, I've really appreciated about Sally, you know, she's, she's known for taking some authors' books and creating 2 years worth of content out of one book, which is possibly something we need to talk about at another time, Sally, because I know there's a lot of writers here. And the difference between just putting content out there and actually putting content out there from your book or from your heart or from, you know, your messaging is that there is a connection. You know, you've put that time and effort and attention into how you turn up and who you turn up for. And so, you know, I think that today's masterclass is really special because, you know, we've looked at sales, we've looked at content, we looked at how to get on stages, what to say on stages, frameworks, all these incredible things over the last 18 months. But sometimes it just comes back to who you are, who you serve, how you serve them, and how they know it's you when you turn up in front of them. So, Sal, I'm going to hand over to you. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing with us today.

You are very, very welcome. Thank you and welcome everybody. And so I would love it, um, yes, I've got lots of insights and content to share, which I will, um, but I am totally open to being interrupted in the middle. Um, you can ask questions, and if you've got something you want to ask pop it in the chat or just jump, jump in. I'm an open book, so I love that interaction. So please nag me as much as I promise I'm going to nag you. So let me give you a bit of a backstory. As Jane Slack-Smith said, yep, we have a content marketing agency and we have become best known for turning books into 2 years' worth of content for many of our clients. But what I really help people do is save time and maximize their existing content that they've got, pull out all those inner genius pieces. And we do that through bite-sized content. So can I ask, does everybody understand the concept of bite-sized content? Got a few yes, sort of got a bit of a that. So if you think, and I'm showing my age here, if you think about the old-style postcards that, you know, when someone used to go off on a holiday, you'd get a postcard of a snapshot of their moment and you'd go, oh, wow, look at that, that looks fantastic. And you'd feel something from that emotive postcard. That's bite-sized content. So it's graphic tiles, or it could be a short snippet of a video, but it's bite-sized because it's quick, because we're bored, we don't have attention, a long attention span. So it's bite-sized, it's highly emotive, and it's highly engaging. So this is where when you understand your target market perfectly, you can really, really connect with them. Plus, the reason I talk about bite-sized content and that repurposing element is because it's the easiest for us all to create at scale. So instead of being stuck in a place going, oh my God, I've got to write some content. When you take something that you've written, whether it be an article, a book, or an interview that you've been on, or a seminar that you've delivered, or a training, and you turn it into bite-size, in other words, you get little short snippets out of it, you can stack and create a library of brand assets that you can use as you need to. So by doing a little bit of pre-planning and thinking in advance, you actually enable yourself to develop this library so you can reduce the stress and fatigue of going, oh my God, I've got to create content. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yep. Beautiful. So let me give you a bit of a backstory of where and how I find— found bite-sized content. So my gift really is seeing other people's inner genius and then distilling it down into visual imagery with messaging on it that resonates with the audience. Now I found that because over my career, uh, if I go back way back when, um, I was the bums on seats girls for lots of Australia's leading speakers, um, that business speakers that used to speak nationally. And I was one of the people that helped, uh, Dale Beaumont, uh, first fill his events when he first came to Australia. Sorry, came to South Australia. And it was quite a number of years later that I realized why he was so easy to promote above everybody else. I'll come back to that. After discovering this, I actually went on to fill my own events every month between 30 and 70 people. So again, used to doing that bums on seats. And I did that through content and conversations. And conversations, when they're human, lead to conversions, obviously. But through the process of working with speakers, authors, and coaches in my business, I noticed that one of the common problems was around either content creation or repurposing, but was also this— my favorite word— consistency. So you'll get lots of nagging today from me around consistency, but I'm going to give you some insights and tools around how you can be more consistent and how you can stand out with that consistency. Because what happens when we're inconsistent, it actually diminishes our brand equity. It also diminishes trust in our audience, and obviously that's paramount. And it sort of also slows down our momentum of growing within our business. So the secret that I've discovered working with Dale is he was so easy to promote. He was so— his rooms were easy to fill. We got really, really high conversion rates to the events and also to his programs because at that time he provided me with bite-sized content. He gave me little videos, he gave me tip sheets, he gave me lead magnets, he gave me lots of little things that I could put out on social media and share with my community or put into cold, cold community groups, etc. Those people in those communities audience would consume it. They'd sort themselves, they'd go, "Oh, this is really good," and they'd want a little bit more and they'd want a little bit more and they're getting closer on the journey. We know we've taken them from here and we've sort of led them down the path. And that's what your bite-sized content and consistency will help you do. It actually helps lead your audience down a path with you. And what happens is people were consuming his content, they were sorting themselves out, they were wanting what he offered. So when they got to the event, the conversion rates were high because these leads were hot. They wanted what he was sharing, what he was selling, because they consumed his content. So therefore, the first selling nag is if you're consistent and you're easy to consume, you're easy to buy. That's one of my first takeaways, or shares I should say, with everyone. How does that Does that make sense so far? Yep. Beautiful.

And you know what I love about that, Sally, is that, um, it goes back to our heart, right? It goes back to why we create the business, is that we want a connection, we want to do things. And then sometimes the sales and the, you know, financial pressures and all the messaging of how you're supposed to do it, what's the algorithm doing, and you're trying to do all these things, they get in the way. But just coming back to that simple messaging is like, Well, if you've got really good content and you have really good connection and you have really good conversations, you have really good conversions. And it's the consistency of people seeing you turn up all the time and going, oh, she hasn't changed a tune.

Correct. Yeah. And coming back to that, just to share an insight of mine over the years, my business has changed and evolved as I did. And I remember starting a brand called Business Mums in Business. And prior to that, people would always say, oh God, what are you doing now? When someone says to you, God, what are you doing now? That's code for they've got no idea what you're doing because you keep changing your tune. So that was my first experience. That's where some of these Sally Nags come in through learned experience. And the other one was when I launched Business Mums is I'd had an established audience and 70% of them were men. So I had two comments: are you not working with us anymore? And, but I'm not a mum. So I had alienated the audience I had by sort of trying to narrow a niche down way more than I should, should have done. So there's a couple of little mistakes there that I've made. So I shared that because a lot of what I'm— will share today is insights And I want that— my ultimate goal is to, when I get to the end, is to uncomplicate it for you. But I'm going to get you into thinking differently and into more of an inspired state versus that icky stuff where we've got to do this and we've got to do that, we've got to do this, which is what, um, stalls us because we've got stuck in the gotta-dos versus the where's the inspired place to play and serve. Okay, so just to give you some context, I've done all that working with Dale and speakers like that. I've been putting bums on their seats, been putting bums on my own seats, and I was helping other people fill and grow their businesses as well. Then I started to see my professional speaker community that were creating a lot of content, you know, a book a year, an article a week, etc., stuck on a different hamster wheel creating content, going, oh my God, I've got to create content, and not focusing on growing their their business or being so fatigued and frustrated that they were falling out of love with it. When a couple of them came to me and said, "Oh, for God's sakes, give me your book." I've got a bossy streak, as you can tell. I took some of their books and I pulled out some of those insights and I did turn them into visual graphics, etc., for them to help them lead their audience towards their events. I kept getting asked for it. This is how the agency came about. and then I thought, oh God, this, this could actually be a thing. Could this be a thing? Um, and then I had another client referred to me. He'd just written a 100-page ebook and he'd been interviewed. He had 3 hours worth of interview, video interviews. Um, and he didn't need me to create the graphics. He had his own marketing agency, but they were struggling to pull the inner genius, the little short the simple bits out, the teachable moments, the tips and those sorts of things. That was purely what I did back then before I had my team. We took that 100-page book and those 3 hours' worth of videos and we went through it and highlighted all of his monetizing opportunities. We found over 300 quotes and teachable moments that he could put onto tiles. We found 300— sorry, about 35 other elements of words that he could expand on. So things that he said repeatedly that could be expanded on in videos. And we turned those videos, that 3 hours worth of video, into 32 video snippets. And it was at that point that he said, woohoo, I've created 2 years worth of content. And that was where our tagline has been born from. So not my cleverness, client's cleverness. So give you a bit of an idea there. I think the key thing there is that we all sit on so much content and we get sort of bored with it because we've done it that we don't realize how highly valuable our content and our insights are to other people. And I often talk about, you know, there's money in the boring. When we've got bored with it, it's exactly the time to get it out to our market because we might be bored with it, but it's exactly what our market needs right now. Yay! Because they're on that little bit of an earlier journey with us. So that's really what I wanted to share with you today. Let me jump into my slides and give me 2 secs because I can't talk and do things at the same time. Awesome.

We see that.

And everyone, that's all good for everyone? Beautiful. Does anyone have any quick questions at this stage before I sort of jump into the next bit? But as I said, I'll be asking questions as we go through. Everyone's good? I'm just going to move everyone over to here so I can actually see you. Awesome. Oops, that's jumped up the top. Give me 2 secs. Clearly cannot do tech and talk at the same time. Here we go. Oh, now it's gone down the side. All right, we'll just leave it that where it is because it's not going to cooperate with me. Awesome. So I want to talk, um, about the importance of consistency, and what I want to share with you today is around Finding your consistency rhythm, talking about creating a recognisable brand, and then I'm going to talk about valuable content. And this all ties into what Jane Slack-Smith said around that connection, that humanisation, and the engagement. And I'm going to give you lots of concepts around how and what ways in which you can do that. So consistency, from my perspective, is the most important um, because successful brands are a product of consistency. And we're going to talk today about a lot around major brands and what they do and modeling from the success of some of those major brands. So if I go back and say successful brands are a product of trust, trust is a product of consistency, and consistency is the greatest differentiator of all. Why? Because most people aren't consistent. So let me ask you, where— from a consistency perspective, where is it that you struggle most? Is it that online creation? Is it the business elements? What do you find you struggle with the most as it relates to consistency in your business?

Yeah.

Sle—

oh, your microphone's not working, buddy. You're unmuted. Uh, we can't hear you.

No, can you hear me now?

We got you.

Sorry about that.

It's weird, my headphones were working but the mic isn't.

Um, god bless tech.

Um, so when I am inspired and have a clear relationship to the meaning that I want to bring forward or, uh, an opportunity that I'm promoting, I don't have any issues. But that is reliant on the kind of like ebb and flow of my inspiration. And so having a relationship to content generation, I'm pretty good at creation, but I also recognize how much time and energy it takes and the not getting caught up in the do-do-do of strategic marketing. Which at the end of the day feels like a schlog. It's like when I'm inspired, great, you know, I've got the message, I've just taken some inspiring photos, I can make something that is original and of me, and I think therefore connects with other people.

Yeah.

But how to have a relationship to consistency that kind of goes beyond myself and is like a structure that I put into place that I then can work through. That feels like where I am beginning to change my patterns. And back when I was a professional performing artist, it was like the show I had choreographed or the show I was in to promote that created consistency because there was— it was scheduled into a calendar. And so I knew that 6 weeks out, you know, leading up to it, created a kind of, um, attention that I would bring my attention to. So that's what I meant.

Yeah, beautiful. You've, you've almost, um, got— I've just— I'm a prolific note taker, so I've just written some things down, you've actually, actually highlighted the steps that I'm going to highlight back to you. So you've got an inner genius going on there already. So I'll come back to you on that.

Yeah, Kath, did you want to ask your question?

Oh, I was just going to say, with that inconsistency thing, it reminded me a short while ago that I was there to promote my work, you know, helping children, and people would come up and say, oh, but I'd like to do the course. And suddenly I'm saying, oh well, you know, you could do the course too. And, and that And, you know, suddenly I was watering down what I was offering because I was trying to grab anybody and anything coming past. And, um, I realized that really took away from what I truly had set out to do. So it really watered down it. And I think it was detrimental rather than, you know, helped out trying to get some customers. I probably lost 2 customers. Yeah, it's often, it's often what we say no to. But sometimes it's very difficult to say no when we're in those early stages. But I've always been reminded of, you know, say no to what you're really not quite sure about or you're not quite inspired about, because the next thing that comes along is the right thing. So just from a— and I love that you used the word— oh, sorry, you've got a question too. Sorry, go for it.

Sometimes I find it difficult to get caught in the consistency of like posting regularly. Consistency is a time aspect as opposed to consistency of what my message is and what I'm trying to deliver. So it's like, oh my gosh, I haven't done something on, you know, this week. Maybe I should put something out there. And this is like, blah, as opposed to me being consistent as to what I, the message that I'd like to bring. So I think there's like the time and then the brand consistency that people expect as well.

Yeah. Let me just, There's some really great keywords there. So from a time perspective, so let me jump on that one, then I'll backtrack it. And finding your consistency rhythm, which is obviously the first point I wanted to bring up today, is it's not whether it's 5 times a week or 7 times a week or whatever. Your consistency rhythm is what you are capable of doing at the time right now on a consistent element. So what can you do logically for the next 90 days consistently. So that— find your consistency rhythm. And then obviously by understanding your avatar and audience well enough, you can sort of work out where and when you need to be or what platform you need to be posting on. So one of the myths I always like to bust is you don't need to be on every platform and you don't need to be on every day. You just need to be on the platform and on when your audience is there so they know when you're gonna be showing up so they can consume you. I've got one client that just does it Sunday 3:00 PM 'cause that's on LinkedIn and that's because that's when his audience is. So his consistency rhythm would be very different to what mine is and it's working out what suits your lifestyle. We got into a business of sharing our expertise for lifestyle and service. But we often forget to serve ourselves in amongst that mix. So find your consistency rhythm, whatever it is that works for you, that you can lock in, that you know you can lock in for the next 90 days, and then work it out from there. If you can be more consistent, increase it. Awesome. I'm going to come back to choreography. So that's one of the things that we talk about. We talk about choreographing your content. So, and you've also talked about a calendar and a plan, and you talked about structuring it. So I'm going to come back with a Sally nag, is everything we do in our business, if it's not in the calendar, it doesn't get done. So I print off 90 days off a calendar and I go, right, what am I selling into for the next 90 days? What are the key dates I'm selling into? And then I go, great, what content topic do I need to be talking about for month 1, month 2, month 3? And then what are the elements for each week? So I actually choreograph it like dance steps across a calendar. So I've got an idea of what I'm doing. So I'm taking the guesswork out of it. You know, that little bit of planning will take you an hour, but it saves you hours a week when you're going, oh my God, what do I need to post today? And when am I going to post it? So you can map it out that way. The other great thing is when you've got it mapped out on the calendar, like I started, you can take a photograph of it and then go, can somebody please post that for me? So it gives you a simple system to actually outsource it and save yourself some time by popping it onto a calendar, whether that's a digital format or a printed format like I used to use. And if you create some of the bite-sized content, which I'll share with you as we go through, you can then direct them to which piece they need to post when et cetera. When you've also got that calendar mapped out and you've got some of your content created in advance, when you see that little piece of bite-sized content like that postcard, you have an emotive experience, which means you tend to stay in that inspired state. And you can also map, almost map out all of that content and what you want to say, often for the 90 days, but certainly for the first month, because you can you see what you're gonna be posting and you're in flow. And most of the problems around consistency is the icky stuff gets in the way, therefore we're not in flow. How does that sound?

Mm-hmm.

Make sense? Cool. One of the couple of quick systems, and I'll come back to this more towards the end that we talk about, is, 'cause I'm gonna share with you lots of imagery today as it relates to emotive images. And I find those avatar emotive images in advance, and we only ever use Canva. So if anyone's— does everyone use Canva? No. Peter, you've got an opportunity to experience Canva. It's a tech platform to create graphics and all of the sorts of imagery that I'm going to share with you, although they are Apple and Nike related, you can find awesome imagery on Canva. And so find your imagery in advance so you don't go down a rabbit warren of wasting time while you're trying to find images. Find them, store them, and then you're just helping to cut down a lot of that wasted time and remain in that inspired state. Okay, gosh, there was lots of Sally Nags in that. Sorry, Jane, you had something pop on?

No, I love Sally Nags. I'm writing notes.

Good, good, good.

In advance, you're right, you go down a rabbit hole, right?

When you're trying to find a image, find them in advance. It's the biggest time saving ever. So that's one of the simple systems we always create for our clients when we're setting up their systems and stuff, their brand assets, et cetera, for them. So the reason why consistency matters, biggest word ever, trust. Trust in yourself for yourself and trust in your audience for you that you're gonna be there for them when they need it. It's the heartbeat. It's the element that builds quality customers. It builds a quality following of people that are like you, that believe what you believe and want to be around and consume your content. And it is really the thing that sets and creates that competitive advantage in a marketplace because it builds reliability. They feel that you're trustworthy, you're helping them have forward movement, you're educating them, um, and you are there for them because they can consume you with ease. Okay, now I'm going to talk to you about what happens when we're inconsistent. And one of the greatest things when we are inconsistent is we actually are funding our competitors' marketing efforts. Yes, I just saw Jane Slack-Smith's face go, ooh.

So this—

tell me more, tell me more. So let me explain.

I thought that was supposed to be finding. I'm like, okay, it's interesting, but no, funding. Now I'm upset.

Funding. Now you're upset. Okay, so this is a visual, um, that I was part of a News Corp, uh, presentation that I did. I, I worked with News Corp with their SME clients, uh, for their sales events. For a number of years. And although this relates to print media, I think it's a really great visual of exactly what happens in our online space as well. So this is a typical print media cycle, and it's often our consistency cycle. So let me explain. You're here, yeah, you're at the— you're climbing the cliff, so to speak. You're putting your content out consistently, your topic's on topic, you're sharing that topic and your wisdom, you're building a community, they're consuming it, they're stalking you, everything's going well, you get to the top, you've had some really good engagement, you've had some sales inquiries come in, you've had some sales, and oh my God, you've got busy. So you go, I've got some sales, and it falls off a cliff. Okay, and then you get down the bottom and you go, oh shit, I need some more sales. And we start being consistent again and we go back up here. We can— we've got our messages clear, we're back out there, they're curious, that we're attracting our audience, they're learning, they're starting to make inquiries, they're doing comments, and we get busy again and it falls off a cliff. You get the gist. So what happens in these gaps is when you disappear The audience that you had attracted this, and especially those ones that haven't engaged with you yet, all those ones that are actually out in the ether that are stalking you from a distance, that were curious and they still are, but suddenly you're not there, you've gone. First off, you've broken trust, you've reduced your brand equity, which I mentioned before, and you've reduced your momentum. But the major cost is you've warmed up that audience, you've got them curious, they're consuming your content on your topic in your area of expertise, you've disappeared, they're hungry. Hungry people go looking for solutions to satisfy their hunger because they're hungry, and they have to then find and consume another expert's content and will often buy that person's that product or offering because they were getting close to ready to buy, and that was what you were doing. But when you've disappeared, they can't buy it from you. They have to buy it from the next person that comes along. Does that blow everyone's socks off?

You've just broken my heart because what you're saying is so true, is that you get busy, right? You have this whole plan, you know, you've got your 90-day plan or whatever, and you get so busy when it's successful and you're patting yourself on the back and then you disappear. And, you know, it just, it makes me remember one of my marketing mentors who talked about the fact in Las Vegas, in, you know, some of those big conventions, they actually tracked people who showed interest in buying taps and, you know, they tap their little card and they track them. And there was only like 20% who bought in the first 30 days, but 80% bought in the next 18 months. And if you get really busy in those first 30 days and they're all of all of a sudden ready in month, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, and you're not there, then you've lost the sale. But you did all the marketing.

So, and it's that, it's that if you call it Dunbar metrics, where there's the immediate people right around you, and then there's the ones that you actually know are around you, and then there's all those people out in the ether that have been consuming you, the cyber stalkers. And they're the ones that buy from you in 18 months' time. So you lose all of that chunk of consistent lead generational conversion opportunity. So I find this visual, as upsetting as it is, it's a really strong reminder of what happens when we're inconsistent.

Cool.

Let me jump into the next one. So the biggest roadblocks that I've, that I find talking to clients is the losing ideas, creation overwhelm, which is sort of partially what we talked about a little bit before, and we can expand on. And then the other element is fear of it, fear of giving their best stuff, best stuff away. So I think one of my other questions here is, you know, do you ever find yourself in that inspired state with ideas popping and then you lose them? Yep. Everyone's going, yeah. You know, the 3 AM, you know, I was gonna say conspiracy. That's not quite right. Epiphany, the 3 AM epiphany where you just go, I wish I should have written, I'll remember it, I'll remember it in the morning and you don't, all those sorts of things. So let's have a look at some of these myths and then I'll give you some solutions as well. So we've all totally forgotten and not captured ideas. So that's obviously one of the biggest things that we need to look at doing is capturing ideas. So I'll come back to this in a minute and share something with you. The other scenario is that, that content overwhelm, e.g., like we mentioned before, oh my God, I've created some content. I've got to create some content on the fly right now. I'm shit staring at a blank sheet of paper or I'm staring at my LinkedIn or Facebook. I can't think of anything. That block when we're in that, we're not in an inspired state, we're in that forced state. So that's obviously the next one, which we'll come to. And then there's this fear of giving their, um, the best stuff away. You've unpacked some of your inner genius. You've got a signature program. People are buying it, but you need to create content, but you don't want to give your good stuff away. Where would you say you tend to sit as it relates to some of those problems? Which one's jumped out for you guys? Pop number 2. Yep. Number 2 as well. Yep. Beautiful. Yeah, I love the balloons. Thank you. So let's have a look at what we can do to capture them. So captured ideas unlocks confidence. When we're confident in ourself, in our content, and our expertise, That's what enables us to grow from a flow state. Ideas ultimately are opportunities, and they help us be in that creative state. When we're in a creative fluid state, we help— it enables us to monetize our business opportunities. So I'm gonna ask you, how are you currently when you do capture those ideas? How are you capturing them? And then I'm gonna give you a tool, um, which you'll be able to get at the end of the session to, uh, capture that.

Just unmute yourself, guys. Call it out.

Yeah, please.

I've got a, uh, a notebook that I keep, um, that I write things down when I'm inspired, and I lost that book one day. Yeah, that was shit. Um, but the good stuff was still up here, right? But, um, planning it out, and I found, um, when I'm, um, I got a little camper van. When I'm on the road, I just get downloads and just bang, just stop and just, it flows.

Yeah, yeah. And it's capturing that beautiful Yeah. Catherine, you've unmuted yourself as well. Yeah, classic. I, you know, I get this idea, think, oh my God, I gotta write that down. So I write it on piece of papers all over the house and then, then go and try and find them. Think, oh, I'm sure I wrote something down. So, so I grab 'em, then lose them. Yep. I've got a solution for you.

Oh, you had one?

Yeah. Thank you. Um, by the way, thank you for this. It's amazing. Um, oh, most of my ideas come through in the shower. So the first time that came through and I thought, oh yeah, I'll remember it. After I wash my hair, completely forgot. And I thought, no, I'm not going to do that again. So actually take my phone in the shower with me, and as soon as it comes in, I do— I speak it out, I record it, and I speak it out, and then it's in the phone. I can go back to it later. Brilliant.

I love that. It's funny, I sometimes I do circles on the shower wall to do a circle in the morning, and I'm like, I'll remember the bridge. But maybe I need my shower— my phone in the shower. Jane Slack-Smith.

So yeah, couple— love that. Um, I'm just going to share some weirdness as we just talk to— oh, sorry.

No, go ahead, please. I was testing my audio.

Testing your audio, talking about weirdness. Um, so I get all— a lot of my downloads in the, uh, when I go and have a my Sunday leisurely bath with my wine and cheese. And I actually— you can actually get whiteboard, um, tear-offs that will actually stick to walls. And I have one of those on my wall in the bath with my poster— with the pen that works on it. So I capture things when that happens. So I've got everything set. So that's one weird thing. Post-it notes are obviously the next best thing, and audio options are the best thing. But it's making sure we've got those tools around us. Now, as Catherine was saying, when it comes to— we're writing stuff down and we lose them. Let me give you a quick run through of my Capturing Your Ideas Airport idea. And this is an ebook that you'll get complimentary, and we'll give you the link at the end of this. So to help you capture your ideas. So the context is, or concept I should say, is quite simple. If you think of an airport, you've got ideas and planes flying around the airport. They're all buzzing around everywhere, and we need to get them onto the runway so we can actually see them and execute them. And then when we've executed the ideas or unpacked them, they've stored into the hangar. So you've got ideas flying, we need somewhere to land them, and then we need somewhere to be able to store them. So I'm just going to show you a visual of mine. Now, um, sticky, um, Post-it notes, all those pieces of paper that you had, Catherine, with a bit of sticky tape, go onto this, onto this board, onto this board, and anything else in, in other ways that you do it. So, um, in the early days I had it on a glass sliding door in my hallway, and now I have it on my wardrobe as a big, big sheet of paper. So it can be either be a sheet of paper or or however it works for you. The reason I, uh, created this Ideas Airport is for me, I'm very visual, and in fact 70% of the population is visual. So we need to be able to see it both from a helicopter view but also from a, you know, right down on the ground, uh, perspective. And when you have all of the ideas as messy and as all over the place and as random as they may be, and we've got them stuck in one spot, you can actually start to see patterns, and then you can actually move those ideas closer together. Um, as I've started to do sort of through here, you can see I've got— had a random idea, and I've just got some other ones, and I've started to move them closer together. So the Ideas Airway is just a way to dump all the ideas on so you've captured them, so you can see them. You may not do anything with them for a while, but at least you've captured them. And it can be references, a little Post-it notes back to those audios, and you know, perhaps a highlighted note out of your journal, etc. And then on the second page, so you've got the first page is you're capturing your ideas, and then the second part of the airport idea is, you know, what are you prioritising? And a simple system here, and this comes back to your content and the consistency, is what's my big word for for the year and what am I focusing on for the 90 days? So what's my big, big word for the year and what are my major topics? And then if you got that focus, so that gives us the focus. So we're not chasing bright, shiny, beautiful things. We're going, okay, my word is this and my topics are these. And then you can work out, okay, well, that idea fits with that, those words and topics. And it helps you prioritize and maintain that consistency of brand, topic, and voice and message. And then down the bottom you've got the sort of the landed ideas of where you've actually unpacked something. And down the side here you can see it's— I've got years and you can sort of work out what content you're going to map out or unpack over the years, etc. So that visual that you'll see in the e-book is more around content. But it works equally as well around business growth ideas or growing your business and strategies around this. This is a really great way to have a visual strategy board of what you're doing and when you're wanting to be doing it. So it's just a really nice way to see stuff because we as humans, we connect with visuals, uh, and it helps us, um, be more in that inspired state. So, um, that's the selling ag around visuals, but you'll get, get a copy of this ebook, um, shortly. Obviously, when you've got all that stuff all over the board, it gives you the opportunities to unpack your genius further, which enables you to actually see your genius. So you can actually start to explore where that expands to. So this helps to overcome that fear of giving it away because you've got a plethora of potential ideas and opportu— and business opportunities as well. Any questions so far? No, everyone's cool. So now I want to get into the, the elements around the recognizable brand, and I am going to deep dive here into the emotive or the visual elements just to give you a bit of a concept around content creation and the visual elements. And we can unpack more of this in the Q&A towards the end. Recognizable brand to me is what happens when somebody sees your content and immediately knows it's yours and they say and feel, oh my God, they get me. That comes about because, as Jane mentioned at the beginning, because you know your avatar really well, you understand their desires, challenges, pains, transformations that they seek at et cetera, and your, your brand voice and message is consistent. And the magic of visual consistency and the human connection comes through the starting of well-chosen colors, fonts, and that emotive imagery. Your logos, your colors, your typography are not just aesthetics. They're your brand's unspoken language. Because successful brands are highly recognizable because of their colors, fonts, and feel. Let me just grab a quick drink. Okay, when I say to you what brand comes to mind that's red, tell me what brand you think of that's red and white, mainly red. Coca-Cola. Yep. Beautiful. That's exactly right. Shared with Coke. So what I'm going to do now is go through and share with you some visual elements that some successful brands use. Why was this particular campaign so successful for Coke? What do you reckon? Yep, Peter?

Personalize it.

Yep, hyper personalized, just people's names on it. Oh my God, I'm going to buy a bottle of Coke, it's got my name on it, and I'm going to buy one for my friend because it's got my friend's name on it as well. Hyper personalized, super simple. And this is what I'm going to be sharing with you next. Although the concept's going to, um, be unusual, the principle is it's simple. So just if you remember anything as we're going through this next expect. Simple, simple, simple. Beautiful. Here was some, uh, just in case somebody mentioned somebody, something other than Coke. Most people mention Coke. Here are some other brands that are red, uh, predominantly red with a little bit of white as well. So, um, let's— whose, whose logo is this?

That—

yep, Nike. Yep, beautiful. Now I'm going to ask you to call these ones out. When you see this image of Apple, what words come to mind to describe Apple?

Think different.

Yeah, innovative.

Yep.

Most successful company in the world.

Yep. Beautiful. Any, any more? Well, expensive. Yep. So I, when I see this, I'm an, an Apple girl through and through. I think of innovative, elegant, and user-friendly, purely because I don't, I don't get along with PCs. But we've all got words that everyone goes, oh yeah, that's Apple. 'Apple.' We've all gone, 'Yeah, we all know it's expensive.' As everybody said those words, everybody almost did a head nod because we all agreed that that made sense for Apple. So this— there's some elements of brand, visual brand elements that make a brand highly recognizable. Let's dive into the valuable content. Now I'm going to jump into the bite-sized content and how we make it compelling through utilizing emotive images. So these are those images that you find and create in advance, which you can find on Canva to help you, to help use within your social media posts, etc. The key thing that I've— oh, this is a big, big selling nag. The most common thing most successful authors, coaches, and consultants still do not do is educate their audience enough. They do, I've got an event, I've got an event, buy my book, buy my book, join my, join my something or other, but they're not educating their audience enough. And the reason I say that is because I had a diagnostic on my website for a number of years when I was working within that space. And the number one thing that was always not on the list of of the 12 things they should be doing was they were not educating their audience enough. Yes, they were putting stuff out on social media, but they weren't providing little short snippets of educational elements or tips. So we want educational, emotive, and when we've got educational and emotive, it helps us enroll our audience into whatever it is that we're selling in the next 90 days, etc. So this is what I mean by bite-sized content, and it's also what I mean by visual elements that actually stand out significantly as that person's brand. So these are some that we've created for two clients. I've got a couple of screenshots for this. So the top one is Nancy, and obviously her brand colours are that, that goldy coloured and that purple. Sorry, not purple, blue. And we've pulled some elements out of her book. So you can see the very first one, we actually are promoting her book. But then if you look at the second image in and the one on the end, we've actually identified her target market. Now Nancy's book is called The One Philosophy, e.g., be the one person that makes a difference in somebody else's life. So her audience avatar in this case literally is nearly everybody because she doesn't have a singular target market. She has a very broad target market and she has an incredibly inclusive community. So she promotes and creates a, a community and a membership site. So she's incredibly inclusive. So her imagery is inclusive of all ages, all, all types of people, etc. Now the one, the next one down is Peter Nichols. He's an, uh, he's 80, 82, and he is all about enjoying life and helping people that are retiring remember what they enjoyed when they were younger so they don't feel so isolated. He often works with them when they're feeling that they don't know, they don't have their identity anymore because they've retired and they're trying to find the next joy element in their life. So obviously his age group is an older age group, so we've highlighted his ideal target market and we just reminded them visually of things that they used to enjoy doing. Does that make sense for everyone? Yep, beautiful.

Then there's a couple of books I'm going to have to put on my list, I think, Sally.

Um, and here is just some example of mine where I've just done, um, what I call inspirational quotes. So these can be deemed as educational because they're little, little snippets that just give people a thought or an insight. Um, and then this one This one here is a book and movie that we did that was all around the inside effects of how our mind can actually heal our body. And this was a multi-author book, so we had lots of different authors highlighted on the different tiles, and we captured the elements out of each of their chapters and turned this into emotive imagery. Any comments, thoughts so far? Nope. Cool, cool, cool. Next one.

Just the fact that they're just so obviously beautiful, like, you, your eyes drawn to them, um, in the sense that there's the color scheme that you expect, but more so those images that you have, they just, you know, they kind of, they speak to you. You want to stop and go, what, what was that? That eye looks so compelling. What was that? That, you know?

Exactly.

Multi, multi-speaker book or whatever it is. It's like, wow, who would have thought?

Yeah, that's, that's exactly right.

Curiosity.

It's that curiosity. It's what's going to stop the scroll, what connects with the human. And this is one of the key, key things that when we see an image like that— and I'll, you, I'll demonstrate this in a minute— when you see an image, you actually create your own narrative to it based on your life experience and what you're looking for or seeking. So we'll demonstrate some of that shortly. And these are just bite-size videos. So again, these have all— all this stuff's been created on Canva. Here's a video that we created just by doing still tiles. This is for Carolyn. And again, we've just got— this is very educational, talks a little tip. It's moving. It's a little bit interesting. Interesting. Obviously you've got social media copy that would go above it, but it's bite-sized, it's easy to consume. Quick, quick, quick, somebody can get an insight from it and get on with their day. When you've got really good quality content that makes people curious, they'll consume it even on their worst day, which is the tip.

And what's refreshing here is no hair and makeup, don't have to turn up. Like, this, this shows us the video can just be stills.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Cool. So let me jump to the next one. Oh, wrong button, wrong button again. So I'm going to talk about the visual compelling element of it now, and I'm going to unpack what successful brands do, and I'm going to use Apple and Nike. And the reason I wanted to share this is because as an agency, we model off of Apple and Nike because they've got are so good at finding images that connect with their audience and reflect what they stand for and often the transformation that their clients seek. So if you can show the transformation that your client seeks, they're going to be coming to you more because it's resonating with them. And I'll share some of that as we go through. So here's the first one. Now this is Apple's shot on iPhone campaign that I'm sharing here, and they've mastered the art of brand consistency through showcasing their actual avatar. Now, the reason I wanted to show you this is that this was a highly educational element that Apple did. Not lots of do this, do this, do this, do this. Their message was, here's a— here's an image shot by Joe Smith and this is how you use the iPhone camera. It inspired everybody to use the camera and go and take photos and share their photos. So it got people into that inspired state through sharing, through everyday people sharing everyday imagery and capturing everyday moments. It captured hearts and minds. I'm going to show you another one. Each image tells a story, but we add the narrative. So this one for me, this one absolutely touches my soul because this reminds me of my mum and her friend, her best friend Nora, down the back of the yard giggling, having naughty conversations about their husbands and how they wished that they could hit them on the head with a frying pan. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to flick through some images and I'm going to ask you, what story do you see? That one to me is just deep. Pure joy, everyone smiled at that. And I love that this one resonates with me because I've got a dog and she loves water. So let me ask you, what narrative did you add and what image jumped out at you the most? Yeah, go for it, Peter. Just come off mute, yell it out. No airs and graces.

Um, the, the baby in the, um, in the pool, and just brought me back to when my boy was a— some, you know, something similar, and the joy of splashing around in the water, just that joy feeling.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you've nailed that too.

Yeah, yeah. And it's an— it's a stunning image, but it's an everyday image. And the great thing is you can find these images online through, uh, in Canva and through other free resources. Takes a little bit of time, which is why we talk about getting images in advance. But if you're wanting to demonstrate joy to somebody, kids splashing water. Yep, that looks like that's landed for everyone. Awesome. So emotive is so valuable because it moves and touches us, and anything that does that is highly highly consumable, and when it's highly consumable, you're easy to buy. But it's also highly valuable. It's what keeps people coming back. Okay, I'm going to shift gears to Nike now. And to me, Nike is, is inspiration. So just as a wave of hands, who's nagged their kids or nagged somebody or themselves and just said, just do it? Yep, everybody has, right? Yep, Joe, absolutely. We've absolutely all done it. So we all use this slogan in our life. So it's a highly recognizable brand. And what they do so well is, again, they use everyday images that create an inspiration. And this campaign is the Find Your Greatness. And Jane, do you want to share anything on this, as I know you just happen to come across this image?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's funny because I, um, I, uh, saw this as an example of a great advertising campaign just this weekend. And essentially there's a video and all you see is someone jogging, jogging, jogging, jogging. You don't get this image of this little boy, but Nike lost the advertising rights to the Olympics to Adidas. And so they were not allowed to use any of their athletes that were in the Olympics. They weren't allowed to do that. And so instead of, you know, sitting down and going, well, we've lost this opportunity, they actually pivoted and said, well, what about the people who aren't the Olympians? What about the everyday person who's just out there having a slog and just doing it? And so when you see this come up, I've got goosebumps, you know, find your greatness. I'm just like, That just got me. And so just from an advertising campaign, but they, they, you know, we talk about riding the latest topic and these guys were excluded from that. They could not advertise and use those Olympians and they pivoted so beautifully. So this is not just a great campaign for them singularly, but at that time, in that moment, amazing.

Yeah. And the great thing again is, is Is it not that our ideal audience are all everyday people on a specific quest? Yeah. So let me share a few more with you. Right, permission to do it your own way. Love this one. Kid doing a handstand and she doesn't care whether she's being bad. Greatness isn't judged by others. Great message. So I'm just going to pause it, and I've got two slides I'm going to share next, and I want you to— and again, happy for you to call out— what word do you feel or experience or see from these next two slides? Fear. Yep, I hear fear. Yep. But to me, it's fear, and then there's a certain amount of courage starting to come up. That's an example of a simple transformation that you can actually help your clients see because of the work that they can do with you. Okay, do that again. To me, that's the holy shit moment, to be quite frank, and then it's the, oh yeah, I might do 'You know, the courage is sort of starting to grow a little bit.' Beautiful. So visually emotive content deeply connects with our audience. You've all experienced that connection through the imagery that we've shared today. Now, this is one of my beliefs. The image— sorry, the image helps them imagine the possibilities. That kid imagined the possibilities. Possibility of jumping off the top. They can see their aspirations, like the kid that was jogging down the road. We can see that aspiration. It helps them envision the transformation that they're seeking, and most importantly, it helps them identify themselves as a potential client of yours. Now, the reason I've banged on about visual content for as long as I have is is from a LinkedIn perspective, which is my sort of play place, a post with an image on average gets 98% more opportunity for comments and conversations started because of the image, and conversations is where we start our conversions. So imagery becomes very important to capture your audience and enroll them in a journey with you. Because when you're without images, it's my belief that, you know, it's just a sea of sameness. It's AI-generated sameness, which basically just keeps you being invisible, unheard, and undervalued because they don't get it. Your audience doesn't get it, which is where those brand elements become so important. Another little quick demonstration of you know, uh, transformation. To me, this is, this is splat and stuff it. I'm getting back up. And as I've said, you know, that it mirrors our hearts and souls. It helps you stand out. It energetically and emotively connects with us. So one of the other beauties about using emotive imagery, um, is that it actually helps our audience. It sorts our audience. So this is a very, very old, back very early days of some content that I helped a client create. And this actually, I talk about this because you can repel the wrong audience and sort people with your ideal target market. So this client had one message, assess, don't guess. And so she sold wearables and wearable, um, I don't know what, quite, um, gadgets that sort of tracked your heartbeat and all those other, um, health-related stuff. Um, but she had 3 client avatars. She had fitness and athlete, athletes. She had executives and then she had healthcare workers. So, and, and the reason I shared that, even though this slide's a bit busy, I share this because it acts as the same phenomena. Who's— I'm going to use my example. You've gone, you're thinking about buying a car. I wanted to buy a yellow car. You know, you buy yellow, you're thinking about buying a yellow car, and then all of a sudden you start seeing yellow cars everywhere. It works on that same principle that when you're familiar with something and you're looking at something, you will see more of it. So in this case, even though she has 3 distinct, very different avatars, the healthcare workers will actually only notice the healthcare worker images, and the executives will only notice the executive-related images, and the athletes, the athletes-related images. So this is a, a really good demonstration of why it's so important to know your avatar so intimately so you're putting the right images up on your social media. So that's around that brand consistency in those elements. Any thoughts, questions at that point? Yeah, go for it.

This one is, um, interesting to me because actually I looked at this and I have like no idea what this is advertising. It's actually confusing to me because I see like What the old, old people with, you know, like I can kind of start to work and assess, don't guess. I mean, I get it once I think about it, but it's not immediately accessible actually. And then I also don't really have a relationship between the name of the person, Alexandra Laws, and product. And so, and I guess there's, there's a difficulty here because what is true for the person is that there are 3 avatars. And so how do you successfully achieve bridging that gap for one product to 3 different target markets? And what I observe is that for me, this kind of like misses the mark right off of the bat. So that was my experience.

Yep. Anything further? And I'm gonna— there's a reason I've done this too, to be disruptive. So awesome. Any more questions or comments? Not yet. Cool. So I suggest perhaps screenshotting this one and actually looking at the images and putting literally a sheet of paper over so you can actually see them sort of separate as 3 separate avatars. First thing, from a consistency perspective, you would not be running those 3, those 3 avatars at the same time because it wouldn't land. You would be, if you were running a 90-day campaign, you'd run a campaign for the athletes in month 1, you'd run a campaign for the executives in another month, etc. So you would be targeting individual avatars at individual times for a specific purpose, firstly. And then when you've actually got that— the reason I show this is because if you are— if you— if it's going through the scroll and you're in that nursing space, um, you would, you would see the nursing ones. You wouldn't actually notice the other ones because you're not in that space because of that familiarity of the reflection, the mirror reflection. So using that mirror reflection that the healthcare workers would see theirs along with the others. The reason I also show this tile and challenge everyone is that her key message was assess, don't guess. So then the content above that would provide the context. But this is how easy it is to create tiles en masse graphic tiles like this at scale that you can then provide context with the copy that goes above it. But your tiles do not need to be complex. And for anyone that's in the wearable space, Alexandra Laws is relatively well known because she used to work with a lot of the major athletes in the US, so, and the tennis players and all those sorts of things, and she was their, their their personal performance coach. But my reason for being disruptive was one simple message with context. You'd be able to get it, but it's around the fact that the tiles themselves are super simple, but it's how the imagery will stop the scroll because of the familiarity. Jane, you're on mute.

I've got a cup that says you're on mute, but it's because of the curiosity as well. Like if I was an athlete and I saw that assess, don't guess, it would call to me. And I, you know, I know one of my marketing mentors, Dean Jackson, that I've worked with, he had, he talks about, you know, calling out the niche and he talks about a photographer, but he's got, I shoot bottles, I shoot children, I shoot. And so he has all these different brands, which the context above would send people to, you know, the athlete, the, the, um, you know, nursing person, the executive. So, you know, you can send it to the particular information, but it's stopping them and going, hey, that's me.

And that's exactly that curiosity that they, you know, coming back to that, oh my God, they get me. That's how we, how we're doing it. So I'm just gonna bring it all together and then I'll, I was gonna ask have some questions now, but let me bring it all together and then I'm going to open the floor and hit me with your if-butts, your what-ifs, oh my God, etc., and we'll go, we'll go from there. Skip over that one. So let's bring it all together. So coming back to find your consistency rhythm, whether that's 2 times a week, 5 times a week, what's your method of honoring yourself and being consistent across that 90-day period. Choreograph your content on a calendar plan so you can see it and map it out. And then eventually, when you've mapped it out and you've done that self— you— sorry, when you've done that a couple of times for yourself, you can actually pass it over to a virtual assistant. That's how you systemize your business so you can work your way out of doing this stuff by having that visual representation of what you're doing over a 90-day period. The key things to know are: what are my key dates and what am I selling? What are my key topics for each month and what am I key messages for each month? Okay, um, and capturing your ideas is paramount because that's where you unlock your own confidence and you create your opportunities for yourself and you can remain in that inspired state. The second one that we went through was creating that highly recognizable brand. Yes, I absolutely rabbited on about the emotive imagery, but you got it because it connects. The recognizable brand stands out because of those other elements that, you know, like Nancy's and Peter's, they've got strong brand colors, they've got strong logos, they've got same fonts, Just like Coke, etc., that they became known for their brand colors, fonts, feels, etc. And because they stand out because of that emotive imagery, they're highly trusted, they're sought after, and they become the sold-out expert. The next thing is creating that valuable content. And although I've covered a lot around emotive imagery, just like Alex Laws, they don't You don't need to start off with something as complex and as fancy looking as what we create in our agency. It can be super simple, but it's all about the imagery that you find and choose, which, as I said, you can find on LinkedIn. And that's the way that you actually stand out and become really, really trusted. And keeping it really simple, it's everyday people, everyday images, But the thing is, it's those everyday moments that relate to your audience. It's understanding your audience again. What are the everyday challenges that your audience face? What is it that they aspire to? What is it that inspires them or pisses them off? Find imagery that helps to find— helps you find that. And if you, for example, utilizing Canva, and you're trying to find words on inspiration, then you've got a search bar in Canva and you just put inspiration up and it'll bring you all those photos that, um, that are inspirational. And then you've just got to find your avatar within it, which is why I suggest as a simple system, find your images in advance as it relates to your big word and your key topics, because then you've got a library of images in and you can create things at speed because you can do that with Canva tiles. And just as a reminder of what it can look like, I'm going to go back to Peter's. Perfect age of his avatar, doing things that they like doing or used to do, clearly expressing joy. He's got his brand colors. He's got his brand, this in this case, is his logo, that just something really simple, Life Enjoyment Mentor, um, and an image of him. Let's go through. And then we've got some other elements that are part of his, uh, brand and, uh, program. So he's got a model that he uses and walks people through, and he's just got some of those elements on there as well. But they don't need to be complex. And I'm just going to flick it across to that link now, um, and that's the Capitalizing on Your Ideas, uh, link that will enable you to get that ebook, uh, and little mini system. And in chat, Jane will put that in the chat for me. Thank you.

For those recording, it'll be below this video.

Beautiful. And I'm just going to open the floor up now because I know that was a lot of alternate insights as to content and consistency and finding that brand element that is the mirror reflection of your audience. So yeah, hit me with your questions. Where are your pause? What's getting in the way for you? And let's just unpack that.

Sally, that was really great. Thank you for that. Wealth of knowledge and experience and wisdom. So great. I don't have a spare $100 million. So I'm sure you've heard, you know, how does a small operator develop a brand? You know, I see a guy, oh, my plumbing business. I don't, Really? Okay, good on you, mate, but I don't write down the phone number. So obviously he's got other channels which you can find him, right? But on this online stuff, because I'm a numbers guy and I followed the Canvas growth and experience but never used it, right? Because any projects I've worked on, other people did all this stuff. And now Jane got me onto AI. Thanks, Jane. It was Fantastic. Now, you know, I'm learning, um, as I said, a Luddite, so this is all new to me.

Yeah.

Um, for me to take it on, and there is this element of overwhelm.

Yes. Yeah, totally.

With, with all of this, and also taking in my old I'm not capable belief systems, right? It's, I find this part challenging, time-consuming, don't know where to start. How do I do this? You know, even I'm reinventing myself. So what is my message, you know? And, um, I'm finding it challenging and exciting. And what you've been telling me has been great. And other projects, we just threw money at it, but now it's my money.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's very different when it's our money, isn't it? That's right. Yeah. So I would, uh, what sort of CUM, Peter?

Um, it's developing. I'm changing everything. So, all right, cool.

So I'm going to go straight to the Ideas Airport. Now, I know you said you've got your journal, journal, and you've written things down in there, but if— and you're a numbers person, so you like to be able to see the data and the details— I would try mapping different things out on, uh, on a wall or on a, on your a wardrobe wall or a window or a glass sliding door or the sheets of paper. You know, what is the thing that I, what's my one topic and what, or what's my keyword that I want? Like if my keyword's consistency, clearly I can nag till the cows come home around consistency. Who would've thought consistency was a topic? So, and then find out where are your topics from? So I would suggest visually mapping something out to start with. So you've got some clarity. There's no point diving into any of the other stuff until you've got clarity of what you want to do. When you've got that little bit of clarity, stop testing it in your own brain, test it in your market. Get it out onto a platform, and I would suggest starting on a platform, not every platform, a platform, and see where and how it lands. And then adapt and mold from there. If you're wanting to do the Canva elements like we've talked about today, but you don't want to do them yourself, when you've got clarity of what your content and your topics are and, you know, what your— who your avatar is and etc., then you can get— find virtual assistants for around the $5 and $8 US that can do that sort of stuff. But you have to have a few little systems in place to be able to get them to do it, which is why I talk about that 90-day plan, because if you've written it out, you can pass it over to somebody and go, just deal with that for me and create the pretty images, etc., for me. The other thing for somebody that hasn't used Canva, Canva literally has templates in there and brand— all those elements that you've seen, although we've personally designed them, you can find templates like that where you literally just drop an image in and you've got your brand colors, etc., in there. Now, question that I get asked a lot is, how do I determine my brand colors? So one of the things that I say to people, and again, this is a bit weird, is look around your room. What colors resonate with you? Open your wardrobe door and see what colors you wear most consistently. Take that visual element and either go down to Bunnings and go to the paint section and actually pull out the paint— the paint, I don't know what they're called, Jane.

Swatches.

Swatches, that's it. Swatches. And, you know, mix and match and see what works together. If you're unsure of what your brand colors are, your brand is often an extension of you. It'll either be extension of what you find appealing in your own home or what you find appealing to wear. Because if you— I'll give you an example of that. Jane Slack-Smith and I attended an event when I was in Melbourne, and the lady who I'd met online knew my brand colors are this sort of reddy pink color, and she found me because I had my brand colors on in a sea of a great big large event. Now people know me for wearing this color, so if I want to go incognito at an event, I wear a black jacket no one will see me. So a brand is an extension of you, so your brand colors will be an extension of what you find appealing. So good old Bunnings, um, is a great place. Um, I like, again, like the tactile nature of that. Or you can go to Dulux, I think it's dot com, uh, the Dulux website, and you can find colors that way from those people overseas.

There's like a hardware store where you can go and do paint colors, Bunnings and Julie.

So thank you.

Can I just add something in there, Pete? I'm just going to share my screen for a second because I know getting images can be like really difficult. And as Sally said, you can go into Canva and start doing that. But I had a choice of making the ordinary seem extraordinary through pictures and sharing with people a few years ago. And I put like less than 200 pictures up on this thing called Unsplash. So this is just my, you know, pictures that I put up that anyone can download and use as they want. But if you go into Unsplash, you know, just something simple that might just be that gives you inspiration. So sometimes when I'm looking for inspiration, I just go to Unsplash and do and add that in there. That's my profile. But you can see here that it's— there's lots of— that's just mine. So you could go into someone else's and, you know, I did that without any, you know, getting anything out of it. They're all free. You can actually have paid ones, but in the last 2 years, 2.5 million people have looked at them and used them and downloaded them. And this is just an easy place where you can go and just go, you know, get some, some really good little images from other people. —so you don't have to do the, you know, put the words over it. Like, obviously that's ideal and you could use that, but there's a lot of those free kind of resources, and you're welcome to use my pictures. But as you can see, it's around the context above it and what you're—

you having, as Sally said, you having that message of what you want to deliver once you know what that is and who to Some of the questions, and unpacking your inner genius is not always an easy thing and you do need to block out time for it, but the word specificity or specifically. So if I'm asking my question, what is it specifically that I, that, what is it specifically that consistent around consistency? And you, so that word specifically helps me go, oh, it's this, it's this, it's this, and they might be just single random words. And then I go, okay, well, what specifically does that mean as it relates to consistency? And I go off on a, you know, a tangent and a rabbit warren, but I end up mapping out all of this stuff that looks like, you know, mess. Um, and then I could go away from it and come back to it the next day, and then I just go over things with a highlighter pen. Oh, that really resonates, and that really resonates. So you can sort of fine-tune where it's going, but you've gotta unpack the mess to find the right elements.

And, and I know a few people follow me on social media, and if you've, you know, to what Sally said, if you've seen what I've been doing over the last, you know, 30 days is, you know, I've got a masterclass. It's just for people who've done natural success or intuitive work. And like 30 days ago, I knew that's where I was leading to. And so I did a post that said, who would like a custom chatbot of William Whitecloud's, you know, inspirational words that you can put something in and they'll come up? Everyone who responded, the 70 or 80 people responded below that, I know, know William Whitecloud, have done the work. And then they're people that I can then start saying, you know, would you like to come to the masterclass? But that was a planned event that I was, I sat down with and I don't have a whole marketing team now. You know, I have one person an hour who might, a day might do reels. I have some person who, you know, makes sure that I can spell correctly because I'm really bad at spelling, you know, and checks the copy and stuff. But, you know, it takes a lot to find those individual people. Like Sally's obviously got a whole team that's been taught how to do that. But, um, it's so that I can actually have a plan of what I'm doing and I have that schedule as just a Google Doc of saying, This is what we are doing. You know, I'm promoting this, uh, podcast. I need to make sure that I've got the content for that a month beforehand for the person who's coming on. So everything is planned so that I don't have to think too much. And you know, that, you know, what Sally's saying is putting the stuff into the, the airport so that you can just go, oh, I'm gonna do a masterclass on this for my mentoring clients in the next couple of weeks. Let me just write down what's the difference between playing the infinite game and having infinite possibilities, working with you. And I put that down as a circle, even just like a board, whiteboard. And then I start going, oh, how would I expand that? And so I'm just always just adding things to it. So as Sally said, you know, you start with the idea, you kind of, you know, you're working, Pete, with, you know, who's your ideal client, et cetera. As you explore that, people are gonna start putting your hands up, but you can orchestrate it so that you can monetize your business, but also you can leave the legacy and the impact that you want. So Yeah, that consistency. What broke my heart was when you said funding your own competition, Sally. I was just sitting there going, oh my God, how often do you do that? You get busy and like I spoke to someone the other day and he said, you know, I really need sales. I really need sales. I said, what happened 6 months ago? And he said, I sacked the sales team because, you know, we had too many leads. I'm like, and now you don't. Did you see the link? You know, so, you know, we have to, that consistency. Yeah, amazing. So I just thought I'd add that in, just a few, you know, thoughts of how I work with exactly what Sally's doing. So you can see with transparency how that, that works. And you're turning up as a human, right? You're not doing something that's not serving people. You're giving people tools and resources and all that educational, um, component, as Sally said, you know, those little videos and things that are actually teaching them. You're not just saying, buy my stuff, come to my Gloss.

Very true.

Yeah, I have, uh, two points. One is a bit of a testimonial, um, which is, uh, I don't know how long ago it was, maybe it was like 9 months ago, I was inspired to make a post and come out to the world as an alchemist, like People know that I've been magically inclined. I have this big extensive community of magical people who relate to the world through magic, but to really like own this role I can play, which is distinct in my community on a certain level. And, you know, beautiful backdrop, Lake Tahoe, you know, a little sexy, no shirt on, but, you know, focused here. And I put it out there and I was like, you know, in coming months, I'm going to be starting to offer classes because because, you know, barrier to access is pretty important for me in relationship to what we are offering the world. And it was a thought. It wasn't totally true. It didn't come from the heart. It was like in that part of me that was like, I've got to start getting clients. There was this like need. It was a strategy. And I didn't follow through. And I could see how people who were so excited to hear from me and to hear this truth coming out the gate kind of were like, meh, because I didn't show up. I wasn't ready to show up with the classes and the offerings and all of that. So that's my testimonial. And then the other part, which we touched on is platforming. I, I think we're all frustrated with social media in different ways, specifically the like Instagram, Facebook hegemony. Like, we're different but owned by the same company. And, and I actually use hegemony because I feel like I've been shadow banned or blacklisted in certain ways because of my equal support of Palestine in relationship to the Israel-Hamas war. And the number of likes I get is nothing. And I feel like, or I observe that there's not a lot of opportunity beyond these platforms to put ourselves out there. And I know that's me thinking small on a certain level. When I think about going over to Nostr, and I don't even know if many people know what Nostr is, but it's like a decentralized social media platform that's blockchain and is going to allow all of us to basically own our content and own our identity. So wherever we go on the platform, there can't be a corporation that then can take that away from us because of whomever they are. So it's really revolutionary, but it's in inception stages. So in terms of putting myself out there, it's somewhat limited. And then I think about going over to LinkedIn, and maybe that's what I'll end up doing, but it's like starting over with a whole new community. And so, you know, I have a certain amount of confusion and frustration about how to put myself out there as, you know, many things, but as an alchemy coach And then interestingly enough, Natural Success, you're listening. There's no real way for us to market ourselves in Natural Success. They're keeping that contained for good reason, for genius reasons. Things are coming.

So hang tight for that. But I'll let Sally talk to that confusion of where to turn up and Yeah, great.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said everyone's sort of over social media. Bottom line was, if I didn't have to be on social media, would I be? No. So for me, I've chosen LinkedIn. So that's the place that I will show up consistently. I am on the other platforms, but a lot of that's automated. So my conversations, because if we're doing anything, it's about about the conversations that we're getting into, content, conversations, conversions. I play on the one platform because that's the one platform that honors me the most. In doing that though, to open up those new communities and opportunities, I speak like I'm doing for Jane Slack-Smith. I interact. So find your— my suggested strategy would be find the platform that doesn't frustrate you, that gives you some opportunities, and then find opportunities to talk to that one-to-many. That could be YouTube, that could be just podcasting, some of those unregulated platforms. There's a number of them coming out. Somebody's got to be the, you know, the person that starts that off. If that's the best place for you to build a community, because everybody is looking for that community connection, it comes back to back to that connection again. Find a place where you can build a community and have the conversations that you're wanting to have. If that means being on one platform and moving them across to something else that's yours, then absolutely go for it. Where do you find and create your own oppity— opportunities? Speaking to one-to-many, podcasts, live speaking, this type of thing, sharing your knowledge, Meetup, uh, as as a platform was a great platform for me to grow my business. That was how and where I grew my business. Um, and go from there. Share your expertise. Such good advice.

And, and the number one thing is you pinpointed this is come from your heart. Like don't come from what am I creating this for, et cetera. Like I've got 15-second reels I'm doing on YouTube that are me walking out of the gym, like sweaty and everything, that's just like, oh, inspiration from the universe today. I'm not gonna care how I turn up. I'm not gonna care if anyone sees this. This is for me in sharing my wisdom. Someone might find it. And so getting caught up with the likes and the comments, as I said, as one of my mentors says, is you can't count the smiles. So, you know, you know, turn up for you and who you serve. It would be my number one reason to start with.

Yeah, and find really great networking communities that you can be in and enrolled in and participate in, because you'll find all of your opportunities there. Serve others, and the others will eventually serve you.

Fantastic. Well, I think we might wrap that if that's good with you, Sal. I really— gosh, I really appreciate your gosh, I'm gonna say decades, which is like ages, but the decades of wisdom and information that you've shared here because there's so many nuggets, you know, that, you know, how we turn up and who we serve and being consistent and understanding that it starts with the content and that awareness piece and then it goes the conversations and then the connections and then the conversion. And then, you know, if you're doing this consistently with brand and your identification, but that emotive, the examples that you gave around putting the curiosity, the emotion, the stopping the scroll kind of things in there has really got me thinking. And, and just that, God, as I said, it's broken my heart around, you know, me, me, uh, preparing competitors for my, my ideal clients. But yeah, it's just so amazing. And look, I really encourage you guys, I'm gonna put that link to the ebook below, which is really around how to confidently create the content, business ideation and brainstorming, and how to actually then monetize your inner genius because that's what we're all here for in Creators Academy. We're here to, you know, share our skills, our genius with the world so that, you know, we can uplift humanity to create something even better. So, um, thank you so much, Sally. I really appreciate your help. Is there anything else you want to say before we go?

No, I just wanted to say thank you very much for helping me fill my cup up this morning with all of the sharing that I've been able to do. So thank you very, very much. And my own last Sally nag is don't overcomplicate it. As humans, we do. Just keep it simple. Find your first next step. It's not wrong, it's right.

And it's right for you. Thank you. As always, here's to your success. Bye for now.