Going From Hustle To Ease

All right. Hi everyone. How are you doing today? Today I want to talk about going from hustle to ease, because I think a lot of us feel that hustle when revenue dips and we think we just have to grind and grind and grind some more. But what does it actually look like to have ease in your business? So I'm going to share my screen and pop this up here. Go ahead and just gonna— as a business owner is obscurity. And with noise and AI increasing, ever increasing, obscurity is only more likely to happen, not less likely. And we need to account for this, but in a way that doesn't make you feel like you're huffing and puffing, right, all the way to the bank. Now, hustle is directly related to your obscurity level. If people don't know you exist, you're unknown, right? And so you have to work really hard to get people to even know that your business and your offers exist. Unclear means they don't really know what it is you do. They may know of you, but they don't really get it. And so you have to work hard to convince them and explain to them. And the last one is unimportant. So maybe they know who you are, Maybe they are clear in what you do, but they don't really think what you do is important, necessary, or valuable enough to invest in. And the more obscure you are, the harder the hustle, right? Because you've gotta become known and then become clear and then become important. And if we can kind of clear those rocks out of the way, you will have more ease and less hustle. Now, if you are thinking about your own business and you're like, man, I— nobody knows who I am. I'm completely obscure. You want to focus on becoming known, and the best way to become known is through marketing, right? That's what I teach. And there are 4 types of marketing that I focus on: social marketing, search marketing, relationship marketing, and paid. Social is things like Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Uh, TikTok. Search is YouTube, Amazon, Google, Pinterest, things like that. Also, I would probably put AI in the search bucket. Relationship is networking, uh, DMs. It's, uh, guest speaking, podcast interviews, things like that. And then paid, obviously, are paid ads. Now, if you are pretty dialed in with your marketing, but you're finding that it's hard to make money, you could have this problem: unclear. People just don't really understand what it is you do. And the things that you're going to need to work on in order to get more ease in your business are things like being easy to refer, right? So that top-of-mind effect. Being niched down— people know you for something. Your content is consistent, so people are clear. Oh, okay, you're a business coach. Oh, okay, you're a speaking coach. Oh, okay, you're you know, a finance expert. And then memorable branding. And that doesn't mean it has to be super well-produced branding. It's just yours, right? I was thinking about this. I follow Heather Cox Richardson, as I'm sure many people do. And, you know, she doesn't have branding in the traditional sense. You know, she pops up on YouTube, she's, she's everywhere, but she's just memorably herself. And That's really important when you want to work on that clarity. And when you become clear, people don't forget about you. Affiliates are easily able to sell for you and refer you, and your community starts to become self-sustaining. You might be in this bucket, right, where you're kind of well-known and things are clear, but people are just not investing in your offers. This is where you want to focus on things like Are your offers relevant for today's world? Are they positioned correctly for today's world? Do you have enough proof? People that are saying, hey, I, you know, I've taken that, I've worked with that person, I know they're really good at what they do. You know, do you have the right pricing in the right container? That's that positioning so that people are not accidentally comparing you to something that you don't want them to compare you to. And are you aspirational? And that just means, does the idea of working with you or buying your offer make them feel like, okay, once I've done that, then I'm going to be in a different place. I'm going to have a different identity or I'm going to have a different transformation. Okay. And when people understand who you are, what you do, and they understand the pain of their problem, it makes it easier for them to invest because you don't have to convince them that what you offer is important because they already know. Okay, let's go deeper now into becoming important. Okay, important. Number 1: what problem are you solving? Really important. I know that sounds obvious, but you would be amazed at how many people cannot actually answer this question and the product suite that you have right now, you do not technically need a low ticket offer, a mid ticket offer, and a high ticket offer. But if you do have multiple offers, are they very clearly stationed? Right? So if you just have a high ticket offer, that's fine. But if you have a high ticket offer and a mid ticket offer, and then a sort of high ticket offer, and it starts to get confusing. Okay. And that leads to cannibalization, which means, hey, I have this offer, it's $300 or it's $700, but then I have this other offer, it's $3,000. And you're now not seeing people buy the $3,000 offer because they're buying the $300 offer, and you've inadvertently kind of chopped, chopped yourself off at the knees, so to speak. So you want to make sure that your product suite is very, very clear so that people, when they come to you, you know, and they feel like, okay, this problem is important to solve, they know exactly where they need to go. The second thing you wanna do is make sure that you have as much proof as possible. Do you have testimonials? Do you have case studies? Do you have any endorsements? And this can oftentimes feel like a slog. I honestly really struggle here. I, I tend to forget to gather my proof, and I think if I were to identify a problem in the market that could be solved with AI, learning how to use AI to gather proof would probably be a really powerful way to use it. The third is to address the positioning of the offer. What is it named? What is the argument for it? Are you just trying to sell something that's like slightly better than another person's thing, or are you actually, you know, positioning yourself as a new opportunity? And then what is that price, right? Are they looking at it and you're talking about it like it's a high-ticket membership? And so people aren't buying because people don't want to buy high-ticket memberships, but If you changed it to be like a mastermind, now that would be really inexpensive and now it's irresistible. Okay. And lastly, you wanna look at the, the ideal market. Who is the ideal buyer? And markets do evolve over time. So it could have been a certain type of business owner back in 2017 or 2018, and now the market has shifted and you want to make sure that your product suite is aligned with that. The last thing that we talked about in becoming important is to make it aspirational. How does solving this problem or using this offer increase your status? And how does it feel good to solve? You know, I mean, I know not every offer can be fun. You know, sometimes it's hard work, but how can you make it more appealing? You know, it's kind of like asking a kid to eat their broccoli. Can you stick it in a brownie? What meaning comes from the solution? These are the things that you need to work on if you are known and you are clear but people aren't buying. Okay, these are your homework assignments. Now maybe it's the clarity piece, right? Notice I'm going backwards and I'm starting backwards because I think it makes more sense that way. If you are not clear, you need to become easy to refer? That helps with the clarity. Have you looked at affiliates? Have you looked at your collabs and your connections? And have you been able to explain it easily for others? And a really good way to think about this is if you were to bump into someone that you really admire that has a big audience and you had 30 seconds to convince them to refer you, would that be easy for you to do, or would it take a lot of explaining? The second thing is to be niched down. What is your true category and who is your ideal customer? And the niches are getting smaller and more specific because people have no appetite for things that don't specifically and comprehensively solve the problem. Okay. Third thing, consistent content. Are you consistently showing up and saying things that are predictable. And I don't mean predictable as in boring, but you are a predictable person that they know, okay, when I come to learn from you, I'm going to get, you know, really brass tacks. I'm going to get tactics. I'm going to get logic, right? That's something that people, you know, think about when they learn from me. They're like, okay, I know that if I go sit down in one of her classes, she's going to be very clear. She's going to be very organized, right? It's going to be relevant to where I'm at, all that. Also, are you recent, right? You're not disappearing for months on end and then resurfacing. And then memorable branding. It doesn't have to be well-produced. It just has to be unforgettable. It has to be as close to your natural self as possible because that's the branding that will last over time. And I do, you know, from a personal standpoint, I've really struggled because I have long thought that if I became someone that I'm not, like more polished, I would become, you know, quote, more famous. But that is a sure sign to not be able to keep up with something. Instead, I just need to be as much myself as possible because that is the thing I can sustain and that will ultimately be memorable. Now, does someone want to wear it when you are representing a company? So I would think about this, like, if you're a company kind of like my company, Funnel Gorgeous, like, do people want to be associated with that brand, even if it's a subtle association, right? You think about people who love Apple products or people who love Disney products, or, you know, people who wear, you know, certain companies' merch. Does somebody want to wear it right on a t-shirt or a quote maybe that you say? And if they do, then that's a sign that your branding is really clear. Now, maybe I would say the majority of the audience that follows me struggles in this category, right? They're all the way here. They are not— people don't even know they exist. And maybe they, you know, have the importance dialed in, they have the clarity, but they just don't have the visibility. And this comes back to those buckets, right? What channels are you on consistently? That's important. And what is your strategy for putting out content? It does not have to be complicated. In fact, I think people who have complicated strategies end up burning out. But what is that mechanism that just puts you out there? Okay, search is, like I said, it's things like, you know, YouTube, Amazon if you have books, Pinterest, also long-form content on Substack, blogs, LinkedIn, even X articles now. You know, AI can start to search that content. How do you continue to promote it? How do people continually see that content? The third thing is relationship, and that is affiliates, referrers, um, your dream 100. That's when you find people that you would love to work with and you actively build a relationship. I would also just give a quick shout out here to Selena Su, who teaches Rich Relationships. It's a great book. This is also where you'd put like a DMing strategy, right? Creating that pipeline for customers to come through. And then lastly, are you using paid? And if you're not using paid, that's okay. But I'm gonna tell you right now that paid absolutely amplifies what you're already doing, right? So if you're already putting content out, why not add a little bit of budget, getting more engagement on your account? You're gonna get more followers. Are you building your list? Are you actively getting leads? Are you getting people into your webinar? These are the types of things that are going to help you become known. And I've seen some of my students and clients, you know, they'll start running a webinar funnel and then all of a sudden they've got all these other opportunities. And it's just because the visibility of their whole, their whole account has gone up. And if you are a coach or consultant, you want to get more applications. Honestly, just adding some ad budget to the content you're already putting out there can help. Now I wanna wrap up with something called the ease threshold, and I made this up, but it is a threshold that you reach where there are enough, mathematically, there are enough people talking about you and there's enough opportunity to buy something from you in your offer suite and you have a big enough community that it's self-sustaining without you so that there is a sale happening every day, even if you're sick. The ease threshold is that point at which people are coming to you, that you're not having to hustle for that next dollar. It means your pipelines are active, your community's active, your product suite is clear and available. And you are consistently showing up. And this threshold happens when there are enough people. I wish I knew what the actual number was, but it's different for everybody. But I would say that I hit the ease threshold probably somewhere in 2020 where I noticed that I wasn't having to work so hard anymore. Things were just kind of happening, and I absolutely have an active pipeline. And an active community. I do have a clear and available product suite. In my personal business, it's just one thing, right? It's just coaching with me, and I am consistently myself and consistently showing up. And so that has been working really well for me for the past 6 years. Same thing with Funnel Gorgeous, which is our software company. We have all of this dialed in, and that is ultimately, uh, what you want in order for it to feel like making sales every day is not a struggle. And that was the goal of today's teaching, to say, hey, where are you? Are you known or unknown? Are you clear or unclear? Are you important or unimportant? And that is how we get from here to there. All right, I'm going to go ahead and pop off. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. I hope that was helpful for you. I really wanted to share that today. It's a presentation that I did a long time ago, and it's still extremely relevant. And if you have any questions about it, please don't, uh, don't be shy. Go ahead and put it in the chat, and I'll talk to you soon.