Practical Ways To Pivot Your Business 🚀

Welcome to the Boost Lee podcast. We're in season eight, episode 16 and my guest today is Janet Murray. In this episode we're going to talk about how you can potentially pivot your business and bring in income during uncertain times, but also as well talk about content and content creation during an epidemic like this. It's not your normal podcast interview and I recommend everybody to watch this through or listen to this through throughout. And if you can have a pen and paper with you because we have a mini workshop where Janet walks you through how you can find out what your potential guests or customers pain points are, then you can try and match it up with the skills that you have and then what you can do to potentially bring in some income to help match your guests customers or you know, potential customers needs. It's really insightful, it's really interactive and like I say, if you have got a pen and paper handy, great. We do share and talk about a worksheet. You can go and get that by going to boother.co.uk podcast go to episode 16 season 8, click in there, there'll be a link on how you can go and get that worksheet. If you don't want to do that, just get a pen and paper. It's super simple to do and super simple to follow. Please go and check out the sponsors of this podcast. They are hostfully you get a free digital guidebook that you can wow your potential guests with pre and post day and also as well please go and check out the Boostly book Direct Membership. If you're looking to increase your direct bookings. If you're looking to decrease on your over reliance on third part to bring in guests through your doors. When all of this is over, the book Direct Membership is the best and the most cost effective place to do so. Only 9.99 and for 9.99amonth you get the following all your social media content taken for you 30 fresh pieces of content for Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram every single month. It works for stories, it works for posts. You also get a listing on the bookdirectmap.com plus as well you get over 80 hours worth of tutorial and training videos showing you exactly what you need to be doing to increase bookings, it's all over there. Go to boostly.co.uk bdmbbookdirect Membership hostfully is hostfully.com thank you so much. Now let's get in to the show.

Thank you so much for having me do let me know. You can hear Me. Okay. And it's all going out. Okay. Yeah. So my name's Janet. And these days when people ask me what I do, I generally say I help people to build online audiences. So that means more followers, means more fans, more subscribers. Because if we have all of that, then we can, we can make more money, we can make more sales in our business. But actually, my background, I started off as a journalist. So I spent the best part of 20 years writing and editing for newspapers like the Guardian. Before that I was a school teacher. Now I kind of combine those things. So I teach people about how to build online audiences. I teach content, content planning as part of that. What I've been saying for the last five years about how important it is to have an online audience and how important it is to have a following, I think it's really come into its own over the last few weeks. And it's something that really, people really, really need now more than ever.

There are going to be a lot of people that are watching this, whether live or on the replay, that in the current state of play, there may be a guest house owner who has currently can't take any bookings right now, maybe thinking about pivoting themselves or trying something different. But what would be the one piece of advice that you wish that you had received before you made that pivot, that initial pivot, that sort of jump from going from one to the other, from one sort of career to the other?

I don't think I did anything wrong, as it were. I don't look back and think, oh, I did that wrong. But there was a piece of advice that was given to me actually when I left teaching and went into journalism because I was freelance. I've always been self employed the whole time. I've always had to buy my own business, my own customers, whatever. And it was look for work while you're busy. So when I was a journalist, I always had my eye on all the time. Like, I was never sort of like, oh, I'm fully booked at the moment, I've got enough clients, I've got enough writing work. I was always, I was always building my audience because I knew that one source of income could run out. I could be onto a great thing with a particular newspaper or magazine, or I could have a nice copywriting job that was going really well and then suddenly that could be taken away from me. Look for work when you're busy. But also this, this concept of building an audience. And I was doing it without even realizing that I was doing it when I was A journalist. I had quite a big following on Twitter and that not only helped me in my work as a journalist, but people found me as well. And people would find me, they'd see what I specialized in and they'd offer me copywriting work or they'd ask me to come speak at things. I also had a blog as well, which is kind of how I ended up doing what I. I do today. I started blogging thinking, well, you know, maybe if I started a blog, then people might find me and they might. They might come and find me and offer me this nice copywriting work or offer me this. This consultancy work they're asking to do. So without even realizing what I was doing, I was kind of building this audience and this following.

So they've already done that initial pivot. So I watched a video of yours recently. You did a bit of free training for everybody on helping people discover sort of their hidden talent talents to potentially bring in revenue and income, especially during times like. Could you just walk us through that process that talked about on that video? Yeah, Just again, to sort of mention about the worksheet and just how people can go and grab that.

So I think you've shared the link to it. So it takes you into my messenger bot. It's very clever. It takes me to my messenger bot. My messenger bot will deliver you this worksheet, which I'm holding up now. So if you just head through to that link, but if you don't, even if you don't grab it, I can just take you through a few steps. I mean, there's two things I will say. Out of all the industries I've been helping all kinds of industries and businesses get online over the last three or four weeks, and I'd say this is one of the most challenging industries. There's some industries I've worked with. The other one is weddings as well. And it's just, you know, it's pretty much impossible for you to do what you. What you've done in the past. So it's about being creative and it's about looking at some of the other skills and some of the other experiences that you might have and looking to see if there is something that is possible. So, for example, this is a completely different industry, but it just shows how sometimes we can be so tied up in what we're doing. But a friend of mine is an audio producer and a musician, obviously, like the hospitality, cannot. Cannot practice any of that at the moment. And I shot him a message the other day. I don't know Why? I was just thinking about him and I said, you could edit podcasts. And he was like, well, you could edit podcasts for people. People still need podcasts. Edited piece of pie, you've got a studio, you could do that. And he goes, oh, well, actually, I have actually edited radio interviews for people before. I just never thought about it. I just never thought that's what I could do. So I think some of it is going to be about. And if you've already pivoted, it's just thinking about, you know, I'm a qualified teacher, you know, I could use that. I'm a qualified journalist. It's about thinking what other skills I've got and how can I put them to use, and what problems have people got at the moment? But the other side of it is, even if you can't come up with something right now, we're going to try and come up with something. In this exercise, you can be building your audience and you can. I was really interested in the comments that I saw before. Lots of people saying, I can't put content out. You totally can put content out. And I can give you loads of ideas of stuff that you could be posting to keep that audience really warm. Because if you look after that audience and you just keep talking to them while you can't have people staying with you, when things go back to normal, or version of normal, they will be, you know, they'll be warm. You've kept talking to them, but if you kind of shut down and you, you know, you stop talking to them, which is what I've seen a lot of people in the hospitality industry do, then you're going to have to warm that audience right back up. And actually, this is a real opportunity, probably got a bit more time on your hands as well, to create some really engaging content and to become really memorable. So if you haven't grabbed the worksheet already, if you just head over to the link that Mark's shared, and I think Kim's going to share it as well. Mark's just shared it again there, you can grab it there. It looks like this. So the first thing I want you to think about is, and this is probably tough if you're having a hard time, it's tough for you to think about this. But what problems are your ideal customers? The people who would have come and stayed with you and perhaps were booked in to stay with you? What problems are they having right now? So I want you to write down three problems that they've got right now, things that they are struggling with in their daily life. And I know this is hard because I'm sure you're struggling as well. But if you can just think about them and focus on them, what things are they, what things are they finding hard at the moment? I think it's really important that we understand because the thing about audience building is about giving your audience what they need from you right now. And that isn't always about you selling to them, but a lot of the time it isn't. It's just about giving them what they need right now because you will reap the benefits from that. So that's the first part of the exercise. So what we're going to try and do. Is there a way that you could help them with that? Is there a way that you can help them with those problems that they're having through something you're doing at the moment? It's going to be challenging for your industry. The second thing I want you to do is just write down a list of other skills that you've got. Okay? So if I was doing this for me, ironically, my backup, I always say, oh, well, it's okay, it's okay. You know, if the bottom fell out of what I was doing, I could always be a school teacher because I can't even do that now, although I could do it online, I could do it online. But I'm a qualified school teacher, secondary school teacher, I'm a qualified journalist and I've worked for like national newspapers for like years on end. I can sing a bit, I can play the piano. I've had a podcast and I had to make podcasts. I published my own books, I've self published my own book. Trying to look at my list of things. I was a school, a runner, I've organized big off road races. So I've actually got quite a few other skills which are not related to what I do at the moment. So potentially it's about thinking about, you know, we might use some of those skills, we might come back to that. But there's a lot here that you could do. If you can find a problem that you can solve. There's a lot here actually that you could, that you could do with all of this. Let's have a think about how you could use some of those skills that you've got to solve some of those problems that you talked about before. So you said that people are bored, they've got nothing to do, they've got cabin fever, they're really fed up. So we're just going to talk about some. Just going to throw around some ideas of some potential ways that you can make money. Then we're going to talk content and we'll talk about content you can put on your existing Facebook page or Instagram or whatever it is that you're doing. So the next thing we're going to do is to have a think about those problems that you said that your ideal customers or clients have got at the moment. So you told me that they're bored, they're stuck indoors, they've got nothing to do, they've got kids to educate, Maybe they're having to homeschool and holiday at the moment. So I'd just like to just throw some ideas into the chat how you could solve that problem using some of the skills that you've got. You can't necessarily get them in your holiday home or your let, although I have seen some people are letting out their properties to NHS workers and I've seen some of that going on. Is there anything that you could do? Let's just think laterally now. Let's just think about it creatively and just think, is there something that you could do? I've had clients as. I've got clients doing online baking classes, I've got clients doing online Pilates, I've got people doing singing teaching, I've got people doing music teaching and I've got people doing floristry teaching. Floristry online skills and talents like this, there's an awful lot that you do.

I can see so many people, even if they aren't commenting, I know that people are thinking right now of what they could be doing just by the comments and the things that are coming in. And even if you're watching this back on the replay whenever, even if you're watching this next week or next month or even next year and you're tuning into this about how to do. So please just leave us in the comments and leave us like with messages on what you're doing on the back of this, because it's insightful and really interactive. Sort of podcast this. You know, we're sort of talking back and forth and asking people to interact and there's. There's so many little activities that you can do alongside this. Really interesting. So say that somebody's gone through the process, they've figured out my guests that should be here aren't here. Super bored at home. I used to do teaching or I used to do cookery cooking and I want to do an online cookery class now. How do they go from there to right I've got this idea. I want to maybe offer a cooking class. How do you start talking about it on online? What was the best way to get started?

This is the really interesting conversation I had with my friend the other day, the musician, about the. He could even be watching about the podcast editing. And he said to me, how do I market this? Like, I can't just go on my Facebook page and say, by the way, I'm editing podcasts now. And I was like, well, why not? You know, if you've got a new service to offer, the people are most likely to want to buy your new service that you're offering or your new product that you're offering are going to be people who know, like, and trust you already, or people who know, you know, who recommended to you. So the very first thing I would always do with any new product or service is actually not worry too much about social media. We're talking about that in a second. But I would do what I call proactive outreach. So I would like message all your friends. Just. Just make a list of everyone you know, basically, who you can tell, hey, look, I'm doing this new thing where I'm doing landing pages for people. Do you know anybody who might want this? I'm doing this cookery classes. Like, who do you think might be interested? If it's relevant, then by all means, jump on your page and tell people about it. But if you think it's going to make your guests go, what? You know, so it's just about most of us. When we're getting our first clients or customers for a new product or service, we can literally just make a list of all the people that we know. We can tell them what we're doing and just say, look, can you do me a favor? If you know anybody who would want benefit from this, can you send them my way? Most of our friends, you know, really keen to help. I've even had, you know, there's people who need to be taught how to use zoom, like what we're doing now. There's people who need to know, you know, if you know how to do something like that. Like, somebody may well want to pay you for that because they're finding it really painful. And I think the key thing is I don't think you need to build a massive audience to pivot and offer something. In fact, just doing kind of proactive outreach might be the best way to get your first client. And then if you think, well, actually, I like this, maybe I want to do more of this, then you might want to think about building an audience on social media, but actually if you're just testing it out and saying, is there a market for this? Are people interested in this? Proactive outreach would be my first go to for that.

So many people rule out the power of do you know anyone? It's so simple to do. If you've got an idea and there's something you're thinking that you could produce, potentially bring income in over the course of the next couple of weeks and months whilst all of this is going on, open up your contacts in your phone, open up your Facebook friend list and just go and just send a message. It could literally be to your best friend or your cousin or sister or anybody and just say, hey, I'm thinking of doing this. Do you know anyone? And just say, if you do, just tell two people. And then if they go and tell two people, and then they tell two people. And that's how an idea spreads. You don't have to be starting up Facebook ads, You don't have to be starting up mad Facebook groups and niching down or whatever. Just ask somebody, you know, everybody's at home. No one's going anywhere, no one's busy. We're all sat at home watching the Tiger King. So if you just pick up the phone and give them a call and ask a method, ask the question, then you'd be amazed at. Amazed at what. What could potentially happen.

And I would really recommend, you know, like, texting or calling or, you know, people often hide behind emails or, you know, like, I've got an email list and you say, I'll just blast my list. Actually, in this case, personal outreach, personal messages and like, you know, the example I gave there with my friend with the podcast editing, I know loads of people I could refer him to who need podcasts edited. So, you know, it's just. It's just looking in your network thinking, who do I know that might know someone who's interested in this and just being brave enough to ask that question. And that's where I would start. And then if you think, okay, well, there could be a bit of a market in this, people are quite interested in this. Then think about an audience. If it sort of, you know, complements what you're doing, great, like, use that audience that you've already built. But if not, the personal outreach is absolutely fine and it's probably going to be more effective.

You're thinking that this shouldn't be on my Facebook business page. Well, just do it on your personal profile. You get much Better reach, you get much more. Facebook treats you a lot differently on your personal than you do on your business, because your business page only gets seen by about 1% of your audience. And that's on like a normal post. But on your personal page, it's free. You know, it's 10 times that. So definitely, you know, just give it a go and give it a test. Is there anything, any, like, final. Before we sort of move away from that, is there any other final things that you could sort of wrap up and just sort of give advice to anybody or, you know, is there any sort of final remarks you could leave on that?

If you're going to continue to post content, I think you need to put out what I call a positioning statement where you explain why you're going to be doing what you're doing. So you say, look, you know, I can't let out my cottage at the moment. I understand that. But, you know, I do hope to be able to do it again in the future. So that's the reason why I'm continuing to post and that's why I'm going to be trying to share. And you actually kind of set out your stall and explain why you're doing what you're doing. So if anybody does question, you can say, well, look, you know, I put this thing on my Facebook page, or I wrote about this on an email or whatever, and it's perfectly reasonable for you, you know, as long as you're clear in saying, I understand that I can't let my property out at the moment, I understand I can't have people staying at the moment, but, you know, as soon as everything's safe, I really would like to be able to do that again. So I want to keep posting. That would be the first thing I would suggest as you create some kind of positioning statement where you explain that you are going to be continuing to post content. And the second thing is you just stay visible and you just consistently just keep showing up. I think the worst thing you can do is just kind of hide and come away from your Facebook page or your Instagram page. Now, the kind of thing that I would do, I'll share some of the ideas that I would do. I would be so excited if I had, apart from all the other problems, but I would be so excited if I had the content. If I had like a B and B or I had a holiday let or an Airbnb or something, this would excite me very much to create the content for it. Because with a mobile phone, you know, very Minimal resources. You could create some really engaging content. And what I would really do is I would just take people behind the scenes with you and I would just be really authentic and say, okay, well, I'm not gonna be able to let my cottage out for a few months or I'm not gonna be able to, you know, sell any spaces, my B and B or whatever. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take you behind the scenes. And, you know, I have a client who has a holiday cottage and even every time I think about it. But her most engaged post was when she asked on her Facebook page, when you stay in a holiday cottage, do you like to have an iron in your holiday cottage? In her own words, her engagement went mad. So you could just take your followers through a process. Okay, well, I can't let the cottage out at the moment, but I'm going to take you through my spring cleaning routine. I'm going to show you or we're going to go through the kitchen and I'm going to show you what I've got in the kitchen cupboards. And perhaps you could give me some feedback on, you know, whether I need to have this, that and the other in it or, you know, we're going to be doing some work on the garden. I'd like to love some fe from you as to whether we should plant roses here or whether we should plant carnations or whatever it might be. You just take them through your process. You take them on the journey with you.

The beauty of hospitality and the beauty of what we do and what you do and what everybody does when it is real hospitality is that you have a business and you have a type of business, specifically B and B and small hotels, that is unlike any other out there. Because you have strangers come and stay in your house, they literally come and live with you and you have got the most social business. And for those of you are saying, well, I don't really know how to post on Facebook, I don't really know how to communicate, then just put the questions that you ask your guests every single morning when you see them at breakfast, those same ones that you just ask and ask and ask on, pretty much on repeat. You know those sort of questions that you ask your guests when they're checking in, when they're checking out at breakfast, just making chit chat, everybody's done it. I can know in the back of my head those same answers to the same questions that I asked all the years while doing breakfast and whatnot, and those are the Things that you just take and put online because people love talking about themselves. I can totally see why that question about the iron went down. Because, you know, it's a question that is open ended enough where people are just going to pile on in. They don't care what anybody else is saying. They want to let them know what they have to say and things like that. It just feeds into it. Because as we all know, Facebook, Instagram, they want conversation. They're getting away with spammy, you know, posts and they want conversation. It's why everybody out there encourages people to get comments and then you comment on the comments and you start a conversation. Because if you do that, then your Facebook business page will just keep being seen over and over again. And you don't have to spend any money when you do this. If you do it right, if you create engagement, if you create conversations, then your Facebook business page will just be at the very top of somebody's newsfeed. So when you are open and you can take bookings, you can just put out a real clear post, a real clear post saying, we are now open for bookings. Go and book and you'll be the ones because you stay visible.

If you're showing people around, you know, and you're showing people some of the work that you're doing, maybe you're updating areas or you're updating rooms or you're repainting things or whatever, they're gonna feel excited about coming to stay with you. Or if you're showing them how the gardens change or somebody's was telling me that they posted pictures of the lambs and stuff and she said, oh, they can't come stay. But you know, it's still engaging. It's still, it's still, you know, showing that beautiful scenery and showing the changing seasons. You want people to be like, I cannot wait to, I cannot wait to come and have my holiday with you. You know, if you just go into your cottage every day, you go into your B and B every day and you say, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna focus on a room, this room, today or tomorrow. I'm just gonna focus on a utensil. Like my client who did the iron thing, she's also done like one about hair straighteners. She did one about whether you like to have a cheese grater or something like that. She's done everything. And if you just think about, you know, what are the questions that people ask you? Like you say, or you could show a photograph, your guestbook, and you know, start Showing some of the, you know, your favorite comments from your guest book, funny comments from your guest book or whatever. You've got content just all around. You could just open a cupboard and you could film yourself doing a Mrs. Hinch style. You know, this is how we organize our cupboard.

Tell us a little bit more about the podcast, the one that used to be called Soulful pr. Talk about the new sort of the podcast, the sort of things that you talk about. And yeah, obviously people are going to go into the Facebook page and thanks to Kim and we're going to go and get that worksheet. But this is a perfect time for people that have never really been into podcasts before. You know, you've got a lot of time on your hands. So those of you who are looking in at podcast, tell us a little bit more about yours, please. Janet.

And this is a lesson in itself, I guess. My podcast is 400 episodes old on Friday, so I've been showing up and doing a weekly podcast since last 2015, and it's pivoted as well. So I started off teaching people about how to get press coverage and pr. Then it went sort of general marketing and content and audience building. So it's moved and changed with me. So I've got episodes on, you know, how to put a content strategy together, how to get more engaged on your page, how to get more likes on your page, all of that stuff. So probably any of the questions that you've ever kind of asked yourself about your content, your content strategy and building your audience, getting more followers, subscribers, email marketing, it's all there.

What I like to do on the end of all of these podcasts is we do quick fire questions. It's just a nice way to find out a little bit more about our guests on this podcast. And as always, I encourage everybody that is tuning in in the comment section to add in what yours are, because I do like to do, like to see these. This is where I got the recommendation for Tiger King, which is amazing. I watched all episodes pretty much in 48 hours, number one. Then if you could be isolated on lockdown with one celebrity, who would. Who would it be?

Actually, I think my answer is I don't think I'd like to be locked down with one person. I think I just find that too intense.

Too intense to be the one. So I'm thinking then it could be just a couple of people. So because you could have like a group of people in one. But is there anybody that stands out?

They probably would be fictional people from like, say, so I'm a little bit obsessed with that. Box sets. Box set. Mrs. Maisel. The. Is it the marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I'd love to have dinner with all of them. And also I'm also a big fan of the Gilmore Girls as well. So I reckon if I combined the cast from both series, that would be quite good.

Okay, so moving on to movies and TV series. So obviously you're very busy person doing all of the things. You've got to have someone on your watch list. So what is the one thing that's been there on the thing that I've got to watch, whether it's a movie or a TV series? What's been there on the Netflix or Sky or wherever? What's. What's that one thing that you've been wanting to. Wanting to watch? Because obviously now is the best time to do so.

Thinking this Tiger King thing because everyone just keeps talking about it. So you're gonna have to get.

What is the one thing that you've missed since being on lockdown?

Miss people so much. So I would say I've always thought I was an introvert and that I, you know, I like people a lot and I was a journalist. I'm curious about people, loves people, but I just enjoyed then going away from people. But I just miss people so much and being physically around people, with people. Yeah, I'm finding that hard. Yeah.

What is the. Your best purchase under a hundred pounds in the last, say, six months to a year? Anything under 100 pound. What's been your most favourite favorite purchase?

My AirPods. I think they've been revolutionary, but they're over 100 pounds. But they were a present. It's not a purchase. But I've got this. It's a bit boring, but I've got this water bottle thing.

Drink your water.

Yeah. Which tells you how much water you're supposed to drink. It's a bit boring that though, isn't, isn't it isn't.

Because I find that personally during lockdown. My. How much water I drink is shocking. I don't know why, but like the things that you take in your routine and whatnot, it just goes out the window because you're just literally inside all the time. So that is a. That is a good one. I do agree with you on the AirPods. So you're a podcaster, you've got a podcast, but you know, you tune into other podcasts. Is there any. Have you got any particular ones that you can recommend? It can be one, it can. It can be two. It can be three. There's only other ones that you really like or YouTube channel, if there's no podcasts that stand out for the kind.

Of stuff we're talking about today. So Jessica Lorimer has a good podcast, obviously, which your audience will know about. There's one called Content 10x by a friend of mine called Amy woods that's really good as well about repurposing your content. I do like Amy Porterfield, Marketing Made Easy. It's another favourite one as well. And I like a lot of Instagram accounts. So that's, that's not what you ask, but there's a lot of Instagram accounts that I kind of follow.

What is your one number one advice anybody listening to that you would pass on to help them increase their direct booking? So no bookings from Airbnb, no bookings from booking.com, just coming straight from, from their website, straight from their social media. What's the one bit of advice anybody listening to that you would pass on to help them to do so?

Publish high quality content on your social media channels and publish, create content that helps people find you. So blog posts, you know, YouTube content, podcast, whatever. But I think organic content is so powerful in terms of building that relationship and people coming back again and again recommending their friends. So that would be high quality, high quality content.

Perfect time to start because like we keep saying, you can't go anywhere. So just keep going. Just test and test and test. Like the first one that you do, the first blog post or the first email or whatever, it's going to be crap. Just get used to that. But if you keep doing it and you keep practicing and you keep learning and you listen to people like Janet and you know, you can study, there's so much great stuff out there that you can use and to learn and improve and amazing. Janet, thank you so much for doing this. We've really enjoyed it and amazing. Thank you so much and thank you to everybody that is tuned in. It means a lot. We've been doing this pretty much every night since April, so since March 17th. And as people tuning in live, being with me every single night, I'm still going to do it every single night in April, bar weekends. So we're going to be here, we've got some amazing guests lined up and also what we're going to be focusing on this week is audits. We're going to be looking at marketing, the marketing that you're currently doing. We're going to be doing marketing review live. So we've picked out a few people that we're going to be doing it live with. We're taking a peek behind their marketing, and I'm going to be sharing tactics and advice that they can be doing. And you can also be doing as well. We're going to be focusing on that. And we've got many, many more people to interview during April. So please, if you know anybody who would benefit from listening to these interviews, listening to these podcasts, and please share it into one Facebook group, or just tag somebody, or just even grab the link, send it to them in a message and let them know about it. But in the meantime, we'll be back tomorrow for another episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you very, very soon.

Sam.