Transcription
Cheers. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Business Besties Live. Excited to connect with you, my friend today. Uh, Cara Williams in the house. Cara, how you doing over there?
Good. How are you?
Fantastic. I'm excited to bring this conversation to our audience. As Cara, we were on a business coaching call last night and or part of our mastermind call and I had to step away. I had a little family emergency. Everything's fine. But that required me to just step out and Cara kind of took the reigns on it. And so we're gonna kind of unpack that coaching call. I actually have, kind of no idea what happened.
So I didn't, she didn't even tell me. So I'm kind of excited to get into this conversation live in front of you guys so we can kind of really talk through it together. But for those of you maybe that do not know us, I've been an online social seller since 2018 full-time. Cara's been in this space building online since 20. No, not 20. How when?
Someday I'll get it right.
16 years. So, whatever that is. Mine at 20. When 2026?
2009.
Yeah. 2009. So, wow. So, back in the day when Mindy and I first met, we well, after we had met and we both ended up coaching for the same program. A lot of times we would either end our day or begin our day talking about just some challenges that our coaching students were going through and how we could help them better. And so last night, I I thought instead of me talking to Mindy off camera about this, let's just bring it right here and they can experience what it's like to be in our world and the the chats that we have kind of behind the scenes.
So we won't name any names, but I was on a coaching call or Mindy stepped away last night and I continued to talk to the person and we were kind of exploring. She's in a season of kind of pivoting but also figuring out what business is going to look like for her. And so we were kind of like throwing out ideas and talking her through just some things. And after Mindy had stepped away, I said, you know, if I could give you a solid plan of what to go do for the next 90 days, this is what it would look like. And I said, I would divide what you want to talk about into four or five buckets, whatever those things are. If you want to talk about, and she's um, she has therapy. So, you know, if we want to talk about intimacy therapy, you know, things that women go through after menopause, all of that. If you if you have a heart for that, that's a bucket. If you have a heart for autistic children, that's a bucket, right? Helping parents really relate to and and help their autistic children. Another one would be helping the parents. And we so anyway, we walked through kind of these buckets of the different pieces of content and types of content she could create. And I said, "If I could give you any advice, it would be to go through those and whatever consistency looks like for you. If that's three posts a week, if that's five posts a week, whatever it looks like, turn that camera on, have storytelling conversations, tell what you know about an actual client that you've dealt with in a in a story that is going to help someone else. They're going to relate to. And that's do that for 90 days. And then I want you to look at the way your content performs."
And that is going to give you a lot of data in what you need to then double down on and what your audience is actually wanting. And Mindy talks about this a lot. You know, we build the course before the horse, meaning the the product before the audience. And it is so backwards. And I think about my own business and how it has evolved and it's it continues to evolve based on what my clients say they need. Friends, our whole job as entrepreneurs is to solve a need is to find the need and and fill it with a solution. So Mindy, I just want to get your feedback. Like, let's talk about what other things would you have told her? Maybe what would you have said differently? Because I know we both have, you know, two kind of different brains. But here's, let me back up. The question she asked me whenever I said to make content in those buckets is, but what is my ultimate goal? What am I selling? And I said, "Oh, friend, you're not selling anything. You're not selling anything. You're getting your audience to tell you what they want and what they're willing to pay for."
Yeah, and there in lies the problem with a lot of entrepreneurs. So some of us start out with this intention like, how am I making money? How am I making money? And when you do that, part of it comes from, I think, a scarcity mentality because we're doing this thing and now how am I making money? And if you are in Christ, my my first comment is to absolutely shift your focus and and put your eyes on Him, all on Him. That's number one. All too often, this is what I see entrepreneurs do. They build the course because they think it's really good. And it probably is pretty good. It probably is, but it's what they're really good at, what they love to do. It's really about them. And to your point, Cara, like you said before, I coined this phrase. It's called the course before the horse. You built the course, but the horse is dead. The horse is your audience. The horse is the people out there that you have not been feeding. So, it's dead. And when you do that, the strategy looks like this. I spent all this time, this energy, this effort, all this money to brand it, to make it perfect, to get it edited, to have it like absolutely perfect. And now I'm going to talk about it. Now is the first time because now it's done. So now I'm going to open my mouth and talk about it. That could be, that is the most inverse thing to do. You should be doing exactly what Cara said, creating the content, getting those buckets or those content pillars, kind of dialing those down and going, "Yeah, you know what? This woman's an OT. She should be talking about helpful tips for autistic kids, tips and strategy and and coming alongside parents of autistic children and how they can help, you know, mitigate these situations. The intimacy part, the age that this woman is, she's gone through perimenopause, menopause, and understands some of those difficulties, too. Again, she's an OT, so she knows some different strategies." My biggest encouragement to anybody listening to this right now that is in that inverse kind of upside down state, you're like, "I did I did the thing. I've built the course. I've got the branding perfect and like no one's buying anything." Okay, you did the really hard part first. So, be proud of yourself for getting that done. But now it's time to just take off the perfection lens that everything needs to be perfect. Talk about it. Talk about it. Ask questions. Engage. Talk about it. Ask questions. Engage. Talk. Like go and just like I want to say, like be free. Like go talk about it in your stories. Create some Reels. Again, the only way to Cara's point that you can really uncover the need in the marketplace is by asking good questions, is by scratching the itch and ripping off the scab a little bit. Like, you know, poke the bear a little bit and be like, "Hey, I'm curious. What do you guys think of this or that?" Those people are going to come, right? So, I think what you did was excellent and I would have said the same things and just go have fun with content creation.
Yeah. So, you said something last night, though, and I can't remember exactly how you said it. Oh, no, no, I do remember. You said, "What you do is you sell them what they want. You give them what they need."
Yes.
And I think that's so important. And one of the things if you are sitting in this situation right now where you put the course before the horse, you've already got your product. It's not selling. When you start creating that content and doing what Mindy said, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, and listen and have conversations about it. There's a really good chance that you can repackage it, change the marketing behind it, change the name behind it, and it may start selling because you're going to change the way you talk about it. You're going to sell them what they want, but you're going to give them what they need. I would say don't be despair, you know, like don't be like, "Oh my gosh, this is awful. You know, my life is over." No. Start talking about it and let's see like what can we do now?
Yeah, better. So, it's so good and it's so true. And you guys, when we talk about sell them what they want, give them what they need, I want you to when you're done watching this video, go out to your social media and watch how people are selling you. This is why many of you have bought every like $37, $47, $97, $4.97, $49.97. That's why you guys are buying all this stuff because they're really good at selling you what you think you want and sometimes not delivering you really what you need. That's for another conversation. But but they're really, really good at doing that. And you know, when you when you can do this from a place of integrity, you can do it both and you can do it both really well. You can sell them what they want and and it's catchy and it's clicky and it's, you know what I mean? All those things. But when they get into your world, you better believe that you're going to over deliver with what they truly need.
And eventually that gets them what they want. But there is that there is that space that's got to be filled. And this space is not sexy, right, Cara? It's like this space is some of the foundational stuff, some of the hard stuff, some of the woo woo. You're like, "Really? Gratitude? Really? That's going to change everything?" Actually, yeah, it does. But if I was out there like, "Listen, I'm going to sell a course on gratitude and we're going to have, you know, gratitude party," and nobody's going to buy that. But if it's like, "Give me five days to take you from X to Z," and you know you're going to, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to, you want to be careful with your words, friends. Let's not do what a lot of these people do and sell what am I trying to say, Carrie? You know what I mean?
Oil. Yeah.
Don't sell some snake oil.
Yeah, don't. And that's not our audience, right? We know that you guys don't do that. But what I'm saying is it's in then the part of your delivery of that product that you can really hit on. Gratitude absolutely changed my life and and here's why. I mean, from a science perspective, did you know that, you know, you cannot be in a state of anxiety and gratitude at the same time? It's just not possible. Did you also know that when you get into a practice of active gratitude that your perspective on everything changes? So, it's Do you guys see what I'm saying? Is that making sense?
Yeah. And I I want to give kind of an example because I've I've watched this like I've walked this out in my business and and actually last night on that call when the person was talking and she was talking about, you know, calming your nervous system and and she's so good at just practical things. I was sitting there listening and I remembered she's been a private client of mine. I remembered her saying one time, "You threw me a life raft. You didn't jump into my pool of chaos." And as she was talking about what she does with her own people, it dawned on me, I sell finishing your product and getting it getting all the tech done. But I had a conversation with a client that didn't say it in the same way that this person had said it, but she said she spent $8,000 on her package with me. And before we ever touched her tech, she messaged me one day and said, "I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth, even if you never did another thing for me." So, I sell the tech, but what I actually give them is the support for their nervous system and the calm energy that they need when they're walking through creating because it is stressful and it is hard.
Mhm.
And so it was so funny when we were having that conversation because I'm like, "Wow, I I hadn't even thought about it." But when you said what you said and I remembered back to what she I was like, "Wow, it all comes full circle." But you do you sell them what they want. So when you see my marketing online, it's talking about like you've taken all the courses to get your course launched and it's still not launched or you've bought this platform and this one and this one and you still have no systems that work, right? Because you want a working system. You want that course link.
But friend, to get there, you're going to need some mindset and you're going to need some some system regulation.
Yeah.
And I'm going to be that that voice a that points you to Christ, but b that says, "Friend, you are spiraling out of control. We're going to have to calm it down and we're just going to do the next step."
Yeah. That's so good.
Yeah. So, I mean, it's just so neat working with our clients and and having conversations and realizing like, wow, you know, this truly this works. This is exactly the way all this works. And I've been through the same thing building on the tech side of things too where you just get so incredibly frustrated that if you don't have somebody to come alongside you and to work through the mindset piece. A lot of the tech people that I know that I've met before, they just know they know how the tech works and what it can do, but they're waiting for you to tell them what you want it to do. And there is a disconnect in that communication. And you're like, "I don't know what I want it to do. Like, you're supposed to tell me." And there's that disconnect, Cara. And so and I see that and and how you work with your clients too. How beautifully you like you throw the bridge out over the valley. You really do. Like when we are helping someone else and and it's funny because we when I was talking to the client last night, I said, you know, we become for our clients what we needed somebody to become for us. And that's exactly, you know, what she's doing every day as an OT is she's learned the things that I mean, I think back to when my kids were little. I wish I knew some of the techniques that I know now that I'm able to if you know, if a mom comes to me and says, "I'm struggling with this." Well, here, this, you know, I went through that too and this is what worked. I didn't know at the time. Like, they're just, anyway. So I just I think it is so neat to watch all of these ladies build their businesses and watch them evolve and lean into where the Lord really has given them strengths that they don't even know they have.
Oh, that's good. And I want to just give those of you too that are maybe you're newer on the journey or you're kind of on the struggle bus right now. I want to give you guys just kind of a 30,000 foot view as to kind of what this can look like. And again, the importance of community, which many of you know Cara and I launched Unstuck and Unstoppable. It's our foundational five-day boot camp. That's awesome. And so if you're looking for some foundations, you should start there. Unstuck and Unstoppable. It's going to be in one of the links somewhere as you're watching this video or just comment the word unstuck. We'll get it to you. But from there, we launched uh our mastermind, Called to Activate. And Called to Activate is a community where Cara and I go in weekly and we coach. So you can't get stuck on tech. It's just not an option anymore because Cara's there and she's going to help with that. You can't get stuck on, "I don't know what kind of content to create" because that's what I'm here for. And so we come alongside you and all of that. But what I'm wanting to say is this is 30,000 foot view of what it looks like to really do this. It really starts with, "All right, I have this idea. I think it's good. I don't know. Let me see what everybody else thinks." You start creating that that dialogue on social media. You start creating content that starts creating conversations. And you kind of just have fun with it. I want to say don't get stressed out about it. Let's have fun with it and see what kind of action and traction you can get from talking about the thing that you think is so awesome that you really want to create a course about. The first step is to not create a course about something and have no idea whether or not the market's going to even like it. Any, you know what I mean? That they're going to interact with it, that there's a need in the marketplace for it. So your number one thing that you need to do is go out and start talking. Go live. Create a Reel. Share your thoughts on, you know, actually contrarian kind of content. If it's a little bit like polarizing, good. Create that kind of content. See what can happen with it. From there, then, like Cara said, like you kind of take a view, uh, you kind of take a look at over the last 60, 90 days of you having fun creating content, getting other people's opinions and stuff. If something's hot and popping, well, success leaves clues, right? You're like, "Okay, actually, gosh, I thought they were going to really be interested in this, but they're all missing this piece. Holy crap, I almost created an entire course of this, and they don't even have a clue that this is, you know what I mean? This is where I'm going to go." So from there, you create maybe a free guide, a free resource, right? Start getting these people into your world. May maybe then you do a little workshop or a mini-course. But the last thing I think a lot of you need to be doing is a 12-module, 56-page binder course of something that you haven't tested and flushed out and had conversations with. Like, that to me is the biggest. If I've seen any mistakes out there, that's been the biggest one. Wouldn't you say, Cara?
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, unfortunately, I think a lot of times we're we're told it it'll work, but but when you actually strip back and you look at what really works, it's it's it's not just go create a course and and sell a bunch. You're going to have to have relationships and you're going to have to have conversations and you're going to have to make sure that what you're building aligns with what your audience wants.
You got.
Give them what they need, right?
Yeah. That's so good. Yeah, it's awesome. So, if you guys are looking for community, just know Cara and I do have our Call to Activate community, but to get into that, we start with the foundations because I think we'd be doing you guys a disservice to not send you through Unstuck and Unstoppable first. And so, yeah.
Yeah. Well, and I'll say Unstuck and Unstoppable came from all of the conversations we had and we realized the foundations that were missing with most entrepreneurs. And so we we sat down, we mapped them all out and we're like, we're going to teach all of those foundations. We're going to show you what it's really like to run an online business because we don't we're not going to sell you the belief that it's easy 'cause it's not. Uh, and there's, I mean, when it gets hard, not if it gets hard, when it gets hard. And we want the people that are in our community to already understand that. We don't want you to come in with, you know, your rose-colored glasses on and be like, "This is a, you know, just a rainbow paint party. We we've got this. This is amazing." No, it's hard. Now, let's go do it together.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I mean, I think we end at that. That's fantastic.
Yeah. We'll see y'all next week.
Take care, friends.