The Only 3 Things That Matter to Explode Your Biz Online

We could all really make business so much easier and simpler for ourselves, if only we were willing to let go of the idea that it HAS to be complex, that there must be something we don’t know that everybody else does, that there’s clearly something we’re MISSING.

It IS hard work to build a successful business that’s also ‘on your terms’. You will have to fight fear, resistance, self-doubt, uncertainty, lack of time, lack of money, often SERIOUS financial and emotional stress, relationship stress, people not getting you, people not liking you, your stuff not working, envy and comparisonitis, the list goes on and on!

So yes … it’s definitely HARD WORK.

But it is NOT complex work.

If you strip it all away and just get down to it, all you need to do to be successful – all any of us need to do – is:

* Deliver incredible value
* To people who want and need it
* In a way that makes YOU happy and alive
* And in a way that they ‘get’ the value they’re receiving
* Oh, and ask for money at some point. Yeah … not asking for money for anything for the first 2-3 years of my online biz was probably a major reason I didn’t get any; but that’s just a guess!

Let’s make it more specific – what do we actually need to DO to make this work and to create the lifestyle and financial freedom we dream about?

I believe that there are only 3 things we need to do each day in our business. I speak about this all the time to my clients, and I tell you – when they LISTEN and then act accordingly everything gets much easier and results start FLOWING. Sometimes they – and I! – need reminding everyday mind you.

1. Get your message out there in some way, shape or form.

Your message is the thing that YOU know you need to share with the world. It’s essentially what you believe and are most passionate about sharing with others.

***Bonus points! Just getting your message out is the MOST important thing, but if you can also do so in such a way that you create VALUE for people and are INSANELY useful, helping them to solve the stuff that’s been haunting them or stopping them from reaching their goals while also helping them then GET to their goals, you will truly be an unstoppable force AND I promise you that people will practically beg you to let them pay you.

2. Sell something.

Offer people a way to work with you. Give them the HELP that they need. Always. Be. Selling. Of course this ONLY works if you are also always doing point #1.

***Example: most of my income comes, both directly and indirectly via simple ‘PS’s’ I add to the end of my message. I.e. a PS at the end of a blog post, explaining how I can help or linking to a current promotion. Or the verbal equivalent of a PS at the end of a live call.

3. Grow your audience.

Every day do something to grow your audience. Even putting a post up which is useful and helpful (I hope like this one!) is a great way to do this, as people will like and comment and maybe share. Of course you can also be more strategic, like guest posting, FB ads, and so on. You can even automate a great FB ad in large part so that you don’t have to actively think about how to grow your audience each day. Even so, the ultimate ‘best’ way to grow your audience is simply doing point #1 and then getting it out there … aka share awesome, inspiring, truth based, USEFUL content, in whatever form works for you!

A ‘real life’ example of how I do all this:

My life is pretty crazy busy most of the time. Not in a bad way, not at all! We live location independent, having left home in November 2013 when our second child was about 2 months old. I’ve lost count of how many countries we’ve even been in … I think he’s on 15 countries for 16 months of life. lol. Anyway … life is awesome and I have a lot of freedom, all created of course by design after setting this as an intention many moons ago when I was a green thumbed young entrepreneur just starting out.

The awesome thing is – every day is like a holiday and my family are around all the time!

The tough thing is – every day is like a holiday and my family are around all the time! I don’t want to go too far down the path of ‘woe is me’ for my laptop life … but I’ve read a few posts lamenting the tough side of life on the road and I can definitely relate.

We often lose whole days and certainly many half days in travel, and then everything that comes with travel – unpacking, re packing, dealing with meal and bed times thrown around, language problems, wifi problems (oh the wifi problems – the horror!), cramped hotel rooms at times, if we’re not staying somewhere through Airbnb, public transport, finding our way around, waiting in queues for stuff and so on and so forth.

You know … usual travel stuff!

In terms of how this impacts my ability to work – a LOT. I like to get up super early and try and get most of my work done before the day begins with the fam. Thing is though – like right now – if you’re all sleeping in one hotel room, one person gets up and everyone gets up. So already I’m a few hours behind when I start the day as I don’t want to force everyone up at 530am – not very fair on Enzo.

Wifi can be mega problematic, and I’ve been known to get online in the oddest of places. The most random was possibly the time I did a webinar to 50 people in a toilet! Ha – they weren’t in the toilet, just me smile emoticon when we’re in a hotel room and I’m coaching or teaching online at night, I have to leave the room or I’ll wake the kids. Even when we have a suite my voice comes through and wakes them.

I guess you could say why not just not do live calls? But that’s the point … I’m not going to put my ideal business on hold for travel purposes! Just like I don’t put my travel and adventure life on hold for business purposes! So – you compromise, you make do.

Often times I’m in a situation where I can either get some work done during the day, or I can go and see the city where we are. This is truly tough, as I do love to work and I get stressed if I miss much work. I like to get a solid 3-4 hours in a day if I can. But something that means making my family sit around in a hotel waiting for me, or it just means I miss out on sightseeing.

Yesterday I walked past my family at the waterpark in the hotel here (Atlantis, Paradise Island – it’s a whole freaking city!) and saw them laughing and playing – they didn’t see me, and I had to just keep walking as I knew that if I didn’t go do my few hours work then before meeting up later with them, I’d end up doing nothing that day.

Don’t think for a second I’m not grateful – I’m MEGA grateful. Despite this sort of thing sometimes getting to me I flat out get to spend WAY more time with my kids and husband than practically anyone I know, aside from other lifestyle entrepreneurs.

Of course speaking of spending a lot of time with one’s husband – this is not always a great thing.

We fight like cats and dogs. Worse. We also laugh together, play together, have fun together. But we are both EXTREMELY stubborn, and let’s face it – kids underfoot 24/7 (more so for Enzo than me as he looks after them when I work), VERY rare opportunity to spend time just the two of us let alone alone individually, non ideal at times meal and sleep stuff … cramped space … constant juggling of time, money, emotion … it builds up.

A lot.

So we release the build up.

A lot.

The amount of times we’ve seriously considered splitting up during this trip is impossible to even remember. We’ve come VERY close at times. To top it all off, given our living situation, the kids often get to see these fiery displays.

Awesome.

Okay, so before this starts going super doom and gloom – it’s not.

We are traveling the world mostly in FINE style, we get to choose how we spend our days, we’ve done more int he past year of seeing the world than most people do in a lifetime, we’ve created incredible memories, we’ve fought off nearly bankrupting my company way back at the start, we’ve overcome the stress of at times not knowing where we’re even going to be the next week or whether we’ll have the money to pay for it (this was more so back at the start before my business really exploded … now my income is freaking awesome if I do say so myself; I’m doing 6 figure months which is pretty much as wonderful as it might seem!! … but despite that it comes at times in waves and sometimes there are an INSANE amount of expenses all at once. In the last 3 weeks alone for example, I’ve had over 55k of $$ go out; partially this was a tax bill but also travel stuff, biz expenses stuff, and so on. This IS stressful and it can be hard to juggle even with a great income) … so yes, we’ve developed tenacity, persistence, and a whole lot more character building stuff!

We’ve also grown together as a couple and a family in ways the ordinary life just doesn’t demand of you or allow you. We’ve learned about what each of us needs and we’ve made incredible plans for the years to come. All in all it is a MIND BLOWINGLY awesome way to live.

But anyway … before I went off on that little tangent, which certainly wasn’t planned! … I was going to tell you how I actually do the stuff that matters in my business, how I keep it simple and just make it COUNT as well as work.

Let’s come back to those 3 points:

1. Getting my message out.

I write a blog most days. Today this was going to be just a tiny FB post, so I don’t know what just happened but hey – message done, boom! This post is a great example – I’m sharing thoughts about who I am, what I stand for, what I believe, as well as providing value. This would be the perfect post to add a promotional PS to.

Other ways I get my message out: I have a weekly podcast and YT show, both new, both done TOTALLY off the cuff and just in leftover bits of time. No makeup, no filter, no studio, no BS. Quick and easy. Once again sharing value based content and my message.

I also run free live calls from time to time, on topics of my choosing that I feel will help and inspire people.

So all of this is me ‘getting my message out’.

2. Offer something for sale.

Simple: whack on a PS either verbal or written at the end of any of the above! Link back or offer back to some way to work with me, based on whatever it is I’m promoting or offering at the time.

**Note: obviously this means you have to have something to sell! This should fall along the same lines as getting your message out: be inspiring and insanely useful! Obviously in a personalised and in-depth manner, as compared with the free stuff you get out. If you don’t know what to sell or what you’re selling isn’t working – ask people what they want and would pay you for!

3. Grow my audience.

Case in point right here, although it’s pretty indirect. I could turn a post like this into a FB ad though (and maybe I will), then retarget people who read it with a free optin. FB ads are one of the main ways I grow my list. They are a royal pain in the ass, even though I fortunately am able to pay someone else to do them now! They STILL are hard to get through, randomly stop working, and there’s so much behind the scenes that needs to go into it to make it effective. All of which is WORTH it.

I also submit guest posts around the web, which is good for branding but it doesn’t have much impact on my traffic.

There are tons of other stuff that help with reach but LARGELY it is about getting your message out there!

So here’s the thing.

Most people use their available online work time to do practically everything EXCEPT the above 3 items, and then try and squeeze in a quick blog post or content at the last minute. Even with stuff like getting a FB ad up people over complicate, try and make it perfect, procrastinate for weeks or months even on getting an optin up!

The only way I am able to get so much done, and run a now million $ biz and growing with kids underfoot all while living location free is because I focus like a mofo.

I know that matters, I know what is essential and I know what I can let slip.

And I am RUTHLESSLY disciplined to doing first things first, at the expense of ANYTHING else. You have to be. I couldn’t have achieved what I’ve achieved- and this goes for a lot of stuff in my life, not just business – if I allowed myself to be swayed from doing what really matters or if I allowed myself to over complicate it.

A perfect example is doing my YT shows just as a selfie video with no makeup and no prep. It takes 3 minutes, a few times a week, and I have a YT show! Is it glam and perfect? Hell no! Does it HELP people and therefore get my message out and therefore allow me a platform to make more money and help more people? Hell yes!

So you have to be willing to let go of a lot of the rules about how things should be. If you can’t do that – if you can’t do a webinar in a toilet! – then maybe this isn’t the path for you. Or maybe you need to wait until you have endless available time, money and patience to build your biz, or your kids / partner / dog are all grown up and out of your hair.

Good luck with that!

The thing you have to realise – and this was such an important lesson for me; one I continue to learn over and over again- is that it doesn’t have to be perfect in order to get done but it DOES have to get done in order to make an impact.

So you can’t do business the way you ‘one day’ want to, can’t take your time, sometimes can’t do it without simultaneously sitting a baby on the edge of the desk and sticking your boob in his mouth while you type (I hear you sister!) … so what?

You want it, or not?

I’m always impressed when I see women achieving something incredible against all odds. The Mum who does backyard or playground workouts with her kids, makes it into a game, and gets into freaking phenomenal shape as a result. (I was recently inspired by Stay Strong Mummy for example to start doing this again myself).

The woman who builds her entire now million $ biz with a single finger typing on an iPhone while breastfeeding her child and simultaneously dealing with PND (shout out to my awesome friend and mentor Leonie Dawson).

The woman who stands up for what she believes even though people call her stuff so nasty you can’t even imagine, who makes a name by polarising unashamedly by freaking saying what she actually THINKS instead of sugar-coating it … hello Leela Cosgrove, a previous mentor of mine and one of the most influential in my learning to speak my truth.

The woman who goes above and beyond helping everybody around her out just because she’s so passionate about what she does, who has gone through hell and back and most people would have no freaking clue, to get to where she is now, who has done the freaking WORK and continues to do so … the inspiring Karen Strunks.

My clients who have walked through emotional fire, who have laid their very souls on the line to create a freedom-based business doing what they loved, who risked EVERYTHING and who continue to walk into that battle day in and day out … Christine Tona, Kim Power, Rosemary Nonny Knight, @Contemplation Cafe (ah, you’ll have to tag yourself Elles, it won’t tag!), the newly formed Beach Bunny Adventures you guys have my heart forever, and so many of my brand new clients who are already rocking it out of the ballpark in just weeks in Message Mission Money Magic … you know who you are!

Look around you –

If you WANT to look you can find incredible woman everywhere. Nobody who HAS anything worth WANTING hasn’t in some way been to hell and back (and often had a helluva time on the way, but still!) to get there.

MOST people simply will not PUT themselves through what these women have done, what so many others do everyday, what YOU could totally do if you made up your mind to.

So the only question is … how bad do you want what you say you want, and what are you willing to do to make it happen?

Part of this is also about what ideas or ideals do you need to let GO of.

The truth is you simply cannot try and do EVERYTHING based on how everyone else is doing it … you need to choose your path, adapt it where necessary, and then get out there and DO it.

Finally, and always …