“Due cappucini per favore”.
Suddenly the bar went quiet, it’s not the done thing to order a cappuccino in Italy after 11.30am.
You might get away with an espresso in the evening after dinner but a cappuccino has “foreigner” written all over it.
We didn’t care and I especially didn’t care since I needed the caffeine kick.
It’s not that I was tired, it’s that I’d been talking to my big brother for the last two hours about a somewhat foreign subject, digital marketing.
He’s an expert in that field working with some major companies.
And since I had him over visiting me in Italy I wanted to pick his brains on the latest strategies that might support my growth.
For those of you that know me, you know that I’ve built a reasonably successful coaching business being low-tech, high style and having very little interest in strategy.
Favouring the human to human approach over a random advert on Facebook that’s promising to make you millions overnight, I’m not your typical Millennial, apparently.
At one point though even I fell prey to those adverts.
Lost in a world of insecurity I began to think I needed to know more in order to sell more.
This was despite the fact my business was growing fine on its own.
I joined all sorts of marketing academies and soon found myself learning how to do Facebook Ads and how to create content for my “ideal client”.
All of this moved me away from what was working into spending a lot of time behind my computer.
Eventually, I was deep down the rabbit hole of intellect, confusion, comparison and chaos.
I wish I’d left it alone.
What was working for me was always simple.
It didn’t require tons of money on ads, capturing leads and 10K per month strategy.
Nor did it require me to be high-tech and constantly on social media carefully choreographing an online persona.
It allowed me to be me and generates a healthy six figures per year doing what I love.
The good news is that you’ve got it too.
Wisdom.
Looking back I see that I leveraged my wisdom, intuition and ideas really well.
I’d get an idea and rather than question it I’d find myself acting on it, despite the obstacles.
For example, I remember when I really wanted to start working with clients, I had no list, no concrete message or offers but my wisdom guided me to set up a small event and fly back to London.
Having no money of my own I collaborated with a friend, we split the costs and went ahead.
Our masterful marketing plan comprised of calling friends and friends calling friends and setting up a Facebook event page.
I clumsily shared my story at that event, of leaving my 9-5 job and made an ambitious offer that fell flat on its face.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
But it didn’t matter.
It was there that I landed my very first client anyway.
And that’s the good grace of following your wisdom, it might look messy and not very strategic but it always ends in a result.
I could say that the rest is history.
Ultimately the growth of my client base continued following this very same reliable source.
But wisdom did also point me towards major professional development, like learning to coach effectively and to run a business too.
So I highly invested with other coaches to become more equipped.
I also spent a year as an apprentice to a master in the field of coaching.
And that’s the thing about wisdom it’s very proactive and rarely airy-fairy.
Sometimes my clients worry that if they are to rely on this source they’ll find themselves doing nothing, this simply isn’t true.
The same energy that turns acorns into oak trees wants you to succeed, it’ll be guiding you to the exact action, people and opportunities you need.
Too often though, women starting out underestimate this incredible tool.
They question themselves and their ideas, innocently getting lost in learning more information as if the latest “how to” will save them.
Putting the cart before the horse is it any wonder you might get discouraged when you don’t see results?
I got lots of helpful advice from my brother that night and it was helpful because now that I’m 4 years into my business and know more about what I’m doing, I can actually apply a marketing strategy to my next phase.
How I thought that would be useful when starting out, when I didn’t even know what I was about, is mind-boggling.
But it’s innocent, you see when we get insecure we’ll reach for anything that looks like a solution.
Here’s my message to you, you wonderful woman starting out.
You don’t need to be high tech, you don’t need to know the latest marketing campaign, you don’t need to be a social media loving millennial to succeed!
You can be you, using your wisdom and following whatever it guides you to do, I assure you that will involve action, sharing more of yourself and your message and from there the people you can help will reach you.
Recent Comments