A - Z Of A Boring And Broke Business

Welcome to the A to Z of a broke + boring business.

Airy Fairy Concepts.

Impact. Success. Confidence. Freedom. Next level. Transformation. Dream Life.

The technical term for these concepts is “piss weak with no substance to them.” This is why people can’t put a price on what you’re offering and lay down the cash for it.

Buzzwords.

6 Figures. 7 Figures. 8 Figures.

They make you sound stale and sleazy and salesy. All the things you hate.

Conviction-less.

You dance around the topic. You write fluff pieces. You switch between your offerings. You change direction 50 times a year [Also see: multi-passionate].

There’s no conviction in what you’re doing.

Doing What Your Idol's Doing.

If you’re asking yourself this: Why would anyone want to work with me when they could just work with <<insert mentor here>>?

The answer is why indeed.

Stop trying to be someone else.

Do you. With conviction.

No one wants a copycat clone girl so don’t go there.

Emotion.

People buy based on emotion, and then use logic to justify it.

Presenting the emotional piece first gets people to feel.

Get them to feel, and you get them to buy.

Fear Mongering.

Ya know: If you don’t work with me you’ll never make the money you want and you can forget about that family holiday to Tahiti, you freaking loser.

It’s so fucking rude.

If you have to scare someone into working with you then here are two things I know for sure:

1. Your clients will never get results because they’re so fucking afraid.

2. You’re actually scared yourself and that desperation reeks more than the kid in year 7 who bathes himself in Linx.

Green Smoothies.

Your green smoothie looks the same as everyone else's. Putting spinach in to make them green isn’t innovative.

Now, if you’re using the blood of a leprechaun because of their youth-amplifying minerals, write a post about that.

How-To Guides.

Are lame. Mostly because what you’re telling me isn't new. Your curated version is the same as Sally's curated version.

If I'm typing in “how to make the crumbs stick on my parma,” I'm not going to pay attention to you.

When I finally find out how I'm crumbing that bad boy quickly. I'm hungry damn it. I'll never remember your name, your site, your edge, the thing you're known for. I'll never pay you for anything either.

I'll mentally thank you if the crumbs stick at the end of my meal. But you'll be a mystery and then you're gone. Forever.

How-to guides are one-hit wonders.

Are you a one-hit wonder?

I’m Doing What The Gurus Told Me.

You are not part of a pyramid scheme. So stop acting like it. You are a badass business owner and you can (and should) do things differently. It means you’ll actually stand out in the sea of sameness AND you’ll reverse that creative lobotomy you had when you became an online business owner.

Jargon.

Accountant jargon: Owner’s Equity, Accrued Expenses, Present Value, Balance Sheet.

Most accountants keep them to themselves, if they know what’s good for them.

Coaching jargon: Limiting Beliefs, Mindfulness, Shifting Perspective, Clearing Blocks, Inner Critic, Scared Self.

Why are you making these words the star of your sales page and then wondering why nobody is buying?

I guarantee your people aren’t walking around thinking: I need help with my limiting belief and clearing those blocks so I can release my inner strength and live my full potential.

Killed The First Impression.

What people remember: how you made them feel, not what you said.

What happens on the internet: it’s how you say it that’s going to make them feel something.

And your first impression is lacklustre. Probably because you’re trying to get them with your super impressive jargon.

Logical And List Heavy.

Logic is part of the buying process. But it comes last.

A lot of businesses get this part wrong. They go straight to the logical elements, listing out what they get and why someone should hire them.

This doesn't work because the audience isn't emotionally invested yet. And so they tend to skim read. And we lose them. Build that emotional response upfront before we present the how / what / why / what's included and bam. Sales.

Multi-Passionate.

Have multiple passions? Set up multiple businesses.

I’ll never buy from a slash-ie.

Especially if it’s something as important as heart surgery. Think about it, would you get heart surgery from someone who specialises in social media? Fuck no. You’d go to the person who's so crazy into their skills and profession they're an expert.

If you don’t think what you do is as important as someone specialising in heart surgery, get out now.

Need Instead Of Want.

Need: to sort out that bat shit crazy mind of theirs.

Want: a size 8 body.

Sell them what they want, give them what they need.

Don’t think you can somehow avoid this very human rule.

You will never make money from someone who’s so freaking desperate to be a size 8 by selling them the idea they DON’T need to become a size 8 but need to sort out their batshit crazy mind.

Opinion. Where The Hell Is It?

You’re too afraid to say what you really think. Or feel.

You'll never be positioned as an expert, or thought leader.

Pick a topic.

Pick a side.

Write about it.

People are going to get pissed off. Guess what? Those fuckers were never going to buy from you. Begone.

Process Driven.

Give me all your money and you get two hours of time, with me.

No.

No one wants to spend two hours with you for the sake of spending two hours with you, not even if you’re Chris Hemsworth (although I prefer Liam.)

If you buy two hours with Liam, what’re you getting for those two hours?

Bragging rights. Photos to plaster all over social media. The inside goss. A proposal if you’re lucky.

Quick + Reactive.

OMG I love how she did that. I’m so doing that.

OMG that seems like an easy way to make money. I’m so doing that.

Stop reacting to other people’s success.

And get proactive about your own.

Refuse To Recognise The People Who’ll Pay You.

I can help everyone. Seriously. For real. The kind of work I do is for everyone. No joke.

I believe you, sister.

That doesn’t mean you actually can do it. Physically. In the real world, help everyone.

You know why? Because there’s nothing you’ll ever be able to say that'll appeal to a bricklayer tradie bloke who’s 25, a 5-year-old kid, a prisoner who killed his cat, a 50 year of heart surgeon, and a stay-at-home mum.

No, this isn’t a challenge. There is no one sentence that's going to sell what you do to all of them.

So pick the person who you’d be delighted to help. Talk to them.

Summaries Instead Of Teasers.

If you're going to summarise what you’ve just written in a headline or subject line then thanks babe, you’ve just saved me a crap load of time not having to read through everything you’ve written and I can skip over and click delete.

Summaries do exactly that. That’s why they were created. So you don’t have to read the whole thing.

And when I don’t have to read your whole thing, I’m never going to know about how freaking cool you are and how you can help me. Or how I can pay you.

Telling Instead Of Showing.

You feel anxious.

You feel sad.

You don’t feel confident.

You’re sick and tired of not getting clients.

Shut up. You can’t tell me how to feel. And I’m sick of you telling me how I should feel.

Somewhere along the way, some guru told the internet you need to get in the minds of your people (good idea), and then really let them know we know how they feel (also a good idea). But, they failed to mention just because you tell someone they feel something doesn’t actually make them feel someone.

So stop telling people and start showing them. Stories help.

The best way to have someone feel something is to describe that feeling in your body.

Using Proper English.

You are writing like a robot.

You do not contract your words and you are writing with perfect grammar.

It is not only hard to read, it makes you so far removed and robotic that I will not develop a rapport with you and think you are a drone.

Contract your words. As much as you can. Write like you’d speak.

Viewpoint.

The fastest way to creating a smash hit failure of a business:

Not understanding how your people view the world around them.

Not understanding how you view the world.

Not understanding where you two meet with your viewpoints.

What’s Your Edge?

Your specialisation.

Take the heart surgeon example again.

You've got a heart issue. Do you go and see a GP, or do you go see a specialist heart doc?

Easy. You go to the person who specialises in the field.

You can specialise in so many ways.

In the type of industry (pharmaceuticals).

The type of person (30 year old women who’ve divorced the high school sweetheart and have never been on a date again).

The type of work (personality driven email marketing campaign copywriting services).

You get to choose.

Quit being a boring fence sitter, jack of all trades, and stand out with your edge.

eXaggerating Figures.

Everyone wants more money. And to do that, we need more clients. And we’ve been convinced to get more clients, we need to outdo the next coach with how amazingly successful we are.

Enter: exaggerating figures.

I made 6 figures in 6 months. Work with me.

I made $10K in one day. Work with me.

I got fully booked in one day. Work with me.

But please don’t ask about the details about my ongoing success and about what my calendar look like today, though. And don't ask about how yesterday I made negative $5,000.

Talking about your figures is like a dude buying a red corvette to overcompensate for his small penis.

Your Brand Voice Is Inconsistent.

Swearing like a sailor who’s drunk too much rum and on a rant in one post.

An angelic spiritual soul sister who’s attuning her vibration to the angels in another.

Preaching “getting shit done.”

Telling people to listen to their intuition and slow down.

There’s nothing more confusing than a brand voice that does 180 flips every other day.

I don’t know whether to relate to you, high-five you or roll my eyes at you.

Zero Follow Through.

Say you’re going to email your people once a week and don’t?

Say you’ll get that brief to a client by the afternoon and you fail?

Even worse, an enquiry comes through and you don’t act on it?

A yawn-worthy business is someone who’s all for show. Smoke and mirrors. When it comes down to getting it done, doing the work, showing up, where are you?

Watching Netflix? May as well stay there and don’t bother coming back.