Transcription:
Feeling overwhelmed by everything that you should be doing in your business. if so then join me on today’s episode where we are going to welcome America’s number one coaching team for small business owners and see how we can take some of that off your plate.
So let’s dive into today’s episode. you, I’m just trying to tell you hello and welcome to the live advantage show.
I’m your host, Ed Troxell, live streaming video specialist and online marketing expert over at ed troxell dot com, where I help real estate agents and entrepreneurs use live streaming video market a little differently here online.
I’m super excited about today’s episode but before we bring on our guests, I just want to let you know that today’s episode is sponsored by my coaching program called, Real Estate Agents Go Live where I help real estate agents embrace live streaming video not only to just hit that go live button, but to know what they’re getting themselves into because anybody can hit that button, but it’s what happens before, during and after that really makes a difference and can help you stand out in your industry. If you want to learn more, head over to RealEstateAgentsGoLive.com.
The information is also in the show notes. now let’s dive into today’s episode and welcome our guests who are going to introduce themselves, and then we will join the conversation.
Hello, welcome. hey, how are you? hey, I hope you don’t mind. we brought one of our cats with us.
Yes, it’s a friendly studio, so I’m glad that you’re here with your pet. by the time we’re done, you might see at least two tails walk across when we’re on a show. it’s like, oh, this must be our time.
So there, yeah. and who is the cat? so since we’re starting with introductions, we might as well start with the cat first because that’s what it was.
Pesky. yes. the other one you might see is Tessie. you might hear Mookie, but you will probably see him because he’s £23 and he doesn’t tend to come up. he’s afraid to come in the studio.
Yeah. the camera-shy happens to all of us, including cats. as you all can see here. exactly. so we thanks for having us on uh, like you said, we were voted America’s number one coaching team for small business in 2017. uh, and that’s really because we help small business owners deal with all of the challenges in their business.
You know, we all started a business not to have a job, but to have a career, have it, have our business serve our life.
And that’s what we teach. we you were talking about, overwhelmed a lot of the small business owners that we meet are just overwhelmed by their to-do list.
Uh, and, and one of the things that we do with our small business clients is to help them deal with the whelmed. we want them in the state of whelm. yes. and that’s where I think all of us, everyone who’s listening is probably raising their hands saying yes, please, let’s just take that breath and yes, please.
Yeah. and um, when you got the business together, when you put everything together, how did that come about, did you guys start with, hey, we’re just gonna start an online business or just a business in general?
Or did you have something that you were working on before that kind of just made that light bulb go off and think yeah, we should be doing this for ourselves. do you want to start since you started the businesswomen later?
You know our business started it started at thanksgiving. yeah. I was working for another company and we were one of those families that went around the table and said, what are you thankful for?
And this is the short version when it came to me, I told my mom, Sharon and I married great things are wonderful and I’m passing it off to my sister and she said henry and when she’s henry instead of hank I know it’s serious uh what’s going on with work?
And that began a conversation with her, basically telling my dad write him a check for a couple $100 so we can get a new fax machine and start his own company. no kidding.
Yeah. and uh it was a promotional product company with the view was always too lending and add coaching because my background was in advertising and pr and economics and just selling stuff with logos on it. there’s a way to set yourself apart.
And ours was there was a marketing point to it. uh and over the years it was a lot of fun but it didn’t really become really fun until share enjoying the company because then we got to work together.
So while he was doing that I was doing office in hr management and financial services entertainment. um I had a work-related injury which I know seems strange for an office job but I did um so I was thinking in those days, well he’s the marketing guy, I don’t know anything about marketing.
And then I had this work-related injury where I was home in between physical therapy appointments and got to eavesdrop on the conversations he was having with his clients and realized, wait, those are the same conversations I was having in my hr office.
I worked with small business so it was the same and the light bulb went off that hr is really internal marketing. like I was marked, I was helping an employee market their idea to a target market of one usually their superior or a colleague or vice versa. right? the company had an idea and they wanted the employee buy-in.
So how do we message that? how do we frame that so that they want to buy in? it’s the same conversation he was having with his marketing clients.
So we just we joined forces and now we get to help small businesses with marketing sales, human resources, and back-office systems. wow. I love that journey that we just went on with you both because it started out with again, just a conversation over thanksgiving dinner and then it started to build from there.
And then also, I love how you eavesdropped on a conversation. that’s always a great thing when it comes to business learn, you know, you’re left the door open, literally the door was open and that’s the thing when you start to be curious and you start to pay attention to things that are maybe a little outside of your expertise, then you can start to determine whether or not that’s something that you want to look further into, whether or not, that’s something that you should maybe take part in and it allows us to continue to evolve and move forward.
And that’s something I want to ask you both about tying into what happened last year. so what was the biggest challenge your coaching clients had last year in 2020? uh uh so many of our clients, come to us as hank said right there wouldn’t what they do, um many of them come to us because the whole online thing is overwhelming, right? there are so many social media channels, I don’t even know which one to be on or I’ve been told I have to be on all of them, right, so they’re overwhelmed by the online stuff.
So now enter the pandemic, they, y’all gotta pivot, we got, you got to get onboard this online thing. now we’ve been taking them on the journey, you know they were already heading in that direction and getting comfortable and all of that, but now, right, the pandemic kind of sped up all of those shifts every time there is a major shock to the system and in this case namik plus recession now a lot of us went through researching and I only know nine and then you know which is this that even, that wasn’t our first recession.
Uh but trends tend to get sped up. uh and here’s a really cool example uh in 2019 we hey we’re business coaches and we’re going along with you know, we really should have an evergreen webinar on our website that talks about what we do. you know just one of those online tools like kitty and it was always a matter for us of okay we have to have the script down, okay now we have to have the time and we okay we should practice it all of this online stuff then the pandemic it and zoom became a verb.
Skype left. yeah, so we had we went from having done been on a couple of webinars as guests presenters to doing over 100 of them last year.
It’s like turning lights let’s go. and now we do about you know 10 or 12 of them a month. we have one in less than an hour. yeah, we’re done here.
And the business owner, by the way, if you want to access go to your marketing advisor dot com not now later.
You know when we’re done, never do it during ed show. never ever. but if you go to your marketing advisor dot com our schedule is there.
So that was we had to pivot 60 different clients on you know what they were doing. so we never really had that downtime that they were talking about. people claim to be bored and that was what I and I love that you bring up the zoom part of things and the pivot and how we all are basically forced to be on camera one way or another.
And have you seen any challenges with that with your clients in terms of having to be on camera having to use zoom because they maybe weren’t comfortable or they’re not just not used to the technology. have you seen anything around that?
Of course. how much time? yeah. most most of our clients and myself hank not so much um hank uh as a photographer and so he’s used to being behind but he’s also used to being in front, being on on and on stage.
I am a shy introvert. so for me to be on camera it took work and what it meant though is that I was able to have that empathy for our clients because I was feeling it too. so most of our clients and as I said and myself are hesitancy is with being on and being on camera and well, I don’t like the way I look on, you know what you look? the way you look like. sorry, you kind of look like George Clooney. like I do, you know, I had to get over that.
Yeah. you know, and not everybody is as handsome as head. yeah. 11 really easy tip. make sure that your background is not distracting.
We’ve seen a lot of folks where they’ll have like a moving background. um, and this is, this isn’t a virtual and this is an actual black background.
You know, it’s, it’s cloth. uh, the more it’s simple work here, the more they’re going to pay attention to you and make sure that you are, you know, from like we have a challenge because we’re different heights.
But everybody looking at see how well ed fits fills the box. yeah. and he’s lit wonderfully. that is a true professional. he’s got that depending on what time of day it is here in Sedona where we live, we have several different lighting systems that we can use.
So, uh, so how you look, you know, as soon as the most of your clients or realtors, let’s, let’s look at it, realtors, do you want them to see you as the newbie or the one that had 70 different clothings last, you know, last year, like one of our friends did, uh, we want them to pay attention and see you as a professional you are. so let’s, let’s clean up the background and make you look great.
Yeah, definitely. and when it comes to, uh, marketing as well online, whether it’s video or just in general, what kind of challenges have you seen with clients in terms of them putting themselves out there?
Is it the struggle besides having to be everywhere? how can they, like simplify that online stuff overwhelmed? uh well, let’s let’s start with the end in mind.
Yes. and and that’s every time you’re thinking of a marketing tactic, no matter what it is, uh, we start with that in mind. what do we want to happen?
Uh and watch here? I’m gonna pull back the curtain, not that curtain, but this one we go on a show and our goal is to is to offer you two or three different ways to find us.
You guys already got one of them, your marketing advisor dot com. and you know, later we’ll give you a way that you can track us down for a half-hour free for free.
If you want to get there faster, you go how to get there faster. dot com. so what is the goal when you, when you’re doing something? what’s the goal when your door knocking? what’s the goal when you’re making your follow-up calls?
If you know that, then you work backward. okay, what’s the message we have to share in order to make that happen? now? here’s, here’s the where most people start, who am I going to talk to and if they’re not sure who they’re going to talk to and they don’t have that really niche down here is an example.
Um, we hear a lot of coaches and say we work with small to medium-sized businesses, you know that that catchphrase small dominion part. we kept hearing that it was like, you know what, that’s not us, we work with small business owners, so it’s, we avoid the cliche and we niche it down. but when you’re creating that message, it doesn’t hurt to have an actual photograph, a person that you’re talking to.
You know, if it’s a new home buyer, if it’s if you know someone older, how whoever you’re talking to for that message of a picture up, then what? then you’re talking to that person.
We have all sorts of photos of our clients that we put in various places when we’re doing messaging. so we feel like, you know, let’s let’s create a message for small business owners that are professionals. all right, let’s put Scindia she’s a financial planner.
Yeah. and if you start really who you’re going to talk to and understand that we all can’t sell to everyone, then it helps you niche down. and then the message becomes more obvious and then, well, heck where is that person looking?
You know, you’re we’re doing this on live, on LinkedIn, right. well, mostly professionals, we know LinkedIn is a professional database.
It’s not just a place to get a job anymore. it’s growing up. I thought in advance I might have added a tie. uh, but we’re not on TikTok, the audience is older and more professional.
So know who you’re, who you’re chatting with and then you know where their eyeballs are. that’s where you put your message. so don’t start with the I have to be in lincoln. I have to be on youtube. I have to right.
Start with the end in mind. who’s your audience? then create the message, then you can choose where to put it. yes. and I love that you bring up the fact about having a photo of your ideal client, the person that you may be worked with or that you want to work with and having that there. and you know I talked to my clients about visualizing that if they don’t have the actual photo yet, they can visualize whether they’re talking to me or somebody else on the other side of the camera so that when they go live they know that they’re a little bit more comfortable and at ease and in fact even have here for everyone, I even have name your device because it’s no longer just a phone.
This is your best friend, it’s your personal assistant, it’s your photographer, your videographer uh that it’s there for you through thick and thin.
Even when you throw it against the wall like it’s still there. you know we call ours. well the name for ours is a. t. m. because every time you pick up your phone, whether they say yes or no, it brings you closer to the yes. so every time you pick up your phone and make a follow call or answer it, it’s bringing you closer to money. so name your name, your phone 80 m there you go.
There you go. yeah. it’s just being able to think a little differently about it and to feel more at ease by personalizing it, right? I mean we think about how apple gave the name.
You know, it starts with the NASA can’t say because she’ll wake up but google has, you know, yeah, google has, there’s like we have all of those for a reason and it’s not just because they thought it was fun to give it a name.
It’s because they want it incorporated in our lives and be part of our lives, be more personal. so that can really help when you are trying to be on camera and talk to your audience, whether on camera or just in general being able to visualize them.
You know, if you shoot a video, you can always delete it and start over. thank you even with live everyone. so let’s talk about that for a second. that’s something that I really want to stress is that whether you’re doing pre recorded or a live stream, you can always delete it later.
So don’t let that stop you from showing up and being the best that you can be where you’re at right now because we all start somewhere. so use what you have, do what you need to do, record, go live and see what happens.
And then if it’s extremely terrible, which is not going to be. but if it’s really extremely terrible, you can always hit that to leave button. so probably not. you’re probably being way too hard on yourself.
100%. yes. look, here’s the thing, your ideal client, your most profitable client. they don’t want to see you be perfect.
They want to see how you handle the imperfection. yes. yeah. we’ve we’ve had we’ve had, you know what every weird thing you’ve had happened.
We’ve had it. you know, it’s uh-huh. my favorite thing. I will stumble over words and I just say, you know what I talk, I speak for a living like ah but that’s the way it goes.
Look if you’re perfect and prim and proper and then they meet you in purpose on in person again, I speak for a living, you can edit that out later.
Wait, we’re like when they meet you in person if you’re not the same, it doesn’t work. you can go through it. one of the reasons we started our coaching program is that we know that coaches need coaches. so we looked for coaches and we were in a few different coaching programs and we never felt like we met the real person, oh and for us and that feels sticky for us to talk to always be, you know, ed you and always project that top professionalism is hard because there are clients are going to see us every Monday on a mastermind call and I’m not that good an actor.
It’s a lot of work if you’re trying to truly is so just and work that’s unnecessary. like there are things that take a lot of work that need your focus to do that to be perfect all the time. that is an unnecessary stressor.
100%. and I love that you bring that up because everyone listening needs to re-listen to that on the replay because it is so important. we get so caught up in perfectionism and how everything has to be perfect before we launch it or share it or whatever post it and we have to get over that. we have to, we have to silence those.
There’s no right or it’s wrong for that, right? there is a time for this, this whatever has to be perfect. but then there are times when you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and sometimes good enough is really actually good enough.
Yeah, we did. we started our we have we’ve done 240 plus episodes of our podcast and when we started yeah, yeah, microphones live at four p.m. on Tuesday. uh we each killed a small tree with the amount of paperwork that we had to be prepared. you know, we were, we had articles for an hour show and by the time we got to show number 100, it became they were on in 10.
What do you have? we each came with like a post-it with a few bullet points. okay. we got used to it. yeah. so just that honestly, if you want to get out of overwhelming Nike is right, just do it and mess up.
Nobody uses that as an accused. just mess up. yes. and I love that you bring that up too because it’s so important, especially when starting out, even my clients when we’re starting out with going live, everyone will be very scripted, you know, have the 23 page layout of everything that they’re going to say.
Yeah. I mean it’s just, I think it’s just default for all of us. you know, I started that way too. and once you get going, then you realize.
Yeah. I mean, I was when I was doing my show five days a week, I literally did the same thing that you had mentioned, inc is that I would show up five minutes, 10 minutes before, sometimes, maybe two minutes before just alive.
Because it was like, I knew that I had to go live at this specific time every day. I made it a part of my daily routine. and so I would just go live and hope for the best, like you’re beginning, beginning, but you know, you get there and it’s the more you do it. so i’m glad that you brought that up. you know, it’s really fun is when you’re a guest on someone’s show and it’s like this and their internet goes out.
So we were a guest on somebody’s show. their internet went out and their producer said um guys you’re it I said tell you what now, this was on a radio station that we were on in phoenix.
And we shared a producer, I said wendy just put our okay come back from the break and put our music up. we just turned it into our show until 20 minutes later he his internet came back, it’s like you just roll with it and have fun.
And he was he came back and we introduced him and we and we uh interviewed him as it was fun. but yeah, that’s beautiful, you’re able to roll with it and not just sit there and be like what do we do? like you don’t you love it when you watch Saturday night live and they lose it.
Isn’t that like the best part is using crack themselves up there trying to hold it together, and they kind of like, wow, yes, they’re on their, on live tv.
Yeah, in fact, um lookup British broadcaster interrupted by kids. do you know that video? yes, it’s an awesome video. so you can’t possibly be BBC embarrassed.
It’s got long before covid right, I was, was doing British broadcasting live, prim and proper from his bedroom and when you look over his shoulder, his bed is there, but it’s covered with books. so it looks like a desk and in the middle of the conversation door opens behind him, kind of like the door behind you and a three-year-old walk, you know, just kind of saunders in like, oh, that’s dad, and then the 1.5-year-old comes in and the guys just, oh, but you know, the next day they interviewed him, his wife and his kids and he said, look, I’m we’re a family happened. so now it’s happened to almost all of us, this pandemic.
I might or might not be wearing shorts. I will be honest with all of you because I actually was thinking about bringing that up. I am wearing shorts right now. so it is what it is like that.
That’s why the long pants don’t come on to our own. there you go, wow, who needs to do? but it’s one of those things that, you know, you just, you have to have fun with it. and that’s what I really love about live streaming.
Get me on pre-recorded. and it’s, it’s a lot tougher. it’s a little different for me, which I know might sound weird to some people, but pre-recorded is so much more challenging and so much harder um in my brain and I think most of our brains when we go live, it’s that survival mode that kicks in.
And so we automatically just whatever happens versus a test that we’re gonna, we’re gonna have you come on our show. it’s the view cast.com and we’re going to have you come on ours because we hear you record it.
It’s everyone who gets the same questions. it’s seven minutes, 21 seconds long because our anniversary is July 21. I love it. and everyone, you can, you know, come to see ed truck. so he’ll be on our show and we’ll see how you go pre-recorded.
And then you the viewer, you can you better live or better recorded. yes. there you go. you decide one bet. uh speaking of marketing again, because that was a good Tyler.
Um let me also ask you because I know we’re getting close on time, but do you have some marketing tips which will help our listeners? because I know we’ve talked quite a bit about the overwhelm and we talked about a lot about on camera, which is great.
Any other tips around marketing? number one rule consistency? yes, i’ve lodged once I wrote put an ad in that publication once it didn’t work seriously uh, consistency.
How do I know what things to be consistent about everything you don’t that’s what testing is all about. that’s that’s why we have a gig as marketers, we’ll let you know which things will work or not.
Uh, but there are sometimes you have to be consistent for a while and try it and test it, test it out. uh we looked at one um website this morning and she’s she’s getting people to her website, but she’s not getting conversions.
And I looked at it and said, well, your target audience or actors and your phone number is nowhere. they’re, you know, they’re all looking at bright shiny objects if you want them to connect with, you put your phone number at the top. so all I have to do is click it and call you just a little tweak like that.
And now she’s going to get people to convert because she’s getting them to her website. there’s no issue there, but it’s getting them to call or getting them to reach out and she doesn’t have that. so there are a lot of things you can test uh and still have fun with.
So there’s two or three right there. yeah. and that goes back to what you were saying earlier in the broadcast, where it’s all about having that end in mind. so in this case the end in mind would behave them actually call you. so you got to put your number on the website.
But being on the phones a time suck. well, do you want to be right or do you want to be rich? there’s a great quote. you guys.
Okay. I’ll put my phone up around there. we’ll try that for a month. cool. and it’s free. we gave her some tips and she can add that phone number to her website and it was free.
She didn’t have to call her developer. we showed her just how to do it in her WordPress site. so it doesn’t, it doesn’t all have to be expensive if you’re testing in your consistent yeah.
And that consistency is key because like you said, you can’t just host once, blog once. you can’t go live once like go yeah, you have to go for a while and really get good at it, you know?
Um, I was trying to think what his name was. I was just reading an article yesterday and see if you can find it real quick. but he was talking about, he became the # one in real estate trying to figure out his story. let’s see who is it Joshua Smith.
Um, he became number one in real estate because he did this shift and I just learned about him. so forgive me if you’re watching Joshua or if anybody knows him, I’m just now diving into your publicity is good publicity.
Yeah, exactly. I just started diving into his podcast and I just read this article. but he was talking about how in one of the interviews that he was doing so many videos, I want to say that it was like, he did like 400 and it might have not been videos, but like his show 400 of them before he started to really get in the groove.
And I think that all went on his youtube channel and it just, it all takes time. so don’t discourage by the one or 10 posts that you share in the next month or six months. like, we’re working with building up our relationships online, we’re working with other human beings, they have to get to know, like and trust us, and that’s not gonna happen in an instinct right after we post, even though, right, it’s not like McDonald’s that can announce the McRib is back and all these people will go and spend $2 for it for most of the things that if you’re watching this if your professional, most of your services are a little more expensive than a McRib and they do have to get to know you they take a bit more of an investment from your ideal client. so let’s let’s start to develop the relationship. that’s why we blog all the time.
And but wait, if I blog, I’m giving it away for free, you know, it’s a google world, they’re going to be able to find the answer that for most coaches, most of our clients hire us for the accountability and that was their hand-holders were their safety.
And you’re the same way if your financial planner your that way they could find it online, but we’re going to help them get there faster because they don’t have to do all that research to find the thing that they should course correct that they could do it on their own and that is key. so, everyone, that’s another point when you re-listen to this is make sure that you pause on that and really listen to that because I know all of you are going to be thinking, yeah, if I give it away for free, what are people going to pay me for right there?
That’s your answer. and that’s what we all need to be remembering. and if you need to play that on replay every day, every other day, whatever works for you, but you need to hear it consistently so that it sits up here.
What? well, the reason we give away so much content is that we want people to think, wow Sharon is so good for free. how good is she? if I pay her yeah.
And the answer is she’s really amazing. I have a great team. I love it. uh, what’s up more for you guys before we call an episode of rap, even though I would love to stay and chat more. but I know you guys have another webinar to get to as well, oddly enough, we were in on somebody’s webinar podcast yesterday that was supposed to be an hour and we went almost to uh time management for us. um our 30th wedding anniversary is coming out this July 21 and we have a book coming out called partners in everything that is written.
We interviewed a bunch of people that are, you know, in business together and that’s gonna be our, our seventh book that’s coming out on our anniversary. so that’s what’s next.
Uh we do. we always have a small business breakthrough boot camp. and if you like a free ticket to that, if you go to plan your marketing dot com, all the info is there.
I think that ed in the original show notes, has our main site, but because you’re actually watching you get the secret tip site to get the free ticket you gave him, you gave him the marketing event.
Got it. okay. so here’s the thing, if you want to see the difference between charging for an event that you’re doing and doing, getting a free ticket, um go to the marketing event dot com and then compare it to plan your marketing dot com. you can see the two ways that we do it.
Oh, I love that. you see what happens when you tune in. you get to see what’s going on behind the scenes, us wearing shorts with our polos and be able to get insider perspective and get to now see the difference between those pages to which is awesome.
And if you want us for a half-hour, we’d love to chat, go to how to get there faster dot com and that’s a little uh I’ve got a two in the morning.
I was I woke up and I was thinking uh and it came to me, you know, it’s really cool. I looked up, get there faster dot com and it’s owned by a bike store.
Oh, is that not the best? that’s it does. so I just added how to sew how to get there faster. okay, fine.
But i’m watching that you are l if that bike store ever dumps that u. r. l. you’ll be the first one to take it. yes, I absolutely will.
Because that was brilliant marketing. I love that. well, thank you both for being here. anything. any last words that you wanted to share before I let you go higher.
Ed. he’s awesome. he’s a really amazing coach. he is awesome. I will tell you that uh, we have been interviewed on stream yard before the system that ed is using to go on multiple platforms and we had a challenge.
There was no challenge with ed. he was seamless. it was, it was awesome. so yes, work with it. let him show you how to do it too.
Why do it yourself when ed? well, he’ll hold your hand, he’ll be your safety net. he’ll make sure you’re, you know, you get through it.
He’ll take your call at one in the morgue. at one in the afternoon. james’s are, I probably would at one way. so those are our last words for the time I appreciate and that was not a paid advertisement by the way, genuine love. I appreciate that so much.
Thank you both for being here, you to stick around. I’m gonna let everyone else go. I appreciate everyone for tuning in, even if you’re watching the replay and be sure to listen to this again, take your notes and actually implement something. at least one thing that you learn from today and just know that you can do this, you will do this and all you have to do is show up, deliver and engage, take care of everyone.