2 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

What’s up? I need to make this really fast because we’re going to an awards’ banquet tonight. And my husband is going to walk in here any second. He’s going to be like, “Are you ready?” And I’m ready, hair ready, make-up ready, accessories are ready. I just have to change my outfit. So I’m – for the record, I’m ready, right, everybody? She’s ready. Yeah, she’s ready. Okay.

Hi, my name is Chalene Johnson and I am the creator of the Marketing Impact Academy. I also happen to be a New York Times best-selling author. And I’m happy to speak to you today about two things that business owners and entrepreneurs need to do and shouldn’t do. Hmm, sounds tricky.

Okay, here in my opinion is the mistake that most entrepreneurs make. They worry exclusively about their social media, building their platform, building their platform, but they really don’t know what that means. And they really don’t know what they’re going to do with that platform once they have a platform. So they spend a lot of time coming up with great pictures to post on Instagram and oh, gosh, I hope  got more engagement on Facebook and just social media, social media, social media and then they’re like, okay, how come I don’t have customers? Or they don’t know what to do when they’re not getting engagement. And once they have engagement, they’re not sure what to do with it. So that’s a shouldn’t do, right?

Here’s the other mistake which is kind of like the opposite end of the spectrum that certain entrepreneurs make and that is, I’ve got this brilliant idea, I’ve got this amazing concept, I’ve got just an incredible brainstorm of a business and I’m going to start creating it. And I’m going to create it. And once I create it and I spend all this time creating it in a test tube where no one else knows about it and I really haven’t talked to my – I haven’t talked to anybody in social media so I don’t even know if they want it, and if this is the price point they want. And I don’t even know what their struggles or problems are but I’ve got this brilliant idea. So I’m going to create this thing. I’m going to create this amazing thing and then I’m going to be like, to the world, I’m going to be like, “Okay, world, surprise! Surprise everybody, I have a product! Hi, my name is Chalene and I have a product. So, is anybody listening? Is there anybody out there?”

And then they go from seminar to seminar to seminar to workshop and buy books and they keep trying to figure out how to create more products and create funnels and they haven’t done anything to build a platform.

So what’s the right order? And I know it’s going to sound crazy. Ideally, you should be doing them at the same time, honestly. The problem is, unfortunately, most people, as soon as they get on social media, they stop building a business and they just focus on likes and popularity contest. And the truth is, when I take people through the Marketing Impact Academy, which I am doing at this moment, I have people build the infrastructure and listen and understand they’re a lifer before they spend a bazillion hours in social media, so that very soon after we start building an infrastructure and creating our first product, then we go back to social media and start really focusing on listening to our customer and building social media content that leads to the thing that we’re offering. Not that it has to 100% always relate and be exactly but if you don’t know what you’re going to offer, then it doesn’t make sense to just be slapping content up that has nothing to do with what it is – or solution that you provide for people.

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Conversely, if you’re creating a product and you think that people are just going to talk about it through word-of-mouth, ya’ll got another thing coming. The only way to get the word out about your product or service is to turn first by developing a really great product and making sure it isn’t something you’ve created in a vacuum and it isn’t something you’re like, okay, I’ve been thinking about this and working on this and writing notes and I know exactly what people want. No you don’t. You know what somebody in your mindset right this minute knows they need but, see, the person you’re serving is so much further behind, you have to get back into your old mentality, so you have to listen, you have to understand, you have to shut up and listen, and stop telling them what they need and stop telling them what they want. But you have to listen. You have to ask questions. You have to take notes. Guess what? You have to be polite and you have to get on their Periscopes and you have to get on their Facebook pages and you have to go on Amazon, oh, I know the words that they’re using to describe this. I know the language that they are using. I know the words that they don’t know. I know the things that scare them. I know that – you just – so that’s key. And then, right away, the second you have something to offer, the second you have something, whether it is a freemium or a baby offer, boom, you are back to social media.

Then, social media, listen to me closely, I am so sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, it is every single day on as many platforms as possible. Now, you don’t have to personally be on every single platform, but your content needs to be. Every single day, there are probably 10 posts that we, me and my virtual staff, do to Pinterest. We do anywhere between three to seven posts per day on Facebook anywhere from seven to 100 posts per day on Twitter. Anywhere from probably about eight posts per day on Instagram, blog posts. Everyday there’s a blog post. Several days a week there is a podcast episode. That’s a lot of content. Why?

Because I don’t know where my lifer is at any given moment. I know where they hang out predominantly and I’m going to, like I’m going to plaster those, but I also have to make sure that if somebody is searching on Pinterest that they can find me. And who creates all that content? I create that content and I create it by creating one video a day. I create one video a day that’s anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, some days I create more. And then that video gets turned into a transcript which is turned into tweets which gets turned infographics, which gets turned into Pinterest post which gets turned into Facebook updates which gets turned into blog posts.

So if you look on my blog today and if you look back at the last five days, this week’s blog posts, you’ll see that those are all blog posts written from content that I’ve done on video. Who does this for me? A virtual staff. And I know it sounds like a lot. It’s baby steps and there’s a series, an order in which you need to do these things. And if you do them out of order, you get frustrated. You waste money. You waste time. And you do it the hard way. It requires patience, determination and a decision to do it in the right way, in the right order and to not give up. It’s an overnight kind of thing. It’s simple. It is not easy. It’s simple. It is not easy.

Easy is creating a product. That’s easy. Easy is being on social media every single day. That is easy. What is not easy is doing all the right things in the right order and sticking to it and knowing it’s going to pay off. When you jump out of sequence because you’re frustrated, because you’re not getting sales, because you don’t have enough social media, when you do that, you lose your way. And it just takes more time, then you got to go get back in line.

Have you ever stood in line at the airport and there’s like one or two or three or four or five different lines that you can choose from and you look and you’re like, “Ah, well, that line is shorter than that, maybe I should jump.” And then you look at the line that seems like it’s moving faster and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to jump out of this line. I’m going to jump into that line.” And you look at that shorter line and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to do it because they’re moving faster.” So I’m going to jump out of this line. I’m going to jump in to that line. And what happens? Every single time. That line comes to a screeching halt because it’s an illusion, the grass is greener.

Stick to the course and regardless of who you are and where you are, whatever stage you are on your business, once you have something to offer, a place to send people back to, a product, a freemium, then and only then should you be focused on social media. And at that point, social media needs to be every single day. It’s the only way you’re going to build your platform. It’s the only way you’re going to build your following. It’s the only way you’re going to ever move product. And it takes time. It’s a relationship. It takes time. It takes familiarity. It takes trust. It takes servitude. It takes time. Servitude and trust, those two words take a long time to create, and that is your job, social media that serves and that creates trust and that builds that relationship, that’s your job.

What is not your job is worrying about whether you were the most popular, whether you’ve gotten enough likes, like, don’t worry about that. Worry about finding new people that you can serve in your niche market that meet the criteria of your lifers.

And once you’ve got something to offer, whether it’s a freemium or an introductory offer or a product, then it makes sense for you to be in social media, until then it’s difficult for you to even know what you should be posting and how it should relate and who you’re speaking to and what’s the goal, what’s the goal in social media. I know what my goal is, so we have a calendar that kind of tells us like based on what’s upcoming or what we’ve just come out of, what type of content I need to be creating in social media so that it all creates a very easy journey to follow for the person who I want to take care of. Like, I don’t want them to have to guess on how to get to the destination, the end of the rainbow, right? I want to lay that out and make it really, really easy for them. So it’s my job to shine a flashlight on that path and make it really simple, but I didn’t say it was going to be easy.

Thanks so much for joining me on this broadcast. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the time that you guys spent with me. I appreciate all of the reviews that you’ve given me on Build Your Tribe. And for those of you who tuned in live at my Periscopes and Facebook Lives, I really do, I love ya. And for those of you who are in the Marketing Impact Academy, congratulations, many of you have just created your first introductory offer, now it’s time to make sure your efforts every day, at least an hour, at least an hour every single day is focused on creating content that somehow, some way shape or form relates to or serves the people who are going to be most interested in your introductory offer. I hope that’s helpful.

All right, guys. It is my goal to be brief, to be bright, to make it fun and then be done. So we’re done. We’re out.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Build Your Tribe!

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