What To Do When You Have a Difficult Client
13 Nov
Business Coach, Confidence Culture, Entrepreneurship, Grow Your Business

What To Do When You Have a Difficult Client

As a business owner, the unfortunate truth is that not every client you take on is going to be a walk in the park. Inevitably, you’ll have a client come along that will prove to be quite difficult. 

The challenge with difficult clients is that they tend to be overly demanding and may even clash with your working style. You know you have to finish whatever work you’re doing with them, but you want to figure out how to do so with the least amount of pain. So, what do you do? 

Since your professional reputation is at stake, you need to come up with some strategies for dealing with a difficult client ahead of time so that when the inevitable happens – you’re ready. 

Tips for Dealing with Difficult Clients

When dealing with a challenging client, choose your words carefully to avoid confrontation and escalation.

  • – Listen well and acknowledge without apologizing. 

  • – Take breaks whenever you need to and/or limit communication, but be careful to do so in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re ignoring them.

  • – Emphasize that you’re working together toward a common goal. Discuss things in terms of the results you’re trying to get and make sure they understand you’re on the same team.

  • – If they’re asking you to do more than you offer, set clear boundaries and remind them gently of the job’s terms and your business’s capabilities. 

Even though they may be driving you insane, try your best to find a solution that’s quick and that will make them happy and get you both moving forward. Remember, the best-case scenario is to leave them satisfied and then avoid working with them in the future, if possible. 

As trying as these kinds of clients can be, keep in mind that it’s likely not personal. Simply chalk it up as a learning experience and move on knowing you’re better, and wiser, than you were before. 

How To Make Black Friday Profitable For Business Owners
27 Oct
Business Coach, Digital Marketing, Grow Your Business, Marketing, Productivity

How To Make Black Friday Profitable For Business Owners

With an enormous $9 billion dollars spent by consumers on Black Friday in 2020 alone, this day undoubtedly presents businesses with an incredible opportunity to have more traffic and profit coming their way by partaking in the festivities. 

4 Tips For Running A Seamless Black Friday

With Black Friday and the holiday season just around the corner, it is the perfect time for businesses to start thinking about their strategy for participating in the sales and deals of this iconic shopping day. Here are 4 tips and tricks for running a profitable Black Friday: 

#1: Offer Loyal Customers Exclusive Perks 

If you have already done the hard part of making a sale and converting someone into a loyal customer, it is important to make them feel valued before the Black Friday experience by offering them exclusive perks and deals on top of the ones you’re running for the masses. This will make them feel more inclined to participate. 

Whether it’s through an SMS text or a targeted email, get your subscribers and loyalty program members excited for your upcoming deals by early access to deals, additional discount codes, and more. 

#2: Promote Your Upcoming Deals On Social Media

With 420 billion users active on social media in 2020, using these platforms for marketing is one of the most important tools for getting the word out about your businesses’ Black Friday events. 

Promoting on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, and other popular platforms is a great way of creating buzz around your deals in the days leading up to it. 

One of the most important tactics to get engagement you desire are by using Black Friday-specific hashtags and captions so that people can find you more easily. 

#3: Go Above And Beyond Traditional Discounts

With thousands upon thousands of brands partaking in discounts on Black Friday, it is important to find innovative ways to stand out against the competition and create more incentives for consumers so that they focus on what you have to offer. 

Some of the best ways to go above and beyond are to offer free gifts and perks in addition to discounts, offer free shipping with every purchase, and provide future discounts after they make a Black Friday purchase. The possibilities are truly endless, so get creative with it! 

#4: Don’t Miss The Benefits Of Online Shopping 

One of the most important aspects of planning a profitable Black Friday is focusing on online shopping. With 93.2 million consumers online shopping on this day in 2019, it is just as important for businesses to take advantage of digital Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals in addition to the traditional brick-and-mortar Black Friday deals. 

Watch Your Black Friday Profit Soar With The Help Of Coach Allison Todd 

If you are looking for new ways to improve your business’s profitability for Black Friday and beyond, I am here to help. As a coach and consultant with 20+ years of experience, I am energized by the opportunity to transform entrepreneurs and corporations alike. 

To learn more about a partnership, don’t hesitate to shoot me an inquiry today! 

19 Nov
Grow Your Expertise, Start Your Business

How Can I Monetize My Skills and Expertise?

Are you the one people always call for advice on a certain subject? The truth is when you are an expert in your field; people value your knowledge and opinion. The question is how will you monetize your expertise and create multiple streams of income.

Online courses, seminars, workshops and keynote speeches are some of the many way to create income streams. The goal is to create ways that allow you to be recognized for the things you are good at while you teach your audiences new skills. Your knowledge is why your friends and family trust you, so spend some time creating your offerings.

Being knowledgeable is one thing; knowing how to utilize, package and monetize that knowledge is another thing. Choosing the right strategy to diversify your skills. Then spend time in discovery and experimentation until you get it just right. By all means, don’t forget personality is as much science as art.

Monetize Your Expertise

Here are a few steps to help you strategically monetize your expertise in a profitable way.

1.    Audit Your Experience

Monetizing your skills and expertise goes beyond knowing your expertise or your field. It involves knowing yourself. You must know your strengths and how it compliments your expertise. As such, audit your experience. What skills do you possess? How will those skills solve other people’s problems?

The key to this step is to realize what you have in terms of skill and talent. Are you an accountant with great organization skills? Or are you a good marketer with super sales techniques? Perhaps you are a successful entrepreneur who is excellent at public speaking. You are an expert already, so how will you present that expertise? After you audit your skills and knowledge, combine what you have into a perfect and easy-to-consume product(s).

2. Who is your Target Market?

Before deciding what to do with your skill and expertise, you have to closely analyze your target audience. While you want to create a product from your talent and knowledge, you also want to create a product that your customers would appreciate. 

You have to figure out those who need your expertise and focus your energy on producing for them and selling them. 

For example, a writer can write any type of content, but if his target audience wants useful information and wants it fast, then a blog post would be most convenient.

Figuring out who your target market is would help you create the perfect product and content. It would also help you market yourself and your business strategically.

It is unwise to market an online class to busy execs. Consultancy or short, summarized content would be more suitable for their needs and schedule.

3. Creating your product

After analyzing yourself and the market, you are finally set to produce value. At the core of monetizing your expertise is creating value. People would pay for the amount you add to their lives and business.

Other than being conscious of your strengths and taste in the market, you must also ensure that your service or content offers value. 

A book, online course, or keynote speech, whatever you are selling, must change your customer’s life for the better. If it isn’t doing this, then your product is useless, and you have to go back to the drawing board.

4. Marketing

Irrespective of what your monetization strategy is, marketing plays a significant role in the level of your success. You must be able to convince your audience of your skill and the value of your product.

All marketing avenues are fair game, from online ads to free videos on YouTube and publicizing your portfolio. The key is to establish yourself as an authority and back it up with quality.

People wouldn’t buy anything you are selling until they are convinced that it is valuable. It is your job to do the convincing and no one else’s.

Conclusion

The process of monetizing your expertise is very technical and intentional. You can’t just wing it and hope for the best. Without adequate planning and in-depth analysis of yourself and the market, failure is a very likely outcome.

To get the best value out of your expertise, you have to offer the best value possible. With in-depth planning and execution, you can create multiple channels to monetize your skill and expertise with ease and convenience.

05 Apr
Confidence Culture, Grow Your Business

How to be Creative with your Blogging Process (Step Four)

Learn how to be creative with your blogging process by taking the fourth step. Note this is not the final step but it is step four. Now that you have made it to the final day of How to be Creative with your Blogging Process, I hope you have a general idea of what it takes to create your content. The next series will show you How to Market Content with your Blogging Process.

Complete the Process

To complete the process here’s a recap of the four steps to creative blogging success.

  • Brainstorm
  • Organize Ideas & Create the Planner
  • Select Images to Connect to your Content
  • Complete the Content & Tell Your Story (Hooray!)

Step four is all about filling in the gap. You have the title and blog summary from your Editorial Content Calendar. Perhaps you also saved your blog draft after selecting the image in step three. And here we are at the final step before scheduling your post. This is your opportunity to tell your story. Let’s grow!

creative blogging process step four

Happy writing! Connect with me on social? Let’s keep each other motivated and inspired to do what we love! I can’t wait to hear your reviews. Helpful or nah? I’ve got tons of content and curriculum.  If this didn’t help, I am sure there is something that will.

Subscribe to my Confidence Coach Notes and you will always be in the know.  That means first dibs on everything.  And that include the goodies!  If the Four Step Creative Blogging Process was helpful let me know in the comments. I’d love to know if we can make a difference next week with a new process.   

04 Apr
Confidence Culture, Grow Your Business

How to be Creative with your Blogging Process (Step Three)

Learn how to be creative with your blogging process by taking the third step. So glad that you are still with me! Yesterday, we reviewed step two. Did you select your planner yet? The Confident Culture got me to give them all four tools for all four steps. They have been showing off their work in group coaching. What fun.

Back to Work (Step Three)

The best part of a blog is the image. I invest the entire emotion in my image. I want the reader to know what I was feeling when I shared the content. How about you? Do you invest in your images, create them yourself or use no images at all? I work with a designer who delivers image packs. Let me know if you are interested and I will share the info.

creative blogging process step three

If you have the images outlined with the content, the vision begins to come together. At this point, you can decide to post all images and titles as drafts OR start writing. Either way you are super close to the finish line. Let’s take a mid-day break and invest time in image selection. Challenge yourself to plan the next 30-60-90 days.

90-Day Action Plan

Once you have your editorial content plan complete, you will know what type of images you need. Go ahead and lay out 90 days, it makes life much easier. And then grab your images. If you don’t have any (see above) , I know someone. Take some time to fill in the blanks on your planner. But, don’t stop there.

Make sure you are reviewing your story. Read it out loud to yourself. Fill in the blanks and begin blogging. If this Four Step Creative Blogging Process (Step Three) is helpful let me know in the comments. I’d love to know if the next 3 days make a difference in your process.

03 Apr
Confidence Culture, Grow Your Business

How to be Creative with your Blogging Process (Step Two)

Learn how to be creative with your blogging process by taking the second step. Wait, if you haven’t completed step one yet, click here. Once you have completed step one come back to begin step two. Okay, everybody ready to create and editorial content planner and manage your ideas?

Choosing the Perfect Planner

If you are like me, you may have to experiment with a few different planners first. Personally, I prefer a pen and paper planner and a digital planner. I find that most of my brainstorming happens with pen and paper. However, I begin to develop the ideas in a digital form. I love the way I can arrange things with the drag and drop features. And the safety feature better know as Ctrl + Z or “undo” saves me a ton of time.

So how about you? What type of planner do you prefer? I have also tried the passion planner (which you may like) but it was super heavy for me. I have finally married the idea of the start planner which allows me to plan 12-months in advance and carry 90 days at a time. By now you have figured out I prefer to do my planning in an actual planner.

creative blogging process step two

Editorial Content Planner Template, Too.

How you design and share your content will depend on your creative style and audience needs. The most important lesson to gain from this step is how your organize and plan your content. However, here are some basic fields that should be included in your planner. Create your template in google drive, evernote or excel. You will be surprised how productive you can be.

Content Planner Topics:

  • Date and Time
  • Topic or Headline ( I like a column for both)
  • Content or Details ( I like to summary the blog so it has a jump start when I complete it)
  • Author (Unless you are the only author, no need to type your name 30 times)
  • Status or Due Date (I like both because I need to see my due dates)
  • Keywords (Identifying these early on is super helpful for me)

Managing your ideas in an editorial content planner assists with social media, podcasts, videos and blogs at the same time. And once you organize your content and manage your ideas, you will be even more creative.

I thought you might be motivated to get started, so I created a template for you. This will help you get started with your digital planner. And if you don’t have a paper planner, print the digital planner. A creative process is important. Don’t skip steps to your success.

Happy writing! Connect with me on social? Let’s keep each other motivated and inspired to do what we love! I can’t wait to hear your reviews. Helpful or nah? Subscribe to my Confidence Coach Notes and you will always be in the know.  That means first dibs on everything, plus goodies! 

If the Four Step Creative Blogging Process (Step Two) is helpful let me know in the comments. I’d love to know if the next 2 days make a difference in your process.

02 Apr
Confidence Culture, Grow Your Business

How to be Creative with your Blogging Process (Step One)

Learn how to be creative with your blogging process by taking the first step. Welcome back if you tuned in yesterday. If not, take a peak at How to be Creative with your Blogging Process. Fast forward and here we are at the first step. First things first, do you know what will you write about? Have you thought about how you will design your voice? Let’s learn more about you.

What’s Your Story?

This could be the best way to begin your process, thinking about your story. Step one is to begin brainstorming ideas. Wait, before you do anything grab your pen and paper. Then, write down all of the ideas that come to your mind. Whatever you do, don’t overthink what you are writing, just write. I like to play loud music while I brainstorm but do what works for you.

All of your ideas may not be great but could lead to greatness. As a result, this is where you create the foundation of your creative blogging process. How you brainstorm, where you brainstorm and the tools you use to do so make a big difference. My personal style is to brainstorm about what’s on my mind or what I am current business challenges. Then, I outline them.

creative blogging process step one

Which topics stand out to you and which make you say hmm? In other words, everything that you wrote down won’t be used. But take your time to review your list after active brainstorming. Then, identify the good, great and not so good ideas. It’s important to collect your ideas and figure out how to organize them. Some people like to use post-its to build their content and organize their blogs.

Let’s Start Brainstorming

Whatever your choices, take time now to determine what your brainstorming process looks like. Prepare to venture into uncharted waters, unfinished thoughts and mind motivation moments. To help you get started, here’s are a couple of brainstorming problem-solving, mind provoking questions:

Brainstorming Question List

  • What was my biggest challenge this week/month? What did I learn from it?
  • I want to learn more ________________ (insert topic) to improve my professional development?
  • Who does your expertise attract? And, what do they want to talk about?
  • What have you learned about your expertise? What would you do differently?

If you need more, the questions continue in the Confidence Culture community. Once you know what to blog about, how will you plan your blog for the next 30-60-90 days? Come back tomorrow for Four Step Creative Blogging Process (Step Two).

If this Four Step Creative Blogging Process (Step One) is helpful let me know in the comments. I’d love to know if the next 3 days make a difference in your process. Don’t forget we will end the week with some Blogging Goodies. In the meantime, sign up for Confidence Culture Membership and download your Blog Brainstorming Template & get your Brainstorming Question List.

01 Apr
Confidence Culture, Grow Your Business

How To Be Creative With Your Blogging Process

Are you ready to learn how to be creative with your blogging process and make it yours. With these four steps, you can create, plan and post your blog! I figured the best way to learn is to take it day by day. The Four Step Process will show you how to ignite your creativity. So, what is your blog topic?

What Will You Blog About

Yes, you need to know what you will be blogging about. We can’t get creative until you identify your topic(s). I often ask myself what do I like to read? And normally, I write about those things. Then, when I need some creative discovery, I get deep in my research. Depending on the day, I can be a skimmer or a reader. Best practice says if my skimming turns into reading, that might be my next blog topic. Either way, I write about what I love. Hence, you should too.

If the research doesn’t motivate you, focus on solutions. No doubt, marketing your expertise is a great way to grow your brand. Plus, everyone likes solutions, right? I often will use some of my confidence coaching topics or business consulting topics to write about. This gives the reader some good tips, tools and techniques (for free)!

creative blogging process

Who Inspires You?

I am inspired by love letters. I love to write letters to people who motivate and inspire me. And, that’s love. Sometimes, words for one, can benefit many. Whatever works for you. After all, it’s your blog. It’s a space to carve your voice and architect your creative process. Your audience will appreciate your creative content.

I will share the Four Step Creative Blogging Process this week. If you need to ignite your creativity, come back each day this week. For extra tips, tools and templates, join the Confidence Culture. With your membership you will receive:

  • digital group coaching
  • how to instructional videos
  • access to the resource library
  • membership access
  • an accountability group and more!

If this process is helpful, let me know in the comments. I’d love to know if the next 4 days make a difference in your process. We will end the week with some Blogging Goodies. Subscribe and stay tuned.

123