“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”–Maya Angelou

Time Stamps for “Transitioning Your Offline Business To The Online World”: William Wood Interviews Chris and Susan Beesley

 

3:48—Introducing Chris and Susan Beesley

6:30—They couldn’t do the things they wanted to do

9:32—The BEST change they could ever have made!

12:31—Establishing good relationships

15:48—Time frames

18:12—Spot on!

21:04—The very best of intentions

24:16—How people use technology

27:24—Attracting People

30:26—What do you need on your website?

33:40—People research you at 11 O’clock at night

36:12—Setting up a series of automated emails

39:13—The Objective

42:04—Measure, Rinse and Repeat

44:22—Chris and Susan’s branded website

Transitioning From Offline To Online Business:
The Reason behind their Transition, the Experiences gained along their Journey and the Best Change they have ever made in their lives.

If you want to get a copy of the whole transcript from today’s podcast, click the button below:

 

Will: Welcome back to the show. William Wood here, your host. I’m here with Chris and Susan Beesley who are just outside of London. I think we’ve known each other now for almost two years, if my memory serves me. Was it?

Chris: Longer.

Susan: Longer I think.

Will: Has it been longer than two years now?

Susan: Yeah.

 

You are soooo Lucky!

 

Will: That’s amazing! They are some of the best coaches and consultants that I’ve had the chance to get to meet. And they have some really high level material that we’d like to share with you today. We’re just gonna have a little conversation here – back and forth. Right now, they just came back from Curaçao where they were at a high level mastermind and they were featured speakers there at a business conference.

So we’re gonna go ahead and just take as much of the great information that we can from them so that we can deliver it to you. So that wherever you are, building your business and whatever phase you’re in, I’m confident that by the end of today, you’ll have some information that can really be immediately applicable to your situation and where you’re at. So with that in mind, why don’t you guys tell a little bit about your story – how you came to do what you’re doing today and just tell us a little bit about the journey.

Chris: Okay.

Susan: It’s been an absolute pleasure but before we do that, what I want to say as you’re listening to do this, you are so lucky! Because when we first started moving away from our traditional business which Chris and I will share with you in just a moment. We had nothing like this. Everything we needed to know, we literally had to go and find out about. So, I think you’re so very, very lucky to be getting this kind of information from Will today.

Chris: Yes. So, what’s our background? Well, you can’t see us.

Susan: [Laughing]

Chris: But we will tell you that we are in our late 50’s and early 60’s. That gives you some idea. And we’ve been working online for about 4 1/2 years. That would tell you that we actually didn’t come across – we didn’t make a switch to working online, working on the internet until we were in our mid to late 50’s.

Will: Wow.

 

Why the switch? Why the transition?

 

Chris: So, why did we do that? Well, our background is, we’re accountants and management consultants. We’ve been entrepreneurial, if you like for probably, well – I don’t know. My first business was 1985 and I think Susan was just before that.

Susan: Yup. Same.

Chris: A good few years. We started together; I think it was in 1994, we started a consultancy business working for small businesses. Accountancy and consultancy. We were shouting and helping businesses grow and develop and using our business skills, we were helping them to basically build a business that the owner wanted. Now, it was too of the basic floors with that model if you like, I can say with hindsight. One is that, we working time for money. And I can tell you, we had a successful consultancy business but we were working 6 or 7 days a week.

Will: Wow.

Chris: Just to keep the clients happy. Because when you run a business and you got integrity, you wanna do a really professional job. I know that you guys out there, if you’re listening to this – you will feel the same. If you got a consultancy business, you got a coaching business, you got a training business whatever it is that you’re doing – you would absolutely wanna provide the best training, the best value that you can and do the best job that you can. And that was no different to us.

The challenge we had was that we were literally running out of time. We had some things that we wanted to do in our lives. They only involve freedom of some sort. Freedom of time. Money to us wasn’t the problem, it was absolutely no time. And so, towards I suppose of 2009, we were still working for our clients and we were actually investigating the internet because we were looking for ways for our clients to be able to use the internet, to market themselves.

Like most businesses, we tend to specialize.  We specialized in the veterinary profession. Most of them had a website but no clue what to do with it, no clue how to generate leads, no clue how to generate sales, no clue how to generate a brand online – they just didn’t have a clue. So that was how our first investigation I guess started.

We just started to go on Google and searched for internet marketing training. We started to do that and what we actually found, was that there were people who could actually show you how to build a business online. And we thought, well okay, we weren’t aware that it was there but once we found out that it was there, it was sort of – talked away because at that point it was, not really of any relevance to us. But that sort of brings us onto the second point that I mentioned earlier on when I said that were two problems with the consultancy.

One is that we were trading time for money. And that we didn’t have any time. And the second I think, really was that we were just unable to do the things that we wanted to do. Now, actually there’s a third one you might like. Just talk away in your head as I mention it. And that is – Pension. We were like most small self-employed businesses. Pension was something that’s going to happen in the future.

Will: Right.

Chris: Unless you make an attempt and you put a small amount aside for your pension in the future. When you get into your mid 50’s all of a sudden you gotta hang on this pension thing is slightly becoming a little bit more important.

Just to give you a little bit of a background, we decided that weren’t ganged down the traditional pension route of insurance policies and all that stuff. We were gonna invest in property. So we did that. And we did it with some success. We went to learn, we spent a lot of money on the training course to learn how to do it properly. And we booked some properties. And then 2008 came along, 2008 there was a big crash worldwide and it caused our properties, instead of becoming this little pension nest egg became rather like a mill stag.

And I’m sure that there are many people listening to this who can probably relate to that. They were starting to cost us rather than benefit us. We had to continue working; we had to find another way.

Now, we found another way eventually by deciding that we were going to build a business online. Like probably most people when they make a significant change in their life, there is a trigger. There is just something that tips you over the edge and you just say, “We’ve had enough of this, we gonna do something different.”

For us, we booked our first two week skiing holiday in about 6 years. We’re absolutely passionate about skiing. We love skiing. And we booked our first two week holiday, Christmas and New Year. Booked for a couple of months and we’re really looking forward to that. And we got to October and one of larger class, said,“You know that computer system that we’ve been planning for the last two years? We decided that we’re gonna go ahead and we wanna get it in by the end of January. Early February at the latest.” Which means our two week holiday, has just gone out the window.

Will: Yikes.

Chris: Because, we were going to have to manage and make sure that it will went smoothly. So, it might seem a very silly thing, but it was the one thing that just tipped us over the edge and we just said, “Okay, we have to find a way out. We’re not doing this anymore.”

 

The Decision

 

Susan: That was really, as Chris said, that was the change for us in our lives and Boy! Was it the best change we could ever have made? Because having done that kind of research and taking our consultancy, coaching skills with us, we could just have a new business online. That’s exactly what we did. And we’re set about finding all of the best marketing education that we possibly could. We studied and we studied and we studied. And we implemented and we implemented and we started to build a very successful business online. And now, basically…

Chris: There was another ingredient basically. Which was our mentor.

Susan: Yes.

Chris: One of the things that we did before we started is we went and found a mentor or a coach. Just like we were mentoring and coaching small businesses. Just like Will does exactly the same. He’s a coach and a mentor. We had to have somebody to follow. Because accountants and management consultants don’t do internet marketing.

Will: [Laughing]

Chris: It’s just a fact alive. It’s a big shift. And so we had to go and find somebody who’d been there and done it and was prepared to help and guide us. Our mentor was 27 years old. Bear in mind, we were in our mid 50’s.

 

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Criteria of a Good Mentor

 

Will:  Right. So, half the age but had the skills. Let me ask, this is good question. As we have people out there and the listeners that are in all different stages of their businesses. What are your criteria for looking for a good mentor?

Susan: Ohhh.

Chris: That’s a classical question, actually. I think, certainly…

Susan: Well, age doesn’t matter.

Chris: Yeah. Age is not relevant. But I think certainly, they have to have done what you want to do. That’s gonna be the first criteria. They have to have done what you want to do. With the internet nowadays, we’re about in the world they are not really relevant as long as you can handle different time zones. We’re sitting here talking to each other. We’re in London and you are in the States. We’re, I don’t know 5,000 miles apart. It doesn’t matter.

Will: It doesn’t matter. And I’m guessing there’s probably about 9 hours difference between us?

Susan: Probably.

Chris: 6 I think, it is. If you’re in Central?

Will: I am, Mountain Time.

Chris: Yeah, Mountain Time. No, it’s 9 hours.

Susan: Yeah.

Chris: So, the first thing is, is that they have to have done what you want to do. And successfully, to be honest. And secondly, you have to be able to establish a good relationship with that person or people. I guess we’ve all been in a situation where you’ve had a boss, that you have to work for but you can’t stand him or her.

Will: Sure [Laughing]

Chris: It’s not a similar relationship in terms of boss and employee but it’s a similar relationship in terms of you have to be able to work together. For us, before we took on the young mentor at that time, we spoke to him. We had a long conversation with him. “What can you offer us? We can see what you’ve done. How long is it likely to take?” Because everybody has a different criteria for what they’re trying to achieve.

I think it’s important that your mentor is able to bring your expectations into live and you can have that conversation about expectations before any mentoring actually starts or takes place. I think that’s really important. You have to understand what your expectations are and then talk to your potential mentor about what his or her expectations are to make sure that they’re compatible.

Because quite often in our experience, we found people – let’s put it in financial terms just to illustrate. Is that some people may say, “Okay, I want an income online of $20,000 a month. I want to do it in 3 months. But I’m not prepared to invest $100 in my business.” The expectation just isn’t going to work.

Susan: In a little or in no time.

Chris: [Laughing] yeah, so there’s going to be a working balance.

Susan: We know that you’re not like this, if you’re listening to this. We’re just using that as an example to show you the kinds of things that can happen if you don’t seek out the right kind of person to work with. Who’s actually going to help you manage your expectations?

And although they’re not going to be there sitting on your shoulder, watching your every move. you will have tasks to achieve in your business, whatever you have agreed between your coach and yourself. They will expect you to go ahead and do it. You are like an accountability partner for them but there not gonna be there watching to make sure you do every single thing.

And actually, I find personally having met – we got mentors, you’re one of our mentors, we have mentors all over the world for different things. And we always know, they’re not gonna be sitting there chasing our tails saying, “Chris and Susan, have you done this?” But they know, because we have the investment and that relationship that we’re gonna do the work and you know you we gonna do that work.

Chris: So, we’ve covered expectations, we’ve covered that they are capable of teaching you what you want to know and I think the third one is time frame from your own perspective. How much time have you got to invest in the mentoring program? And does it match with what the mentor is offering. And I think the other thing is, probably making sure that – I’ve totally lost it. This is an age thing. [Laughing]

Will: [Laughing]

Chris: It’ll come back to me in a minute. The other thing is, it’s not just time but it’s your ability to be able to want to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. Your beliefs that you can achieve it are I think is very important. Because you can’t believe that you can’t do it.

Susan: That’s perfect. I was about to say that it’s a mindset shift. It really is. If you don’t believe, the end result that you’ve agreed in your relationship is achievable. You’re not going to achieve it. You have to have that absolute faith. I don’t mean the religious faith, I mean the faith in your abilities to follow the tasks through and do what you’ve agreed that you’re gonna do. Because you can. We faced that. We did numbers and stuff, not marketing kinds of stuff.

Chris: Let me give you a very great example. When we first started online, as Susan said, we were numbers people. Things like WordPress and that didn’t exist for us and it seems strange because it has always been around, but believes me they didn’t.

Susan: I’m going to say, that’s for making websites. Because some people might not even know what WordPress is? So, I don’t wanna put out the terminologies without explaining.

Chris: It’s a website builder. But when we first started, I said to our mentor, “Where do we start?” And he said, “The first thing you gotta do is that you gotta build yourself a website. Because you need to have a home online, you need to have a place where people can find you, find out about what you do, find out what you stand for, what products you sell, etc…“ So I said, “Fine. Okay, how do I do that? I’ve never built a website in my life.” He said, “You got to get this piece of software, download it, put it in your computer, watch the videos, do what it says.”

Will: [Laughing]

Chris: Which was spot on! Because, he wasn’t going to build it for me, he wasn’t gonna watch the videos for me, he wasn’t gonna show me how to do it. He just said, “You’re gonna do this!” And so, we went and did it.

Will: Go figure it out. This is the direction that you need to go, go figure it out!

Chris: Yeah, he’d given us the basics. He’d given us the tools to do. He told me where to get the training and then I just had to do it.

Will: Aha.

Chris: So that was what happened. It became a little bit difficult when I uploaded it to the internet and Susan said she didn’t like the color or she’d want the picture moved or something.

Susan: I see you.

Chris: We had a little bit of a challenge. But that was the point. The stuff that we’ve got today, the tools that we’ve got today didn’t exist. I wish I was starting today with the knowledge I had back then…

 

Attracting new people in.

 

Will: Well, a lot of people who are listening are just starting today. So, let me ask you, if we have a brand new coach or maybe he’s a coach who’s been coaching marketing in a local market and he’s looking at broadening out and moving from more of sales based model into a marketing based model for attracting new people in. What are the first steps that you would recommend that this new coach, new consultant, new small business owner take to start to get their brand out there?

Chris: Okay. So there’s one thing that I’m going to start with, they have to be open to change. It sounds a silly thing to say, but it’s absolutely crucial. Because from our experience, particularly working with coaches, consultants and for small businesses that we have done for years and continued to do even though when they are online.

A good example, you look at their website – their corporate website or their business website and you’ll say, “Well okay, when we look at this we’ve got no video, it’s very corporate, we’ve got no way of collecting leads or peoples information, we’re not giving them any value – so it needs to change.” And then you find the owner says,“Oh yeah, but that website was built by my son 5 years ago.”

Will: [Laughing]

Chris: [Laughing] and this happened.

Susan: Or they had a website designer and paid a lot of money and had a great connection with it because of that. And that is really hard to let go. And that is one thing I’m gonna say, if it’s suggested to you that, that’s not the right model for you moving forward into a more sales and marketing drift business then you have to take the advice. Because it’s been given to you with the very best of intentions for your future profitability. And you need to do something about it. Are we talking generally about single, solo-preneurs?

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Website and Broad Guidelines

 

Will: Yeah. A lot of solo-preneurs or people who maybe, who has a business partner. But we’re not talking about huge corporate biz. We’re talking about a solo-preneurs meaning someone who’s gotten to business, they are the janitor, they are the CEO, and they are the one who outsources the website design.

Susan: Basically, they are now in the phase of their business on the way that’s what they gonna have to develop. They may have a great back-end business. Whatever their skill and talent is and to which make them money – their income their profit. But they need to be very YOU forward facing.

So, they need to become somebody that whatever their field is that their clients, their customers, their future customers are going to want to love to work with. And they’re going to have to work on themselves, their image and their image marketing. You probably know it as branding. I don’t love the word branding because it means so many different things to different people.

When we mention branding to some of our clients who are like yours, they’re solo-preneurs, they think about spending thousands upon thousands with a branding consultant who’s going to do their hair, change the way they look, change their whole philosophy. And might be even with their business model. that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about a way of showing your future customers that you’re a really nice person, someone who can really be trusted, some who has their well being at heart. And all that comes across in the different kinds of marketing that you’re going to do. This is what we absolutely love. And we can tell you, 100% plus – it works.

Chris: Yeah! Absolutely.

Will: So you’ve got this solo-preneur and his open to change and he needs a website, so what kinds of things would you be looking for in a website to make sure that it’s – and obviously it’s gonna change a little bit depending on the type of market that somebody is in. But broad guidelines, what would you recommend that somebody have on their website?

Chris: Certainly, we have to really go back to basics here and these are business basics not necessarily online basics. People buy from those they know they can trust. It doesn’t matter whether you’re buying your car or your weekly groceries at a local supermarket or whatever. There is a reason or a series of reasons why you go there and you buy. Normally it has to do with the people.

Will: Right.

Chris: That’s no different online. It just becomes harder online. Because you’re having less physical meeting with your potential clients or people who were looking for you. Nowadays, people use technology a lot. We use the internet to find things that we want to buy. Even if it is a physical coaching or maybe like a dentist. Or something like that.

Susan: Chiropractic practice. It doesn’t matter what it is.

Chris: Something physical. We still search online and do the research online. So, you have to have a presence that (A) is able to be found. And that’s sort of a totally different subject altogether because that’s marketing but you have to have a presence that people are going to go, “Oh. Right, okay. I’m gonna listen to this person. I’m going to watch this person.”

The biggest benefit that you have nowadays of working online is videos. It is absolutely, 100% the way to go. Now, people will say,” I don’t wanna be on camera.” You don’t have to be on camera. But I’m going to suggest strongly that if you are a solo-preneur or you have a small business where you work with people specifically a lot of the time, then you should be on camera. Just get over it.

Susan: Even if you’re ugly. Be on camera. It doesn’t matter.

Chris: It doesn’t matter. You know, the biggest thing that people say to us is,” I don’t like how I look. I don’t like how I sound.” And we say, “Yeah but, you look and sound just like that, right now. Because you’re talking to me.”[Laughing]

Susan: Then you’re clients come to you right now and do they mind? No, they love you. You’ve gotta get that type of connection that you have now in your business over to your potential customers just by being you. And actually, I’m going to say it doesn’t need to be a video necessarily. It can be an audio, just like what we have on this interview today.

Will: That’s right.

Susan: Just hearing somebody’s voice, it builds that trust. You suddenly know that there’s a real person behind this thing on the internet. Especially back if I can describe a website, it should be a living model. People first find it. They wanna find that little connection. I would say a blog. Definitely a blog. Because you can talk about your experiences in your business. You can get your customers to share their thoughts and experiences.

So, you’re giving a third party testimonial. That’s really important. And I’d also say connections to social media. Nobody but nobody should, in any business of any kind not have a presence on social media. And I don’t mean all the hundreds and thousands of possibilities. I mean, the very basics, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And LinkedIn. Obviously, LinkedIn is really important for coaches and consultants. We have a big presence on LinkedIn. We’ve built that up over the years but it doesn’t take long to get started. And we would definitely recommend that you have those.

You gonna attract different people from different fields and different people search on different medias just because that’s the way they are. And you wanna get one of them because you wanna grow your business.

Chris: Another big thing for you. A thing you need to think about that most business don’t think about enough in my opinion and that’s – Who’s your target market? Once you know who your target market is, your ideal customer – their age, what they like, what they don’t like, how many kids they’ve got. And you might not think listening to this, that all that is relevant to you. But if you sit down and you write it out, you write down what cars they drive, what holidays they take, whether they’re likely to take them, how much they are likely to spend, how much their income is..

Susan: Books they read magazines.

Chris: Films they watch.. The reason you need these information is because you will create what we call an AVATAR – Your ideal customer. The reason you need that is because you can then (A) Find out where they hang out online, where you need to put your ads. And you can also talk to them in the way they need to be spoken to. The way that they understand.

You do that every day when you’re talking to your clients physically in some way shape or form. You speak their language. So that they’ll understand what you’re saying. You need to be able to do exactly the same thing online. Whether that’s in video, audio or whether it’s in writing on your website. You need to be able to communicate in a way that they want to be spoken to and how they’d understand it. So, that is really, really important. Because once you know that, you can then define where you’re gonna advertise.

If you go back to newspaper advertising. We over here call it Yellow Pages, which is a book, a directory this thick. Full of business adverts. If you look at it nowadays, it’s this thick.

Susan: They can’t see you.[Laughing]

Chris: Oh, you can’t see us. My bad. Very thin.

Susan: So you’re going from 3 inches thick to like half an inch thick.

Will: Same thing has happened here. Our Yellow Pages advertising used to be a huge business. If you’re a local coach, you could advertise yourself in the right niche. Put a big ad and your problem of getting people to pick up the phone and call you was pretty much over. Today, that’s not the case. So you’ve got to find another way to do it.

Chris and Susan: Yup.

Will: Let me back up just a little bit. I want to make sure that we’re on the same page because you said something interesting the other day, I know I interrupted you in your mid-thoughts. I’ll bring you back to the Yellow Pages here in a second. But, you’re talking about what’s needed on the website.

And if I’m hearing you right, when you’re talking about branding, you’re talking about creating the same kind of relationship online that you have been creating offline. So, you’re looking at providing value, serving your customer, giving them good information and also giving them the right kind of look and impression that says, “Hey! I’m a professional. You can trust me.” So that’s the basics. At some point, that website needs to be a portal into doing business.

Chris: Yeah.

Will: So, what I’d like you to address after you finish your Yellow Pages thought is – How do you use your website to collect client information so that you can start to transition the relationship from online now to one-on-one, whether that’s live in the office or whether that’s over Skype or over the internet or in some other way?

Chris: Okay. Just to go back to the Yellow Pages just for a second.

Will: Yup, I’ll let you finish.

Chris: No, that’s alright. It was only because, when people advertise in those pages they would spend thousands of thousands of pounds or dollars depending on where you are in the world. The thing was, is that they never knew (A)Whether it really worked and (B) People will tend to go in about 4 or 5 different directories and they never knew which one worked.

Will: Sure

Chris: So it’s throwing lots of money at the wall and saying, “Well, hopefully some of it will stick and somebody will pick up the phone and talk to me.”

Susan: They never measured anything, really.

Chris: Well, it’s very difficult to measure phone numbers in those days. It’s very difficult.

Susan: We placed some systems in. But it was difficult.

Will: And expensive.

Susan: Yeah.

Chris: Yes and expensive.

Susan: But it does feed beautifully, doesn’t it? To answer your question.

Chris: So nowadays, your website needs to have two things: It has to have a way of delivering something that your client might want and it has to have a way of collecting their information in exchange for whatever it is you are delivering. Now, you might be delivering, let’s say some sort of electronic information. And eBook or something that you’ve written that gives them the basics or answers to the questions and that’s normally one of the best ways of dealing with it. Think about the questions that your customers ask you, write it out on a sheet of paper or a couple of sheets of paper, call it a book or re poem or…

Susan: White paper.

Chris: Ten Top Tips or Your Questions Answered – whatever you want to call it. Create that and put it on your website and show people that it’s available to them. Because what it does is that they come to your website, they’ve got some questions and they’ve got a way of instantly getting them answered without having to talk to anybody. People around the internet – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Even your customers, even if you’re working in a local area, they could be researching you 11 o’clock at night. So, you have to have that information available and people expect it to be available nowadays. So that’s one thing that you can do, but you have to find a way of saying, “Well, I can give you this. But the only way that I can give it you is that I can send it to you in an email address. If you give me your email address I can send it to you.” So it’s a perfectly logical swap of information.

And you have to be careful as the recipient of the email that you don’t use that email for purposes that it hasn’t been collected for. Because there is such a thing as the Anti-Spam Act and we hype this stuff with this stuff comes through out. Email box, junk mail or whatever you like to call it.

You need to understand and find out how these sorts of things work. It isn’t difficult to do, I can assure you. We use something called an Auto-responder. And there are many, many Auto-responders out there. The two biggie stars are something called Aweber and Get-response. They do a very similar job, they are just a direct competition and looks slightly different.

Susan: And they are perfect for solo-preneurs.

Chris: Yes. Perfect for small business. Because they are not expensive. But what do they do for you? Well, that person who’s visited your website and said, “Oh yes. I’d like your information. Here’s my email address.” Or even better and this depends on what sort of market you’re in, what sort of business you’re in. You might just collect an email, you might also want a name you might also want a phone number.

Susan: Name is great if you can get it.

Chris: Personally nowadays, we tend to go for name and email. Because we don’t need phone numbers. But if your business requires a phone number for some reason and the customer understands the reason that they’re giving you that information. They don’t want cold calls and salesman getting on the phone and trying to pitch some stuff. That’s not what this is about. T

his is about start of building a relationship. So they’re giving you information in exchange for value that you’re gonna give to them. Now, you’re Auto-responder which is an online program which basically collects your customers or your potential customer’s information. And it does it automatically.

Now, if you want to take this to the next level, we would suggest that you do, you set up a series of automated emails so that you don’t have anything to do with this. Obviously, the first email is going to say, “You asked for our information, here it is.”

Susan: Trust.

Chris: And then you send them an email with a link to the information where they can click on it and see the information. Print it, download it, do whatever they wanna do with it. Whatever you promised you must deliver and more. Because you might actually say in that email, “Thank you for requesting that, but did you know, I’ve got this other information which might help you even further and you can have that for free as well?”

So all of a sudden, you’ve gone well past their expectations of what they were asking for originally. So, you can then use that email to build a relationship with that person by continually sending them emails on a regular basis.

The biggest question is how regular? Depends on what business you’re in, what market you’re in and what your customers are likely to expect. If they would expect a newsletter from you once a week, send them a newsletter once a week. If they expect to hear from you every day, send them something every day. But only you can decide that. The point is – is that you can make it automated.

Will: And different customers may want a different level of content.

Chris: Correct.

Will: And so, depending on how they are coming to you, depending on what you are offering them – they may expect one thing over here and then over there. They may expect totally different things. You maybe emailing one group weekly, you maybe emailing one group monthly, you maybe emailing another group daily just depending on what kind of relationship you have.

But this idea, that you’re using your website to build a relationship, to create a personal connection through video, through audio, through the written work and then you are offering something of value in exchange for permission to continue to connect and deepen that relationship is important.

And one of the things that I wanna point out is that – notice what Chris and Susan were talking about. They were talking about one person, connecting with and serving another person. What the internet has allowed us to do is that the internet allows us to connect and develop relationships in new ways. And email is one way to do that. If you’ve been in business, offline in any capacity – you’ve already been building relationships.

The same rules that you’ve been abiding by offline will translate over into an online context. The beauty is, is that as you seek to serve, develop and cultivate these relationships – business can and does happen more easily than it ever has before with people all over the world.

The Objective

 

Chris: Yes. That’s absolutely right. Because you have to remember, the objective is to get people to buy from you when they are ready to buy.

Will: Yeah.

Chris: Everybody has a buying cycle. We start to research something. We get an idea on that and we say,” I think I want to go and do or buy.” Whatever it is. We start some research. We start online. Or we might go in social media. Which is another topic altogether.

Susan: [Laughing]

Chris: But something you need to consider. But the thing is, they go through a purchasing journey. They start their research and then they might decide on a model, or a place or where they are likely to find whatever it is they want. They might decide on a color or a person. Then they might decide on how far they are prepared to travel.

These are whole draft of questions that people have going through their heads depending on what service that you are offering. At some point, they are ready to buy. And so, you have to be in their mind when they’re ready to make that decision. They are ready to pick up the phone and talk to you or they are prepared to get their card out and buy something online whatever it is that you are offering.

And therefore, that is why you are building this relationship. You always have to remember that, that’s the objective of the email and the relationship building. You want them to spend their money with you.

Will: They’re going to spend it somewhere.

Susan: Exactly.

Will: Otherwise they wouldn’t have been online looking in the first place. They wouldn’t have clicked on the ad. They wouldn’t have gone to the social media post. They wouldn’t have gone to your website and watched the video then opted in to an email list so that they can get your eBook mailed to them for example.

This is a brilliant advice! We probably need to move into the direction of winding things up. So let me just ask, what is your last parting advice that you can give today to a solo-preneur, coach, consultant, small business owner that’s looking to get their message out to the world.

Measure, Rinse and Repeat

 

Susan: Just do it.[Laughing]Everything that we’ve suggested, we know from personal experience. Having been in the place that you are, absolutely works. We walked through the requirements to expand your business online, you learned the marketing that’s gonna help you to get there and then you implement it.

There is nothing better than doing that. And then measuring the results that you get. Rinse and repeat. And just keep doing it. And those things that work, you do more of and those things that didn’t, you don’t do them anymore.

Will: Beautiful! I love it! Measure, Rinse and Repeat. That’s a great advice. I didn’t mean to cut you off Chris.

Chris: That’s alright. That’s not a problem. I think the other thing is – I said it earlier on, you have to be open and you have to be prepared to accept advice from people who knows better than you.

If you’re a Chiropractor or a car mechanic, you’re not gonna know about internet marketing. The thing is, is that you need to find an expert and work with somebody who is prepared to work with you to develop your business.

As Susan said, marketing is one of those things that you’ll never know the results until the results are in. Some will work and some won’t. If the ones you do first of all don’t work, don’t say,” This marketing thing doesn’t work.”

It’s only that one element of marketing didn’t work for you. You just have to be prepared to invest some money to expand your business because at the end of the day that what it’s all about. The more money you invest – if you do it right – you’re gonna make more profit, more sales.

Susan: That’s it with our accountants huddle.

Will: Beautiful advice. Beautiful advice from Chris and Susan Beesley coming to us from London. Near London, anyway.

Chris: Yeah.

Will: If this is a business that you’re in, it needs to be treated like such and marketing is simply a skill. It’s an art and a skill and the skill set part of marketing can be mastered. Day by day, little by little, moving forward and eventually coming to something that brings you in a tremendous amount of business. So if our listeners wanted to find out more about you, do you have a website you can refer them back to, a place where they can contact you.

Susan:  We do indeed. You can find all about the information on what we call our branded website, it is: ChrisandSusanBeesley.com. We brand ourselves by our name.

Will:  And how do you spell your last name?

Susan: It is B, double E, S, L, E, Y.

Will: Okay, thanks for being on the show and we will definitely have you back. I think Susan, I wanna pick your brain a little bit about social media marketing and what you do there because I know you are brilliant there.

Susan: Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Will: Sounds good. Have a good day!

 

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William Wood and Amir Mahmoud have helped thousands of people achieve massive breakthroughs in their lives. Both share the same mission and a similar vision, wisdom and expertise. You can connect with Will & Amir directly through their Facebook Fan Page.

 

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