Each week, I show up in the Rise Above Noise group, and now the Law of Attraction for Biz group to shine the light on an area that is going to help you grow your business in a way that feels authentic and in a way that protects your, your time and your energy.
So what I wanted to talk about today before we introduce Scott to the conversation is something I've been thinking a lot about.
And that is that no matter what we do, but we'll talk about business, but no matter what all we truly have as our currency is our time and our energy. And if, and we need to be very, very particular how we use our time and our energy. I mean, if you're an entrepreneur you're smart, you can make money, right?
Maybe you have to figure out how much money you want to make and how you're going to make it. But what you really need is to use your own time and your energy as the currency, that's going to be the driving force in everything you're doing. And that's why I was really glad that Scott opted for the topic increased your marketing energy.
So if there's something that we all know already - no matter where we are in, in business these days is that as far as marketing, thereare just so many things. There's the website, there's social media, there's email marketing, there's networking, there's search optimization, there's Facebook ads, Google ads, all of the things. And what we know already is that we can't do all of them well.
And so we have to choose what suits us and in the work that Scott does with his clients and the work that I do with my clients, it's of more importance to know that we're showing up in alignment with our values and an alignment with our mission, how we're going to help people so that it doesn't feel like a drain.
Scott, I don't know about you, but when I talk with people, this happened just on Saturday. I gave an in-person presentation on “Subject Lines for Emails”, and this happens every single time I get in there. And once everybody's introduced and we're very happy. Then, the minute I say digital marketing, this happens like there's a physical drawing in of the shoulders and the energy.
Oh. And then when I say email marketing, their eyes roll up. And I know that, right? And I think that's because so many people aren't in alignment with who they're speaking to and what their message is. And when you are in alignment, you get to hold your shoulders back. You get to radiate from your core values so that you're showing up and you feel good about it.
So my tip this week is to, and people who have been following me know this, they've heard me say it a million times and they'll hear me say it a million more times, get a little, get a, a pad of paper or a notebook, or maybe you're a digital keeper. I am a digital keeper. I'm a digital everything.
However, I do believe in the power of pen to paper. So write down all of the questions that anyone has ever asked you about the work you do, the problem you solve, how you solve it, how you got started, who works with you? Who do you recommend? Write down all of the questions you can think of.
Now once you've written down your, your questions go over to your website. Cause you probably already put a lot of this into your thinking. When you created that, go to your website and see what other little questions you had now. I'm not telling you to, to answer these yet. I'm telling you to keep a list of them.
And then the next thing to do is to ask other people, you're out to dinner with people you're with your family, ask them, what do you think I do? And do you have any questions about what I do? And those are going to be questions that you're going to write down too. So now when you're ready to create your marketing content, right?
Heart open.
In particular, your email, heart open generously giving. Now you are addressing the questions that people already have. I'm not going to tell you to buy this book, but I will tell you to check out, check out Marcus Sheridan. He wrote a book called “They Ask, You Answer”, but you can also find everything about him online.
Brilliant. Just talking about search optimization and building relationships with people. People are looking for answers to their problems. And if you're answering those a you're going to get found with search optimization and you're going to be speaking directly to them. They're going to be like, what? How did you know that about me? So that is my tip this week, I have a blog article.(https://bit.ly/rise-faqs)
That is my tip of every day. That's just everything that I talk about all of the time.
Perfect. Yeah, it's good stuff. And it works and it just makes you feel more generous and consistent. Okay. So now what I'd like to do is if you have not yet met Scott Aksamit, , he is the CEO and business coach for Law of Attraction Biz. lawofattractionbiz.com
So he wants you to know that marketing stress keeps people from growing their business. And he says that if you can remove that roadblock, you're going to grow fast. And so we're going to talk about that today. So the first thing I want to tell you is when I asked Scott what his superpower is, he said that it's finding other people's unknown superpowers.
Yeah. That was actually told to me by the, by one of my close friends and students, we were just discussing that while we thought each other super power was. And I think from the martial arts industry, you know, that's really how I developed that to, to find character traits that the student didn't know that they have and cultivate them on the floor.
And now I help it with business owners, You know? So that's probably a good lead in, you mentioned the martial arts and I looked and I, I think I didn't have any notes on that. Can you tell me a little bit about what, what you've been doing and where, what you're doing now? Yeah. I started my business when I was 18 years old,
just because I wasn't the college type of kid. I wasn't a good student. I was a C D student, but I love martial arts. I love physical activity. I loved athletics. And I figured let's figure out how to make money with this. And that's how I got started. I actually, I went in there thinking this is cool. I get to play karate all day.
But in reality, I fell in love with teaching and that's when my business really started to thrive. And I shifted recently into, we still have the martial arts academy. That's actually where I'm talking from today. So I still do work in that, but now I've been focused more on entrepreneurship and helping people get small businesses built. How do you do that?
Well, like you, you mentioned a great marketing tool. If you think about every single question that somebody could ask you about your business, how much does it cost? Where are you located? How'd you get started? What's your background, all of these questions you have answers to. Well, if you do put that into a blog post, now,
when people are searching Google, they're asking those questions. So it gives them direction. Hey, this is going to come up. Number one, how much does it cost for email marketing? For example, now you have an answer for that through your business, but what will stop people from doing that simple exercise are language loops. And I'll give you some examples.
How am I going to think of all these questions? How in the world am I going to have time to do all this stuff? This sounds like a lot of work. I don't know what a blog is. Where do you even put a blog? I'm confused by this. All right. So now they have all these loops going on. They can't do the work.
It's the equivalent of, you know, the kid who gets a homework assignment and spends 25 minutes complaining about it. This isn't fair. I don't like I don't have any time to do well. They just wasted all that emotional energy on the complaint. So one of the things that I would recommend just shift your language, loops a little. I don't have to do all of this today.
You know, I could do this gradually over time. I could learn one small thing today and get started. I like talking to my customers, let me ask them, what do they think I should be answering? Now, those language loops have a higher energy to them. And if you're implementing those now the work will start to flow out of you and you'll be more productive when you do it.
So it's really about helping people eliminate those blocks. So I think I do similar. We all do similar things. How do you, how do you, where would somebody even start? I know that you just gave a little example, but maybe you have an exact example on, oh my God. Email, you know, well, I could talk about email marketing,
but like, oh my gosh, I don't even know where to start to write a blog. Okay. I, I wouldn't attach all my energy to a tool whenever I make a to-do list. Okay. I want to make my business grow. Here's the 15 things that I got to do. I always feel this heavier energy around it. And if that heavy energy is present, that's, what's telling you all right, you're not working on this the right way. Again, back to the martial arts example. If you throw a technique, you will feel whether it was good or bad. You don't need somebody telling you it was good or bad. You're going to throw it. And if there's a little something off in your hip,
you're going to know it. Your body is going to communicate with you and let you know, you need to adjust. Most people don't realize emotions are the same way. If I look at a task that I want to do, I want to start writing this blog and I don't feel good about it. That's me. That's my time to get awareness about what my thoughts about this are.
That's the only work you have to do. Okay? What am I thoughts? Let me write this down. Well, a blog is confusing. This is frustrating. I don't know where to start. Okay. That's where you begin. You got to clean up that thought before you get started, you know, we're in February right now, January 2nd, everybody was at the gym.
Now we're in February. I would say 80 to 90% of those people are not there anymore. Now they went with a physical plan. I'm going to eat only these foods. I'm going to implement this diet. And I'm going to exercise by doing three sets per muscle group, every single Monday, every single Tuesday, et cetera. And they laid out all this stuff,
but three weeks into it, they didn't change any of their language loops. They didn't change it in any of their thoughts about exercise, working out and diet. So they're actually working against their own desire. They're working against their own goal. And until they start developing a healthier mindset around that topic, you could give them every plan in the world and ain't gonna work.
And the proof is the gym is empty and we're only into February and it's not empty because some of those people did shift. They either had so much pain because their doctor told them they're going to die if they don't change. So now they have a new loop. I got to do this to survive. So now there's a high desire or, you know,
they're the key person in their life left them because they are not attracted to them anymore. And now they have a high energy around getting that back. Or they shifted internally. I want to feel healthy. I want to feel excited every day when I wake up. And if you shift those, then you can stay in the gym because you're excited to be there.
Your business is no different marketin. Isn't stressful thinking, marketing a stressful, stressful Thinking. Marketing is stressful is stressful. Correct. All right. So let's, let's shift that over then. So, okay. If people say, all right, I'm going to, and I've done this. I've worked with, with clients and they,
they work with me for X amount of time and they get all the things set up similar to what you're talking about. You get the gym, you get your reps all set up. And then the accountability is a big part of it because they're meeting with me every week, they're doing the things. And then, you know, if that program's done,
some of them are like, great. I'm going to go do the things. But then they fall back. They lose the consistency. And I think somehow they are back into thinking. It's a lot of a lot, right? So, I mean, if we're talking about increasing our marketing energy, we want to create something that's sustainable. That gives us joy.
Do you have any tips towards that? Like how do you w what do you tell your clients? Well, I, I believe strongly in using metaphors because metaphor is actually shaped your belief systems. And my instructor, my mentor in the martial arts industry gave me a great metaphor about marketing. He said, it's like jump, starting a car. When your car is totally dead on the side of the road,
and you have to jumpstart it, it's a big, heavy piece of metal that you have to start moving. So you get behind it and you start pushing. You put a lot of energy in the beginning and the thing doesn't move barely at all. But if it starts to move even a little bit and you quit at that point, then nothing is ever going to happen.
But when it starts to move, even that little bit, if you give even more energy at that point, and you start pushing a little bit harder, now that momentum will increase. And as that momentum increases, you could get to a point where it's going on its own, that you could jump into that car, hit the switch and it'll drive me anywhere.
You want to go. That's how marketing works in your business. Most people are not going to respond because you did one outreach. Hey, I teach martial arts. Do you want to join? That? Doesn't produce much results. It just starts the momentum going. And it's just a better way of looking at your business. You know, where marketing the word comes from,
right? A medieval, you go into the market and you go, I'm selling, that's marketing. And that's the easiest way to look at it. You're just announcing to the market people that are in for what you have to offer. This is what I have to offer. And here's one more tip on this. People put too much emotional connection to the answer to message.
Meaning I'm selling apples. If you don't buy one, it means you hate me. They actually take it personally. You know, I'm selling apples. So turn this around from, I'm saying this in order to get money, that's not what you're saying. I'm saying this to let everybody know in the market, that if they're interested in apples, I can help them solve their problem.
Are you interested in eating apples? Well, I can help you. It's a different energy. It's actually asking the question. So if I asked you, what's your favorite color? Susan? It's yellow. Okay. You see others? No emotional baggage to that. So if I go there and I go, she's got to say red, she's got to say red.
She's got us. Now, when you say yellow, I feel hurt. But if I genuinely just, I'm curious, are you in the market for martial arts? Okay, perfect. See, it's a, it's a genuine question. I just wanted to know if you're in the market and it's a better way to promote your business. Yeah. I agree.
A thousand percent. And I would also say that marketing is not necessarily yelling out. I've got apples, I've got apples, but it could be, let me tell you why apples are so good for you, right? Like, and, and why you know where to get your apples and how, what kinds of apples? So it's, it's not necessarily selling.
I just got off of a webinar with a Donald Miller. StoryBrand. And it's really making people marketing is a vehicle so that people understand the problems you solve and how they can work with you. That's, that's what it is. And if they're not your person, right. So a lot of people will say to me again, they get that physical, Ugh, with email. And I'm like, because they don't want to bother people in their inbox, or they don't want to appear selly, selly. And that's that kind of typical marketing sales, marketing mindset. But when you think of marketing as generosity, when you think of it as informing people, engaging and then educating them, then it doesn't, then you don't get that physical feeling about it.
You feel great about sharing. And the thing about email marketing is that, which is where I spend most of my time is that if people don't align with what it is that you're teaching them each week, or every other week, they can unsubscribe it's permission-based right, right. It's not, you're not throwing anything in anybody's face. They raised their hand to get on your list because you would never put anybody on your list that didn't opt in.
And then if they're, if they're consuming it great. And if they don't want to consume it anymore, they can unsubscribe. But the, but we're here to show up in service and consistency. Right. And your message isn't going to be right for everyone. I actually, one of the first things that I do with coaching, who do you help?
90% of my new clients say, well, I can help everybody. Well, you can't. Okay. And that's, that's, that's an important shift. Let's say that your grandmother just died and you're in the market for a funeral home. That's what's taking on your priority right now. Well, if your business is not a funeral home, then that person is not your client.
At this moment. You cannot serve everybody. There is a group of people. They have a demographic outline, they have a specific problem. And there's a timing component. There might be somebody that's in that funnel, but their grandmother died. And so now that you can't help them at this point. So that's the awareness. And by having that awareness,
okay, this is who I'm really trying to target. This is the exact problem that I'm trying to help them with right now, with this message. That's how you start to get better results with your marketing. I'm going to help everybody is so broad. It doesn't help anyone. That's right. That's right. And that, that was one of the things we talked about.
If people want to check out last week's interview with Heather Maguire, you can find it on my website, Rise Above Noise. ( https://www.riseabovenoise.com/blog) We were talking about something similar to that. We were talking about you, you know, you can't serve everybody. And then her point was a little bit more energetic. It was like, who, you know, we have to align with who we're going to work with.
Right? So I, because of my mission and my goal, I wouldn't work with somebody spammy or pushy. Right. But there are plenty of people who will, because that's, there are other ways of marketing that are not my ways that work. They work for some people. It's just not the way that I work. And so you have to be energetically aligned and you have to make sure that you're showing up in a way that feels aligned to you so that it's consistent.
Just like doing reps at the gym. Right. You feel good? You want to go do some more, Right. Well, that's one more way to raise the energy around your marketing to, and it might not seem like it's raising it. If you're having a hard time raising it on the tool. Okay. I got to build my website right now.
I don't feel like doing that because it's confusing. Okay. So now you have a lower energy about building your website to shift that, raise your energy about your potential client. If you think about your potential client, and you think about how they feel when they're going through that problem, and you raise your level of empathy and you raise your level of excitement about helping them get out of that, and you get that passion going, that's an attractive energy that can actually lead to you creating this on your website. Cause it'll change your mindset.
When you're in that frustrated mindset, you can't get anything but frustration, but when you get up that high energy, I love helping business owners. I love helping them break through these marketing barriers. So they actually get money coming into their bank account.
I love when I get those reports, Hey, I just closed a $5,000 sale is first time I want more of that. Now I'm thinking from a higher level. So I could get out in there and get started doing my messaging and doing my outreach. That's exactly. That's exactly right. It's it's that? And I would also say, I'm going to say this because it's me.
And it's my clients that we get kind of caught up with the shiny tools. I mean, I started our conversation today talking about a new shiny tool, right. And that I caught frustrated last night and I got to figure it out. And a lot of people wouldn't have, I happen to love tech and that gives me a lot of joy and give me all the dopamine,
I'll press all the buttons. I love doing that, but I can see where people get frustrated. And so this is maybe this is something that, that you teach in a whole business kind of way. But with the marketing that I talk about in particular email marketing, it's keep it simple and do what gives you joy. As long as you're showing up with consistency in general,
like you don't need, you don't need all the things little by little, maybe do I know somebody who's building websites for somebody. I love this. I think more people should think about this, Maureen. She will start you off with a one-page website because she knows that's what you can do. Like you just started like a one-page website. Maybe it has anchors that you can go down to the different sections then as you're growing and as you're getting clarity on your business and how you help people and your products,
then she will add on pages. There are a couple of months there. And so I think that's a brilliant way to like what you're talking about. Right. Just get that car moving down the road. Yeah, for sure. Right. And to have, yeah. And to have her drive, you know, have somebody in the driver's seat, kind of helping them get,
get along with that. So, you know, wherever you can get support, wherever you can show up with joy and whatever you can simplify, I think is important. As long as you're showing up with consistency in generosity, And to have that consistency, to use the menu metaphor. If you look at all the possible marketing tools out there that you are aware of, and maybe there's 15 of them, write them down, look at them like they're a menu going. If I had one meal to eat, which one would I eat right now? Which one would be the most delicious to me? Which one would give me no stress and all pleasure. Okay. And if you could pick that tool from that mindset and then build it from there, you'll get a better success. I, whenever I work with new staff members, new instructors, I do exactly that. Here are a bunch of different ways that you can market to get new students in which one feels best. That's the one I'm going to teach you first.
And it's funny. I had, I have a student that's been with me since he's seven years old.
He's now teaching and he's the lead instructor. And he just found a form of marketing that he loves, like nothing, nothing else he's ever tried where he brings students in. And they train really hard for two hours to create an unbelievable video commercial. And he that energy, because that's what he does. I love training students. They get all excited because they know they're going to be on film.
We had an editor, put it all together into a little 32nd, you know, high energy, all these kids doing all this cool stuff. He was proud of them. They were proud to be a part of it. And now he's all excited and he's sharing it like crazy, you know? So you got to get that energy around the marketing before it's actually going to produce that result.
Brilliant. That's brilliant. And that you gave that instructor license to do what felt good. And that's what I'd like to do with my clients as well, give them license to do what feels right. But also, you know, I'm geeky. I'm going to look at their, I'm going to look at their analytics. I'm going to look at their conversion rates.
I'm going to look at what keywords have working, what people are clicking on and what they're not clicking on because it's nice to have all the fields, but we need to back it up with the statistics and the analytics And the instructor's name is Garrett. He's more engaged in that. He wants to know how many people are watching this video because he's invested in it emotionally.
It's not an act of discipline. You know, that's, that's that gym example. I absolutely hate eating salads and I have to eat salads in order to lose weight. Well, you ain't going to last, you got to find something that you can align with. That's so true. It's true. So this was good. This is the law. Tell me more about the work you do,
where people can find you, what kind of call, you know, I love a good call to action. Everybody knows. I love a good call to action. Tell me where people can find you and what you want them to do. If it resonates that they want coaching to help understand that law of attraction is not a woo woo thing. That's really what I want to get this across this.
Isn't like some magic that some people can tap into it. And some people can, you just have to understand how it actually works so that you could get it working in your business and who wouldn't want to do that. You know, who wouldn't want to go into their business and enjoy more of what they're doing? That's the whole point of how we utilize the skill of law of attraction.
And if they want to participate in that in any way, the best way to do that is to reach out to me directly from my website, law of attraction is.com. Can I share just one quick example of how long traction yesterday? So I, I wanted to promote my business, but I was feeling a little bit of that discipline energy, okay.
Want to do this in order to make money, that feeling. And I realized that that feeling doesn't feel that good. So I sat at my desk and I just took a few deep breaths and I relaxed a little bit. And I started thinking about the joy of service. Okay. How I really like working with clients. And I love getting that result and I felt my energy rise.
And once I felt a little bit better about my business, I'm like, okay, now I can mark it. So I went onto LinkedIn, didn't know what exactly I was looking to do. And I realized that on LinkedIn, the subscription that I do, I could see people who looked up my profile. So let's check them out. And I found this one woman,
and she actually has a plumbing company that sends a camera down your pipes. And I'm like, that's who I'm supposed to talk to because I got this problem with one of my pipes. You just moved into the house and we're getting all this backup. So that's why I have to go talk to this woman. And I reached out to her and I said, you know, as I'm looking at your profile, I thought I had to contact you because I have this problem with my house. But I see that you're in Illinois and I'm in Denver. So I figured I'd just say, Hey, I thought about you. Let's be friends. She replied back to me. My daughter is actually in Boulder right next to you.
So yes, we can't do the drive. However, I looked at your profile and I love my business, but I hate marketing and selling. Maybe I need your help. So it's interesting that I did, you know, just simply one outreach and it actually led to a client, but I don't think that that would have happened if I wasn't in the right place, emotionally, get yourself to the right place emotionally and follow inspiration.
That's the way your business can actually grow. Now, that's the first step. As you get better at that, then you learn how to systemize it. And that's where your business can scale and grow. And you can actually get more freedom from it, but it's got to start somewhere.
That's the initial aspect of pushing the car. Boy, I hope some people heard that and it helps them to that. That was, that was really good. My other tool that I'm going to use to transcribe this, we'll make sure that we have that as a golden nugget to share to for more people, because that was cool, right?
You just got to get out there and share.
I think that's a perfect place to end our conversation today. You got to get out there and share.
You've got to just enjoy it and be attractive to the people who need you. I agree. A hundred percent. Scott, Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah. Thanks for doing this. Have a great day, Susan.
