[00:00:00] In my 15 years of entrepreneurship, I have seen a lot of different strategies for how to grow a business, some good, some not so good. And today I'm going to share with you the five things that I would never do as a mind performance coach for entrepreneurs to grow my business. You are listening to Success in Mind with Teri Holland, the show for high performing entrepreneurs, leaders, and change makers ready to take your life and your business to the next level.
If you're ready for whole life success, keep listening. Okay, let's dive in. The five things I would not do to grow my business as someone who coaches other people on how to grow their business. So first of all, And this is one that I made this mistake myself. I did it. That's how I know it's not a good idea.
The first thing I would not do and that I do not recommend doing in your first year of business is paying [00:01:00] for professional branding. Now, before people get upset with me, before you come at me, especially you branding people and graphic designers out there, I know the importance of having a concise, clear branding image.
I think that is incredibly important in business. However, in the first year of business, you don't know who you are. When you're a solopreneur and you're just starting out, you're a practitioner, you're a creative, you don't know who you are. Yet in business, you are figuring it out in that first year, and if you spend a lot of money to get your branding done in that first year.
And by the way, to get a really good brand strategy done is gonna cost you some money because, well, it's, it's an important skill. It's an important part of your business and it should cost a substantial amount of money. But before you spend that money, you've gotta figure out who you are, who you're serving.
The mistake I made [00:02:00] is that I had a really great branding, branding image, branding strategy, um, done for me. And it was beautiful. It was great. It was cohesive, it made sense, and I'm not using it anymore. After about a year, I realized that's not me. Now, the person who did this brand strategy created the right brand strategy for who I thought I was and who I thought I wanted to work with.
But over that year, I realized I don't wanna work with those kinds of clients, and this isn't representing me. I'm not representing myself the way I want to be seen, the way I want to show up in my business. So after about a year, I started messing with the colors and I started playing with it, and I started changing fonts and doing things that felt more like me, but I ended up making a huge mess out of it.
And then I had my logos redone, and then I had my colors redone, and then I started feeling like those colors aren't really representative of me either. [00:03:00] So now I'm kind of back in the same position of, well, it's kind of a bit of a mess again, other than my logo, which I love and my messaging is pretty clear and solid, but that's about it.
So, and, and I've been doing this for a while, but I would say in that first year, you don't have enough information yet. And the person who's doing your branding is only going to be able to deliver based on what you tell them. So if you say, I wanna work with big corporate clients and the problems I solve are, you know, eliminating corporate burnout, for example, you're gonna have a very different brand strategy than if you say, That you work with creative entrepreneurs and that you are helping them solve the problem of self-worth and imposter syndrome.
Those, those are different brands. And if you, if you don't know who you are within that, how you wanna be seen, if you can't describe that, the kind [00:04:00] of energy or how you want people to feel when they connect with your brand, if you don't know that yet, Then you're probably gonna answer those questions in the wrong way, and you're gonna get a brand strategy that's not gonna fit you for very long.
But having a brand is important. So I'm not saying to never get it done, but what I am saying is use some caution at the beginning. Spend some time working with different clients. Figure out what you like, what you don't like. What kind of problems do you like solving with people? What kind of clients are you enjoying working with?
How do you like showing up? How do you feel when you're your most authentic self? What resonates with you? So spend some time figuring all of that out. And you might not know what kind of clients you wanna work with until you start working with people and realize, oh, not that one. Now I can tell in a 15 minute consultation if someone is a great fit for me or not a great fit, and I don't want the [00:05:00] clients who are not a good fit for me because the work isn't going to be the same, I'm not gonna enjoy it.
They probably won't get the same results. If we're not a fit, we're not a fit, I'm not gonna work with them. But you don't know that until you've worked with a number of people. And then you can say, okay, I, I don't really like working with corporate clients. Or, or maybe you do really like working with corporate clients and you don't like working with small business owners.
So you start to figure out what is it you like, what don't you like? Where do you do your best work? And that's gonna help shape your branding. Now, when you're starting out though, you still wanna have a professional image that's important. So if. If you wanna spend that branding money on something or you wanna get some branding done at the beginning, I would say a logo.
Just do the logo and go on something like Canva. And I know, I know graphic designers you hate, you hate when I say this, but go on Canva and [00:06:00] pick a color palette that you like. Just pick what you like for now. Pick some fonts you like and start there and, and maybe spend some money on getting a logo. Uh, You know, you could design a logo yourself on Canva, but they usually look homemade.
I, let's say just, just pay someone. But you can go on something like Fiver, where you can find a freelancer who will do it at a minimum cost. Is it gonna be the best logo you ever had? Probably not, but it'll give you something to start with. So now you have something to start with that can give you a cohesive image for now.
And as you play with that, you'll start to realize what works, what's not working, what feels like you, what doesn't really feel like you. Then after a year or so, when you know, okay, this is who I like working with and these are the problems I'm really good at solving for other people. This is where I really light up in my business and what I do well, and this is the kind of energy I want people to feel.
When they look at my content online or when they land on my website, this is how I want them to feel. And when you can [00:07:00] confidently answer those questions that by the way, any great brand strategist is going to ask you those questions, now you get a brand that really, really starts to showcase who you are and what it is that you do with people.
Now there's a connection to the brand. So even though like I love that first branding I had done, I loved it. It was great. It looked fantastic. My brand guide looked amazing. I loved it. But I realized a year in that's actually not representing who I wanna be, who I thought I wanted to be. Yes, but not who I actually am.
So, Don't spend. That's what I would not do. That's what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on branding right away. I would wait, figure some stuff out, do some things for cheap at the beginning, just to gimme a solid image to start with. Just something to work with, and then start feeling out what do I like, what don't I like?
I would start with that. The [00:08:00] second thing I would not do to grow my business, and I've never done this and I never will do this one. Is I would never pay to be a part of one of those multi-author books. Now, this is not meant to offend anyone who has been a part of one of those books. I know a lot of my friends have contributed to those before, so my clients have even contributed to them.
Not on my recommendation. Mind you. But, um, I know a lot of you might have been a part of those, and here's why I wouldn't do it. Those books are designed to. Be a flash in the pan of your marketing. And what I see happening is that these authors, these entrepreneurs, they get involved in one, they usually pay somewhere around 1500, $2,000 to participate.
They write their five to 800 words, which is basically a blog. Uh, I've seen some where it's not even that, it's like 200 to 250 words. That's your [00:09:00] contribution. So you've written a short blog at that point, and now you're a part of this book with all these other people. And then what you have to do is you have to get all of your friends and family to buy the book on Amazon within a certain timeframe the day it launches.
And that's what, that's what gets you the bestseller status for that book. It gets the book on the bestseller list, and then all of these authors. Say that they are bestselling authors. There's incongruency in that because you're not really a bestselling author. You didn't write the book, you wrote a little, a little section.
Sometimes it's one page of a book and that book's a bestseller. But can you really confidently and congruently say that you are a author when you've written the equivalent of a blog post? At best To me it's false credibility. And when I've talked to people after being a part [00:10:00] of one of these books, there's all the hype leading up to it.
They get all their friends to buy it, they get on the bestseller list, they start putting on all their social media. They're a bestselling author. And then they start to, at some point they start to develop negative feelings about it and they don't feel confident sharing it anymore because people say, well, where's your book?
And they say, well, here's, here's the book. And people are smart. They see that and they know that, well, you didn't really write that. You just wrote a, a small section, or you wrote a page and so now you've paid all this money and they get you to do it because they say, well, you can call yourself a bestselling author and you can leverage that title and it's gonna help you grow your business.
And I've never seen it work. I have yet to see. Contributing to one of those work in a way where one, the person recos their money, they never recoup their money from the book. Uh, they usually drop the best sellers listing. [00:11:00] At some point, they stop saying their bestselling author because they start to realize it doesn't feel right.
Doesn't feel congruent. And so now you've paid, what? 1500? $2,000, maybe even more in some cases. To do something that you don't feel great about and that you didn't recoup your money on. What I would say instead is if you want to write a book, write a book, write an actual book. Even writing an ebook, even a short ebook is still better credibility.
In my opinion, then being a part of a multi-author book where it's a flash in the pan and it's not going to do anything for you, you know some of these deals too, they say, well, you have to order however many books yourself in order to get in the bestseller list. And I've seen people who have like a stack of books or boxes of them sitting in their garage because they're embarrassed to give them away, or they're embarrassed to take them to events and actually sell them.
And so again, [00:12:00] they've invested all this money in buying the books and, and they're not doing anything with them. They're not working for them. But imagine if that was your own book, you'd feel proud of that, you'd feel good. It would be congruent. You'd be able to say, yes, I'm a bestselling author. Because at that point you would be a bestselling author.
So I would, I wouldn't do this. To me, it's not a great strategy. The only person who ends up doing well is the person who compiles the book and the person who ultimately puts it together, who organizes the whole thing. They usually make some money. The person who's publishing it, they make some money, but the people contributing, they don't come out of it so well.
Okay. Number three, the third thing that I would not do to grow my business as someone who coaches entrepreneurs on growing their business, I would not pay for followers on Instagram. I would not do any inorganic ways of getting followers, so that includes paying for [00:13:00] followers. I wouldn't do follow for follow.
Or follow groups or any of those things, I wouldn't do it. And this is one that I'm embarrassed to say I did do. I was in the follow loops. I did. I got into engagement groups where we did follow for follow. Everybody in this group follows each other and engages with their content. It is a losing strategy.
There is no way that you could get followers inorganically on Instagram and come out ahead. Aside from doing ads, like if you wanna run ads, sure you'll get some followers, but aside from ads, If you're doing any of the follow groups, follow loops, whatever they're called, follow ladders. If you are paying someone who says, I'm gonna get you to 10,000, a hundred thousand, whatever followers, do not do it.
It is not worth it because what you'll end up with is a lot of bots on your account or people who aren't really interested in what you're selling. When I was doing those follow groups, I was on my old [00:14:00] account. I ended up dropping that account. I got to 12,000 followers and I had this 12,000 followers of people who didn't give a shit about what it was that I was talking about.
They weren't interested in my business. They were never going to translate into clients. A lot of them were mommy bloggers and no shade on the mommy bloggers. But that's not my demographic. That's not the kind of business owner that I'm trying to reach out to. So I had a lot of mommy bloggers, a lot of like mommy type businesses, uh, which again, there's nothing wrong with that, but those aren't the kinds of businesses that I work with.
So, It was, it was not working for me, and it ended up bringing my engagement rate way down because these people are not interested in engaging with content that I was offering, which was about N L P hypnotherapy mind performance. They weren't interested, and I realized at one point that I could either spend a lot of time going through.
All 12,000 followers and determining who's actually engaging [00:15:00] with me and who's not, and deleting and removing followers. Or I could just start a fresh account. So that's what I did. I started a new account. I still have that old account, but I keep it deactivated or archived or whatever Instagram calls it.
Yeah, I left that account available to me because there's content on there. I want to be able to go back and revisit, maybe repurpose into other ways. Plus I had that account since I think 2009 when Instagram first launched. So it's also has a lot of history and, and I don't wanna lose all that, but I started a new one and my engagement is much, much higher now because the people who follow me on that account are there because they want to follow me on that account.
They're not there because they had to follow me because of some loop or ladder or circle or group or whatever I was in. So it's a losing game. It is not, you know, people are, people are catching onto this, like I said earlier, people are smart and if they see that [00:16:00] you have a hundred thousand followers, but you're only getting five likes on a post, or like one or two comments, those are some pretty red flags that you don't really have a hundred thousand followers.
The optics aren't as important as maybe they used to be. People used to be impressed by that, by those numbers of, oh, they have so many followers, but now we're a little more savvy to that, and we see that, hmm, they're not getting any engagement. And there are apps you can use to run a person's account and see what their engagement percentages.
And if it's under 1% and even one percent's quite low, but if it's under that, That's, that's not good. And you can see how many followers are dropping off each week, what their growth rate is. And if I can look that up, that means that any brand who's considering sponsoring you, if that's why you are getting all these followers, is to get sponsorship deals.
They know how to run those numbers too, and they can see that, okay, no, something's not right there. [00:17:00] You don't really have a following, so don't do it. It is just not worth it. It is not worth it. Just create really good content that speaks to the people who you want to speak to. Speak to the problems that you solve, speak to the clients you wanna help.
What is it that they need to hear from you? That's what I ask myself when I sit down to create content. What does my person need to hear from me today? And I create all of my content with one person in mind. And what is it that they need to hear from me today? That's it. And if you do that consistently, and you've gotta be consistent, you will grow a following and you'll grow a true following who will be much more engaged.
And the purpose of doing that is so that you can grow your business, which means that your followers convert to sales and clients, not all of them. But some of them might become friends or they might just become cool relationships online. Some of [00:18:00] them might just get enough value from your free content, and that's great too.
But then there will be a percentage that convert to sales, and that's ultimately why you're doing it in the first place. Okay. Number four, the fourth thing that I would never do as someone who coaches people to grow their business, I would not do this to grow my business, and that is I would not pay someone to get me onto other people's podcasts.
Now, the people who offers us this as a service, they usually do a terrible job of marketing you, and I'm saying this as someone who has been podcasting for eight plus years now. I get pitches in my inbox every day. Every single day, and if you've been listening to me for a while, ask yourself, how many guests have I had on?
I invite guests onto my show, in fact, and I invite guests on when I have a topic I wanna discuss that I'm not. I'm not the expert in, I need someone else to come in and fill the gaps. [00:19:00] Usually it's just me. But when I get inspired to bring someone else on the show, it's because I believe in their work, because I have experienced their work or I've been following them online and I think, yes, I need, I need this person to come talk about this topic with me.
Otherwise, it's just me. I have only accepted one pitch in eight years of podcasting, one pitch, and that was for Paul William Davis, who was on the show just over a year ago, to talk about purpose because the person who pitched for him did an excellent job and caught my attention and it was a topic I was interested in, and I thought, yes, this is someone I wanna talk to.
That's one, and I get pitches every single day. So the people who do this, the people who sell for you to get you onto podcasts, it is a numbers game for them. They will pitch you to everybody in the hopes that someone is going to bite and someone probably does bite. [00:20:00] But you need to ask, what is the quality of that show?
Are they putting you in front of the right audience? Are these companies helping to position you in the right way so that not only are you getting onto the show, but you are effective in growing your audience when you're on the show? Because that's why you'd wanna be there, is you want the people who are listening to that podcast, so that podcaster's audience to hear you and say, oh, I've gotta learn more.
And then they go subscribe to your show or they go follow you on Instagram. They download your free offer. Whatever it is, they start engaging with you and they end up buying from you. That's ultimately the goal, but are these people really putting you in front of the right audiences? The reason I have rejected every pitch except for one, is because they're usually not a fit for me.
I get pitched a lot of life coaches. I am far more qualified than the average life coach, and I'm not saying that out of ego. I'm saying that as someone who is trained at the highest levels of N L P in hypnotherapy, [00:21:00] that a life coach who wants to come on and talk about gratitude. Well, one, I can talk about gratitude all day long.
I have no issue with that. Two, I'm not gonna promote a competitor on my show who's doing what I do. And three, I'm more qualified than that person. So why would I position them to be the expert on my show? I'm not gonna do that. Paul is an expert on finding purpose. I'm not an expert on that. He was a great fit for my show.
Other people who I've brought on, Amanda Carson, she's an expert in grief. I'm not. I'm fascinated by what she does. I wanted to have a conversation with her. So a lot of times the people who pitch. They are not pitching to the right shows. They're not positioning you the right way a lot. And I read them. I do read every pitch that comes my way.
I'll read it and I'm usually bored just reading it and I think, well, this person doesn't really seem to have anything unique to offer my audience. That I don't [00:22:00] already talk about and I don't talk about a million different things. I talk about what I know well. So if you can't pitch me someone who can talk about something that I'm not talking about, then you're not trying.
I had one of these companies approach me and they wanted to represent me and get me on other podcasts, and they wanted to charge me $20,000 US for six months, and I laughed and I was like, that's my marketing budget for the year. And I don't know if I should be sharing that with you, but that's the truth of it.
That was my entire marketing budget for the year. And I was like, I can't invest that in six months into one strategy. That's not a good plan. And I said, what's the guarantee that I will make that money back from those podcasts? And I said, well, there is no guarantee. Depends on how well you do on those shows.
And I said, well, are you gonna coach me? And they said, well, for another, I think it was for another 15,000 or something like that. There'd be coaching involved too. And I said, no, no, that's, no, no, thank you. [00:23:00] So I wouldn't do that now. I'm gonna put a caveat to that. If the right company came to me and if they didn't wanna charge me $20,000 for six months, and if they could gimme guarantees on what I could expect and if they were going to vet the audiences, so to make sure that I was put on the right shows.
Oh, and by the way, that was only for six podcasts. That's what I would get one a month. They, they could get me onto one podcast a month for six months for $20,000. Um, it didn't seem worth it to me. So, I have been a guest on other people's podcasts, and because the podcast has asked me to come on as a guest, that's how I end up on them.
So would I ever do it well, if the right company came along and gimme some good guarantees and charged an amount that seemed reasonable for me for the amount of money I would expect to get back. Uh, I would consider it. I would consider it. I have not come across such a company as of yet, [00:24:00] and I don't know if they exist based on the pitches that I see landing in my inbox, which by the way, one of the reasons why I read them is because I think, well, if it's a really good pitch, I might consider contacting that person and talking to them about representing me.
That has yet to happen, and like I said, the only one that I have accepted. Is Paul William Davis, and I believe the person who pitched for him is was a VA or someone working directly for him, not a podcast company. So I wouldn't suggest that, and I wouldn't at this point do that as a strategy unless the right company came along that could offer more.
That could do better. Put me in front of the right people. And number five, discounting rates. So this is something I wouldn't do, this is something I don't suggest my clients do, is discount rates. Your rates are your rates. What you charge is what you charge. Do. You go to your dentist and your dentist says like, Hey, if you come to me this month, I'll give you a bit of a [00:25:00] deal.
I'll give you a break on your cleaning this year if you switch your dentist to me. I've never heard of a dentist doing that. They say this is the rate. That's the rate. You pay it or you don't pay it. Uh, either way, they're fine. So your rates are your rates. Now, if a dentist did that, as they said, Hey, if you switch dentists and you come to me, I'll take $500 off your next bill or whatever it is.
Would they seem credible to you or would they seem desperate? I think they'd seem a little bit desperate. So you get what you pay for when you hire a professional. Now, are there people out there in the personal development space who are charging way, way, way too much money and not delivering on it? Yes.
You need to be able to deliver the value that you are, that you are saying you can provide for the rate that you're saying you can provide it. If you can't do that, you will not have repeat clients. You will not get referrals, and you will damage your reputation. And I would say [00:26:00] not only do you need to be able to match the value, but you need to exceed it.
Because if you can provide value above and beyond what you charge, then your clients will be very satisfied with your work. And they will, they will tell everyone about it. So I always aim to provide three times the value of what I charge. Then I feel really good about charging the rates I charge, and I'm not a cheap coach.
I feel really good about it, and I get a lot of referrals from my clients, which tells me that they are satisfied. They are happy with the work I provided. So don't discount your rates. What you can do is add something to it. So instead of discounting what can you add? Can you add bonuses? Do you have some mini courses that you can add in to bump up your offer?
Can you sweeten the deal with some courses, with an e-book with, uh, if you've written a book, give them a gift of your book. What can you do to add onto what it is [00:27:00] you're offering? Not taking it away. So don't discount your services. Add something to it. Increase the value without increasing the price. And if you can increase the value without it costing you more time or costing you money to do so.
And I think you have a really good, you're in a really good position with that offer. So those are the five things I would not do. Or that I'd likely not do cuz there are a couple. There was the one that I would, I would wave on the podcast one for the right company. But those are the things I wouldn't do.
I wouldn't invest a lot of money in branding in the first year. I'd invest that money in something else, like I'd invest that money into setting up systems. I would invest that money into maybe working with a good coach who's gonna help me get really clear on who I work with, problems I solve, and getting the foundations of my business.
I would invest up money on learning some sales techniques. I would invest that into, um, into getting like my bookkeeping set up. Like there, there's better ways to [00:28:00] invest that money unless, I mean, if you have an abundance of money to start up with, and by all means, do whatever you want with it. But if you are starting with a finite budget, if it's a little bit lean, especially then branding is not the place to spend a lot of money in the first year.
Once you know who you are and who you're helping, by all means do it. I would not. Do a multi-author book. I wouldn't do that. I would not pay for followers or do any inorganic ways of getting followers on social media, like follow groups, follow loops. What I would not do those, stay away from them.
Definitely don't pay for them. I wouldn't pay someone to get me onto podcasts unless, again, I said that they were like really brilliant at it and could guarantee me something, but they can't. And I wouldn't discount my rates. I would add something to my rates to sweeten the deal. So those are the five things I wouldn't do.
That was Dutch. Just saying hello to you all. Um, and I'm curious, what are things that you wouldn't do? [00:29:00] To grow your business, or what are things that you think should be added to this list? Come follow me on Instagram and let me know what, what am I missing here? What would you add to the list of the things that you would not do to grow your business or maybe things that you have done that if you were to go back, you would not do that again.
That was a waste of your money. Your resources didn't work. Whatever. I'd like to hear them, so send them to me at the Teri Holland. On Instagram, and before we close this episode, I just wanna share with you that I am doing another five day launch, your podcast challenge. It starts June 5th, we go June 5th, June 9th, every day live calls to walk you through the process of launching your podcast and getting you up on your feet.
My guarantee is at the end of the five days, you will know what to do to launch your podcast. Some of you will be ready to launch. After the five days, some of you might need a little bit longer to put things in place. Either one is fine. But you'll have the tools that you [00:30:00] need to launch your show. So if you want to launch a podcast like this one, come hang out with me.
The link is in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you got some value out of this, leave me a five star written review. Those are always appreciated. They help more people to find the show just like you. And if you know someone who would benefit from this episode, please send it their way.
Thanks so much. Hope you have a fabulous week. Bye for now.
