Hello, everyone, Tracie here, your resident business rebel, and you're listening to cocktails coffee and conversations podcast, the show that lets true stories and insider secrets of digital entrepreneur life unfold. Our business world is growing and as an online business coach and digital product creator, I believe you didn't become an entrepreneur to grin and bear your way through business. So I'll be your guide. As we drop in on coaching calls. Have intimate sit downs with online personalities you love and discuss ideas, opportunities, and strategies circulating our online world. So pop in your earbuds, tap, follow, and join me as I demystify this thing called business. Hello, hello. Welcome to Cocktails, Coffee and Conversations. I am Tracie, your host, who is flying solo for this episode. In other episodes, you'll hear me interview amazing online business owners and friends, or hash out some business strategies and advice with fellow coaches. But when I'm flying solo, I'll be answering your questions and sharing some inside business knowledge for creating a sustainable business. And since we're getting to know each other, I wanted to start with a message that I hope you'll find uplifting and a way that you can see a path to a deeper impact pretty quick, because there there's a lot about doing business that many people don't like. Right. Including that big hairy word selling so much so that people will run themselves out of business to not have to do this act effectively. And why? Because centuries of bad examples and personal experiences that have left many thinking and conducting business with a sign that says, I want to do this work, but don't ask me to charge you. You know, I don't want to be labeled old business. I don't want online bro marketing stigma either. I want to be out there doing good. I want to do what I love. I want to make the life I imagine, but self promoting or using my face or using my voice or having that, that need to do that, that ask. It's just a bit too much. Can't I do the work that I want and money just magically flows to me. So what happens when, when we have this kind of tension, you know, that this, this feel where we don't want to be all these horrible examples. But at the same time, we do want to make some money. We do want to make our life's work out there and available to people and, you know, bring some change in and do some good and bring our love of something out there to the world, right? What happens? Well, often is that people will swing wildly. in the other direction, all in this effort to like, take back their power. They attach concepts like worth or serving or well, look, calling it, taking back their power to the act of assigning prices and putting up sale signs to the point that like a 30 minute coaching call ends up costing five figures. And people get exhausted with the show that they feel like they have to put on to say, it's okay. It's okay to sell. It's okay to have a business. It's okay. It's okay. And then they just want to, you know, put it all away and, and start all over again somewhere else because they're absolutely exhausted. It's one pendulum swing to the next. And I will say that none of that was in any sort of judgment, but that was rather an observation. And an understanding that those actions, those practices, that, that one pendulum swing to the next, those places that we're coming from is trying. And that, that is okay. A beautiful part of entrepreneurship is our ability to experiment. Sure, it feels like we have extremely high stakes, right? Because we're having to have families and have lives and have mortgages and, you know, eat. But these things in life are not small that we're trying to accomplish with our business. Let alone that the grander concepts that we're after. Yeah. That it's, it's very, very real, very truthful, makes perfect sense that this feels like it's high stakes. are our businesses and we get to adjust elements of them until we find our Goldilocks fit. So we can get off that pendulum and away from, you know, those, those gender based business labels as well while we're at it by looking at where our power does lie with our business and what we are saying and what we can say with our business on a daily basis. without Instagram lives being required. And you might think like, wait, what on earth are you talking about Tracie? Like how is this even possible? And it all comes back to the, these elements that what we choose to engage in and create is what creates systems. And I don't just mean the ones in our business, you know, that our VA is like begging you like, please, for the love of God, make us SOP. Please make an SOP. I don't mean those kinds of systems. I mean the systems that we rile against and curse the man for having spawned since centuries ago. You know, the ones that feel oppressive and that take advantage of people and that very rightly need to be gone, right? Those kind, the systems with a capital S. And you might've heard this concept as a consumer. It's been around for a very long time, but especially with, you know, with the internet, you often hear it called voting with your wallet. The idea that you have a say in what gets made, but also in business practices because of who you back through your purchasing power. Yeah. So to choose the businesses, to choose the products that align with what you stand for. Now, of course, like anything, especially anything online, there's controversy over that efficacy. But what I'm talking about here is that business side of it. And as a business owner, you are creating things to sell as well as buying from other businesses. So you're not just a consumer, but as a business and often as a partner with other businesses, this concept is now a hundred fold. You have a hell of a lot of power. Yes, you, the one listening right now to change this system with a capital S to the kind that you envision, the thing that you want different for not just the next generation or five generations from now, but the one that we're currently in right now, you know, there's already been a lot of change and a lot of unfolding and a lot of undoing that's just happened in the last five years, last 10, last 15, you know, think about what it was like when you were in elementary school and middle school, pre COVID, post COVID, all the things, right? But there's still a lot of other things that can happen. And there's a lot of things that maybe you personally feel very strongly for. And this is the same in our world of business. So right now, we're going to look at this as this business owner. And especially because we live and breathe in this online world and this online world that people are seeing, even if they don't do it, what we do, right? So I work with people that own businesses, but you might not. The people who buy from you might be people that have completely different jobs or no jobs at all, or all the other things in between. So our, our ripple effect is fast and fast and wide. And we can use that in a positive way by paying attention and consciously Making changes by what we do that we want to see. So if you don't like the way selling is done, change how you do your own sales and how you engage with the people who are doing sales, like the other businesses that you're working with. right? So like, that's kind of like a top line option right there. It's like, if, if you don't like a certain tactic, don't use that tactic. And that's what I mean when I talk about, um, how that can feel, Oh, I don't know, but if this is supposed to be this tactic that works really well, and of course I want my business to succeed, then what do I do? What do I do? And that's where we want to break that down into those base elements and think, okay, well, hang on. What is the purpose of this? And what are my other options? Yeah. And I'll save that for a different episode. We always have that choice. We always have that power and we don't have to give into like those different kinds of emotional pressures. So if you don't like the type of offers out there, if you don't like the way people are being spoken to or spoken about, if you don't like the way things are being interacted with or that people are being interacted with, you don't have to emulate that. You don't have to bring that into your business on accident. So take an audit of how you are doing the different pieces into your business to make sure that you haven't accidentally copy and pasted those behaviors into yours, right? Because you were following somebody else's model or template or, you know, trying to make it work for you, right? Cause again, like we feel this pressure and it's like, Oh, okay. They're saying this model work. They're saying that this tactic work, they're saying this phrasing worked and I want mine to work. I want to make sure mine gets out there. So let me do the same thing. But then whenever we see that practice, like out in the wild, when you see it emulated, it makes us kind of go, ew, I don't like that. But what we don't realize, what we kind of forget is that, oh, wait, we accidentally use that on one of our pages too. Or, oh, wait, did I, did I do that over, uh oh, wait a minute. Yeah. So we have to just ever so often, we got it. We got to kind of step back and we have to, to reflect on that. And, and I'm going to give you a nice little three step formula to follow that. Okay. Cause we have to make sure that we didn't accidentally bring those behaviors into our business. We have to clean up our stuff. Change who we engage with, and definitely who we affiliate with, partner with, share stages with, you know, any of those kinds of places, right? Because there's so much reflection in communities, in our societies, of how we treat people, what we think about people, that quote unquote value that we put on people, that is reflected in selling and how business is conducted. Even to the point of like, who's allowed to buy something? Who's marketed to? You know, how things are said, what's even considered, all of that is a reflection of what, of what people think about other communities. And, you know, we don't always think about that. Sometimes like it's not even a concept that ever entered into our thoughts and other times it's like, Whoa, that feels so heavy. I don't even know what to do about that. Right. And, and again, like, that's okay. It's okay if you didn't think about that originally, but whenever you're looking at these things, you're like, Oh, I don't like this. I want to do something about it. Well, this is your escape hatch. This is the way to say, Oh, here's something I can do is if you truly want that change, if you want that gross to go away. As these business owners, we have that right to do that because it's not some, you know, big corporation somewhere, you know, in, in, in New York or London or Tokyo. It's not some like massive conglomeration that has this kind of power anymore. It's not even like those ad companies on Madison Avenue, like it was a century ago. It's those of us with online businesses that now make these changes. Cause we're the ones that are all over social media. We're the ones that are buying the Facebook ads, the Instagram ads that are making the posts that are on videos that are doing viral things on Tik Tok that are all over YouTube that are on podcasts. You know, we have more control, more impact. We make more waves, more ripples than any of those massive companies do now. So we can't just accidentally copy and paste other people's strategies into our business if we want to consciously create societal changes, right? And again, that's like. from that large kind of concept all the way down to these small ones. Yeah. From the overall society impact to our communities, to these different little elements that we can think of. So what can you actually do today? Well, we can observe, we can analyze, and we can act. So observe. Today, as you're going about your normal work and life, notice the ads, notice the sales messages, the captions, the videos, all the messages that are coming from businesses that are taking up space online, including your own. As you notice these messages, observe any sort of gut reaction that you might be having, any sort of like visceral feels that you've got. When you see something you don't like, whether that's in your business or someone else's, if you hear something, take screenshots, make notes, anything that will help you personally remember it. Okay. But then leave it there because what we'll do later. Once you're out of kind of that, that emotional state, once you're out of that, um, body reaction, that visceral reaction, and definitely if you're not in the middle of like planning your own launch or like in the middle of this, this kind of nerve wracking pitch prep. But instead when you're in a place where you can have some kind of outward observation, we're going to look back at those screenshots, at those notes, at whatever that you used to remember, we're going to do step two, which is to analyze it. So figure out, go like bit by bit. What was, or was not working that kind of gave you that, that reaction? Was it the images, the phrases, the layout, the color choices? Was it like an overall feel? Did it feel forced or desperate? Anything at all that made you kind of squint your face? Note it. If it was your own work, go back and think about ways to fix it, right? Were there other ways that you could have said something? Was there other image choices that maybe would have reflected what you were trying to accomplish in a more accurate way or in a more uplifting way, or in something that actually felt like it was a little bit closer to where your most recent buyer would actually be versus some, you know, super far off kind of transformation. Transcribed Right? If it was someone else's work, then use it as an example of what you don't want to bring into your business. Almost like an anti swipe file, you know? So that way, anytime you are making copy, you know, you're making sales pages, you're making social media posts, you're making anything, any sort of content, any sort of sales stuff, then it's like, okay, I love these things, but I don't want these things. We don't want to accidentally bring these into our business. Yeah. And you can do this exact same process. You can observe, you can analyze, and you can act for things that you do like, the things that you do want to emulate that do make you feel excited, that make you feel expansive for all of the good feels that you want to bring into your business and your community, right? Cause as we observe and act more and more things will change. And guess what? The high pressure tactics, all those things that made you feel gross and like, I can't sell, I can't put my message out there. I can't be out there. Like all of that stuff will no longer be the recommended way to do things because they won't have worked anymore because we won't have interacted with them. If we don't interact with these things and the conversions won't be there, they will have tanked and then something else will have tried. Right? That is that direct cause and effect. If something makes you feel gross, if you're like, Oh, I feel desperately like I really need this product, but I don't like the way they're talking to me, walk away. And then that tactic won't be tried anymore. If you're like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that they're using this message to sell this thing. Oh, but I'm going to buy it anyway because I really want it. Well, then they are going to think that that message is the reason why somebody bought it. Right? Do you see that? It's the same thing in our own business, right? Whenever we're doing those, those, you know, post launch analysis, anytime that we're looking at our conversion numbers, we're having to. match up our data any way that we can. Yeah. Because we don't know, you know, person by person, exactly what happened for the most part, unless it really is high touch and you can ask every single one of them, then, you know, it's impossible to know, especially with, um, you know, any sort of the high volume kind of things that are out there. So what do we do? Well, we look at our funnel data. We look at the things that people clicked on. We looked at exactly which page, which button, which form did they fill out? You know, at what timing, what was going on in this, which post, which email? And then we, we assume then, that that was the message that brought them in. So if you don't like the message, don't let that one be the one that brings you in to someone's offer. Yeah? That works the same way handed in for ourselves. as the sellers and as the buyers. That's how we can squash the things that we don't like is by not allowing them to work. Right? Cause if you leave this kind of thing to other people, then the changes that get made may not be the ones that you want. Right? And I think we've all seen that in our own lives over and over again on, on many different levels. And this is the way that, that you can have this, this choice. And again, this exact same kind of process. I'm breaking this down for how to use this in your online business. But it's the same kind of thing that you can bring into other parts of the community. They can bring into other parts of society as a whole. Of course, there are other layers to this idea. And of course there's other examples, but I want to leave you with something that's very tangible with this observe, analyze, and act exercise today. And if you want to talk more about this, please tell me, you know, if you want to talk about this idea or really anything else, let me know, leave a comment or go to Tracie Patterson dot com slash AMA. And I would love to hear from you until the next episode, be well and have some fun.