what to do before you even think about marketing your business

Rebecca_9202_Cropped_SmallRebecca Tracey has something very important to share with you.
 
So many people come to me for marketing help who are not ready for it.
 
Before you can market a thing, you need a thing to market.
 
It sounds so simple.
 
But, if you want it to be really successful and fulfilled it’s not enough to have any old thing. It’s got to be something you’re over the moon proud of, something that you can’t wait to share with the world, something that expresses your heart and feels right to you.
 
And people often come to me with something they feel ‘okay’ about. Sometimes even ‘good’.
 
They do massage, but they haven’t figured out how to make it theirs yet. They haven’t found their voice in it. So they have a generic thing. And you can try to sex up a generic thing and add more sizzle to cover the lack of steak as it were . . . but in the end we feel incongruent about it and people discover it and are upset. 
 
Rebecca Tracey is one of my dearest colleagues and she helps people do this pre-marketing work (which is actually the basis of all effective marketing). She helps people take this generic thing (e.g. life coaching, massage, holistic practioner) and build solid foundation they’re proud of. And, believe me, this makes marketing so much easier. 
 
Before you obsess about making your business attractive to your clients, focus on making it attractive to you.
 
I recently did an interview with Rebecca about her new program The Uncaged Life Mastermind. You can read the interview below.
 
What’s the result you’re offering people?
 
I work with people who want the freedom to work from anywhere, and who want to work for themselves, but who can’t quite figure out what they could possibly do. I help them smoosh everything they love and everything they are all about into a business that fits them perfectly.

 
So you’ve recently refined to this direction – how did that happen and how is it feeling to hone it?

 
Oh my god Tad, it is feeling AMAZING!
 
Everything in my business is SO much easier! I was kinda-sorta always doing what I am doing now (helping people figure out what makes them unique and then helping them start a business based around it), but it scared me to really OWN it. So I kind of skirted around it for the first year and a half. I was too scared to really commit to it (welcome to my life!). And now that I’ve really owned up to my expertise and have redirected my business to really make this the cornerstone of what I do, everything is all falling into place.
 
I know you’ve seen a lot of people try to create a business before they have a solid foundation underneath it. Can you share what you’ve seen?
 
Well, I’m probably the best example of that.
 
I graduated as a Holistic Nutritionist and was desperately trying to grow my business, but something wasn’t feeling right. I had NO idea what made me any different from the other thousands of nutritionists out there. I had NO deeper connection to why I was doing it in the first place, so nothing was really working and my whole business felt really generic (even though I knew I wasn’t a generic type of person. I felt like I was trying to be something I wasn’t). 
 
It wasn’t until I really looked at what it was that I loved about nutrition – that it gave people a choice about how they wanted to feel and live – that I was able to see why I was really doing it. I cared about people CHOOSING their lives. And so I ditched the nutrition part and JUST focused on coaching, and all of a sudden everything made sense. I allowed myself to build a business that was based on what I was naturally good at  – seeing the possibility in people and in situations, coming up with creative solutions, helping people move past obstacles so they can have lives of adventure and travel and fun. A way better fit than trying to tell people that kale is healthy.
 
And I have seen this over and over again with my clients. They have a general idea of what their business is, but they have no really sense of purpose. They are kind of just going through the motions of creating a website, picking a tagline, learning how to use social media, but they’re SO disconnected to their bigger WHY that they struggle and business feels hard and kind of like a drag.
 
Once we get really clear on WHY they care so much about what they care about, they have permission to ditch what’s not working and leave the rest.
 
You have a powerful system for helping people create a solid foundation before they build their business – can you lay out the steps you’ve created?
 
Yes!
 
1. Mindset. We are usually our biggest obstacle, so gotta tackle that first!
 
2. Values + Lifestyle. You have to know what’s important to you if you want to know what business to create.
 
3. Purpose  + Message. What do you care so much about that you could build a business around it? I help my clients dig deep with this, and this is the foundation of the work that we do.
 
4. Strengths + Weaknesses, Skills + Expertise. What are you naturally good at (oftentimes so good that you don’t even recognize it was a strength). These are the biggest clues to what kind of business will suit you.
 
5. Idea Generation. We take everything from above and we smash it all together into business ideas, then work through them to tweak them until they feel like a great fit.
 
6. Testing your ideas. I help my clients pick a shortlist of all their ideas and put them to work testing them out in the real world. We look at what worked and what didn’t, and tweak things as we go.
 
My goal is to leave my clients with a business idea that feels 80% right, so they can continue to build it and still have room for it shift and evolve with them as they learn more about what they love to do.
 
I really believe the process is experiential and not analytical, and that taking action is the only way to really figure it out.
 
For my clients who already have business but things aren’t feeling quite right, we basically use the same steps to evaluate what’s not working for them and shine a light on what they could do differently that would be a much better fit for them.
 
I’m curious which of these steps were there when you started and which ones you discovered along the way? And can you share the stories of how you realized they needed to be included?
 
With the nutrition business that I was trying to start I felt like I was forcing my message to fit my business, instead of creating my business around my message. I had it backwards. As soon as I stopped forcing it and let my purpose/message be front and center in my business (and ditched the parts that weren’t working), everything came together quickly.  
 
My values were always there too, those were clear to me before I even had a business. I always knew the way that I wanted to work and what I wanted my lifestyle to look like, so I integrated that right from the beginning.
 
Testing my ideas was also something that came naturally to me. I’ve always been a bit of a “ready, fire, aim” kind of girl, and I tend to make things happen FAST in all aras of my life. When I want something, I want it now! So I never hesitated to try out new things and see what worked and what didn’t, and it became very clear to me early on that this HAS to be a part of creating a business. You can’t just sit and think about what might work – you actually have to put it into action and test it.
 
It took me a bit longer to really hone in on my strengths and figure out how to use them in my business. I started as a coachy-coach, and its only now that I’m really coming into owning that I am WAY better at teaching and leading than I am at being neutral (as you’re “supposed” to do as a coach). So I’ve slowly been listening when things in my business don’t feel great, and then picking them apart to see what strengths I may be squashing and which ones I need to play up more. I now know that creating a business without being clear on your natural strengths is just bogus – it has to be part of the process to create something sustainable
 
Can you share some stories of clients who’ve created uncaged lives and careers or at least made some major progress?
 
I recently worked with a birth specialist and doula who is creating a business centered about teaching people about their options when it comes to giving birth.

She was excited about her idea, but was doubting her expertise. We worked together to discover that what she really cares about is helping women connect with the power of what it really means to be a woman giving birth, to help them embrace real femininity through the birthing experience. This felt way more resonant for her than simply “teaching people about birth options”, and opened up a whole new world for her in terms of ways that she can work with and help her clients. She now has a solid foundation to work on and has so many ideas to move forward with, when before she was feeling kind of stuck about what to offer.

Another client and good friend of mine from nutrition school worked her butt off to create her little nutrition practice. She was working with clients and teaching workshops and all was going well. Except that it wasn’t. It was glaringly obvious to me that her whole thing was about body wisdom and learning to love and respect your body, whether it wants to eat cookies or kale. We worked together to help her get really clear about what felt off in her business, and I’m happy to say that now she has fully stepped into her true calling and I can just feel the energy behind what she’s creating. SO much more resonant than the blanket nutritionist thing,
 
To me, an uncaged life is all about doing work that lets you play to your FULL potential AND gives you the lifestyle you want. This looks different for everyone, and I would really encourage everyone to figure out what their version of living Uncaged looks like.
 
I know you just recorded a free call where you went in depth into your system – where can people get access to that?
 
You can get that free training here http://www.theuncagedlife.com/free-training/
 
Also, check out her full Uncaged Life Mastermind 
 
Rebecca_9202_Cropped_SmallAbout Rebecca: As a Life-Switch Coach + Professional Adventure Instigator, I work with people who want to quit their shitty day jobs and create Uncaged careers that let them travel the world and work on their own terms. I help them create cool Uncaged Careers out of thin air. I also work with entrepreneurs who are feeling a little stuck, and who need to revamp and revive their businesses to be more in line with who they are. Ready to take your top-secret, rule-bending, crazy-town dream—and lay out a plan, to bring it to life? Let’s tell your excuses to suck it. Together.
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