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Monday morning the blog comes out in your, in my inbox. me. Actually, actually you're right. me. Well, I've got an idea for a. That awkward silence I hadn't frozen. Yes, yes.

Not necessarily physically, but just move on my ideas, move on what I say. Yep. Do what I say I'm gonna do. So, There you go. Cameron. Maybe you need to think of something, which will be, you've got, I'm good cuz I'm like your little shining light of Oh, she does this. Maybe something like that

So then, I was there by myself. So then I was like, is this a hazy? I dunno. Cause it doesn't say it to hazy. I mean it's juicy and tropical. Yeah. So most hazes are juicy and tropical. So then I did that in my head for 10 minutes thinking, oh, should I say something or should, should I just do what I normally do and just drink it? And then, and then not worry. And then what if it's not very nice? What if it's not hazy? What else is a lag? I don't like lags . So then I asked the.

Which is like, yes, it is a hazy. And then, so I'm only telling this boring story because, so Frank brother-in-law knows that I like hazy. So he, he, he drinks spades, db spades. The spades man. Yep. Yeah. So he's more of a volume man than a, than a quality men, but, I only have a couple, so I like the hazes and by the way. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not a judgment, just no face. And so then when I arrived, when we arrived yesterday, he's like, oh, I got you some hazes.

And then he brought it out and he looked at it before he gave it to me. He's like, oh, sorry, I, I'm sure I bought you a haze. I'm sure I bought Hazes. Doesn't say on there, there's a hazy at. How crazy maybe is it not a hazy. But then I went to the fridge just now to get this one, and on the box it says hazy. There you go. Yep. So that's it. That's it. That's it. Now I'm gonna, might have to listen this back to see whether I'm gonna edit it out.

That boring, that boring story or not, or keep it.

So . Yeah, so I've scheduled it for, for Wednesday and I sent, I sent, started sending in LinkedIn, me sending out link in messages to coaches on LinkedIn. Yep. Inviting them to my webinar. And I sent an email out to my email list. Y. Great. And so there's about there's about 4,000 people on that email list. Oh, that's awesome, cam. Yeah. Yeah. Hope so. I built, built that up over 14 years. Oh, not since 2014. Not 14 years. So six or seven years worth of the email list.

And then so I've got about, probably about 20 people. Just so the email went out this morning. So I was quite happy with how quickly people registered from the email. Fantastic. So that's good. Fantastic. So it does, it does pay to build up an email list over time. Mm-hmm. , if anyone's, I don't, people, I don't think people still say this, but I know when social was starting to get big, everyone was saying that email lists are dead and that no one wants to get an email from you anymore. That's.

Rubbish, you know that. And,

So, I don't know, you know, if you've been following what's happening with the social media platforms, revenues are down for those that rely on advertis. For their money. So Facebook's revenues down, advertising revenue, looks like they're gonna lay off a big percentage of their staff. Twitter's going through a lot of stuff at the moment with the Elon Musk taking over. They're making some layoffs, making some big changes.

So the biggest thing to take out of that is you never know what's gonna happen with the audiences on those. Platforms, you don't have any control over it. And you can see the things that have happened over time with the algorithm changes, especially when they look when someone like Facebook launched their fir, launched their advertising platform for the first first time.

Yeah. So engagement and reach just plummeted for those who weren't paying for ads because obviously they're gonna push, there's only so much real estate to show stuff, so as soon as. People are paying for ads. All of that stuff's taking up that real estate that you had before. So if you were getting heaps of organic reach and then as soon as they launch the advertising platform and you weren't paying for ads, then you were just, your reach just, you know, plummeted.

So just an example of you have no real control over that in your audience, so you should own your audience in the best two ways to do that. Your email list. Where no one's ever emails like an open platform. No one owns email only. Only email hosting, but the email itself, you can take anywhere and your website generating demand, creating content on your website to get people into your email list, and no one can really either take, no one can really take those two things away from you. Mm-hmm.

. So, yes, always. So not to say that you shouldn't be on social media doing all of the, doing all of the doings, but remember to own your audience and then, and

If you want me to continue to provide this free content, you're gonna have to like, and share and save and all the rest of it. And I just think. Because there's so much you can't control in it. What you can control is your engagement and your consistency, and you just have to be consistent with it. And I know that right now TikTok is apparently blowing up and a lot of people have, are moving to TikTok in addition to say Instagram and, and Facebook to help engage audiences over there.

And, and I think that's great for people who have the bandwidth for, yes, another social media platform, but my strategy. At this point in time is not to go to another platform to then engage with that, because I've still got a lot of stuff I can do to grow on Instagram, for example. So I'm not at 160,000 followers. Also, I don't necessarily think I need to in order to be successful, but I think it's just, yeah, show up for the audience that is there for you and enjoy.

Stuff and just be consistent.

Especially if it's a good quote that everyone's gonna agree with and people like to, See quotes and go, yeah, I like that. And then not do anything. So, and sometimes you can put up a post that's really impactful when you might not get that many lights or comments, because in reality, if you are really helping someone, it requires them to go off and do something in the real world.

So sometimes you might not even know that you've put up a post or a video or something that's been really helpful to someone and they've gone off and done something that's made their life better. Mm-hmm. . But they obviously, they're not gonna then come back and find that post and then like, like it, and then say, this changed my life, or whatever. So sometimes the deeper and more impactful things that you can share on social media gets the less engagement cuz it require.

Time and for someone to go off and actually do something about it. So yeah. True. That's it, that's all. Nice. So yeah, back to my webinar. So email list. So always have an email list. Start building one up. Now slowly if you don't have one, that would be my advice anyway. Don't have to. , My last webinar, I think I ended up with 50 or something in the end. So I think I'll probably get this about the same registered. Mm-hmm.

. But thing about these is, you know, I might get 50 registered, but then I might only get 15 come, which is cool. I'll be stok if I get 15 people come.

And they often think that then they'll be able to like post their new product or service or something and get like, you know, a hundred people buy their stuff or whatever. But you might be very lucky to get like between one and 3% of, of conversions for an audience. Yeah. And that's a really engaged audience, even. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So, you know, your audience needs to be pretty big for each time you send something. For them people to, to buy something.

So know you shouldn't freak out if you only get like a 3% conversion rate of people actually buying something and people have seen it. So yeah, and that number's, that number's probably going down rather than up as well, just because the more social media platforms there are, the more people who are pushing stuff online, the harder it is to get your, your fair share. That audience. Yeah. But that just means, you know, you have to be good and you have to be consistent.

And the longer you've been doing it, the more advantage you'll have than trying to break into it now. Yeah. Hey so sorry, I I was late to the call, my bloody SSL certificate, which is, you know, when you go to a website, there's a little padlock on the address bar. So every domain name needs like a, an SSL certificate, so mm-hmm. if you're a training tool customer, you get that for free Plug for training tool is that, you know, if you've got a website, then you get SSL certificate for free.

And I mean I say that, but most of the hosting platforms give it for free now as well. Anyway, so that's what that little green padlock on your. And the addressed bar on your website is, it's your SSL certificate, so secure socket, flower or something. I won't go into anything more technical, but what happens is you buy it then it either auto renews depending on what platform you are using, or you have to go and renew it after a year. After a year.

So I think a year's the longest that you can get it to last because. The shorter it is, the more likely it is to be secure. The more often it changes, the less likely anyone is to, to hack into it. So it just means everything's encrypted. So if anyone is putting credit cards into your website and stuff like that, it's all encrypted as it goes over the way. So mine had aired when it was renewing at lunchtime today.

So I got an email message from one of my coaches saying, oh, I've got this funny era on my, you. Coaching business training app.com so you get your own domain like that. And then I was like, oh, what's that? Yeah. So I went in, so the auto renewal had failed for some reason, so I couldn't get it to work. So then I had to go and buy another, a brand new certificate and I'd paid for five years worth of them. Mm. Yeah. So a new one was like 300 US dollars or something like that.

So it's a bit of, bit of a pain cuz I couldn't get the one I'd already paid for to work and I couldn't just leave it how it was.

So anyway, that's a bit of a bummer cuz you don't want anyone going to the coach's website and getting that era thinking that it's dangerous or it's been hacked or something where it hasn't, it hasn't. It's just the browser warning you that the certificate has expired even though it actually still works. But it does seem scary. Well, the message is all read and horrible looking and people freak out even though there isn't actually that much danger to it. You just can't have it.

Can't have that happening. Yeah. So just another thing that pops up. So what's your week looking like now? You are, Monday's matter is coming close to an end. Couple of weeks left. Does it end just before

I said, of course, as I said to you, I've been called up for jury service on Monday. Yes. And the letter said I could be called in for two weeks as well if I got on a, if they chose me for the trial that lasted two weeks, and I've already deferred once, and so I can't defer again. So I had to, I emailed out all my clients for next week. Giving them a heads up, I'd already taken the Monday off, but given them the heads up that I may need to reschedule their appointment times.

If I'm chosen for a jury and if I'm actually chosen for the two week jury, I mean, hey, who knows? Someone's gotta do it, right? And I was very resistant to the idea of it at all up until about two days ago. But for the two week jury, I actually am going to plead, I'm going to guilty, put my case forward. . Yeah, be guilty. I realize that plead is not the right word actually, when I'm doing that, yeah.

I'm going to put my case forward to the jury service people that actually it would be financially very difficult for me to do this because I have a seminar and a conference booked in the Hawks Bay for the week after next, which had been a. Scheduled for months before I knew that I would be called up potentially to do it. So I think that I would actually get off on that.

But if, for example, I get chosen for a jury that would last five days, I've had to reschedule my clients because, and this is a thing when you are self-employed, like it's actually, it's quite a financial hit. Even for a week to just, cuz one, not only do you have to, are you not able to see the clients that you would've otherwise seen. You either have to reschedule them for later or in and around that. So in fact, your days then extend well beyond your usual working day.

So you can actually just get a bit frazzled and, but then also, Due to go down to Queenstown on Thursday for the, for a running trip. And so what I've also done is, is just re just had to purchase another flight for Friday later on, which is fully refundable. So actually that's a good thing. I just paid for the fully refundable flight and if I don't need it, ID then that's fine, but mm-hmm. But I've just basically had to reschedule things.

But actually importantly, I've now accept I've just thought I, I'm stop, I'm not resisting it the way I was like four days ago. Cuz I think that if I resist it so much, then it's just calmer. I will be chosen. So, so I actually feel better now that I've got plans in place in case I need to spend the week out. But, but I legitimately couldn't do a two week trial. Like financially. It's just, and, and work professionally. It's, there's no way I can do it.

So I'm hoping that my case could be could be off because before that I was even thinking shit. Could, could I fake Covid? Actually , no, I can't do that. I can't do that. Someone also had, though I've gotten lots of messages from people saying, just look as right wing as possible. And they will, like, they'll beat you. So I'm going to get Richard Preble's book outta the library and take it with

I'm surprised there's, I haven't been called, I was called once when I was very young. I must been in my early twenties and but I think I got out of it somehow. Did you end up going to, might have had exams or something? Might have been, it might have been an easy out. Yeah.

Some, you know, that sometimes things are gonna happen and you're not gonna be able to work and you're not gonna get the revenue that you thought you were gonna get. And my business isn't, it's not as obvious for me because most of my revenue is recurring anyway, but every week I take off means I haven't worked on growing the business. Whatever my revenue will, you know, three months.

So I think it's like, it feels to me after doing this for a while, when you're doing like a subscription based business, that whatever you do, sales and marketing now, you'll only see the effects of it like in 90 days or something like that. You know, just sales, sales cycles and stuff. So yeah, so whatever, if take a week off now it's a. Less of impact you would've made on the bottom line 90 days from now. So it's not as obvious, but it's definitely there.

And you know, cam, I'm good at getting up early and I can, you know, push on through in the evening time and, and ev and I've got eight of 13 people who've already come back to say, oh, well, we'll just reschedule to New Year, which actually is fine. and or yep, I can do this hour or this hour and I'm in fact seeing someone tomorrow as well. So we can make it work, but it's, it's that for whatever reason I was very resistant and it was all I could think about.

And now that I've got these things in place, I just feel so, like, I just feel so much more, I'm like, actually it's not the end of the world. It's not stopping me from doing anything in particular. So just

And I wonder if it's a lot, I think it's the same for a lot of people in my industry is that March actually tends to be fairly quiet. And then almost every March and April I'm like, where have all my clients gone? And then that ramps up again. But this time of year is actually, people are trying to get in for a consult prior to Christmas, and then my post Christmas consults center. Which I'm thankful. Cool.

And if, if they're working full time, they don't have time to do that during the year. So I'm hoping that maybe that will happen. So but a fun, strangely, November was quite a, a month of quite a lot of tune for me, so I lost quite a. Customers for some reason. Not sure why yet, which is in which another thing I'm working on, which is part of the frame, one of the frameworks in my coaching group is the cancellation flow framework.

Yep. Where if someone goes in and cancels, you just take them through this framework. You just get them to answer a few questions on their, on their way out, like an exit. So you can find out the reasons of why they canceled. So if it is anything, it's not, you know, some, there's lots, there's a million different reasons why someone might end up canceling. But if there is something that's under our control, then hopefully that'll pick that up so you can change it.

You know, cuz these things often go, if no one tells you about these things, you may never. So, well,

And actually Cam, I looked at it and I almost laughed. I just thought, yeah, that is not me at all. So I emailed her back and said, how? And I said, Hey, Manda, this is really unusual because we have a number of things in place that. Try and catch people who don't log in so we can communicate and, and make sure that you've got everything that you need if you're struggling. And I said, you know, did you create an account? Because that's how No. Yep. Did you join the Facebook group?

Cuz that's how we would know. She was part of September, Monday's matter. September. And, and did you try to contact me? So I was aware of this? Never heard a thing. Mm. Which, but literally, like I just, I just thought that was the most, the weirdest email and hey, some, sometimes people can't get out of their own way, and I don't think that person is me.

Like iterate things slow. As things come up that it, that people report back, which is great actually when people report back and say It was difficult or I couldn't figure this out or whatever. And then we totally probably change dozens and dozens of things in the sign up process and in the flow and it's never gonna be perfect. And as we build more things into the platform and you add more stuff as well, like new things will come up all the time. So it's good that you get feedback, but so.

Yeah, sometimes other people have other things going on that makes it sound like it, like it's worse than it really is, you know? So she might have gotten to a point where either she wasn't sure what the next step was, or there could have been an error or something didn't happen and, you know, just wasn't the right time for her or whatever, and things didn't work out. And then she got your email and was still annoyed about that.

But it's when people get really annoyed like that over such a. Thing that could easily have been rectified if you'd just followed up earlier. I guess it's, you know, people are struggling with other things in their lives that make them lash out sometimes. And the worst thing you do in business is take those things personally regardless of how valid, valid their concerns are.

So, and equally there were a number of steps like probably. That she may have come across in her journey with us that would've possibly overcome that obstacle. But some you just have to want it as well. Yeah. So it wasn't just, yeah. So I think that's another thing as well. When people say things like, the customer is always right, that's not true. The customer's not always right.