Have you struggled to keep up with all the marketing trends and you're not quite sure what to do in today's changing market? Or perhaps you think it's just part of paying your dues. It has to be complicated, it has to be hard to be able to pursue your goals and continue on to your journey of success. After all, it's how you earn compensation. Well, I'm here to challenge that today because complexity does not equal value. And that's what we're going to talk about today on the Resilient Faith Online Show. Welcome. I'm Marissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective on the external and internal challenges we face as online creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips to create positive influence in the world. To continue the conversation, learn about my private resilient creator community. Go to MarissaShatter.com forward slash community. Hello, hello, hello. So good to be here today with you. Marissa here. I hope you are doing well. At the time of this recording, we're getting close to the holidays, the end of one year and the beginning of a new year. And this is a time of reflection, but I'll tell you something. I have been reflecting since June. So I've been on this quest. I almost feel like I've been a little marketing rebel. I've been seeing how the market has changed, and I've been looking at all these tools. We're just inundated with tools. We're inundated with complexity. We're just told that we need to do this and we need to do that. And all of a sudden, I just in my mind, I said, stop. I said, stop. This is getting crazy. And I started to turn every stone, look at everything that I was doing, and I started closing some things, boosting other things that were working. So I was really shifting a lot of things on the back end. And it felt so good. It felt great. Because you don't have to do everything that everyone tells you you need to do, especially when we're talking about social media. And I know some of you may love it. And some of you that are camera ready all the time, go for it. I just bless you and go for it. But for me, it's like, oh, do I have to do another video? In fact, I'm going to be doing some guest uh podcasting, and those will be on video. And I really start wrestling. Do I want the ones where I'm talking where it's kind of like a monologue? Do I want those on video? And I just said, nah, I don't want those on video. I am okay with creating video, but sometimes I just do not want to be on camera. It's just the way I am, right? I'd rather just write or speak like this on a podcast. If I'm on a stage or something and I'm going to present, that's fine. But every week, day after day, be on camera is just something about that was not feeling right. But in any event, I started looking at all the things. Social media, my website, my um my funnels, my products, my lead magnets. I just started looking at everything and giving some things a facelift, questioning, making sure that every tool was carrying its weight. And if it wasn't, I gave it its walking papers. And so I've been doing this since June. And I love technology. I love tools. I really do. I love technology. I love tools. But you've got to use the right tools, a minimum amount of tools, and the ones that are going to work for you that you're not afraid of, that you'll get in there and use them, right? So I started thinking, how can I make things easier for my clients or my community? How can I make it easier so that they can get in front of the right people without killing themselves, right? Because I was feeling the pressure. I started really looking into some things and start reading some books and talking to some people. And I realized that complexity doesn't equal value. It really doesn't. And I had some false beliefs that if it wasn't complicated and it wasn't hard, I didn't deserve the revenue. I mean, come on. I mean, I had to be really honest with myself. And deep down I was thinking it had to be hard in order for me to earn the revenue. And that's just not true. You earn revenue when you provide transformation, and that's the key. It doesn't matter if it takes five minutes, five weeks, or five years. If you provide transformation, that's what provides value. And so I started looking at everything again just with fresh eyes. And I kind of want to share a little bit of some of the insights that I came up with. And I've been sharing some of these tips on some masterclasses that I've been doing, and those are coming to an end soon. But I will give you an opportunity to connect with me if you want to know more about some of the things I'll be talking about today. So just looking traditionally at how we normally do marketing, you know, we start with the lead magnet, which is some type of helpful resource in exchange for someone's email, right? We're told we need to grow our email list, and I agree 100%. You need to grow your email list. But on the other side, the way of getting that lead magnet in front of people, I was kind of resistant to do a lot of the ads. As you know, my account got hacked and I had all kinds of things going on with Facebook. So I was looking for alternative ways to do this. And so all this year, you know, it's been kind of a hit and miss of learning new ways and looking at things differently from every side, right? So we have our lead magnet and we want to put those out there. And one of the things I will say is make sure your lead magnet makes sense to that end product that you want to sell your audience. So it's not disjointed. So it naturally flows into what you want to provide for them. So we have this lead magnet, and then we create a welcome series, which are email campaigns that we drip out for those people that come into our community. And then eventually, when we have something that we want to offer, depending on how often we offer it, we create a sales page. And then, of course, if we have a sales page, we have to have a thank you page. And on the thank you page, sometimes there's an order bump. And if you have an order bump, then you have a funnel. And all of this complexity begins to happen, right? We should have videos because videos became really hot. And we should have these VSLs or video sales letters, and then maybe we should start doing webinars and boot camps and challenges. And there was a lot of those going on during the pandemic because they were home, right? And they weren't at work. They had time to spend, you know, an hour, hour and a half for five consecutive days because they were at home. And then it seemed that maybe those videos were too long. And it was talk about doing them shorter. And now we're doing video clips. And with all of this, you need more email campaigns. You need to promote more on social media. And we're doing this left and right, day after day, week after week. And sometimes we just have to stop and say, wait, is there a better way? Because most of the time when we're doing this and we're creating these things, we are talking to a cold audience, right? Because typically we are trying to send it out on social media and put it out there to be able to get new leads, right? So we have Facebook and then we create maybe videos for YouTube, and then we think of TikTok. And then, of course, there's Instagram, the sister to Facebook, which is now called Meta. Things keep changing, right? And with Instagram, we think, well, if we're gonna get create a post, we might as well do a real and maybe even an IGTV, a longer video. And of course, we should do something shorter, like a story, because now it has clickable links. And then when that seems to drag its feet, well, let's tap into our friends and family, or maybe we just need more content and appear every day. And there's this perpetual drive to keep showing up and posting more and creating more. And we really need to look at the analytics and see what is working and what isn't, and focus on less and go deep instead of going wide. Obviously, when you have a business plan, you're thinking the revenue that comes in, you want to be able to pay your overhead, right? Whatever the cost is to produce your products or your services. So you have revenue minus cost equals profit, right? That's pretty simple. We all know that. Revenue minus our overhead cost equals profit. But there's another hidden formula, and here it is it's profit minus time, your time equals freedom or another all-consuming job. Say it again. Here's the hidden formula profit minus your time invested equals either freedom or another all-consuming job. And that's not what we signed up for when we wanted to create an online business. My parents had really high work ethics, and they passed that on to me. And there's nothing wrong with having a good work ethic, and there's nothing wrong with working hard, but you can't just rely on that or you will burn out. Working hard is not enough. And I'm going to say something else that may go against the grain. You are not enough. Now let me explain. You are enough to be valued, you are enough to be respected, you are enough to be honored, you are enough to be loved, you are enough to be heard and seen, but when it comes to an online business, you are not enough. Working hard is not going to guarantee debt-free living or sending your kids to college or early retirement with financial security as you age. Working hard isn't going to guarantee more time to build healthy relationships. Working hard isn't going to create necessarily a lucrative business with financial stability. When I wrote that in my journal, because the people that I've loved and even my parents, I've seen them work hard, and then I thought, for what? Right? When it came to the point where they aged, they were very limited, let's put it that way. And so I started looking at other people that I care about, and they don't have time for anything. They're working so hard, and it doesn't seem like they're able to get ahead. And so this really bothered me. And I started looking at it and thinking, you know, there's got to be an easier way. I don't want people that I serve to have to work so hard to be able to earn revenue because they bring value. And remember, it's about transformation. I want you to think about something, and it really takes thinking differently. Think about all of the mentors, people you've bought products from, everyone that you admire that really have made it. They're on the map. They didn't do it alone. In fact, I was listening to Donald Miller's podcast the other day. When I was listening to the podcast, just a little bit into it, there was a commercial and he was promoting Amy Porterfield's podcast. And I'm thinking, well, that's funny. It's not even an affiliate for a product. She he was just promoting her podcast. And if you think of any of the people that you admire, any of them, they all partnered with other people. Well, when I heard that podcast, I thought, well, Amy Porterfield is doing pretty well. And yet Donald Miller is promoting her podcast. And you see this time and time again. And granted, these are probably affiliates, which there's nothing wrong with that. But my point is we don't do it alone. We don't do it alone. And when we're targeting a cold audience, it makes it even harder because it's harder to convert a cold audience. But when you're recommended by someone or you're a guest on someone's um maybe YouTube show or podcast, the trust that people have with that host is transferred to you. So last week I was able to add about 130 new subscribers to my list with no ads, no cold pitching, no social media posts, and no complicated funnels. Just doing what I do talking and writing. I'm gonna explain how I did that to give you kind of a perspective. I started posting on LinkedIn every day since September. I was gonna do it for a hundred days all the way to the end of the year, and that's kind of crazy, kind of maddening, but I never really played around with LinkedIn much. So I thought, you know, I think my audience is probably on LinkedIn. So I'm gonna really look at LinkedIn seriously rather than kind of an afterthought. I've been focusing on LinkedIn and posting there. Sometimes the posts are good and sometimes they're not so great because when you're posting every day, you can't be that good every day. But in any event, I started thinking, you know, I'm so grateful for people that have products that I use because they they help me out on the back end. And so when I journal, I usually have a question, what are you grateful for? Who are you grateful for? And from there, I decided to uh periodically post and give shout-outs. And there was this one tool that I really, really loved, and it's called SendSpark. I'll put a link in the show notes, but I really love the tool. It's just a cool little way to create quick videos, it hosts the videos, and it has a template around the video that you can add with a headline, a little description, and a button. And the button can go right to your calendar scheduler. Now you have this URL that you can post anywhere. It's not just the video, it actually has a button that people can click and go to a page or go to your calendar scheduler. So I thought that was so cool. If you want to see it, you can see it on my LinkedIn profile. I've got it on there on my LinkedIn profile so you can see what it looks like. But in any event, I gave them a shout out and it was just a post just saying how much I love the product. And then they reached out to me and said, Would you do a testimonial? And I said, sure. And so I got on a call with them and it was an interview, and they recorded the interview, and great. And then they said, Could you possibly do a workshop for us? And I said, sure, that'd be great. I'd love to do that. So I did a workshop for them, and then I had another opportunity to do a guest post for uh Mike Kim on this topic, a lot related to this topic, and I did a guest post for him that released today. From doing that presentation for SunSpark, I after I eliminated the people that I already knew that were on my list, um, there was like 110. You might think, well, that's not a lot of people. Keep in mind, I didn't pay any money for that lead. I just talked or wrote something that was shared to a community that was not my own. And they read or listened to me, and then they decided to follow me and take advantage of a resource that I was providing. So that's the type of thing I'm talking about, is just taking the random out of random acts of kindness and begin to be kind all around to everyone, to peers, to prospects, to people that uh maybe have tools that you use and give them shout-outs. And I mean, think about it. How many people leave podcast reviews? Not very many, not very many, very few. If you even did that, you would stand out. So obviously, if you leave a review on my podcast, you would stand out because I would see it because not too many people leave reviews or a book review. Most of the time, the poor authors have to create all these extra bonuses and stuff in in exchange for book reviews. You know, they don't bribe them. I mean, not flat out bribe them, but they sort of do, so that people would do that because they don't just do it, they don't show gratitude that easily. And so when we begin to look at opportunities to do that, but those connections can lead to other things. Maybe if not with them, you get referred. I received like three referrals like within a week's time from people that I thought had forgotten about me that weren't even on my email list, but knew what I did, and they came across someone and they referred them to me. So those connections you never know. And it's so important to be able to build a network of people. When I was in ministry, we had to network with the community, and that's when I did a radio program and I was networking with businesses there and networking with other organizations to be able to work as a group for the sake of the community, and so we have to do the same thing online. So there is a way that you can do this consistently, and I have figured out a way that I'm implementing right now, and I'm loving the results that I want to share with a small group of people. And I'm going to be offering this a few times a year where I do a 90-day intensive. And it's really taking the first month and really mastering your message, being really, really clear on who you are and who it is that you serve, and what is your story, what is your origin story or your product story, and really dialing that in so that if you had an opportunity to fill in for a speaker that all of a sudden got sick, you're ready to go. You have everything in place. Let me ask you this: do you have a media kit ready? Do you have that ready in case somebody wants to see your media kit or an event planner wants to see it? Or maybe uh a podcast host wants to see it. Do you have that ready? The second part of this is also to market to your audience in a way that's not creepy, right? And the wonderful thing is that whenever you're you're doing either a blog post or you're showing up like I did for SunSpark and I did that workshop, the trust that the audience has with that person, that host, is transferred to you because they trust that resource, that person or that business. And when you show up, they must think, okay, this person must be okay. There's no stranger danger because they've have you there speaking. And so that trust is automatically transferred to you, and they're leaning in to listen. So you're no longer a cold audience. And the third component is to be able to monetize strategically. Learn to sell, learn to have sales conversations. And really, that's all sales is. Sales is a conversation. It's not a pitch, it's a conversation. When you learn to do this, how to monetize strategically and take advantage of those opportunities so that you can speak to people, serve people, help people, take the random out of random acts of kindness when there's opportunity, it flows naturally. It flows almost organically. Wouldn't you recommend that to someone if it came up in conversation? So there's nothing wrong with sharing what it is that you do for people and letting them know that you're available to help them and that you could be paid for that without all the complexity. I wanted to Just really underscore that for you because sometimes we feel that things have to be super complicated and hard, and we have to wait before we can see real revenue begin to come into our business. And the thing is, I don't want you to burn out. There is the the parable of the talents in scripture, it's in Matthew uh 25, and it's called, well, in the New Living, it's called the Parable of the Three Servants, where the master gives each servant a certain amount of money. And so they are according to their abilities, right? Give them a certain amount of money, and they were to invest this money or do something with this money so that the master would have more money at the end. And so he leaves, and then one invests the money, and the other goes out to work with it, and the other one buries it. But this parable's got nothing to do with money. Well, it could, but it has nothing to really do with it. It has to do with the gifts and all of the talents and the abilities, and maybe even your resources, maybe even your money. What are you doing with it? And one of the ways that we can really use our gifts, our talents, our abilities, our skills, our knowledge, our experience, all of it, is to pass it on to someone else and give them extreme value and help them transform and reach those goals that they want and reach that destination that they desperately want. There's nothing more fulfilling than that. And I know that my listeners really want to create some positive change in the world. I know that these listeners, you right now, you want to leave your mark. You want to do something of value, and there's no reason that you shouldn't be paid for it. So if you're interested in chatting with me and finding out more about this where you can work smarter and not harder, I would love to chat with you. And if you happen to be able to uh catch one of the masterclasses, I encourage you to sign up for it. There's only a few left, I'm sorry, in December. I am taking a week off in December. Yay! And uh I'm only gonna have two more left, but you can always reach out to me and we can connect. And I would love that. I love talking with people one-on-one and seeing how I can help them. And I will be totally honest with you. And if it's something that I can't help you with it, I'm happy to refer you to someone else. No pressure from this gal. So, in any event, um, I hope that was helpful for you. I just want you to assess, especially this time of year, and maybe every quarter, do this. Is everything working as it should? Are all my tools serving me well? Are the methods, the strategies that I'm using serving me well? Is my homepage serving me well? Does it need a facelift? Look at the things that you have, your current assets. Don't create more, just look at what you have and see if there's room for improvement and tweaking. So I would love for you to leave a review and uh leave a rating for this podcast because that's kind of our currency for podcasts, is to be able to do that. I would really appreciate it. And I always appreciate you tuning in. It means the world to me. It truly, truly does. Thank you so much. And until next time, take care.