The 12 Days of Christmas – The Great Holiday Networking Extravaganza, hosted by Jill Hart and Diana Ennen, is an unprecedented opportunity to learn from some of the best entrepreneurs, best-selling authors, and small businesses who share tips for success and secrets to how to have a profitable business. Daily interviews go behind the scenes to share not only success tips but also how these entrepreneurs are reaching goal after goal.
INTERVIEW w/ SARAH ARROW
Creator of three times listed “Best Websites for Women” by Forbes, Sarah Arrow is a content marketing consultant who specializes in marketing via blogging and Kindle.
Contacting Sarah:
sarah@sarkemedia.com
www.SarkeMedia.com
http://www.twitter.com/SarahArrow
http://www.Facebook.com/SarahArrow
Tell us a little about your business?
I’m an accidental publisher. I started blogging to rescue a business and being eternally curious I wanted to know how it worked and why, and my business grew from that! I prefer the one to one coaching so that my advice can be tailored to the individual circumstances. This means I can help my clients create transformations with their content marketing and reach the people they truly need to serve.
What are some of your top tips for success?
To do something once and get a result is luck, to do it over and over again is success. And that’s the truth about success, it’s easily confused with luck and it hinders us.
Can you share with us two of top ways you market?
I market predominantly by Blogging. For me it’s the most powerful form attraction marketing there is. In fact if blogging was hard work, I’d stop doing it! But with a little discipline and a plan you can get some amazing results. One of my clients has Disney, BBC TV and the NHS as clients, all attracted by his blogging. Another has gained some prestigious interviews via his blog. And earlier this year Tony Robbins invited me for drinks, he’d found me by my blog…The other way I market is via Word of Mouth. I let my clients know when I’m happy to accept referrals and they send me prospective clients! That only works if what I coached helped them get great results.
Are you planning any special holiday promotions?
No, bah humbug! Lol, I do various promotions throughout the year and my latest one will be “I’ve just become a Grandma”. I try to make my promotions very human and personal, so that they stand out in the inboxes of my clients and subscribers. I treat my existing clients like gold, and they get everything first, followed by my subscribers. This means I rarely have a public offer to share. However this year I will do promotion for the holidays and share my “Kindle to Market Your Business” ecourse exclusively for readers of this article and give a 50% discount if they want the complete works after they’ve completed the course.
What goals do you have for the new year?
Some more Kindle books uploaded and marketed. They do nothing for me or my business sitting on my desktop! Start some group coaching sessions and help more small businesses position themselves with Kindle books and to start marketing my membership sites. And to visit the South of France and the US next year as well (I’m located in the UK).
How do you normally obtain those goals?
Focus and hard work! I’m very disciplined and make the most of my working time. I find that if I start with what I want to achieve and then focus solely on that goal it gets achieved quicker. I try very hard to focus on the important stuff and even use hypnotherapy if I’m struggling to pull my thoughts together cohesively!
How do you make your business unique & profitable?
My business is unique because of me and the methods I use to get great results. I learned in my early twenties that the only thing that makes one business different from another is the people. Not the branding or the values but the people. There’s no one else like me, and I trade on that. That also means I truly have no competition, the only person I have to beat is myself. And I don’t “beat” myself, but try each day to stretch myself further. When you start to compete you focus your energy on places it shouldn’t be. My energy is directed at my clients and help them to make the transformations they need. That couldn’t happen if I spent time worrying about how other people were doing in comparison to me.
This also means I don’t have to win business by undercutting people. I complete my proposals with the value that I bring and I know what I charge isn’t unreasonable, and so my business is profitable. When I start working with a client the first thing we go over is who their target market is, and why they are in a great position to address that marketplace’s needs. Knowing who you serve and why is the foundation of all business marketing activities. For some clients it’s a great refresher and for others it’s the first time they’ve sat down and worked it out.
Any additional tips…come on give us a few secrets to your success!
The biggest secret to my success is doing the work. When you create, when you work, you become fulfilled and you feel happy. When you’re happy you’re successful! And the thing is you only have to do bite-sized pieces of work to achieve big things by the close of business that day! I’m not one for to-do lists, but I do believe in correctly prioritizing your work and making it very manageable.
Also there are times when I don’t work because it wouldn’t be productive. I recently became a grandma for the first time. I knew I couldn’t get my best work done whilst worrying about my daughter, so I didn’t work.Rather than put in a half-hearted effort, I stopped working completely. At times like these I’m thrilled to know I have a great support team behind me, and a husband that is happy to look after our younger children.
My final tip is this – you don’t have to do it all yourself. Need a sounding board? Get a business coach. Don’t rope your poor partner in or family members unless they are the marketplace you serve. Get professional advice where you can, get experiential advice. When in doubt remember this is what you were born to do, this is what your gift is and you should not get caught up in things that don’t really matter like what color pen to use when signing checks!
Have any comical stories you’d like to share about your time in business?
As I mentioned earlier I had drinks with Tony Robbins and heard him speak. Prior to meeting him I gave his team a real hard time. I didn’t believe the email was from him, and my first response to a request for a meeting wasn’t yes please but “Do I look like I was born yesterday?” It took 6 emails to believe it was the real Tony Robbins and I really enjoyed meeting him.
And as I’m name-dropping…Martha Stewart invited me to a party in New York. So I sent a close friend along in my place. My friend is the kind of person that likes functional and practical, and there I was sending her to see what clothes could be purchased for dogs and what fripperies could be purchased for the home. Three years later I think she’s only just forgiven me!
I tend not to recognize celebrities and when I’m invited to cover a PR event I tend to chat to them like normal people, and ask them what they do for a living. Sometimes I get the “you’ve got to be kidding” look and other times they realize I genuinely don’t know who they are.
Tell us a little about your holidays and how you spend them.
We love to get to know the people behind the business, so please do share. We don’t have turkey for the holidays, we have goose. And goose fat roasted potatoes which are sublime. My husband cooks dinner, my daughters make the starters and I cook dessert. We don’t have pie, but selection of puddings and sometimes a syllabub. Next year we plan to spend the holidays on the beach and have dinner with our feet in the ocean!
Tell us our audience about your free giveaway.
My giveaway is a free Kindle Marketing Ecourse to help position you and your business. It runs over 10 days and talks a lot about marketing your business in ways that get results.
INTERVIEW w/ LISA RODRIGUEZ
Next Level Consulting & Virtual Assistance is a small business consulting and virtual assistance firm that specializes in helping coaches, consultants, speakers and other online entrepreneurs create productive businesses, while maximizing their internet presence and revenues. Collectively our background spans over 24 years as both office and virtual professionals providing administrative and business support. Our team consists of virtual professionals, HTML specialists, graphic designers and WordPress experts – whose primary objective is to show initiative and play more of a “partner” role vs. simply taking care of specific tasks.
Contacting Lisa:
info@nextlevel-va.com
http://www.nextlevel-va.com
http://www.twitter.com/NextLevelVA
http://www.facebook.com/NextLevelVA
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101163081165869125454/posts
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nextlevelva
http://www.pinterest.com/nextlevelva/
What are some of your top tips for success?
PLAN! It is very easy to get distracted with everything that comes at you on a daily basis!
Plan your weekly goals, plan your social media, plan your promotions and you will plan your success!
Can you share with us two of top ways you market?
Social media marketing is huge for me. My Twitter network is over 32K followers. It helps to drive traffic to my website.
Referral programs – I offer all of my existing clients a discount on their services when they refer a new client who signs up.
Blogging is also huge. While I have slacked recently, I usually blog 3-5 times per week. When you are consistently putting your brand and your expertise out there, people notice.
Are you planning any special holiday promotions
Yes! We are going to be offering a special discount on our WordPress packages.
What goals do you have for the new year?
- Finally launching my WordPress training / membership community!
- Expanding my existing social media network
- Finishing my book on membership development
How do you normally obtain those goals?
I plan and I delegate. You don’t need to know everything. Decide what it is you want to accomplish and then hire someone who knows how to get it done for you.
How do you make your business unique & profitable
We offer customized packages for just about every budget out there. We also have a unique approach to working with new clients. We assess your business, strategize/plan and the implement your plan.
Any additional tips…come on give us a few secrets to your success!
Stay consistent! Across the board – your blogging schedule, your social media posts, your branding – consistency in these areas will grow trust with your prospective clients.
Tell us a little about your holidays and how you spend them. We love to get to know the people behind the business, so please do share.
My holidays are usually spent with close family members, cooking, listening to music – with the occasional loud argument cropping up. Good food and music is a huge part of my culture. My favorite part of the day is when I get to curl up in front of the fireplace with my dog Buddy and just reflect at all of the amazing gifts life has to offer. And how awesome it is that I can share my own gifts with others and get paid for doing so.
Do you have a giveaway you’d like to share with our audience?
My gift to your audience is a copy of my free report, “10 Profitable Membership Ideas“. Browse and get some great ideas on what type of membership you can develop and create a passive income stream for your business.