Summer Coaching Series: How to Generate Leads to Reach Your Goals
You may be really passionate about starting your side hustle, but if you’re struggling with marketing, selling is not going to be easy.
You want to create your offer knowing:
What your target goals are
How to create more traffic
How to generate leads If you’re not sure where to start, the latest podcast episode is for you.
It’s the Summer Coaching Series episode where I talk with Paige Bond about how to market to reach your income goals.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Show Notes:
Hey Risers, we are kicking off something super fun for the podcast called The Summer Coaching Series. For the next few weeks, you're going to hear episodes from colleagues of yours who are in very similar spots to you when starting their side hustle.
We have a few coming on who are brand new and starting from scratch, and a couple who are going to get coached through things like streamlining and scaling, what they've got in the works.
What I love about these coaching episodes is that you get to hear me working with somebody who probably has very similar questions to you. You get to take what we're working on and apply it to your own progress and where you are as you are building out your side hustle.
Today we're jumping in with episode one of this series, which is episode 161 on the podcast, and we're going to talk with Paige. Paige is an LMFT in Florida and she is talking through a few different things with me. I coach her through some money-mindset stuff, I coach her through "offer conceptualization".
We talk a bit about niching and then we get into marketing, how to start building leads for her side hustle. What I love about Paige and how we worked on this episode is she has a realistic goal for the next 12 months.
It's fun to be able to play around with something like that and come at it from multiple different angles. Within the spirit of this coaching series, my hope is that you get a lot from Paige's episode. Let's jump on in.
Marissa (M): Hey, risers. Welcome back to Empathy Rising. We have kicked off a series of coaching episodes on the podcast for the summer. Selfishly, I'm taking the summer off of recording because I told my kids they didn't have to go to daycare this year, which in hindsight might have been a mistake.
Now I'm hustling to get everything recorded ahead of time and I actually have an episode coming up on how I took the whole summer off of marketing (just of marketing, not of delivering my program), but you'll be able to hear behind the scenes of how this came about, but this is episode one of that coaching series.
We are here with Paige Bond who is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I'm going to have Paige introduce herself to you guys, and then we're just going to dive in, and she's got some questions and things she wants to work through and I'll just coach her through whatever concerns she has coming up right now.
Paige, if you could go ahead and introduce yourself, let us know just a little bit about you. What you do clinically, where you're located, all that kind of stuff, and then we'll dive in.
Paige (P): Okay. So hi everyone. I am Paige Bond, as Marissa said, I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist here in Florida. I have been in private practice since about 2018/2019. Just a few years still, like an early bird in private practice, but I've always had the itch to do more.
I built my private practice focused on helping couples, focused on helping relationships, have better communication, better connection with each other. I'm at the point where I want to put a pause or like a damper from taking on any more new clients and really focus on my side hustle.
Right now I'm developing a program to help people-pleasing millennials navigate non-monogamy and how to tame their jealousy, and have a lot better, more gentle communication. The marketing aspect is what I need help with though. I'm not sure how to go about marketing. I've got an email list. I'm not very good with it. I don't know what to do. I'm hoping I can get a lot out of this episode.
M: Awesome. Me too, give me some backstory. Why did you want a side hustle? Was it more money motivation, money reasons, impact motivation, or just wanting to be more creative and do something new? What was the impetus for you to think about a side hustle and then what are your goals within six months, 12 months of having the side hustle?
P: I would say all of the above. I would say the first motivator was money because I know if I can do less time with my butt in the chair and can reach more people and make more money doing the same amount of work? Gosh, that's like you have it made.
Money was the main motivator so that I could then live the life I wanted, but I am also really creative. I like podcasting myself. I like talking to other people. I like educating people. I can't only do that in my clinical work, in private practice.
I think this is a fun way that I get to be myself, but also help others in a nonclinical, more of an educator or coach manner. It's really exciting to have some of that and to have that along with that, a lot of flexibility and income.
I haven't even thought of what my goals are in terms of money for six months from now, for a year from now with the side hustle. If I thought about it, I would like to be making like $10,000 a year from now from the side hustle. Of course, I would like it to be more. But who knows?
M: I think that is super reasonable, 10,000 within a year. We can totally make that happen. There's not a certain type of offer that comes to mind for me, because some people will be like, "I want you to make a hundred grand by the next year" and I'm like, "Okay. 12 months, a hundred grand, feasible, but we need a solid plan. It has to be a certain type of offer" and all that stuff.
It’s really realistic and really reasonable, 10 grand within the next 12 months. We can play around with a lot of things and still be able to hit that benchmark. I love you that said people-pleasing millennials, and then you brought in non-monogamy
P: I did.
M: Which is super interesting. We've got a person identified and we've got a problem identified. There are four P's that make up an offer. If you guys have followed me for a while, they're Person, Problem, Promise, and Price. It sounds like you've got a couple of those already locked in.
Walk me through your "person" a little bit, and then walk me through this "problem". Is this something you noticed in your clinical work or is this something you've walked through yourself? How did you arrive at this?
P: When I started a private practice, a lot of people who identify as non-monogamous started flocking to me. It was so cool because I had not heard much about that or understood it, but I became so intrigued and was so interested in it.
It just so happened to be there were so many of the clients who found me are people pleasers, they struggle with boundaries. They're also highly sensitive people, which I can relate to a lot. They get their feelings hurt easily, they try not to rock the boat.
Then I just noticed that the more these people started coming to me, the more I connected well with them as therapist and client, and felt like I was able to help them and help them gain understanding from new perspectives.
When that kept happening, I noticed, "Okay, this is a mass problem. They're all experiencing this same thing" and I'm like, "but what if there was a way, a program, a workshop, or something that could help them and not necessarily have to spend all their money on therapy?" That's how I came to trying to create a program for them.
M: When you say you weren't so familiar with non-monogamy, or it wasn't something you were super informed on, did you go and take courses yourself, read books, or was it just really in your work with clients that you became more familiar? I'm asking this for a reason and I'll get to it in just a second.
P: Lots and lots of books, lots and lots of podcasts. Courses, not yet, but I do have plans to take some more courses to bump up my education factor, and bump up my skill set to be able to tune into this community. Outside of that, I was going in blind. Just trying to be non-judgmental and so genuinely interested.
M: What I love about this - and I'm using you as an example just a little bit, Paige, if you don't mind, is that so many times as clinicians, we think we've got to go out and get a certification on something like, "Oh, I've got to go take more courses or I've got to get certified or trained" or whatever.
You're like, "no, I read some books and I've done some podcasts. I've done self-study. I sought out the information I needed" and that is something I work with—mindset. Even with my students in Side Hustle. I'm like, "you have everything you need, you are more than qualified just through your licensure to be able to do this.
Go out and read some books on a subject matter and educate around that". I admire that you were willing to just go for it. I love that you brought up curiosity, genuine curiosity, and genuine interest; this is what's led you to your path. I think that's really cool.
P: I'm excited about it. This community is near and dear to my heart. I love it.
M: As for your people, would they readily identify with the label of people-pleaser? Are they more apt to identify with the label of non-monogamous? Do they not identify with either label? Do they identify with both labels?
P: I know they would definitely know they're non-monogamous or they know they're trying to navigate it at least.
A lot of the people who end up finding me either are couples trying to navigate it together or sometimes one partner. If it's a hetero couple, usually it's the wife. They find me. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I have all this jealousy. I need to just be better for my husband or I need to stop my jealousy" or whatever.
There's a lot of exploration around that. Most of them do know that they're non-monogamous. Some of them are like, "how do I go about this?" and they would use that label. Sometimes they use 'polyamory'. Sometimes they use 'open'. Sometimes they use, "oh, we're thinking about swinging". There are a lot of different terms.
M: It's terms that come out of their mouth. What about people-pleasing? Are they saying that, are they calling themselves out, or is that a label that you're assigning to them?
P: I don't know, that might be a label I am assigning to them actually. They understand what they do is people-pleasing, but I don't think they use that language to call themselves a people-pleaser.
M: The reason I'm asking this line of questioning is that you brought up marketing and we need to know what's going to catch these people's eyes. Is people-pleasing the door in, or is non-monogamy the door in? What I'm hearing from you is non-monogamy is the door.
If they're scrolling on Instagram, if they're on TikTok, if they're on whatever and they see a post, "Hey, non-monogamous person" that's what's going to make them stop scrolling more so than, "Hey people-pleaser who also is struggling your relationship". It's like a backside door that isn't going toward what it sounds like their self-reporting.
P: You're definitely right on that.
M: That's what's most important is, what are they calling themselves? Where are they hanging out? As clinicians, we have so much insight into people. We can watch TV shows and be like, "oh, they're a whatever", we diagnose people on TV or we talk about anxious attachment or whatever. We can spot it from a mile away, and if they don't self-identify with it, it doesn't help us. It doesn't help us reach them in our marketing.
P: Yeah.
M: What we have here it's called an awareness scale and there are four parts. There's unaware. These are the people who are unaware that they're people pleasers, or they might know what they're doing it, or when you explain it to them they might be like, "oh yeah, that's me", but they're not like self-identifying as it.
Then there's problem aware, solution aware, and then offer aware. For those people who've never launched an offer before, people can't be offer aware because you don't have anything yet.
The sweet spot of marketing is talking to people who are either highly problem aware, or who have moved into solution awareness and are actively shopping. These would be people in your case, it sounds like "we are aware that non-monogamy is coming up, it's causing discord in our relationship".
Either both partners want to do this or only one partner does. They're highly problem aware. If they are solution aware already, they're reading books. They're listening to podcasts as you said. Even better if they're looking for coaches or they're looking for courses or looking for things to spend money on, that's your sweet spot.
If you have shoppers and you just get out in front of the shoppers and you're like, "Hi, here's my product. Would you like to take a look at it?" They're much more likely to be, "yeah, let me grab that one and this one and that one" because they're actively shopping.
P: That makes sense.
M: When we have people who are problem aware, that's good because they know there's an issue. They just haven't crossed the threshold yet into solution-seeking, into shopping. When we're talking to shoppers or when we're talking to Solution Aware, the thing we have to think of in our mindset is we're not trying to get people to only buy our product.
When we go jeans shopping, some people go to one store, buy 10 pairs of jeans and leave. But a lot of people go to Macy's, they buy a pair of jeans, they go to Penny's, they buy a pair of jeans. We can certainly think that they're buying multiple programs or multiple workshops or multiple resources on the same subject. There's nothing wrong with that.
We don't have to be the only thing that they buy. If they're not quite to Shoppers or not quite to solution, we want to talk to the people who are problem aware. The more highly problem aware, the better.
These unaware people, we won't cross them out completely, but those are people who take much longer to buy from us. Those are people who might be in our audience for six months, a year and a half, depending on what you're selling to them before they decide to come on into your program. That sweet spot is the highly problem aware to the solution aware people.
P: Yeah.
M: What does that make you think of in terms of your marketing right now?
P: It makes me think of how it's good to have this information. To know I'm not going to be targeting those people who don't even realize this is a really big issue for them. It makes sense to go towards problem or solution aware.
I didn't realize. And I'm surprised, but I liked how you said that they may be shopping for those multiple solutions. I didn't even ever think of it that way. Even if I'm trying to learn something more clinically or something, I like to look at everything out there that I can do to try to help me gain more information on the subject. It's the same thing and we will buy what's worth it to us. I like that.
M: Same for me. I've been going all-in on TikTok the last few months and I've bought four or five different TikTok courses from four or five different creators. Some of them I'm like, "yeah, I trust what they have to say".
Others, I'm like, "oh, I wonder if there's any different information in here that I didn't get from the other ones". I see this as a barrier because we start to get a scarcity mindset, is what it is. "They can only buy my thing. My thing has to be the best. My thing has to be the only one on the market", and that keeps us from getting things out there. It keeps us stuck and we stop.
We're less likely to market or promote because we're in that perfectionist or that scarcity mindset. If we start to think, "Of course, they're probably buying other stuff on this. They probably bought 10 books. Their Amazon cart was full. They ordered all the books at the same time. Every one they could find", then we're able to start putting stuff out there faster.
P: With the problem barrier how do we get them to know, to start looking towards solutions, which is looking at offers.
M: That's marketing. The concept of marketing as a whole is moving people along this awareness spectrum. Eventually, once they are shopping, then we go to sales, we introduce our offer to them.
Marketing and sales are sisters. So many people put a lot more emphasis on sales, but it's actually like, when I draw this for my Side Hustle students, I draw a 12-inch line, and marketing is 10 inches and sales is two inches. If your marketing is done, sales should be easy. It should be just a simple invite, "Hey, doors are open. Come on in".
P: Yeah. Yeah.
M: When sales are hard or when sales feel like pulling teeth, it's because everything leading up to it was ineffective.
P: That makes sense. You have to be really good at your marketing.
M: I wouldn't say "really good", because that puts pressure. Everybody's learning this, especially clinicians; marketing is a skill. Right now you probably noticed if you started your practice in 2018, or 2019 (I'm making assumptions here. You can tell me if I'm wrong), but it was probably harder to get clients in 18 and 19. And then all of a sudden in 20 and 21, it's not been as hard, right?
P: Oh yeah.
M: The market has shifted in our favor and people are just seeking out therapy. A lot of clinicians don't even have to market. They just say "I have spots" and then people are, "ahh!" because they can't find them anywhere else. Where in 2018 and 19 marketing was more in play because the demand was different. It was a different marketplace.
It's just a skill, and where it comes from is your offer. When you know what you're selling, it's so much easier to promote it. If this is wishy-washy, then this is going to be wishy-washy.
You guys can't see me, but I'm holding up my fingers representing the two inches of sales. If that is wishy-washy, what you're selling, then all the other 10 inches of marketing is going to be wishy-washy. We just have to get solid here, and then we just talk about it.
P: Yeah. Yeah.
M: As you're talking about the people who are unaware, way back here on the spectrum, they're going to be like, "oh, what's this thing?" and they're going to start listening and learning.
That's okay, they're moving down the spectrum, but that's why they take longer to convert into buyers because they're still like, "what's this brand new thing? Oh, let me explore this brand new thing", "Oh, now I see that this brand new thing's an issue", "Oh, now it's really an issue", whereas people who are further in the spectrum hear your marketing.
When you're in an educator role in your marketing, you're affirming them. They're like, "yep. I knew that. Yep. I knew that" and then we get to a certain part in our marketing where we agitate and then they start to realize, "oh, this problem is a problem" and when they're already further aware, then that agitation happens so much faster.
P: How do we agitate them?
M: You said you have an email list. Tell me what you're doing for marketing now. Let's talk a little bit about your current marketing plan and then we'll see if we want to make some tweaks or adjustments to that. Then we can go into how we change from the education phase to the agitation phase.
P: My email list is mostly made up of clients who just checked off the box that they wanted to be part of my monthly newsletter. Some of them have found me from some landing pages that I have on my website. I've created a couple of freebies and they got signed onto the list there.
My list is very low though. So it's not even something that is worth anything right now. I need to be more interactive. I know I need to have more people, so they can also tell others about me, but it's so small that I don't think it's doing anything, even if I did have anything going.
M: With your ultimate goal of 10,000 within the next 12 months, which I'm just so in love with that goal, I'm like, "yes, we could so make that happen", you talked to me about workshops.
Do you see yourself having higher-touch programs, like group programs and things like that? Or do you see yourself having just low touch, just offers where you're not involved?
P: I want to do both. I'm going to start with a 90-minute workshop, and then I'll move into grabbing people from there. Going into this group program I want to create
M: One hundred percent. I use that strategy all the time. I used it all year, all summer of 2021. I ran summer slowdown workshops and then invited people to work with me further. I love that strategy.
What's coming up for me - and it may be too early for you to be thinking about this, but I'm trying to think of who I have in Florida. Morgan's in Florida, she's a Side Hustle student. She's a psychologist. You just might want to think about separating this off your website eventually, especially if you're going to have higher touch. I'm not sure about LMFTs in Florida and what the requirements are, but I think it's more safe than sorry to start separating them.
P: Yeah.
M: For a workshop, you might not want to go through all that effort, but when you start moving into the bigger programs, I would just consider it. Check Florida's rules.
Amber is a good friend of mine, and she's in Florida and she's not as gung-ho about separating as I am. I think Florida; it's one of the states where it doesn't matter as much. I would just give that some thought and then also go look at your code of ethics from the MFT board. Landing pages on your website, existing clients. This is just traffic that is already coming to you. You're not going out and like generating right more traffic.
P: Not yet. I don't know how to do that.
M: We can certainly talk about that. You told me you like podcasting. Are you just being guests on other people's podcasts or are you starting your own? What are you thinking about with that?
P: I have two podcasts that I host and co-host. One is just like a fun one that I do with my best friend. I don't direct people towards me for that. The second one I do, it's called Stubborn Love. That is a podcast that I created trying to have different episodes focused on how to make your relationship better.
I think episode 13 will be released next. I think me being a guest on other podcasts would help a lot more getting traction, and getting people to know about me. I just haven't done it yet.
M: If your programs are about non-monogamy, I would make Stubborn Love about non-monogamy. I would niche it down. If you eventually see yourself having just relationship programs in general, you may be able to then niche it back up.
Start with a non-monogamy series or something like that. I'd keep everything pinpoint. That way, the traffic that you are getting, the listeners you are getting are listening for topics that make sense for what you're selling.
P: That makes sense. I've thought about doing that at least a mini-series, but there's no reason why I can't pivot and just only focus on that for the whole podcast. I like that idea a lot.
M: It might only be for a few months until you decide to until you decide to have an offer that's, facing relationships in general. You can always niche up.
It's a little harder to niche down once you have an established audience because you're basically like kicking a portion off, you're basically like, "okay, I don't talk to you anymore", but it's always easier to start narrow and then niche up, broaden out.
P: Okay. Yeah. No, I like that a lot. Get more focused with my podcast about what I'm offering too, that makes sense.
M: Your podcast is an incredible asset because you can leverage it in terms of pitching others. Finding other podcasts. You said you listened to some that are non-monogamy specific. That's where I would start like super narrow. Then you can move out to millennial relationships because that's where maybe the more unaware, or the less problem-aware people are going to be.
They're going to be listening to relationship podcasts, knowing that they're slightly unhappy, and then you come on with this non-monogamy episode and they're like, "that's it. That's why. I didn't know it, but that's what it is". Then you'll scoop up the people further down on the spectrum. To get the problem aware and the solution aware people right away go to the other non-monogamy podcasts.
P: Okay. I like that plan. Love it.
M: The other way to leverage your podcast is to invite people on to it; other experts in non-monogamy who have an audience.
P: How do I find the ones who have the audience?
M: Search them. Look wherever you think your people are; definitely on Instagram. Your people are probably on KinkTok. They're probably secretly on Kinktok and don't tell anybody. I accidentally found myself on Kinktok somehow, because like I said, I've been going all-in on TikTok. I don't know what happened, but I went from SpiritualTok to KinkTok real fast. I was like, "where am I? What is this?" But that's a big community.
I wouldn't be surprised if your people are there and just not out about it, not talking about it. Those are the two places that I think your people are going to be for sure. Instagram and TikTok.
You might already know of others that are hanging out doing searches on TikTok or searches on Instagram for your keywords: non-monogamous relationship expert, non-monogamous coach, and those types of things, and then finding people who have an audience since your audience is smaller.
The sweet spot is finding people with an audience about 5,000. You're not going to pitch somebody with an audience of 5 million, because you have a zero audience or a low audience. Start with that five thousand-ish bracket. Then, as your audience grows, you can go up to the 10,000 bracket.
Then as your audience grows, you can go up to the 20,000 bracket, and so on, and so forth. That's what I would do. Search those key terms, and invite them on to be on your podcast. It's always flattering to be invited to something. You just want to have the stipulation that they share it with their audience.
P: Yeah, I can do that. Yeah.
M: It's not going to happen every time, you'll get the people who want the exposure and don't reciprocate. It's just the way of the world. That's the way it's going be. Pitching other people where there's already the established audience, that's always going to be better for you.
You can certainly invite them on, and then really hope that they share with their audience as well. That brings some people to you.
P: Yeah. I love those ideas.
M: What else have you entertained in terms of marketing?
P: I've entertained doing free workshops. I use Eventbrite a lot to search for cool new happenings around me. I always see people doing mental health workshops or like wellness-focused workshops. I've toyed with the idea of doing a preview one, like maybe a very shortened version of the eventual workshop that I will do.
I've thought about that, of doing like a free version or like a very low-cost version.
M: Would you be doing these in person or would they still be online events?
P: They could be online, easily online. Anybody can join, but I would put the cities that are around.
M: I just have this hunch using the non-monogamy as the angle instead of the people-pleasing angle. I think you're going to get more traction than you think. It's what comes up to mind for me is an open house on a million-dollar house.
You're going get some looky-loos, "oh my God, the million-dollar house is open. Let's just go check it out. I want to see", but there are only certain people who go look at that house because they can afford that house.
When you use the words, non-monogamous in the title, poly in the title, there's going to be people who are like, "oh, that's for me". I'm not in the community, but I found myself down this rabbit hole of having a welcome mat with a pineapple means you're a swinger or something?
I didn't know, but this is what I mean is if you have these little—it's the hanging thing in the window and people know "oh, that's the house I want to go to". I'm sure you probably know keywords to use or things like that, that are going to attract your people.
P: Easter eggs for people to find.
M: The right people will know A) to look for them and B) then they're going to feel affirmed. They're going to know it's safe, because that's probably a part of an issue too, they want to make sure that they're in a safe place to open up and talk about and share and things like that too.
P: Yeah, for sure.
M: I think Eventbrite could be cool and you could be doing those same things on your own social media channel if you wanted to.
P: I could do Facebook events and do keywords or something in there with that. I don't know how that works, but I'm sure there's something there.
M: We have visibility marketing, which is you going to established audiences that already exist and presenting for them, being a guest on a podcast or something like that. We've talked a little bit about that.
Then we also have content marketing, which is you creating your own educational materials or your own opinions on your own. By having your podcasts, you're also doing that. Visibility marketing tends to be faster. I call it ten-zees and twenty-zees. You're scooping up like 10 to 20 people at a time, each appearance, whereas with content marketing, you're starting your own platform, which is nice.
You have more autonomy over it, more control over it, but you're starting it from scratch. One-zee and two-zee. Eventually your content marketing snowballs, and it gets bigger and bigger, but it takes some time to get that traction going.
P: Exactly.
M: Is there one that you enjoy more? The idea of visibility and going to other established audiences, or creating your own content from scratch?
P: I think I like going to other established audiences because again, it's that education aspect that I like. The listener, whoever would be interviewing me, they're so curious. Then I become really passionate and engaged. I think that shines through when I go to someone else.
M: You mentioned impact and reach, getting on some of these bigger audiences. The same thing goes - when we were talking about inviting doing the tiers of 5,000, 10,000. The same thing goes for pitching, but what you have, and what every listener has is credentials, a master's degree, a Ph.D., a license in this, a license in that, and that can open the doors.
You might be able to jump instead of starting at pitching 5,000 type tiers, you might be able to jump straight to the 20 and 25,000 tiers, just because your license will open those doors, "As a licensed marriage and family therapist with expertise in non-monogamy, I would like to come on your podcast and talk about this".
People eat it up and then it gives their podcast a bit more legitimacy as well, because they're like, "Ooh, I'm having professionals on. I'm having experts on". That's a way for you to get even more visibility is to leverage your license and to leverage your degree.
P: I prefer that too because I don't have to deal with working harder. When I'm creating my own content, I have to edit the stuff I have to come out with the topic. It does take a little bit more energy out of me to do that. I like the least amount of effort in marketing.
M: I love episodes where I have guests like this. This is why I planned this coaching series now. I'm taking the summer off. I was like, "what? I don't want to have to outline a bunch more episodes and come up with a bunch more content. I can just sit down and have really fun conversations with eight people and boom, my whole June and July are covered".
Thinking smarter, not harder, or working smarter, not harder, I think is excellent. The same thing goes for when you're going on someone else's podcast. Some of the listeners might know I'm launching a new offer in the fall that's a spiritual lifestyle offer that has nothing to do with my side hustle stuff.
This week, I'm writing my pitch letter and I have about 40 to 50 podcasts identified that I'm going to pitch, but I'm going to spend another two or three days. I think I'll be able to get that up to a hundred, 120 in the spiritual space. Then I'm going to send that pitch email to 120 people over the course of a day or two, however long it takes me, and do a blitz.
When you write your pitch letter, it's like the cover letter for a job. It can be a template, but then you want to make sure you're switching out certain details to talk to that company or that job.
It takes a week. On Monday, you're writing your pitch. Tuesday and Wednesday you're identifying all the shows you want to pitch and then Thursday and Friday, you're sending out the pitches because you've got to tweak each one. You do that maybe once every two or three months.
You've got two sides to it. You've got to do the pitches, and then you just show up and sit down and get interviewed for an hour.
That part's easy, especially if you've already got what you want to talk about. You've got your bullet points down. That part's easy. This part takes some effort, but if you build a system around it, like I said, one week, every two months.
P: Should I try to still do the guest spots that I go to, or should I keep it a niche in non-monogamy and only try to find focus with podcasts with that? Or should I branch out and do other regular relationships?
M: I would always keep one. You have your niche, you have your person and you have your problem. Non-monogamy. There might be gen-Zers listening. There might be boomers listening to a non-monogamy podcast. That's okay because your other marketing will speak and you use millennial language and people who aren't right will fall off.
You might have some boomers in your workshop that are super cool, and you decide if you want them or not. Then vice versa, you can go on millennial podcasts and then introduce non-monogamy to them.
I would always keep them super relationship-focused. Millennial love, millennial sex, and especially millennial work is a stretch. You might be talking to the right person, but they're not quite ready for this yet.
P: Yeah. Doesn't really apply.
M: I would almost look at it as… concentric circles is how I imagine it. Millennial non-monogamy is the dartboard. That's your bull’s-eye. Then non-monogamy without an age demographic specified is like one ring out and then millennial sex would be another ring out.
Then millennial relationship or millennial love would be another ring out and then you can go out from there. The further out ring you are, the closer to the unaware side of the spectrum.
P: This is like a science.
M: That's what I like about it. When you said, "you have to be good at marketing", not really. You just have to know how it works. You just have to show up and do it by the steps. It's less about being good at it and more about just doing in the right order or being in the right place with the right message. Then it's not hard.
P: I can follow instructions. That's fine.
M: There you go. I hear that you already have landing pages built and you know what to do with the audience when you have the audience, but it has been more about getting the audience?
P: Most of the people who come to my website are there looking for therapy, not looking for a coaching course or relationship tips. I get it. A lot of people view their email as sacred nowadays with all the spam that we get.
I think that is the biggest thing is I'm not having people buy into the idea of being on an email list, because I know that can be impactful. Eventually, they can share my stuff with somebody else who they think would like it. I would like to have more subscribers, but I don't know how to exactly get them.
M: We want to make a landing page. We need an opt-in. That is the exchange for the email list. It's all free, but there's still a currency here because like you said, they're letting you into their inbox, so that's still an exchange, but the currency is their actual email address.
What are they buying with their email address? They need to buy some kind of opt-in. You can go back through sessions that stick out in your mind or go back through some client files that stick in your mind and say, "what could I make asset-wise that would either answer this question that keeps coming up, or that would help with this problem that keeps coming up?"
It might be a cheat sheet. It might be a checklist. I don't like the idea of a glossary of terms, because again, that talks to somebody who's less aware. We want to identify somebody who's highly problem aware, bordering on solution aware, what is their big problem? Maybe it's like a script of, like, how to tell your partner you don't want to be monogamous anymore.
P: Yeah. That would be great.
M: Then you set up a landing page for that. They exchange their name and email and then that script is delivered to them. Then we've got them on the email list and then it becomes about nurturing them because getting somebody on the email list, isn't the endpoint. It's actually the start point.
P: How often should I be talking to them on my list?
M: Once a week. I know everybody freaks out. Once a week. If you do nothing else, send an email once a week.
P: Wow. Wow.
M: You can drop to every other week, but if you're emailing monthly, it's just not going to do anything for you, it's a waste of time.
You have a brand new audience. You're introducing a brand new offer to them. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I probably, at this point with my audience could email less frequently because I'm established with people.
They know what my programs are. They know when they come for sale, they're ready to buy them or they're not ready to buy them, but they still are in my audience because they're all the way up at offer aware. They're like, "oh, it's September. That means Side Hustle's opening up again soon. Am I going to do it this year? Am I going to wait till next year?" That's more their thinking.
I have that establishment with them. I can probably email less often. I still email once a week just because I think it's worth it, but I could potentially. With a brand new audience and you're introducing a brand new offer to them, the frequency needs to be there.
P: Okay. Yeah. I am not at that frequency. I'm doing once a month right now.
M: You don't quite have anything to sell yet. Once your workshop is solid and you know what it is, what you want this workshop to be, what problem the workshop itself solves because we know what their problem is, it's this non-monogamy. But what's the workshop going to solve?
Maybe the workshop is 'how to talk to your partner', 'setting up boundaries with multiple partners' something that might be the workshop. It solves its own problem. Once you've identified that, and maybe you set a date, "I'd love to run this workshop in August" or something like that, then I would start emailing more frequently. Because you have a goal in mind, there's a purpose to the emails now.
P: Okay. That makes a lot more sense. For the time being since I'm still in the works of creating the offer, what do I say in the meantime?
M: This is where we get to that education stuff; what, and why. Defining things, explaining why things are important or why things originated. You could go into cultural stuff, other non-monogamous cultures.
I'm really into (I can't say I'm 'into' colonization. That sounds bad) but I'm researching a lot about colonization and how the eradication of original and indigenous cultures. We know what I'm talking about. Things like that, like where did monogamy actually come from? That's a 'what' and 'why' type content.
You want to save the 'how' for what they pay you for. What are boundaries? Why do you need boundaries when you have multiple partners? That's perfect content for marketing. How to set boundaries when you have multiple partners, you need to pay me for that, that happens in my programs.
P: I love that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Perfect. Okay. So the what and the why, and then pay for the how.
M: If you're going with this visibility strategy, you've got a couple of things going on. You've got the pitching. You can set your frequency of that once every couple of months, depending on how many you pitch. If you're pitching 12 at a time, you might do it once every three months.
If you want to grow fast, I would have a pitch week once a month. Once every couple of months, once a quarter is totally fine, especially to hit your goal of 10 grand within 12 months. You're at a healthy pace. You can go slow and steady and still hit that goal.
You have your pitch week. We'll call that once every two months. Then, as those come in and you book them, you'll be doing those. That's going to be sporadic. It's going to be on the host's calendar when they're interviewing. You also might interview for something.
We are talking in April and our episode's not going live until June, so there might be a discrepancy in the time of recording, then release. What will be consistent for you is having your pitch week scheduled, and then you're sending your emails once a week.
P: I put in the emails, "Hey, check out this podcast I was on"?
M: Your emails… mine are long, but that's because I'm like a writer and I like to spend a lot of time there and I get wordy, but two, three paragraphs. I have some people who are not writers at all.
They make a two to five-minute video and that's what they send in their emails because that's easier. It's "Hey, so and so happy to be in your inbox this week made this video for you. If you have questions, let me know", whatever is easy for you.
P: I love that. How do you do the video for them? Is that using Loom?
M: You could do loom, and you could link it or you could embed it from YouTube and make it private or use Vimeo, and host it and then embed it in the video.
P: I feel like I can get wordy a lot, but like too wordy to where it misses the point of things. I feel like the video might be a little bit better way for marketing and they get to see your face and build a connection with you.
M: For sure. Even for people who prefer written emails, I always challenge them to use video. Once in a while, whether they're using video in their launch or whether they're using video, once every six weeks they do a video email or something it can never hurt you. It can only help you.
P: Yeah. Cool. That's awesome. Yeah.
M: What would you say has been your biggest takeaway?
P: Oh, you gave me so many Marissa. The biggest takeaway is understanding which strategy would be best for me. I thought what I had been doing in terms of doing my own podcast and doing it generalized relationships, creating my own content, has kept the ball from actually getting to be rolled a lot faster.
Just having the conversation with you and saying "oh, just go on other people's focus podcasts about no monogamy, and there you have it". I think that was helpful to get clear on.
M: Have somewhere for them to come back to whether that's that opt-in. What's great is if you have a podcast and then you're going on podcasts, you're already talking to podcast listeners.
Saying, "Hey, you're here listening to this show. If you want to follow up" because a host will always be like, "where can people find you? Or where can people follow up with you?" Then you say, "come check out my podcast, which is called, blah, blah, blah".
They're already in their podcast app. A lot of times they'll just search it right there and be like click and then they'll follow along with you.
Whether you use your opt-in and get them on your email list, or just invite them back to your podcast, and then from there you get them on the email list, we always want to be moving them forward.
P: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. No. Cool. That's good stuff.
M: What do you think is your first action?
P: I have a backlog of podcasts that I've done that I haven't edited and released. My first action step is to get that live out there and then start researching the more non-monogamy-focused people, finding other people to be a guest.
Wait. No, not to me to be a guest on their show as in reaching out to them, pitching to them, so that I can get that ball rolling.
M: You might find that they don't have a podcast, but they have a YouTube. Pitch their YouTube. You don't have to only pitch podcasts, whatever platform they have. They might have Instagram, pitch to do an IG live with them, or an IG TV with them.
P: Yeah, that's true.
M: It doesn't only have to be podcasts, whatever their platform might be. You can pitch their platform.
P: Yeah. That makes sense. Not everybody is on one or the other, right? Not everybody uses podcasts. That makes sense.
M: As you're searching, you can search in the podcast app, and then you can find other non-monogamous podcasts. I also think it's a great idea, like you said, to search for 'non-monogamous coach', and 'non-monogamous relationship coach', or search some of those and then see what platforms they have if they don't show up in the podcast app.
P: Gosh, you're a wealth of knowledge.
M: Aw, thank you. Awesome. I hope this has been helpful for you.
P: Yes. Yes.
M: Why don't you share your website with people so if they want to check out your landing pages, they can see what it is you're doing. Maybe they have clients who would benefit from some of this stuff and they could send them to you.
P: Yeah. Yeah.
M: Where should people follow up?
P: My website is www.paigebond.com. So it's my first and last name.com. Really easy. I'm on a little bit of social media, only Facebook right now. So if you do @paigelmft, they can find me on there if they wanted to connect on Facebook.
M: Awesome. We'll put both those links in the show notes for everybody who's listening. If you want to follow up with Paige and send her people, or clients, that are interested in this, then that's the resource.
P: Awesome. Thank you.
M: Thank you so much for your time today.
Alright. I think there are some real gems in that conversation and some great takeaways. If you know that you want some coaching for yourself, what I want you to do is go ahead and go over to my website, marissalawton.com/space-holder.
I think there were some real gems in that conversation, and I hope that you were able to take away a lot from me and Paige discussing some of the concerns and some of the questions that you might have on your own side hustle journey.
If you are somebody who is looking into the beginning stages of marketing, conceptualizing your offer, or coming up with "what is this thing that I wanna do?" and you want to get your own coaching, where I want to send you over to marissalawton.com/space-holder, and you can grab the space holder program. This is the program that is going to get you set up.
It is designed for you to come up with your offer concept, but not just a concept; one that is designed to use your clinical skills and translate them into an online offer, one that is designed to sell well. We've got the lucrative and the helping side, and that's what Space Holder helps you do. Plus we meet monthly for ongoing coaching.
You always get to get your questions answered and you get to be in the hot seat, just like Paige was here. If you want to go ahead and grab this for yourself, remember it's at marissalawton.com/space-holder.
We will be back with more coaching episodes, just like this one throughout the summer, so until then, keep on rising.
