DAY 1 – Let's Begin!

 Hooray! Today is the first Day of our Social Media Challenge! 

I’m so excited about starting this journey with you and hearing about your success as you go through the challenge. 

If you’re struggling to get customers online, then this challenge will give you the clarity, process and support you need to make money on social media without having to spend money on ads. 

Just remember, above all else, keep following the process. 

Let’s get started…

Before we dive into the specifics on getting customers, we need to do two things: 

Step 1: We need to set accountability (so you get the result that you want).

Step 2: We’ve got to clarify your offer, so we know exactly where we’re going. 

STEP 1: Set accountability

This step is critical. Let me explain by using my own story as an example. 

When I was struggling to get my first customer online, I had no following to speak of and no training on what to do to build one. I’d left my job in a large IT company as a business analytics consultant where I was helping businesses measure results and increase revenue.

I’d been there for five years and I had begun to feel stuck and trapped. I had also lost my mother around this time and it forced me to re-evaluate my life. I knew that I didn’t want to spend another five years in the corporate world because I would never feel fulfilled or happy.

I had started to resent the fact that I worked so hard. I was helping other businesses reach their goals and was helping my employer make a lot of money and yet I wasn’t seeing any reward for myself.

On 25th November 2005, I handed in my resignation and called my boss. I didn’t’ have another job to go to and my girlfriend was 3 months pregnant!

My father was concerned. He called me and asked me if I was really sure. He pointed out I would be  giving up a safe salary, holidays and sickness benefits. It was a real concern, especially now I had have a family to support.

There were no entrepreneurs in my family and my father had a successful and safe career for 40 years.

I secured a small contract that was enough to keep us going but it could have been cancelled at any time. I had to make my new business work or go back to a corporate career that really wasn’t me.

People were depending on me and there was no job to go back to. I had burned my bridges. 

I had to make this work.

And that’s the point of this first step. If this is going to work for you, then you’ve got to make sure not getting your customer, not getting your sale, has got consequences for you. Yes, you are out of your comfort zone. And no, it may not feel safe but it’s the best motivator to get it right. It’s this accountability that will drive your forward and give you purpose.

So, here’s what I want you to do: pick a date sometime between today and the next 21 days. That date is the day you will have your first paying customer. Write it down and mark it in your diary. 

Next, choose a consequence for yourself that makes you really uncomfortable. For me, it was letting my family down, not being able to create the next stage of my life and having to find a new job to pay the bills.

What is it for you?

STEP 2: Clarify your offer

Now that we’ve got accountability in place, let’s move on to who your client is and the result you’re helping them get. 

I call this your Ideal Customer Concept.

 It’s knowing who your customer is, the problem they want to have solved and the result you help them get. 

If you already have an idea of your Ideal Customer Concept, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s great too. 

When it comes to knowing what you can help others with, I find the easiest and most authentic way is to offer something that you’ve personally learned through your own experience or education. This does not mean you have to be an expert on it or the world's best at it. 

What I’ve realised after having worked with dozens of clients is that your core message usually stems from the messes you’ve overcome in your life. Put in another way…

YOUR MESS IS YOUR MESSAGE.

It usually revolves around one area of messiness or frustration in your life that you overcame. 

For example, maybe you’re like my client, Gregg, who wanted to help people to make good investments to give them a secure financial future. That stemmed from the struggle in his corporate career working for a big bank and not being able to truly help people because of the pressure to achieve sales. So, he started his own consultancy firm helping people to learn how to make the best investment decisions. 

Grab your journal and answer these 4 questions. 

1) What messes have I overcome in my life? 

2) What were the lessons I learned from those messes?

3) What were the feelings you remember that surrounded that mess or messes? 

4) What specific results did you get from overcoming those messes? 

Set a timer for 10 minutes and just free write. 

Don’t edit yourself. 

Don’t filter yourself. 

Just dump everything on the page and keep writing for the entire 10 minutes. This will trigger deeper ideas from your sub-conscious mind that will not come out if you start and stop. 

So, to recap your assignments for today (and they should take you no more than 15 minutes). 

1/ Pick a date between now and the next 21 days that you will have your new client by. Choose your uncomfortable consequence that will keep you accountable. Optional: send me an email via  [email protected] and tell me the date and consequence. 

2/ Write down your Ideal Client Concept – who your customer is, the problem they have and the solution they will get with your help. Answer the 4 questions above during a 10 minute “no filter” brain dump session. Do not stop writing for 10 minutes.