Out of the Woods [Podcast]
Welcome to episode 14 of the Make it Matter Podcast – today’s podcast gets “in tents” as we talk about the business principles that can be derived from a little time in the wild.
What could roughing in nature possibly teach you about business? You might be surprised – Hanju’s been on the road lately, and what he’s learned could make a huge difference in your company.
“All I need to know about business I learned from camping.” What tools for your work can you actually find outside of the office?
1. Be prepared
Preparation is harder than you think. The time to trick out the van, the sink, the packing, the food, the cleanup. I thought it would be peaceful but we were actually busy non-stop. The lesson: expect it to be tough. (Worst thought you can have: “this is going to be easy.” Totally counterproductive thinking.) You’re not doing something wrong just because it’s hard.
2. Be pioneering
Always ready for the adventure. Makes work fun and new, and helps you solve problems with a fresh perspective. (Divergent Thinking). The lesson? “Life finds a way.”
3. Be present
Never miss a sunset.
We really do think that getting out there, away from the daily norm, definitely gives you a new perspective. And I really like how Bru broke it down. Be Prepared, Be Pioneering and Be present. The 3P’s. What a great lesson for all of us. And even those of us that just do not camp…and don’t have any desire to. That’s okay. No need to as long as you find your own way to step out and learn to see things a bit differently. It will bring more clarity, creativity, and even courage to shift from the grind. Those are my 3 C’s. I was inspired to come up with my own 3 C’s.
Well, thanks for listening, everyone, and you know what? We would love to hear from you, so, just leave us a comment on the iTunes review or contact us directly by going to https://bosmediagroup.com/sayhello We added a record button on there so you can send us by voice, a question, a comment, or a shoutout, whatever you want. We might even play it on this podcast.
So, in the meantime, thank you so much for listening, and remember to always MAKE IT MATTER. Bye for now.
What Keeps You Up At Night?
Think about the last time that your heart was so heavily burdened and your mind was going 100 miles per hour, you just couldn’t sleep. What were you thinking about?
If you know me, I am a great sleeper. I take 30 minutes picking out the right movie to watch, get all cozy, and after a couple of minutes of the opening scene…I am out! Most nights, I fall asleep before my head hits the pillow. Except for when I have something heavy on my mind.
Last week, we found out our dog Sugar (sweet Maltese of 15 years) became terminally ill. She stopped eating and her kidney was failing. They say 15 years is a good long life for most dogs, but I just couldn’t sleep thinking about missing her and also trying to figure out what next steps to take.
As a business, we always have to ask ourselves, “What problem are you solving?” But when we ask our customers the same question, they often fumble around not knowing exactly what their needs are…until, we ask them this: “What keeps you up at night? What is it about your current situation that causes such a heavy burden that you are not able to peacefully sleep?”
During our painful research of “what next steps to take” with our beloved Sugar, we ran across a lot of websites that offered the same solution for our heaviness, but they did it in totally different ways. I would like to share with you why we chose who we chose and how they met our expectations and delivered exactly what we hoped for. A peaceful transition for Sugar into her next adventure.
Why we chose this company:
1. Welcome Section: Right away, they acknowledged what we are going through and offered comfort. But what I really loved about what they said was that the focus wasn’t on the pet owners (us), it was on the pet…what they were going through and what we all could do to help. In this story, they made the pet the hero, not the pet owners. This captured my attention right away.
2. Information Section: They started educating us. They showed us why the services they offered were right for us. It answered the most pressing questions we have and it included a link to more in-depth discussions, research, and videos helping us understand and create a clear picture of the process and expectations.
3. Testimonial Section: They offered insight to the people who have used their service. Their testimonials were not templated or generic; they were real, heart-felt testimonials in letter form explaining in detail how much they appreciated the service and why.
4. About Us Section: Even though they were all well-qualified doctors, they focused very little on their own accomplishments but more on their own story of childhood and how they became animal lovers, and why they currently love what they do and how it affects people’s lives.
Why we didn’t choose the other companies offering the same services:
1. Welcome Section: They didn’t take the time to acknowledge the visitors’ heaviness that brought us to their site in the first place. They mainly focused on all the different services they offer right away. Felt very salesy and untrustworthy.
2. Information Section: It was vague and didn’t offer additional resources or videos to educate or address the difficult questions or even controversial issues or philosophies about their services.
3. Testimonial Section: Mostly short, non-descriptive and templated testimonials. They didn’t offer any personal stories or even detailed examples of what was helpful.
4. About Us Section: Heavy emphasis was on the credentials of the doctors. Their education and previous experiences. Felt cold…like reading a resume.
This is why copywriting matters. It’s the latest word in our definitions series, and it really does have the power to shape people’s first impression of you. Although I’ve never met or spoken to anyone from the first company, just from reading the copy on their website, I knew in my heart, it was the right company. And it was.
We all know how hard it is to find solutions to meet our most important needs. Here’s to being that company that answers people’s questions with the empathy they are looking for so that on sleepless nights when people go searching, they find you.
Turning Your Pennies into Dollars
I am always reading the latest research about marketing, and during my content consumption phase, I hear this a lot, and I know you do too:
“In order to successfully engage and win the trust of your current and future customers, you have to continue to give VALUE. And the more value you give, the more trust you’ll earn.”
Okay, awesome!! But…what does it really mean? How do I know what’s valuable to my audience?
In his newest book Superfans, Pat Flynn paints a great picture of what VALUE is and how to provide it for your clients. He describes a conference where a speaker asked the audience if they saw a penny on the street, would they pick it up? Most people will keep walking…not worth their time. Then he asked, what about a quarter? About 50% of people raised their hands to say yes, they would stop. Finally, he asked, how many of you would pick up a dollar bill? At that point, most of the crowd raised their hands. In this example, all three levels of currency offered value, but the value of a dollar bill passed the threshold from “not worth my time” to “ok, I’ll stop.”
So, the next question is: how do I offer something that my audience will see as worth their time? How do we create the dollar bill level content that someone will stop for?
Here are 3 ideas to help you become a more valuable and trustworthy authority in your field.
1. Know your audience. I know, I know, you’ve heard this before….but really, KNOW WHO THEY ARE. What do they love? What do they hate? What are they good at? What are they bad at? Know their problems, know their frustrations, know their pain. And you know what you get to do? Help them out of their problems, help them out of their frustrations and help them out of their pain. How? Offer unique insights, tips, data, solutions and even inspiration.
I’ve been playing golf for a long time. I played competitively as a Junior and still keep a pretty low handicap (meaning, I am a pretty decent player…lol). However, I play with a lot of weekend golfers who are always frustrated at the game because they don’t improve. Why don’t they improve? Because they are weekend golfers – they never practice, but they all think they just need a magic cure. Knowing this inside information, I decided to start a podcast specifically for these weekend golfers and offer insights, tips, data, and solutions on improving their game by….inspiring them to practice. If you ever want to check it out, the podcast is called Better Golf Academy. I still get random fan emails saying how much I have helped their game.
2. Know your expertise. What does that mean? It means that whatever industry you are in, you are an expert whether you like it or not. You have unique insight that no one else has. You might not know it because it’s just part of your everyday life and you’ve been doing it forever so you take it for granted…but what you know and what you do is unique to a lot of people and they are dying to know what you know. Dive deep into the knowledge that seems so obvious to you, then share your journey and your findings.
Ever since I started camping, I’ve been researching a lot of camping gear. One of the essential needs when you are off the grid for 3-4 days is a reliable refrigerator, and in order to keep your refrigerator running 24/7, you need a good source of power. Well, how about a power unit that runs off of solar? Not knowing anything about this, I started my research and ran across a guy named Will Prowse. He’s a guru in his niche of off-grid solar power and I’ve learned so much from him. I trusted his expertise and ended up purchasing his recommended power unit. It’s exactly what we needed and for me and his other 472k followers, we find him and his content more than valuable.
3. Know your platform. In the golf example above, I chose a podcast as the way to get my information out to an audience. Why a podcast? It’s something I enjoy doing. Also, it’s less time consuming than a YouTube channel – video editing can be very tedious and tiring and I didn’t have a lot of energy for it. Editing audio for a podcast is more simple and something I feel like I could do consistently for a long time. Some of us think now that we have something to share, we need to use all platforms and channels to broadcast our content, but this can be overwhelming. Find one channel that fits who you are and that also provides an opportunity to reach the like-minded people that consume content on the same channel. Give it all you got and watch your audience grow.
I hope this helps get your creative juices flowing for how to strategize, create and broadcast your content. Don’t underestimate what you know – you really do have dollars in you that will stop customers in their tracks.
Marketing Redefined: SEO
What’s the last thing you googled today? Wanna know mine? I asked Google why a washing machine smells like it’s burning. This was after my son texted us, “Hello, parental beings, my washing machine smells like it’s burning, what should I do?”
Well, Google immediately displayed a page full of resources and possible answers. Each resource led me to a webpage, which provided an article or a video. I spent about ten minutes searching, reading and looking through some of the pages, then came to a conclusion: call for service. I don’t want to attempt taking it apart to change out the belt (which I could do by just following the steps on the YouTube video it pointed me to). But, like I said, I don’t want to.
This story demonstrates one moment in the life of SEO – the next term to be highlighted in our Definitions series.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s the very process that happens every time we do a search. The engine scours billions of pieces of content on the internet and evaluates thousands of factors to spit out the most relevant and the most likely answer to my question, almost like magic.
So, how is this done? More importantly, how can my website be so loved and adored by Google that it will spit my link out to whoever is searching for the answers I can help them with? And how can my business get that distinguished rank of being displayed on the first page of the Google search outcome?
These are amazing questions. And if I knew the exact answers, I would tell you and we would all benefit from hundreds of people coming to our website everyday to read about our company and be convinced to do business with us. The truth is, given that Google handles over 2 trillion searches per year (40,000 searches every second), they have incredibly brilliant people outlining over 200 ranking factors (called algorithms) that help determine the best answers to the first pages of search.
The goal for every website owner that wants more traffic is to figure out what those 200 ranking factors are and try to implement them to your own website.
When Google is scouring (indexing or crawling) the content on your website, you want to be noticed and for Google to find your website credible – that’s when they start ranking you higher. Fortunately, Google is somewhat transparent about how they rank the sites, but also, there are some secret aspects of the algorithm that can penalize your ranking as well.
As we educate ourselves and continuously work to bring relevance to our own sites, there are 3 things to keep in mind when it comes to SEO:
1. SEO is not magic. It’s not something that you swirl your wand once and all the work is done. It’s a constant process that involves research, strategy, dedicated time and hard work. It takes patience, but it’s worth it to understand the full picture.
2. SEO is changing and updating with time. There are constant updates to the algorithm – they are always trying to improve and keep from people cheating the system. You’ll obviously need a successful strategy for your SEO efforts, but it’s also important to know that old and obsolete SEO tactics that used to be effective before might not be effective now. In fact, if you continue to use a dated strategy, you may hurt your SEO more than help it. You need to be constantly learning and evolving.
3. SEO loves valuable content. Content is king. Even after all these years, one thing still remains at the top of the priority list for SEO. Fresh content is still believed to bring more value to your site than anything else. Take your thoughts and ideas and put them into action with regular content creation. Not just content for content’s sake, but real, authentic and valuable content that will help others. Like answering why a washer smells like it’s burning.
I hope this gives you a good foundation of what SEO is and how important it is for our business. Because I’m literally about to call for appliance repair to whichever company has the best SEO strategy.
Marketing Redefined: Leads
Starting this week, we’re introducing a new Definitions series, explaining more in-depth certain aspects of marketing. We know that business growth depends on some form of marketing, yet not all business owners ever stop to get educated about what goes into that. We hope this review of the fundamentals will help you develop a marketing strategy that works.
It all starts with Leads.
Most people define a lead as a “potential client or organization that has an interest in what you are offering.” Whether they encountered you through a Google ad, a mailer, a cold call or just through word of mouth, these possible customers have somehow reached out or responded back to you.
Once that contact has been made via call, email, DM, or letter, it’s now up to you to follow up on that “lead” and turn it into a sale. So, what’s the issue?
Well, a lead is not always a lead. I like to compare the entire sales process to the phases leading up to marriage. Basically, you don’t walk up to the person of your dreams that you just met for the very first time and ask for his/her hand in marriage. Why? Because it’s weird, and most likely, whether it’s business or personal, you’re going to get rejected.
Here’s how we clearly define each stage in the process with a lead to help you more effectively prepare for that wedding:
- The Subscriber Stage: This is the very beginning of the lead stage. This is when you get introduced through different channels (social media, ads) and you actually exchange contact information. Congratulations, but don’t jump to any conclusions yet.
- The Nurturing Stage: Let’s get real, once the contact information has been exchanged and the communication starts, it’s pretty common that they will ignore whatever you send, mostly because they don’t really know you. Eventually, you want to improve the interaction. How? Continue to offer valuable content, pursuing their interests and giving them more opportunities to visit your website, download resources, listen to your podcasts, register for a webinar, etc. You are nurturing your relationship during this important stage.
- The Marketing Qualified Lead Stage (MQL): As you continue to nurture, eventually they will show a genuine interest. Here’s where they finally say yes to your offers or even reach out to you for a meeting or a call. If they meet the criteria of your target market, this has now become a qualified lead.
- The Sales Qualified Lead Stage (SQL): They are now qualified and ready to buy. For most companies, this is where the hand-off happens. Marketing has generated a qualified lead; now it gets handed off to the sales department for the closure. In the dating metaphor, this is when you go ring shopping – it’s almost time to pop the question.
- The Opportunity Stage: You’ve worked hard to get here and to earn trust. Now it’s time to let them know that you are the right fit for them, where effort turns into opportunity. An opportunity to journey together for as long as you both shall live…and guess what? It sounds like this could be the happily ever after.
I hope breaking down the stages of leads helps you strategize a long-term master plan for your company, and allows even more growth to be generated as each stage is defined and nurtured.
Here’s to you and your business finding true love!
Top 3 Website Design Tips
First impressions are crazy. I read about a Princeton research project where people watched a video of political candidates for a microsecond, and then they were asked to predict who would win the election. Turns out the subjects correctly guessed the winner 70% of the time.
We make millions of snap judgments throughout the day, and once that impression is formed, it’s very hard to change it.
I know what you’re thinking: “Hanju, why are you talking about first impressions? I don’t need your help with my online dating!” But here’s the thing: this same thinking actually applies to our professional lives as well.
The big question is, what do you think is the first impression of your business? Nowadays, (much like dating), people are probably making their first impression before they even meet you based on what they see online. So… what would be their first impression of your website?
I wrote a guide to help businesses consider the 3 aspects of your website design that are absolutely essential in creating that perfect first impression. Here’s a link to the guide – but if you don’t want to download it and read through 11 pages, here’s a quick summary.
It all starts with the HERO IMAGE.
- The hero image is the first image or message (or both) that people will look at when they arrive at your website. If it doesn’t make an impact in the first nanosecond, you may have already lost the customer. How do you make sure it connects?
Glad you asked – here are my top 3 tips:
- Evoke Emotion: The image or the message should make you “feel” something. There’s a much greater chance that they will be intrigued and moved to continue reading.
- Be very clear: Your message, and how it introduces who you are/the services you offer should be obvious. Don’t make them try to figure it out or be too clever – it will just frustrate them. Tell people exactly what you do and how it benefits them.
- Tell them what to do now: This is called the “Call To Action” or CTA. Every website should have a CTA to help direct people toward eventually becoming your customer.
In the guide, I also include some great examples and visuals so you can see what others have done successfully if you want to learn more. Here’s that link again.
I hope this helps you think through how you can make a positive first impression on all the potential customers that come to your site. And if you’re single… I hope they also swipe right.
Top 3 Tips To Boost Your Instagram Engagement
I used to travel a lot for my business. And, as a total extrovert, I so much enjoy conversations with complete strangers on the plane. My own personal captive audience stuck next to me for 3-4 hours, might as well get to know each other, right? Well, not always. People love to avoid talking to me. They have their headphones on, they close their eyes, they pretend to be reading something, they don’t make eye contact, etc. I make it a game to see what opening line I can present to either make them laugh or put them at ease so we can get the ball rolling.
Over the years, I’ve heard enough stories to write a book. Something about meeting a stranger who seems very interested in you, that you feel safe with and that you’ll never see again – it allows them to share their deepest and most private information with me. I remember crying with a young woman who had just lost her husband, advising a young and brilliant woman who was in a middle of an abusive relationship that she’s worth more, even a 14-year-old kid flying to his dad’s house for the summer sharing about how to make ton of money picking up golf balls from the course next to the house. I even helped him make a list of brand names and showed him how to categorize them and what to charge people.
What does all of this have to do with Instagram engagement?
Too often the mentality behind social media posts is that as a business, we will post something educational, informative, entertaining, or even just brilliant and we wait for everyone to flood in, make comments, share my information, click on the like button…etc. But, in reality…crickets. What are you doing wrong?
You might be acting like the passengers on a plane. Not actively trying to make eye contact. Not actively figuring out the opening line to start the conversation. Not interested in others (just yourself). Not allowing other people to feel safe. It’s funny, when I tell people of all the amazing folks I’ve met and talked to over the years on the plane, they’ll tell me that they’ve been traveling for business for years and never once had a conversation with anyone. And they wonder why they might be having trouble engaging online!
So, how do you organically grow your Instagram following and engagement? Here are some practical steps to add to your daily social media processes:
1. Engage with other similar accounts everyday. Help promote them, encourage them and develop an online relationship with them. When you engage their posts, it helps them become more visible. Also, other visitors will see you active on the accounts they follow, and they might end up following you as well.
2. Write great captions. This is your opening line to start a conversation. Ask intriguing questions, state interesting facts, be funny, be real, be authentic, be human, share your pain, share your solutions…you’ll be amazed at how many people want to engage with you as well. Oh, and if someone does make a comment, reply as soon as possible. Tag their account as you are replying – this pushes the posts to the top of their followers’ feeds.
3. Post more photos of people including yourself. Sharing information about yourself builds trust and makes it safe for people to get to know you and for them to open up with you as well.
Don’t get discouraged when you are not getting a lot of likes on Instagram – it doesn’t mean people aren’t seeing and engaging. Instagram has found a new algorithm that’s redefining what “engagement” really means. For example, here are some insights for each post that help paint a bigger picture: comments, shares, link clicks, bookmarks/saves, reach, impressions, and followers. Bottom line, if you keep engaging with others, you will eventually reap the benefits from the effort you invested in the relationship.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Give me a call, or even better – let’s sit next to each other on a flight sometime soon!
Top 5 YouTube Channels To Help Your Business
We know you’re busy, and you don’t have time to explore the entire ocean of YouTube to find the resources you need. That’s why BOS Media is here – we’ve done the research for you, and we’re using these emails to deliver the knowledge.
Knowledge gives you power. Simply knowing how to do something can create momentum, ideas, confidence and so much more for your business. Watching someone do something you’ve never done might inspire you to say, ”I think I can do that too.”
Through my continuous education in YouTube University (LOL), I’ve come to rely on a handful of tried and true content creators out there that I’ve learned so much from. So, why not share?
Here are the top 5 channels every business owner should follow:
1. Perfect place to start: Sunny Lenarduzzi has been my own personal go-to for learning about everything YouTube. From growing traffic to increasing subscribers to watching how she creates honest and vulnerable content that shares her life and teaches us how to grow our business. She’s the real deal with over 500k subscribers. Here’s one of her great videos about growing your subscribers from 0 to 100 in 90 minutes. Whoa. Check it out below.
2. I have been following Pat Flynn ever since he started his podcast over ten years ago. His pure desire to truly help others succeed has been so refreshing. He’s authentic. One of the latest contributions he’s brought to my own life is teaching me how to successfully launch a podcast. Below is his tutorial on how to record, edit and publish a podcast in GarageBand. Which is still what I use to this day. Thanks Pat!
3. This dude seriously feels like my close bro who just loves to teach. He knows how to break down complicated technical tasks into an easy step-by-step process. He teaches all things online marketing and growth. He’s actually my go-to for Facebook marketing techniques, tips and strategy. For those of you interested in doing your own Facebook ads, click below for Wes McDowell’s instruction on how to do it right. It’s super current so just follow his advice and you’ll be a Facebook ad expert in 20 minutes. 🙂
4. Neil Patel. You might have already heard about him but if not, this guy is pretty legit. I know this because he not only has a huge following, but everyone I follow keeps talking about what they’ve learned from him. He talks a lot about SEO and how to drive traffic to your website. He’s a bit of a tech nerd, so his content involves some technical mumbo jumbo but it’s still not hard to follow. He loves giving tips and tricks, his content is short and sweet but very, very helpful. This will be a great introduction to some of his content that can help you right away if you want to do some SEO work on your own.
5. Have you ever been on a tutorial site and the person that’s teaching is either too slow, talks too much or takes too long to get to the point? Nathaniel Dodson (tutvid) is anything but that. He’s so efficient in teaching you how to do everything you’d ever want to do on photoshop, lightroom and video editing. He teaches how to photo manipulate, how to do color correction right, how to add sun flare, how to remove background…so much more. You can’t appreciate it fully until you see one of his tutorials. Here’s one on changing colors on apples. So cool.
| I hope this inspires you to KEEP LEARNING even in the midst of your busy schedule. If you want to talk more about any of these topics and how they can help grow your business, give me a call! |
Top 5 Books Every Business Owner Should Read
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Top 5 Podcasts To Help Your Business
BOS Media wants to see your business shine. Last week, we started sharing some of the resources and tools that we’ve found to support you in that.
For today, we’ve got some podcast recommendations. We know there’s so much noise out there – who can you listen to that is trustworthy and genuinely interested in helping you grow your business?
Here are the top 5 podcasts we suggest:
1. How I Built This (Guy Raz) He just knows how to interview successful entrepreneurs, asking them simple, human questions that I really want to know. You get to hear the guests narrate their journey from the beginning, from when they were just starting their business to when their company gets sold for billions of dollars. Great stories and lots of inspiration!
Favorite Episode: the Kenneth Cole interview. He has some profound ideas about branding.
2. Business Made Simple (Donald Miller) We use his resources as our BOS Media Group playbook and I pretty much buy everything they sell. I truly believe in their business model and soak in what they teach as far as marketing and business growth.
Favorite Episode: #189 Three Ways to Grow Your Nonprofit with Storytelling. Emphasis on how storytelling continues to be the biggest and the most important aspect of marketing.
3. Online Marketing Made Easy (Amy Porterfield) Her gift of teaching makes it very easy to follow and you just get a sense that she’s on your side. She shows people how to create courses and how to market them. She’s very down to earth and I really learn a lot from her. I will be following her lead to release our own online course someday.
Favorite Episode: #366 How to Turn Your Expertise into a Successful Course. Testimonial of one of her students following her instruction to launch a successful course.
4. The Tim Ferriss Show (Tim Ferriss) He’s the author of the book The 4-Hour Workweek. He has high-profile guests who seem to take it to another level when they talk to him, going deeper into their expertise and craft. Highly technical and philosophical as well as inspirational.
Favorite Episode: “Getting Punched and Picking Winners” You just have to listen to figure it out.
5. Armchair Expert (Dax Shepard) Okay, this doesn’t have a lot to do with business growth, but it’s super entertaining and intriguing.
Favorite Episode: #290 Adam Grant. This episode is epic in discussing Adam’s new book “Think Again”. You might not know this but Adam Grant is one of my favorite authors (as you can see in the bonus podcast episode below).
Bonus:
6. Make it Matter (Hanju and Bru). This is our Podcast…lol…BOS Media Group. This podcast is really about finding meaning in what we do and really making our life/work matter.
Favorite Episode: #7 Give and Take. We talk about the best practices of doing business that’s worth following and how it can change not only your business, but your life as well.
Hope this inspires you with new learning and growth. Please feel free to reply with any questions – I would love to talk more and support you however I can!
