Don’t Send Cold Messages. Do This Instead.

For me, 2021 was like drinking water from a firehose for 3 main reasons:

Forced to wrong size: 126x84, natural is 330x220!

It was my first full year as a new mom. Having a 16 month old is very self-fulfilling but obviously has stretched me in ways I didn’t think I could be stretched!
Add being an entrepreneur. The ups and downs in entrepreneurship are easy to miss if it’s a part time thing, but going full-time brings extreme highs and lows.
The changes Apple made to iOS completely changed the Facebook and Instagram world! The way ads used to work simply stopped, and we had to find new ways to market ourselves in 2021.

My team and I have been focusing on showing our audience how to stop cold-messaging, which is what I talk about in my book, Celebrity Magnetism. To set aside everything your upline might be telling you and just read and implement the concepts in this book! It begins with a story that brought everything about for me.

My parents were entrepreneurs, and they worked in a gym so it’s safe to say my life started in a gym and I never really left. My family worked out all the time and was very conscientious about how they looked, so after school I became a personal trainer and always wanted to learn more. I wanted to change my body so I could feel better in my own skin. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about trauma and how this shaped my beliefs and self-value as an adult. I was conditioned to believe my worth was in how I looked, and I assumed everyone else lived that way too, which made me a GREAT salesperson at my job. Within 1 month, I was manager. Within a year, at only 21 years old I was managing the entire gym and was the youngest manager in the whole company. I deeply understood what it was like to be uncomfortable in one’s own body, so I truly knew customers’ minds and could sell like crazy.

I also had a desire for time and financial freedom. My family always seemed to have money, with a big house and lots of trips, but there was a feeling of “never having enough money” and bills were high. I wanted to ensure I had “enough money” and maintained the lifestyle I was used to.

Within a year of graduating university and becoming a trainer, I met my husband and we both knew we wanted to pursue dreams of selling stuff online. We knew we had to go all-in, but this was LONG before I knew of anyone else doing it successfully. We moved to Vietnam, got teaching jobs, and tried selling everything from art to handmade scarf rings. When we weren’t seeing consistent income, our motivation would slip and we’d have breakdowns and fight, and I hit a wall.

We left Vietnam and I felt like it had been too long, and I had nothing to show for it. I got back into the fitness industry, in training and development. I taught everything I knew about sales in the 2 largest fitness companies in Canada: one was great at selling memberships, and the other shined in personal training. (When you can sell $10,000 personal training packages, you learn to sell ANYTHING.)

Ten years later I had the biggest ah-ha moment of my life, and realized why every past business had failed. At 2AM, I woke up from a dream where I’d seen The Fitness Leader Institute (the company I have now). I saw myself teaching in the health, wellness and beauty space, how to share their passion and make a living with it. I never realized I hadn’t incorporated my “secret sales sauce” into my business before! All this time, I’d been putting my product out there hoping it was enough to get people to buy, and if they didn’t, it wasn’t any good and I should quit. What I’d been teaching at my job for SO long was exactly what my own business needed: A strategy to get people interested, and take them from prospect to someone who’d take action. I knew when I woke up from that dream what my mission was.

A friend of mine at the time was actually selling Beachbody. I had a blog at the time, and wondered if I could interview her because she is the only other person I knew that was making money online. Turns out, she was struggling with what to post on social media and attracting new customers, so I asked if I could create something for her and her team to try out. I created a social posting strategy that used the “secret sales sauce” that I’d used successfully in the fitness industry for so many years, and we’d see if it worked on social media too.

When I realized I could help MORE people by giving additional training, I created a course along with it called “Social Selling Secrets” that focused on the 12 pillars of getting your audience to pay attention. In normal sales scenarios, you can build rapport through body language, words, and tone. On social media, all you have is language so it has to be intentional, strategic and consistent. Guess what happened?! After trying my social posting strategy, a friend said to me, “My page is attracting people like CRAZY!” She hit a rank in her business she’d never reached before.

Then I started to see the same momentum in my business! I only had 7,000 followers when I hit 7 figures. It showcased that it’s not about how many followers you have, it’s about how good you are at getting people to take action. There’s a false belief that we need lots of followers and engagement, but we don’t and I’m living proof of that!

There are 4 main components you need in your social media strategy to get people to come to you, which is laid out in my book, Celebrity Magnetism:

Social Media is your place to make people aware of you. There are certain types of posts you need to use for this that we teach at the Fitness Leader Institute.

It’s not about sales right now. Think of your social media as your dating profile. You just need to stand out by articulating what makes you different, and communicate what your ideal customer is looking for. In order to do that, you’ve gotta know your ideal “suitor.” The more you know your ideal customers, the easier it is to craft posts that will get their attention.

Get people to engage beyond a “like” or a “share” by getting them to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

(It takes about 10 times for someone to be aware of an offer before they engage or buy!)

Move them to a more intimate space so they can get to know you better.

In the marketing world, this might be a Facebook group, email, or private space outside social media. (A “Freebie” - also called a Lead Magnet - is great for this because it gets their email addresses while providing value and establishing you as an authority!)

Get them to subscribe to you.

This can be getting their email (to get the Freebie), or joining your FB group, etc! YES, email is stronger than ever and it’s not going away. It has a much higher return on investment and lets you take them outside the noisy world of social media.

You can spend tons of time creating reels, stories and posts but if you’re not providing value, your audience won’t grow. High value is a great freebie to give them, a group where you’re sharing information, running a motivating challenge, or providing support and accountability, etc. Then if you’re helping overcome limiting beliefs in your emails, showing them what’s possible, you’re stretching that value into different arenas instead of just spraying and praying on social media, where your stuff is BARELY getting delivered to people!

This is the 4-part system we break down in even MORE detail in Celebrity Magnetism! You can go from “Hey Gurl” hustling to a more authentic system.

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

Your delivery rate on posts is around 1-2% if you’re not paying for ads. If you want them to see a consistent message in a less noisy place, you’ve gotta get your potential customers OUTSIDE of social media.
They say every email is worth about $5, and social media only has a 30% return on investment! You can take them outside the noise of social media. You’re competing for their attention over there. Many people start their day by opening their email, so it’s a great place for you to be.
Although it was one of the most challenging and THE most stretching year of running my business, I’m grateful for the wisdom that comes from being uncomfortable.
I LOVE running free Facebook groups. Nope, Facebook is not going away, because it gives you the ability to advertise for free in groups where people have already said “yes,” I want to be in this more intimate space with you. It provides opportunities to have specific conversations you NEED to have in order to get people to take action!