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Last week I shared with you what I loved about the Badass Business Summit. I also shared some key takeaways that I thought were great tips you could use for the next event you go to. This week I want to share with you some of the biggest takeaways I had from each speaker at the event. All of the speakers were SCN members, which is such a beautiful thing. Let me break it down for you.
Speaker #1: ”Be the Shark”- Stevie Dawn Carter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steviedawnblakely/
She talked a lot about momentum, your mission, and how to grow your business. She said, “You cannot grow your business while living on the surface level.” How many of us live on the surface level of what we think people want to hear? What do we think we should say? We really only talk at this surface level with clients or marketing.
You should also think about how you might be living on the surface level from a place of growth. What are you investing in? How are you growing?
She talked about momentum. The way that she related the science of momentum to business ownership and to building momentum was to build your mass. You build your mass to continue to grow. You, as a person, have to get bigger. The only way to get bigger is to invest in certain things to take your foot off the brake and allow you to gain speed.
So what are you doing to grow and build momentum? Where are you putting the brake on yourself? Is it fear? Insecurity? Doubt? A lack of competence? All these things come up for so many of us.
She encouraged everybody to find a brake accountability partner. A partner that can say, “Hey, you’re putting the brakes on yourself. Knock that shit off! Take your foot off the brake and move on! Stop with this bullshit!” #stopyourbullshit.
Speaker #2: “Put on Your Sales Hat”- Steven Wallace
https://www.linkedin.com/in/businessresilienceking/
The biggest takeaway I got is the difference between marketing activities and sales activities. He said, “Marketing gets you contacts. Marketing gets you names on a list. It gets people on your social media. It’s all marketing. But the sales activity is having the conversation.“
They’re on your list. Now what? Those are the things that we’re not doing. We aren’t reaching out for those conversations. We’re not asking for the call or sharing about our new product or service.
We spend so much time on lead generation or marketing while thinking that’s sales activity. But it’s not. Then we wonder why sales may be falling flat, or we’re not growing, or where we want to be.
If you are lacking sales, is what you’re doing actual sales activity? Or is it marketing activities?
For a lot of us, it’s kind of overwhelming. I think the first step you need to take is being able to differentiate whether what you’re doing is marketing or sales. Then, figure out what you need to do for your sales activity. If you’re struggling, I’d be happy to share with you some of the ideas they gave us. If you’re not sure how to differentiate them, then shoot me a DM and let’s talk about it.
Speaker #3- “Boss Uncaged Branding”- S.A Grant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannol/
This was so over my head in a lot of ways. He was just so good. He lives, eats, and breathes branding. This speaker was mind-blowing.
He gave us these worksheets. It was very overwhelming to me just because there’s so much here that I’ve not done for my brand. He gave us the QR code to share his worksheets. I’d be happy to share it just send me a DM.
One of the biggest things that he said was, “Look at all of you. Why are you all not wearing your brand right now? I don’t understand. There’s like one person in here that has their brand on. You spend all this money on clothes and bags and shoes and backpacks and hats and all this shit. You think nothing of spending money on it. Why don’t you have your brand on it? I don’t understand why you guys are not wearing your brand. So that you become your logos, your colors, and your style. Everything just becomes so recognizable.”
That thought was so powerful. He said that it starts a conversation, especially if you’re somewhere socially and you see a logo.
Speaker #4: ”Sharing Wisdom” Eric Rogell
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericrogell/
Wisdom comes from living, deepening your knowledge through experience, and the failures and mistakes. It comes from life experiences. Here’s my biggest takeaway…we’ve heard people say to share your story. What was your biggest hardship? Where did you come from?
Many of us think…what’s my story? How does that have anything to do with my business? You have to share your story.
I’ve talked to multiple people that say, I don’t have a story. This speaker reframed it that it’s not about the story, it is in the lessons that you’ve learned through life. What knowledge and wisdom have you gained that is going to save somebody time because you share your experience?
Everybody has wisdom and knowledge to share. Don’t be afraid to actually share it. It’s not about having a rags-to-riches story.
Speaker #4: “Selling Without Sleaze” Donnie Boivin and Kevin Snow
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnieboivin/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinesnow/
Donnie said, “They only have objections when they feel like they are being sold to.” This just came up in a conversation inside one of the masterminds in the Accelerated Business Alliance.
One of the women said, “I’ve been reaching out, doing some cold outreach, and doing these DMS to these people about this webinar. I’m getting this objection that really doesn’t make sense.”
It was very obvious that they felt like they were being sold to, and they were giving her this immediate objection. So she had to rework the way that she was approaching these conversations so they didn’t feel like they were being sold to.
Shift your thought process to stop trying to get to a point of close, and get to a point of closure. Meaning getting a decision, like getting an answer. Is that a yes?
Get to a place of closure meaning a yes or no or next step. It’s really when you can shift your mindset to what the goal of this conversation is to just get some level of closure.
Speaker #5: “Building a Community” Pablo Gonzalez
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablotheconnector/
I signed up for his boot camp because what he was teaching about how to create a community around your podcast was so mind-blowing. He basically was saying to turn your podcast into an internet talk similar to Oprah. People are just so committed to Oprah that no matter who they bring on, they cannot wait to be there and see her interview her guests. He talked about doing it in a way with zoom so people can interact. It was so powerful.
Speaker #6- “Conscious Culture” Melanie Booher
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-booher/
How can we really create a good workplace? It was really about creating a culture for your business in general so that everybody that comes into it knows and understands what that culture is. What is tolerated and excepted? They know what your standards are. What do and don’t you stand for?
Whether you’re hiring employees, or you’re hiring 1099, you can create a beautiful culture of things. She calls it a “thrive.” Here are some questions to consider when building your culture:
- What are you doing to improve?
- Do you have standard operating procedures to make it easy for your employees or contractors?
- Are you setting them up for success, or are you just throwing them to the wolves and telling them to figure it out?
- Do you have defined values and behaviors?
- What values does your company stand behind?
Somebody asked, “What do I do for my contractors? I can’t do a big cookout or something like if you were in a workplace.” She talked about giving them time off, but still paying them. Can you do that? Maybe you can send gift cards for them to go do something with their family. It’s all about creating culture.
Speaker #7: LinkedIn Strategist, Rachel Simon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raksimon/
Anytime you can learn more about LinkedIn, it’s amazing. What I love the most about this is it’s no different than any other coach or consultant in any industry. Everybody has their little tricks of the trade that are so different.
One of the tricks she had was LinkedIn added this feature now where you can ring somebody’s bell. Then, it sends you a notification to go see their content. She takes it a step further. If she wants to be sure she’s constantly commenting on somebody’s posts, she saves it as an actual bookmark.
She has an entire folder of bookmarks that just says LinkedIn connections. So she just goes to that bookmark, and then she just goes through each one of those pages and can quickly comment on their stuff, see what they’re up to, reach out, or send them a message. If you scroll their activity, and not just their posts, it actually shows the things that they’ve commented on too. It’s a great way to get to their second connections and get your name in front of even more people. I thought that was a really powerful little tip.
Speaker #8- “Custom Sales Process” Ryan Kassner
His entire focus was on creating a sales plan with expectations. Really setting yourself up so that you have all the steps to make it into a plan for yourself. There were 5 key steps to his sales process:
- Planning- identifying your client, their habits, their behaviors, and their journey.
- Building rapport.
- Discovery and education.
- Presentation.
- Decision.
Inside each one of these five steps, you lay out certain things. So with every sales call you go into, you have this plan and you’re going through it.
He talked about creating a checklist, which I thought was really great because it allows you to really work people through your pipeline so much easier. You know exactly where you’re at with them in relation to these 5 steps.
Speaker #9: Champions 90: Donnie Boivin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnieboivin/
Danny says to find somebody that will give you advice that makes you look at them and say, “Fuck you!” He’s talking about the advice that just hits you so hard that it’s like a slap in the face!
That was my slap in the face. We’ve heard all of these things so many times, but then some at one point, somebody’s going to say it in a way that just hits you. I don’t know if it will hit you the same way it hit me.
He talked about building your business to freedom. Are you building a business that gives you freedom? Or have you built a business that’s just another shitty job for yourself? You’re still a slave to it, and you’re your own boss of just a job.
What was so powerful to me was when he said, “You have two choices. You can live and love the life you have, and turn off the dream.”
Sometimes it’s okay to be happy and content with the life that you have. But if you can’t turn off that dream, then you have to go all in to get to that dream.
Champions 90
This is a challenge that Danny introduced. It’s 90 days, with no breaks. My immediate thought was that’s hustle culture. I know we all deserve a break. The reality is, it’s not about the hustle. It’s about discipline and the dream.
You can get champions 90 done in about 1.5-2 hours max, every single day. This is not about the business. It is about building the dream. The dream that you’re trying to create. You can dedicate 2 hours a day and still go lay in your pool from time to time. It’s not about this toxic hustle culture.
If I’m going to give you my biggest takeaway it’s that everything that I learned at that summit was a shift in perspective on how you view things.
You can view sales negatively, or you can view them as a fun way to get to meet people, to get answers, and to grow your business. Maybe you view branding as overwhelming, but you can view it as a way that you become recognizable. Everything is a perspective shift. It’s all in the stories that you’ve created in your head about certain things.
When I was thinking “Why am I not up on that stage? Why am I not up there?” That’s a brake I’ve put on myself. I haven’t applied to be on any stages yet. We’re talking about taking the strategic action that needs to be taken to grow both personally and professionally to go after the dream. If you don’t want to do that, then be grateful for where you’re at.
Stop trying to grow your business alone.
You can grow it so much faster with help and being surrounded by other people. So stop trying and go find a tribe. Get yourself in a room with other people. I don’t care if it’s virtually or in person. It’s game-changing.
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