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It’s really easy to buy into the idea that big payday months are your future when you run a business. But when you chase the big money, you end up creating a business that doesn’t give you a stable, sustainable income.

Talk about STRESS!

Dina Marais is here to talk to us about how to set ourselves up for success… AND the one thing that will hold you back no matter what you do in your business.

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Episode 19 – Nail Your Ads with FB and IG Advertising Specialist Michelle Bridger

BBB04B – How a Smaller Audience Means Bigger Results with Niche Expert Jason Wiehler (Business Building Blocks)

Alyson Lex 0:02
It's really tempting as a business owner to buy into the whole idea that it's big win after big win after big win. And what happens is we end up chasing those big wins. And we forget about building a really solid foundation from which we can grow, and have that sustainable income that, ultimately, is the dream that we want for our families, our future, our freedom, all of that good stuff. And so when we met Dina Moray, who talks about exactly this, we knew that we had to have her, we had to dive into that brain of hers, so that we can discover what it really takes to create that sustainable income, and then scale it up. So Dina, thanks for being here with us today. Such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I would love to start off with Why do you think that so many business owners do have that instability in their income?

Dina Marais 1:00
Well, you were so right to say, you know, we chase after the the big things, but unless you get the ground the foundation, right, you can chase as much as you want, you're not gonna you're not gonna make it. And the foundation is really for me, three things. And the first one is to really have that clarity about your niche. You know, it's not just the group of people that you work with, it's really to dive deep into Who's your who, where are they on a journey where they really need your help, your specific help. And then the next thing is your offer. So often we overload offers, we make them convoluted, and I know if your niche isn't clear, your offer is going to be confusing. And, and also, the other thing is people don't do market research, they don't really go and check. That's something that most coaches overlook. And that is really bites them in the end. And of course, the last thing is all about your mindset. If you don't believe in what you do, if you don't really buy into your niche, and if your niche is unclear, you are confused, your client is confused. And now you start doubting yourself, and you listen to your your friend next door tells you what to do. And now you jump from the one thing to the other thing, and you create this cycle of stress and scarcity. And it just doesn't die. Well one at work kind of thing. You know.

Jennie Wright 2:30
So there's a lot there, where you're talking about with, you know, if we're not setting up those foundations, and we're not making sure we have all those things sort of correctly figured out. But before we talk about fixing that issue, I do have another question. And that is, should we focus on increasing our monthly income month over month? Or should we be looking at creating like a steady, stable, regular monthly income? What do we need to be doing? I feel like sometimes we chase after those big wins in order to have that huge payday. And then we can't keep that pace up. And then it drops off the next month.

Dina Marais 3:04
Absolutely. First and foremost created stable income, really know that you're, you know that you have an offer, that you know that your overall offer definitely converts that you can help someone one on one, for example, and from there, write your overall offer, you can now define your business model so that you can create regular recurring income, you can then go off to the big high ticket thing, where you have the big payday, and you're going to have a membership. So but first and foremost is that first stable income, and that shows that your niche is converting that your offer is converting that you have a winner. That is the most important thing to do. First, I would say in my experience,

Alyson Lex 3:53
you know, it's funny way back in the day, we had a conversation with Michelle Bridger on ads. And one of the things that she talked about was, make sure that you have an offer that works and then scale up. And so really, what that's telling me is that there's this foundational piece across business, prove the concept. And then you can grow from there. Because it's the same as with ads, whether you're using ads to grow your business or not, you still need to make sure you know what works before you keep building the business. That's what you're saying. Right?

Dina Marais 4:30
Exactly, exactly. You can't scale you can't have an ad. You know, I see so many coaches go in, they dive in and they have this evergreen webinar. And nothing converts because you haven't proven that it actually works. There's a lot of tweaking going on in getting to that sweet spot, no matter how what an expert you are or how whatever, you've got to go through the process.

Alyson Lex 4:55
Okay, so how do we set ourselves up for that? stapling, What are my step by step action items here?

Dina Marais 5:04
Okay, first thing is make sure that your niche is clear, really dive in there, you know, and really check in Who am I working with? Where are they? What are the scenarios that they find themselves in? Where they need my help? You know, no two coaches are the same no to weight loss coaches do the exactly the same thing or business coaches or relationship coaches? And there's that distinction of where does your client need your help? In other words, the problem that you solve is, does your client? In other words, is it a Top of Mind problem for them? And that's where the market research comes comes in? Is it a Top of Mind problem? And are they willing to pay for it to go away? You know, that's really awesome. So check your niche, and then check your offer of what you are offering. Is it what they want? And does it give them the result, the tangible result that they are after, and then is to package them in a way that makes sense to your clients, you don't want to overwhelm them. I love a webinar that I saw that this guy and he had this thing that says that you not Hugh Jackman, or, and the thing is that if you offer, it's like different offers, you get a first date offering to get a managed proposal, you want to first do the first date offer. And I don't mean a low cost offer, I mean, a one result offer where your client gets a specific result. Because when they get that from you, they want more, they want to work more with you. But if you dump a whole marriage proposal, even if they buy it, they're not going to finish it. It's just too much. So offer niche market research. And then definitely sort out your mindset Darling, you got to believe in what you do.

Jennie Wright 7:02
I agree with you on needing to believe what you do. And I also really agree with you on understanding your niche. And we're going to recommend that if you need to know more about your niche, we want you to check out the resource that we have, which is the episode that Jason Wheeler did it is earlier on in our podcast, and you'll be able to find that we'll put that in our notes. And also we referenced the Michelle Bridger episode, you'll also find that in our notes as well, or you could just scroll through the episodes and find it. But I want to talk to you about this tweaking thing. So we talked about creating an offer and then tweaking it to make sure that we have something that's viable, and that'll work before we scale. But how long do we tweak for? How do we know if it's going to work? And if we're all we're doing is tweaking, do we abandon and make something new? It seems like I just want to understand that a little bit better.

Dina Marais 7:51
You really ascertain that with your market research, to make sure and you don't need to do to do that indefinitely. Although I love to do market research, because it continuously Tell me where my clients are at. However you need, you want to confirm, you want just to do a nice reality check to confirm that what it is that you offer that that is what they want. And you know, once it converts, you can use it. It doesn't just say that you have to, you know, tweak it indefinitely. You want to get to a place where the offer converts, what do you do? If it doesn't convert? Well, then you have to go back to check if your what the problem that you solve is that the real thing for your client, maybe you just need to tweak it in terms of it's not about the weight loss so much as it is about their health. See what I mean. So it's just to really tune into your car, you only get this information when you talk to people.

Jennie Wright 8:59
So are you recommending when you're talking about market research? Are you recommending that we get on the phone with our potential clients? Are you recommending surveys with our potential clients? You know, are we hiring an agency to do this? Like how are we doing this market research,

Dina Marais 9:11
I'm talking about getting someone on the phone or on a zoom call, you know, set up a chat for 15 minutes. frame it as this and I'm not going to sell you anything because that's what but good people have the thing you're going to sell me anything. You want data. You want to categorize your data you want to make sure that if we talk to five or 10 people, it confirms that the problem that you solve is a problem that they want to go away and they will pay for it and the result that you can promise them is what they want in the end. That's all the new everwhere the new you can go and stabilize it and your offer and you can start to scale it further.

Alyson Lex 9:55
Okay, so I want to dive into this because I have a client that she did a ton of work Get research. People wanted this thing. She created a lead magnet. They downloaded it in droves. She created a low level workshop. Crickets. So they wanted the thing. But and they said they wanted to pay for it. They said, Yes, I'm in for this workshop, she did a poll. If I charge you this much money, would you be it? Yes, I'm totally and sign me up. And then when it was time to actually sign people up, nobody signed up. So they said they wanted it. They acted like they wanted it. They downloaded the free stuff they showed interest. And then when it was time to make that purchase, they didn't. So is it worth tweaking? Or is it worth saying the market research was wrong? What do we do in that kind of situation?

Dina Marais 10:47
I really think it's a mindset. I really think, you know, we can really sabotage ourselves with our mindset, everything looks right. And then that first time that the client doesn't sign up in like five seconds, because they save their word. Now I start to doubt it. Now I started to resist this. Now I start to look for reasons why it's not going to work. And I know what I'm talking about, because I've had firsthand experience in this, that everything is perfect. It just doesn't want to work until I got my mindset, right. And until I really believed in what I was doing. So well, I would definitely go and check that out.

Alyson Lex 11:26
Yeah, so talk talk to me a little bit more about that. How did you how did you begin to work that out?

Dina Marais 11:33
Well, my thing was that I allowed my and that's what many coaches do. And that's what the self sabotaging comes in my I allowed my current results, to dictate and to control my thoughts. So anything that went wrong in the past, I was projecting that into the future. And the present a guide I kept on having the images that I formed in my mind was not of winning and seeing what I want. But I continuously referred back to what I didn't want to do how it didn't work before. And inevitably, that lowers your vibration, then you start to fear it, you start to doubt it and you take dismal action. You You know, you lose your incentive, you lose your motivation and your inspiration to really work on seeing this through. And the more you do that, the more you start backpedaling, backpedaling, and you think this isn't gonna work anyway. So mindset is absolute nice, it is 90% of your success. You know, it's important, it's very important. And often it's and it's, you know, it's not rated high enough, you got to have your vibration in alignment. And it's not whose stuff it's energy. It is. It's science, you've got to have your vibration, in alignment with what it is that you want to create. And so often as well, you know, we we want to control things, we are so afraid of the rejection, and it's not gonna work that we want to start control everything. And that is when we just can just say goodbye, because now we're interfering with the universe.

Jennie Wright 13:29
So let's talk about the mindset peeps, because Allison and I are not mindset people necessarily. We definitely do the implementation piece and the strategy piece. And I know that we personally work on our mindsets, because that's very important. But I would like to sort of go down this little mindset train a little bit more with you, what steps do we need to take first? So in this sort of mindset piece to get ourselves a right with it? As a business owner?

Dina Marais 13:58
I think you got to be really clear about what it is that you want. What do you want to create, because we, you know, we live in a third universe, we think, and we act and we think, feel and act, I always call it the supply chain of the mind, think, feel and act and then we have a result. If you don't like your results, you got to change the way you think you got to change the way that you then feel the emotions because if you don't change the way you're looking at something I love what Wayne Dyer said. When you change the way you look at something, the things you look at change. And if if you focus on what it is that you don't want, then you're going to create those images you're going to that's what you're going to attract. That's the law of attraction. Everybody knows about the law of attraction. So I always teach my clients you got to own of ownership. You got to own your vibration. You got to know and becoming aware of how you think. What are you thinking and how you feeling because That's the the action that you're going to take. So that is that is, in a nutshell, mindset is really become clear about what you want and cultivate those images that you really focus on.

Alyson Lex 15:14
Do you? Yes, at all costs? I like that, do you recommend something like so I have a cork board that lives on my wall behind my monitor. And it's really just to remind me of stuff. And I thank you cards and stuff on there. But would you turn that into some kind of vision board? How would you like, really put that into action? for yourself, like to focus?

Dina Marais 15:40
vision board is nice, it's very nice, you can have, you know, posted everywhere, it depends on where your mindset is at, you know, if you find yourself that you drop in vibration all the time, if you find yourself that you start doubting, you know, we can get addicted to the drama of things happening, or things not happening, depending on to what extent you know, you have like a scarcity mindset, or a stress mindset about money, money not coming in quick enough, then you will, you will continuously feed yourself, the fear and the scarcity, and it's not happening. And what you want to do instead is you want to remind yourself and become conscious about how you feel, so that you can become aware of what you're thinking. And that takes work. That is always work in the in the world to do. And that is to change your mindset, your energy, and you've got to really discipline your body make the commitment, and discipline your mind, you've got to train it like a puppy.

Jennie Wright 16:51
So that's consistency, because training a puppy takes consistency. Exactly. So it's work, but it's work on consistent basis,

Dina Marais 16:58
until it really takes root, you know, until you become it becomes a habit for you to tune in to what's working versus what's not working. Because it's a whole shift to make from what's not working, what's not there yet. And to make the decision to not allow, you know, the money not showing up in the bank account the guy the person not saying yes yet to let that control your thoughts. Because if you allow that to happen, then you will continuously think about what's not working. And that is the way to attract. That makes sense.

Alyson Lex 17:37
Of course, absolutely. perfect sense. I want to know where we can find out more about you so that the people who are listening can really dive into the foundation, the mindset, all of the good stuff that goes into growing the right way with you.

Dina Marais 17:55
I think a great way to start with that is to get my consistent 10 Km month framework. It's a free business framework, where it spells out everything that that you know, that we've been talking about, and gives much more. And there's a video series as well that is connected to this, to explain this in depth. And you can get that@bit.li forward slash 10k framework as easy as that.

Jennie Wright 18:27
And we'll make sure to have that link for everybody in our show notes as well. So no worries there. If you didn't, if you didn't grab that right away, we'll make sure that you've got that. So let's just say it one more time for us, though. bit.li. forward slash 10 as in the digit 10k. framework. Perfect. All right, and we'll make sure that people get access to that no problem. And I just want to take a second and talk about a couple takeaways that Allison and I have from today's episode. The takeaways are things that stood out for us with what we were talking about today. And things that we think that it would be helpful for you to implement. So mindset is 90% of your success. Even though when I came into doing this business, I didn't think mindset was a thing. It's a thing. And I really think that we need to look at it. And and this is something that we really talked about today. So I think it's great. And you have to lay a really great foundation if you want to grow your business, having programs and products and services and chasing after those really big months but without having a good foundation that you can fall back on that's going to make that consistent income. That's where you're going to need to focus so that you have that successful sort of track going forward for the long term.

Alyson Lex 19:43
My big thing, I've said this before, know your niche, your niche, as my illustrious others on the podcast would say today, know your niche because if you want any shot at being successful, you have to know who your Serving what they need all of that. The last thing that I really liked is you're not always going to hit a homerun off the bat, you have to be prepared to tweak and improve your offer and your marketing in order to land on that thing that's really going to work. And a lot of times people give up too quick. So I really liked all of that. And those were my two big takeaways today.

Jennie Wright 20:28
When we thought about this episode, and Allison and I were working on the concept of what this would be, we weren't sure where this was going to go. And it actually, just as we suspected, it did go a little off the track where we thought it would go. And that's actually really, really good. Because we absolutely had a great time today talking about mindset, and talking about foundation with our businesses. And I just want to say thank you so much for being on the podcast with us today.

Dina Marais 20:54
It's such a pleasure, I really had a great time.

Jennie Wright 20:56
Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. And I just wanna remind everybody, wherever you're listening to podcasts, you can follow this podcast with Allison and I, for the System to THRIVE. You can also go to System to thrive.com and check out our other episodes. Don't forget to grab our headline content generator and I always say the name long but also knows what I mean. And if you go to System to thrive.com, you'll see it it's a pop up there and you can grab it, no problems. And I just wanna say thanks, everybody for listening, and we'll be back again soon. Answering another big question.