Kim welcomes Michelle Nedelec to the show. A kindred spirit who spent her time failing forward until it all finally clicked and she realized it was up to her to determine what success is.

In today’s episode she talks about both online and offline marketing and where to start to see the most results.

Michelle Nedelec has over 20 years of experience in Executive Coaching, working with clients ranging from 8 figures to solopreneurs.  Michelle runs the creative side of her Infusionsoft Done-For-You Marketing Tech services company helping entrepreneurs set up and maintain their Infusionsoft (Keap Max Classic) through her company, Awareness Strategies at AwarenessStrategies.com

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Transcript
 

Welcome to the author to authority podcast and today I am so thrilled to have Michelle natelec here with us and one of the reasons is I think there's a lot of confusion today with entrepreneurs about whether they should be building their business online or offline. So I'm quite interested in today's conversation with Michelle and we're gonna be focusing online versus offline marketing for entrepreneurs and what does that mean and what does that look like? So Michelle has over 20 years experience in executive coaching, working with clients ranging from solo preneurs to eight figure clients. She runs the creative side of her infusion Soft, done for you marketing tech service company, helping entrepreneurs to set up and maintain their infusion Soft through her company awareness strategies. So welcome to the show, Michelle, thank you for having me, I'm super excited to be here. Are you impressed? That was a really great opening. Now, why is that well articulated? There's some hard stuff in there, I'm going well, I think that's meant for print, not waiting just laughing because I always have my guests give me their bios because everyone's like, oh I love your introductions, Yeah, I didn't write a single word of it, Michelle. I would love to start the show by just having you share a little bit about who you are and how did you come to this place where you know, you're doing this executive coaching and you know, helping entrepreneurs with their marketing, Awesome. Well, try and give you that kind of the highlight version and we can delve into whatever you like. But basically in 2003 I started a speaking company and we started training Bob proctor seminars and we quickly morphed into doing our own seminars into just expanding that business going into the mindset. I started another company that was all about being able to help people to change their mindsets and then the executive coaching, specializing in business. And eventually we got our award, very prestigious award for our work with PTSD. So to me understanding the mind and how we create change as quickly as possible. Was fascinating and it was particularly fascinating in the entrepreneurial world because entrepreneurial are infamous for being able to take information, apply it right away in order to be able to get the result right away and that to me was fantastic and fascinating. You have no choice there was that kind of helped push the results along. People are more way more motivated when it comes to money than they are in their health and their relationship, pretty sure that's what it was. Yeah, So in about 2014, 15, somewhere in there, people started asking for more content online, so they wanted videos and they wanted to be able to consume the information when they were available to as opposed to having to be in a course and things like that or wanting the recordings of the courses and being able to follow it. So we were a little scrambled by that because my goal had been to make sure that I was always there for people, we wanted to run our business a little differently, which I think in retrospect was kind of a mistake that we did it all kind of face to face and and not being able to incorporate the digital aspects as quickly as we could have. So we'll talk about that later as to one lessons I learned because there was a lot of really expensive ones there, you don't want to learn on your own. Uh so we started, I started putting together kind of the software that I needed. I went to masterminds and um did what my coaches told me to do, we created this lovely thing that I now affectionately called frank and wear and unfortunately I had a love hate relationship with frank every time there is an update or some sort of thing, he'd start popping an eye out or losing a limb and I was like okay, there's gotta be a better way. And then I went to my partner in business and pleasures, we like to say brad Mooney, I think everybody needs a brand in the pocket. I said can you just take this over? And he was so frustrated with it being an I. T. Guy. He found infusion soft at a conference, he said I want to do this, I said you do whatever you want to take it off my hands. And after that we've had this perfect kind of love affair with tech meaning that I don't do any of it, which is why I'm in love with it now and he does all of it, which is fabulous and we through the process of going to mastermind things like that, we realized nobody knows how to do this, it's not their jam, they shouldn't know how to do it. They're good at writing, they're good at speaking, they're good at doing their thing that they're super good at and experience that and text not it. And even if tech is it, they probably shouldn't be doing their own anyways because the cobbler's Children are never wearing shoes and all of that fun stuff so that's how we got into it. And uh yeah, we're loving every minute of it and it still it keeps growing. We've recently become certified by the Canadian government for their Canadian digital adoption program, which was super excited about and we just keep wanting to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Yeah Canada I love Canada, I loved what you said there about making the mistakes and wanting to help people not to make those same mistakes and that is one of my goals as well. I spent No probably 12 to 15 years as an entrepreneur failing forward but not succeeding. Oh and you know let me back up a little bit because I think this is important too and I think a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck on. Yeah, but I've been in business for your X amount of years and I'm not a millionaire so what so what are you happy and what you do? Do you love what you do are you narrowing down who you love to work with things that you're good at and where you're at. Because I think a lot of people define well historically we have always defined success as kind of are you in that top echelons of society And fortunately I think in the 90s that started to change from the me generation into more of a hey I want to be out in nature and I want to experience life and all this kind of fun thing. But somehow we still are stuck 30 years later in this idea that I'm not successful if I don't achieve this much monetary goal and I'm gonna disagree wholeheartedly on that because I think if you can start to figure out who you are as an individual and you can start to figure out what you're good at and you can start to figure out who you like to associate with. You are on a fast track path to success in that, that is success, that's me a success. If I, if I'm happy doing what I'm doing, I love, you know, petting my dog and looking at the mountains, this is Nirvana, the rest is entertaining. Um and and keep in mind, I help entrepreneurs become millionaires, but it starts with breaking it down and backing up the bus a little bit and going, okay, what do you love to do? What do you want to do? How do you want to spend your life in your daytime doing things because that is what success is. I just want to not be the jerk that I was yesterday and if I can be less of a jerk today, I am successful. If I can make you happy in this moment, I am successful. If I can make you enjoy this moment that we're spending together a little More and lighten the load off of you. That to me is success and the rest is icing on the cake. Yeah. You know, I love how you said that and what most people don't realize is that you know, if you've earned 1000 or $5,000 in your business, you're in that top Echelon, right? You're rocking maybe keep doing it. Most businesses quit before they ever even make $10,000. Absolutely. I tell my story when I started in business, I was 23 years old, I was up in the Northwest Territories, you know, next to santa claus. Uh he was very successful. I on the other hand, uh started tanning salon and electronic store and a bed and breakfast all in the nineties, early nineties before the internet was a thing and there was too much population wasn't there? I think there was about 5000 maybe, maybe. Uh that was during tourist season one, our population double. It was, there was a lot of lessons learned on that one. So needless to say that didn't quite work out well not needless to say, but my relationship didn't work out. Therefore the businesses didn't work out. I went back south, started another business, that one didn't work, it started another business, that one didn't work. And people listened to my story when I was a little bit of detail and they're like girl I wanted business, did you start? And just close because it didn't work and there are a lot of them and there were nuggets of success. There were tons of lessons learned in them that I kept bringing forward kept bringing forward, which then allowed me to be able to help people to um set their targets to their businesses smarter, more effective and it's like, no, this is the thing and I see when you're off track because I've done that, you know, I see where you're at because I've done that, trust me, there's not many mistakes in business you can make that I haven't done um why I think ultimately spiritually it was so that I could help other people because if I had just done it right, I wouldn't necessarily have the empathy of the sympathy to be able to see where they're at and help them to get to where they want to be an understanding that you know, we're attached to our our babies, this is my entrepreneur baby and I don't want to let it go and and I get that and here's how you get beyond that and and go to where you really want to get to, which in the end for most of us is I wanna make some money at this time and I wanna have fun doing it, but I also want to make some money out of it, you know, I can so relate, I spent many, many years in, you know direct sales, network marketing, uh multilevel marketing and that trying to, you know get to that success and like you, I had those nuggets, I had those times when you know, I saw some, you know pretty good results, but then I had times when I just, you know, I just didn't and it was so frustrating and finally I was in a company, I just, I prayed a lot and God took me different places and I learned a whole lot of different lessons and he finally took me into a company where someone mentored me and that's what made all the difference. And I can't say I saw, you know, huge success, but I saw a lot more success than I had ever seen. And then during that time, well, I guess about seven years in I started ghostwriting just as a way to earn extra money. And now, here I am a publisher Nice. And all of those lessons that I learned throughout those years you said you carried those lessons with you and I did the same thing I learned, I learned, I failed, I failed, I learned, I learned how to bit learned failed. You know, it just went back and forth in this vicious circle. And then finally when I started the publishing company, that was when all of it kind of came together and I was able to, you know, have success. Like I'd never thought I could absolutely, so little fun fact. If I were going to go on a trip to somewhere that I've never been before and have no idea what I'm getting myself into. You're exactly the kind of person I want to take on that trip because what happens, we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna get through, we're gonna go on and we're gonna have a lot of fun doing it. It's an adventure. Exactly. And sometimes the adventure takes you to places that you have no clue what you're doing. Exactly. It's all good. And I think that's important for people to know, especially, I think especially authors, because it becomes so easy to kind of get stuck in our own heads of, I have this awesome story to tell and to bring it out and and and and it becomes part of you almost more than a business does in that. It's my story, it's my interpretation of the world, that's my whatever. And if it doesn't sell, it's really easy to take it personally that they didn't like me. And that's not true at all. It's not true in any way, shape or form and it's just being able to get your story out is paramount and then surrounding yourself by people that have made mistakes that can see where you're making it and give you those little tweaks along the and oftentimes it's just those little tweaks that all of a sudden you're rails, get your wheels get back on the rail and and off you go, you know, it's funny that you said that because we feel as entrepreneurs that should be this straight line up and it never is, it's like a bowl of spaghetti. Sometimes you have no clue where you're going, you crisscross back and over and front and forward, and you're like, am I even getting anywhere? And I remember one time I heard a quote um that an arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards first and it got me thinking that that's what a lot of my entrepreneur career was like was you know, that that pulling back just waiting for the right time to let that arrow go. Absolutely, and then there's a lot of analogies within that too, because pulling back creates a lot of resistance, it creates a lot of tension. Everybody else is going, you're crazy, this is wrong, you're going, you're going in the wrong direction and everyone else is moving forward and you're not exactly, so you want to look at kind of all of those elements of that metaphor, because I think it's really, really good one. Well, I think the other thing too is we cannot compare our journey to other people's journeys because that's just miserable, especially with the person next to you as a catapult near an arrow, Like they're totally going in a different direction and they're probably not getting, they're creating that tension by pulling forward because then the system's got to go down in order to be able to go forward, like there's just so many things that are so different for everybody that's around us, even though we're all kind of working in the same direction and everybody that's an overnight success, you know, took their seven years or 20 years to get there and we always missed that part of the story too, Yeah, and it's true. I mean you look at just start studying famous people's lives and see how long it took them. I mean I am always amazed. Apparently he was not a very nice man and you went through some really weird, strange things. But Colonel Saunders was in his sixties when he started KFC Kentucky fried chicken and he had failed many times before that he suffered from depression and all sorts of other things and yet you know at the right time. Absolutely. Well and I love hearing Jack Canfield story about how they started his first book was like if I can write one, if I can write a book and make $1 off of each book and sell a million of them. I made my million dollars. I think actually it was 100,000 that he wanted. I think it was 100,000 because the reason I was so impressed was one really, you're only looking at a dollar profit, you're booked and you're only looking at 100,000 and I get it that at that time obviously money had a different valuation to it but it still wasn't in my eyes, a huge aspiration. It was aspirational but it wasn't a huge aspiration and I think that's the part that we miss is that we're all looking at the million dollar mark going, how do I make a million when in reality it's like how do I create a lifestyle I want, how do I Have fun with the kind of people I love hanging around with, how do I make 100 grand? And just starting with like, Hey, how do I, how do I get this foundation solid? So that if I spent every day like this, I would love every day event as opposed to I just want to make $1 million we hate the people that were around. Like that's not a good way to exponentially go to a million. It's a terrible way to go to a million. So figure out how to create the perfect day that you want and then multiply that day out, you know, and then your odds are a lot higher. Well, you know, a couple of things, I mean, how many times did Jack can fill submit chicken soup for the soul to publishers and no one would pick it up. Right? So is that, but secondly, you know, look at how many famous people have committed suicide or you know, were drug addicts and all this because they had everything the world had to offer and they still weren't happy. It's because the fundamental in my opinion, it's because the fundamental wasn't there and and when the fundamental is there then awesome and amazing things happen, it's, it's, it's kind of like um our record used to say, nobody gives you a triple ice cream cone until you can handle a single cone ice cream once you can handle a single cone ice cream then you can have the double and then you can have the triple but there's a skill set to being able to balance that you know, kind of how to navigate it on a hot day with without blowing it and and and that's really what you want to do is start with the kiddie cone and go, you know, do I even like vanilla ice cream? Do I even like black licorice ice cream? I happen to some people hate those kind of decisions are important to know, especially if you're asking for a triple cone right? You don't want to get stuck with the flavor that you can't stand. Yeah. And you know we haven't even gotten to your training section yet. So valuable. You know one thing I was thinking about is is you are right sometimes, you know when we start small, that's how we determine, you know what we like what we don't like what we can do what we can do and it gives you an opportunity to lay a foundation. I've seen people, you know grow their business so fast but it grew so fast with no foundation that it crumbled and they lose it. And those people like me and go yeah and we have lessons we've got about 10 minutes left there Michelle. So I do want to get to the training section for today though, I think you and I are gonna have more conversations longer conversation. So I'm gonna because I think I understand the question already is what's the difference between the online and offline marketing for a book and I think it's hugely important to go into that. So we've been laying the foundation for this conversation is, what kind of lifestyle do you want to create for starters. Second of all, I think especially in the, in the book world you have to have an online and and offline strategy. Well now you have to have a offline strategy and if you want to add an online strategy you can using your book to sell an up sell and to be able to sell people into programs is a immensely lucrative business plan and there are a ton of people that will help to teach you what that strategy is and how it will work for you and your industry in your company and your everything because you can be an astrophysicist and you can be a zoologist and you can anywhere between and still make that work. The thing you want to understand is that online, just putting your book on amazon or whatever isn't gonna sell you 100 and copies. There is not a number one bestseller out there who has just put it out, set it and released it. They all go on tours. They all encouraged their entire tribes to buy, they all have a marketing strategy behind them and often very expensive ones, my dad, so if you're kind of not in the, hey, I got 100 grand to spend on this in order to become a new york times best seller. Then you really want to look at what are the ways I can do it. And one of the best ways is to speak from stage, either sell your book at the back of the room or give away kind of the first chapter and then entice people to um get it from there and to get the first chapter and then kind of put them in a nurture campaign afterwards is all digital. That has to be set up. You can do it one of two ways. You can either set up your, your offline marketing strategy and then move into an online strategy or you can start with an online strategy right off the bat that allows you to do both. So you can hand people a book and go, hey, it's 10 bucks is 20 bucks whatever it is and actually take physical money. They still have that with them and you can go, hey, if you want my book, text, uh, you know, my book at 123 and that requires the digital campaigns and things that we love doing for authors and helping them to, to get their entire business strategy set up and done for them so that they're not having the headache of trying to figure out tech acronyms and stuff and all that fun stuff. And I think you're right there and you know, one thing that you said that you know I really want to stress is the fact like you said, you know, people want to become the new york times bestsellers but they don't realize is it does cost you about $100,000 to do so even if you want to get in a compilation book that the company will guarantee will go to a new york times bestseller. You're looking anywhere from 10 to $20,000 just to have your one chapter written in that book. It's not it's not cheap and you pretty well do have to buy your way in. It's not it's not based on the quality of your book, not based on the quality of your writing or your editing or you know, any of those things. And I think we get this impression that if I just write a good enough book, no You want to have a good enough book because you wanted to go viral. But that is not the premise of what you do. So the good enough book I think is probably about 20% of the equation. Unfortunately you need that 20% of the equation, marketing is totally the rest and a lot of times even the publishers will say, Okay, how many books can you sell, which means that you have to have an existing audience of people, which means you've already put in a ton of working a ton of money and lead generation in order to be able to work off of that. And at the same time, I want you to understand that whatever book you've written, whether it's fantasy or business or somewhere in between, I mean, have fun with it and talk about it all the time. People want to hear about it because if it if it was worth the energy to put into, then it's worth the energy to be able to consume and read and get something out of it. And I think that's what people are missing out on, is the fact that you it's a tool and you only get out of it what you put into it. Right? So just get that book out there and, you know, people say, well, I don't have a tribe. Well then use the book to build a tribe. Exactly, right, You'll attract them because they'll find that they're interested in the title and then they're interested in the subtitle. And then they're interested in like that. The whole idea of writing is that you create that intrigue. And if you don't have that intrigue, that's okay, you find somebody that will coach you on how to create that intrigue so that you can come up with your version of it was a dark stormy night. And the thing is too is you you have to pay your dues there, there's no getting around it. I mean unless you've already got you know, $100,000 to throw at a marketing firm to build your tribe for you. I hate to break it to you. But then you'll still go through it. It's just a different kind of well it would probably be a little faster and a little less work for you. But yeah, you still have to build that tribe. So why not start now, get that book out there, start you know, start building that tribe on social media, you know, get that email marketing going, it is not that expensive to get email marketing going, build that tribe of people who know like and trust you. So your first book, you don't expect it to become this amazing bestseller, but you use it as a tool to get to where you want to go. And one of the things that's been amazing and one thing that happened to one of my clients was he originally we did his book because he wanted to be on a certain stage and he had to be an author to be on a certain stage that he wanted to be on. And so that's why we did his book. But over the last four years, this book has become a message. It has has taken off profoundly, he just kept talking about the book, talking about the book, talking about the book and he did get on that stage, so that did help. But he just talks a lot about the book and you know, he has sold thousands of copies companies now hire him to do team reads to teach the skills that he taught in the book. You know, it's just incredible. He has over 205 star reviews on amazon were working on book number two, but all he did is kept talking about the book and he got the book into people's hands. Absolutely, absolutely. And you have to keep talking about the book and if you're a special kind of crazy like me, I wrote my book because it was inside of me and I was doing a business pivot and I went, okay, I've got all of this experience, I have to get this down on paper and and make this book. So I made that book and was it the best book? No. Was I convinced that there was no typos in it? Yes. Until I give it to my steps. And I said, yeah, page one bottom, awesome, awesome, okay, no, no, When you have worked on a book for so long you become blind to it and you can no longer see the editor on other friends on and everybody missing. I'm like first read the bottom of the page so I just read the book, I was talking to you about, we were 18 months into the book and someone came to him and said, you know, and he had sold prob 1000 copies at that point, and someone found a typo 18 months in and they're gonna find typos, Dude, they're just, they're going to, I think, just let it go, you know, your books never gonna be perfect. So don't, it needs to be good, it needs to be exceptional, it needs to be excellent, it will never be perfect. And a little tip, if you do write a business book and you're worried about the typos, you're like, oh, they're gonna hate me. Just put a little note on the back and just say, for those of you, for the first person who finds each type, oh, we're going to give them a special prize. We have put in a certain amount of typos and we want you to find those, and we're gonna give you presents for finding them, and then you're like, but then, you know, people are reading it and you're building a list, I like that, and when they do find it, you know, that they've read up to that point and they're willing to give you some feedback and you're like, oh, awesome! And hey, by the way, I got this free thing for you. Yeah, that's awesome. So Michelle, what's the name of your book? Mine is the business ownership mindset, I have a book, uh there you go, that's me business ownership mindset, and I got a, I got a three star review on amazon once and she said she doesn't know how to intrigue people. And I went, oh, that's not a very nice review, I don't think I want that review. And she's like, fine, I'll take it down. And then I read the book kind of three years after I wrote it and I went, wow, this does not lead. Yeah, she was right. Of course she was right, but that's okay. Other people read it. But the reason that it worked was because I spoke on stage and talked about the book and then when people read it, they had the mental kind of buy in initially and they knew what they were getting into. So I didn't have to quote unquote, have to have kind of the pre log and the feed into because I just started on context. You don't do that. I don't recommend doing that. I'm telling you there's a lot of mistakes I've made that I'm happy to share with. You don't do that. So Michelle, here's a question that I ask every author or soon to be author on the author to authority podcast. What was the good the bad and the ugly of publishing that book? Well the good was that I got it done. I was super excited about that. Um Bad was that I personally had to read it about 75 times, about 50 of which were out loud in order to find kind of how it flowed and whether or not it actually made sense or if it just made sense in my brain. So by the time I was done with it, I kind of hated it and didn't read it for three years afterwards, talked about it a lot, but marina and the ugly of it is that I, um, because my business has pivoted, I don't talk about it as much as I could have, should have would have I, the ugly is, I could have, should have, would have written it three years earlier so that it would have built up my business. Um, and used it as a tool like your example because when you're speaking from stage and you're speaking with people and they say you're an author, oh, what's the name of your book? Everybody wants to know what the name of your because they want to know what it's about and that becomes intriguing. And then of course they want to buy the book and some people actually read the books, I like to buy books and put them on bookshelves. Um, not everybody's like that. Some people actually read them and to be able to garner that intrigued because I find as soon as I read kind of a chapter of the book that I want to go on and I want to, I want more of that person. I either want their coaching or I want their stories, I want to hear them on stage or whatever the case might be. And I think the same is for most people who read books, wow, that's wonderful. Oh, we can keep going on Michelle but we are running out of time. So Michelle, if people have enjoyed this conversation and they want to connect with you, what's the best way to connect with you? And do you have any little free offers for my audience to do? Absolutely. So I'm gonna give you a free website audit. So hopefully you have a website, if you don't have a website, that's okay to go and set up the wizard and just say I don't have one and then you'll get to the thank you page and you'll get a link there to meet with me so you can meet missy Me anyways, but the website audit is pretty cool. It gives you the green lights, yellow lights and the red lights according to the google gods of where they're allowing your traffic to go to your website and you got green lights and that's awesome. If you have yellow lights, google slowing down traffic from seeing your page because you're not doing things the way they want it to. So those are important. Most important are the red lights. Red lights mean that google is stopping traffic from going to your site on a given page or whatever it might be and you want to make sure that you make those corrections. So that google is not stopping your traffic at all. Like I said at the end of that, you'll get a link to book a discovery call with me and we'll go through kind of what it means to you, what you can work on first, or we can work on the strategy of your business and how we can help you to build your business and get you to where you want to be. Um and it will include both offline and online strategies and if you end up wanting to work with us and you're a good fit for us, that's awesome. And if you're not, you'll be able to take that information to your team, make it work Michelle and kim Thompson Pinder on the author to authority podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we will see you on the very next episode. Bye