How to Play Barbies in Your Business

Watch the video:

I remember the first time I’d ever heard of an “Ideal Client Avatar.” You’re supposed to create an ICA to figure out how to market to her.

I got disenchanted with ICAs. “They’re not real people!” I got kind of grumpy about the whole idea of dreaming up a completely imaginary person. I wanted to meet real, live people who could benefit from what I sell.

Real people buy stuff. ICAs don’t. Right?

Recently, though, I warmed up again to the idea of the Ideal Client Avatar.

Because… Barbies.

?‍♀️?‍♀️

Remember when you used to play Barbies? Your Barbie could be whomever you wanted her to be? She could live in a castle! She could… make scented soap! She could have a dog and a ferret who were best friends.

No limits.

That was fun! Sometimes, we need to bring a bit of fun into our businesses.

I applied the "Barbie mentality" to the ICA.

?‍♀️?‍♀️

Who would I help with your products and services if I could help anybody? If I unbound by any constraints?

I found a lot of fun and freedom in this exercise. I still believe that once you answer that question, you still need to chat with real-life humans, to figure out what keeps them up at night, how they think about their problems, and what they’ve tried in the past to solve them.

But, for the purposes of removing the restraints on what I think is possible in my own business, spending an hour dreaming up an ICA inspired me to articulate who I want to help and how my services help them.

>> Once you've got your ICA, you're going to want to figure out what to write to them. Continue this conversation and get my free training: https://pages.convertkit.com/d979220b7b/f57d7bc816 <<

She said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud

Yesterday I was workshopping an email with a Sweet Spot client of mine.She was telling a harrowing story in her email. She’s a talented writer, so the story was vivid. Snow. A car crash. No cell phone. All alone.

When the trucker pulled over to help, my jaw clenched. "He better be a good guy!" I thought.

It was that good.

Then, at the end of the email, she snailed ?. As in…

You know when you touch a snail’s antennae and they slowly curl in? ??

That’s what she did. She had this crazy story that was also a natural metaphor for the journey of her perfect client from side-lined to getting back on the road. So, she wanted to end the email with an offer. A free offer to help them! But instead she ended with, “join the interest list.” You know. If you wanna.

She would have sent that email and gotten a tepid response. How do I know?

Tepid request. = Tepid response.

No one will be annoyed or offended. No one will pay much attention, either, but that’s the trade-off.

And for a lot of the women that's the problem.

They want to be known for what they do, but they don’t want to be noticed.

How do I know? I have BEEN THERE.

You don’t have to be a talented writer to write good email. And you can be a talented writer and still need a lot of help with email.

Email isn’t about writing talent, it’s about your ability to think bigger. It’s about making your offer with confidence, because you know it’s exactly right for the type of people who struggle with the problem you solve. How exciting! You’re going to help them fix it! They just have to decide they’re ready.

And that sounds great, but what do you do with the advice to “think bigger”? Or to have more confidence?

Is confidence like Tinkerbell? Just believe enough and she’ll appear?

Maybe that works for some people. That doesn’t work for me.

But I found 3 things that did work for me. That stopped me from “snailing,” and allowed me to write email consistently, and to sell on email, without holding back because I might bother somebody. And I created a free training from what I figured out.

If you want a free training that teaches you how to stop hiding and start attracting people to you, sign up .

I Stumbled on Door #3

Last week, I wrote about how someone commented on my weight, because I don’t look the way I did before I had my second kid.

(If you want to read that one, search your email for the subject line “This mentality is killing our businesses.” If you're not a subscriber, sign up here.)

Anyway, I told you that story because I was pleasantly surprised by how I handled it.

Not too long ago, I would have seen 2 options.

1. “Someone is noticing that I’m fatter than I used to be! How incredibly shameful. I must start a diet right away!”

Then I would have started one. I would have done it for a few days until giving up because I hate life when I diet, and I just can’t muster up the energy to hate life for more than a few days.

But rather than feeling liberated, I would have felt I had FAILED at the diet and felt horrible about myself. And felt like everyone knew I was a failure.

2. Not started a diet because I was self-confident enough to know that I don’t believe diets work. But not so self-confident that I would have believed that I don’t need to lose weight. And so I would have lived under a black cloud of guilt for not "getting my body back" after baby #2. I would have thought,

“Why can’t I be more like the OTHER moms? Those totally natural-seeming slim and athletic women I see toting babies all over San Diego. What’s wrong with me???”

This time, without even fully realizing what I was doing, I stumbled on option 3:

3. Nothing is wrong with me.

Nothing ? Is? Wrong? With? Me ?.

I don't buy the idea that my body should always look exactly the same throughout my adulthood. I give myself permission to think totally differently about this.

What does this have to do with business?

EVERYTHING.

When it comes to how I work in my business, do I try to force myself to be the person I was before I had these kids?

The person who worked ’til Jeopardy came on...

Who checked email and Slack multiple times on the weekend…

Who felt in her gut that the solution to any problem was more hard work?

And then do I feel like a failure when that’s not possible… because I can’t muster up the energy to hate life for more than a few days?

Or do I not force myself, but feel like a loser because life’s different now? And wonder why so many other moms seem so successful and perfect in their businesses, when I’m… decidedly not?

Or, do I go with Door #3?

3. Nothing is wrong with me.

I can’t work until 7. Daycare closes at 5:30. But also, I can’t work until 7 because I already work until 8.

It’s just that it’s not all “work-for-money” work. It’s physical labor, like buckling squirming limbs into car seats and wiping up poop. (So much poop.) And mental/emotional labor, like being the calm in a sea of 2- and 4-year-old chaos. Even when I don’t feel like it. Or losing my shit and then figuring out how to deal with the kids and myself anyway.

My life has changed, and the way I work is changing with it. Does that make me a failure or a loser? No.

I give myself permission to think totally differently about this.

…

Would that giving myself permission were as easy as snapping my fingers or saying my favorite mantra over and over. (“It is safe for me to grow and change.”)

To go back to the body image example --

For years, I would tell myself, "I love my body" over and over, but I was really thinking, "I'm awful and fat." That thought didn’t disappear just because I wanted it to.

So how did that change? It wasn’t a one-time mindset transformation. But also, it didn’t “just take time.” It took 4 things.

Time + Practice + A mentor’s guidance + Peer support

That’s how I know that giving one’s self permission is not as simple as saying, "I give myself permission to create a different working life."

It’s a process that takes time, practice, guidance, and support.

The same thing is going on with business.

It’s not all about changing the way you look at things. And it doesn’t just take time.

So if you’re feeling like you’re trying to give yourself permission to change the way you do business, but you still secretly tell yourself things like, “I’m a failure. I’m awful. I’m not doing this right,” I just want you to know that I have discovered that, for me, permission is a process.

It took all 4 of these things for me to feel safe to grow and change.

And I’m telling you, because I’m tired of watching people blame themselves when the guilt and anxiety hounds them. You’re good enough! But maybe you could also provide yourself with more of these four elements.

What do you think?

Is it fear of "unsubscribes"? Or is it actually something else?

I got on the phone with an entrepreneur I admire yesterday and we were chatting. She's been in business for four years and she told me she used to send email to her list weekly, but over the past few months she hasn't felt perfectly clear about every aspect of her business. She doesn't quite know what to say because she's not exactly sure what she wants her list to do. So she stopped emailing them regularly.

"The only thing worse than sending no email is sending a terrible email and having people go, 'What the hell is this?' And hitting unsubscribe."

She said this. To me. Completely convinced.

But guess what! I think she's wrong.

------------

Gather 'round while I take us back in time...

... a time when Macbooks were called iBooks and their clamshell covers featured orange or green plastic (but I was too poor to afford one).

Back then, I was a hack. A muckraker. A person who should have been ASHAMED OF MYSELF, according to our Very Stable Genius-in-Chief.

I was a reporter at a daily newspaper.

Sometimes, I'd get an assignment to cover an event happening that day. In that case I would go out, watch the event, interview the speakers or performers, maybe some audience members if I had time. Then I'd trot back to the office, and write the story. My story was due at 11 pm. If the event started at 5, the story was due at 11. If the event started at 8... the story was due at 11.

Talk about "done is better than perfect"! When 11 p.m. hit, I turned in something to my editor. If I didn't, that meant I would hold up the printing of the entire newspaper.

The newspaper I worked for wasn't going to hold up the presses for me and my perfection issues.

Because missing the press deadline cost money!

This ain't Woodward and Bernstein - it's a reading at the downtown Barnes and Noble. GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE, FRANK!

Do you see where I'm going with this (besides mourning the death of the local newspaper)?

Back when writing on deadline was literally my job, I learned that when you turn in something that's not great, that IS BETTER than turning in nothing at all.

I've never forgotten that lesson, even when I worked with clients who refuse to hit "publish" because they're afraid some day they might change their minds and what the wrote will be wrong.

Even when I encounter clients who don't think they should send marketing email unless they're undergoing a life-threatening emergencies, because they don't want anyone to unsubscribe, ever.

Because I know that when you write every single week, as though you were on deadline, three things happen:

1. You refine your mission. You figure out what you're trying to say by sharing it with your audience, week after week, and getting feedback from them on how it lands, whether it helped, whether it felt clear.

2. You clarify the value you provide by articulating over and over the problems you solve and the benefits of solving those problems

3. You test the validity of that Ideal Client Avator some online GURU told you to create that one time, because you get a sense for who on your list is actually paying attention.

Plus, you make connections that can help you actually get someone on the phone or sell them something they need.

But even leaving aside the selling, (which I do teach), a weekly writing practice strengthens your business.

---------------

Let's return to the first part of what that entrepreneur said. "Sending something terrible is worse than sending nothing." OF COURSE some of your emails are going to be bad. What, are you Shakespeare now? Or maybe Leonard Cohen? GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE. ???

Sending nothing is worse.

If you’re reading this and you're like, "great, but I don't know what to write," get a kickstart free training for writing emails to your list by clicking this link.

How Often Should I Email My List?

Every week. Simple.

…

Wait, you want to know why?

Well, first, here are NOT the reasons you should email your list every week. (These are reasons I’ve heard other marketers give, because I’m not above throwing a little shade): 

• You want to “be consistent” and “show up” for your audience. 

• You want to stay “top of mind” so next time that person needs the kind of services you provide, they will know you exist and call you, maybe. (Except if they forget your name or never read your email.) 

These reasons suck. They suck because you can’t draw a line between these reasons and making money. 

Who’s going to spend precious time doing work when it doesn’t have a direct impact on revenue? 

So if these were your reasons, and you tried to write to your email list consistently and then gave up after a few weeks, that actually makes total sense. 

OF COURSE those reasons weren’t enough to motivate you to write every single week. If these were the only reasons you had for writing to your list every single week, you’d have no reason to keep going, unless you 

1. don’t have that much else on your plate (no one)

2. love writing (some people)

3. are a masochist who never, ever, EVER cuts herself a bit of slack (umm… a few people) 

Otherwise, it’s pre-ordained.

You are going to “fall off the wagon.” You’re going to “forget.” You’re going to skip a week here and there. You’re going to start your email newsletter up with the best of intentions, and then drop it like a hot potato as soon as your client roster fills up, or you just find something else to do. 

What if you had a better reason for writing a weekly email? A reason you could tie directly to making more money in your business?

Well, I’ve don’t just have one reason. I’ve got THREE.

1. Emailing regularly allows you to sell your products and services without having to be present 24/7. (Yes, you can do this without sending too much email, “bothering people,” or coming off as sales-y. I’ll get to that in a minute.)

2. Emailing regularly allows you to build relationships with existing subscribers, instead of focusing on always having to have more, more, more subscribers.

3. Emailing regularly allows you to develop a writing practice that helps you share your mission, and get feedback an audience of people to whom your mission actually matters. (Otherwise they wouldn’t have signed up for your email list.)

Plus, PLUS, a Bonus one.

BONUS: Emailing regularly allows you to write about the stuff you love to do, which allows you to reclaim your love for what you do. This is work as a form of self-care.

Now, let me get back to reason #1. You’re worried you’ll be sending too much email. But weekly email isn’t “too much” if you are learning what your subscribers want, and then sending them more of that.

With a few simple tools available in almost every brand of email software, you can get to know what your subscribers want, so that when you’re ready to sell, you know how your products and services solve their problems. 

Plus, since you’ve been emailing regularly with help and info on what they care about, they know they can trust you. They might even respect you. 

Why should I waste time writing to my list every single week? I don’t even have that many subscribers? Shouldn’t I work on that first? 

You should absolutely work on growing your list, but focusing on getting a big list and more contacts is kind of like collecting business cards at a networking event. 

You come home with a stack and you go… who are these people?

These business cards become totally useless the second you leave because you have no idea who those people are or what they need. 

You need to know that stuff in order to build a relationship. And you can only find it out by starting a relationship. 

Weekly email is the start of that relationship. 

Weekly emails allow you to figure out what your audience wants. And then sell that to them. 

If you want to learn more about how this system works, sign up for my list and watch me do it! 

Sign up here: https://pages.convertkit.com/07ef308a0d/b88316dc32

Can You Get Out of Emergency Mode?

I had this struggle for months in my business. I WANTED to dedicate some portion of my work week to planning and reflection, and to taking stock of how I was progressing toward my big goals. But it just wasn’t happening. Because I was really flipping’ busy… you know, doing the stuff that PEOPLE PAID ME FOR! 

It was maddening. I was watching my students and clients feel more relaxed, more focused, and create a more dependable monthly income by taking a step back and delegating their marketing to me. But I couldn’t do the same. Because I was too busy doing my actual work! 

No time to meet new potential clients, no time to strategize. No time to reflect on whether what I was already doing was working.

I couldn’t even find time to vet an assistant who could have helped with some tasks. Yet I was working all day. I was waking up at 5 am or working from 8 to 10 pm in order to get it all done. So I knew there weren’t more productive hours in the day. I had to figure out how to reshuffle. I had to figure out how to drop some things.

That was just a couple of months ago.

I’d love to tell you that I magically solved this problem and now I work for 4 hours a week and make loads of dough. Nope! But here’s what I will say.

This ain’t an advice piece. (Reminder: I don’t write those.) But since I’m going through this right now, I wanted to give an update about how I took the very first step to getting out of Emergency Mode. The very first step isn’t to drop everything. The very first step isn’t even to start a log and track how you’re spending your time.

Step 1 to stepping off the hamster wheel: I had to allow myself to believe that I deserve more.

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.” I had to “admit that I had a problem.” All the hackneyed phrases.

Well, guess what?

For me that was absolutely the truth. Friends, business buddies, my husband… all were full of smart suggestions and teeny-weeny totally non-threatening tips I could have used to slow down and make room for the creative side of growing my business that I said I wanted.

But I couldn’t hear it. I was too busy feeling sure that all my clients hated me and that if I just stopped for a day, that pause would trigger some kind of cascade that would signal the end of my business.

Then one day, I had an epiphany that allowed me to realize I deserved more. (I had slept 10 hours in the previous 4 days, and I was supposed to be on “vacation.”) Here’s what it was:

"Just be yourself" is the worst advice. Except for all the other advice.

A very ‘myself’ photo of me. Fresh off a 12-hour plane ride from Taipei to L.A. two weeks ago.

Do you know that quote that I'm butchering for my own purposes? ... Winston Churchill said that someone else said it:

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

So it is with the advice to "just be yourself." Not perfect. Not all-wise. But better than the other forms I've tried.

When I started writing for my business, I wanted to talk about what it’s like to have small children and run an online business solo. I wanted to talk about the choices I’d made to prioritize my business and the choices I’d made to prioritize my children.

But I wanted all of the stories of my experiences to resonate with all moms everyone. I wanted stay at home moms to like me, I wanted side hustlers to like me, I wanted corporate working moms, I wanted feminists to like me.

So for years I didn't end up sharing anything. Because I have ZERO stories that are all things to all people.

Then I finally starting sharing these experiences. The response was undeniable. Sharing the truth is undeniably powerful. It’s also undeniably uncomfortable. Some of your readers won't like you. Some will lose respect for you. Some of them will “police” your opinion with comments like, “Stop complaining! It’s not so bad.”

But I'm doing it anyway. Here’s a bit about my process in getting there and the baby steps I started with.

Watch the video.

In the video, I share a story in here about helping one of my group members get more real in her writing.

We had a powerful session that allowed her to write an email with WAY sharper teeth. That group, the Email Marketing Sweet Spot program, helps other online business owners find their sweet spot between sending a boring email newsletter because they're "supposed to" and ramming a crap-ton of email down people's throats (also because they think they're "supposed to.")

Per the post title: You're supposed to do you. I designed the Sweet Spot to help online business owners find your way to show up, get to know your subscribers and let them know you, and sell to them without pissing them off or watching them ignore you. If you want to know more about the Sweet Spot, click the link.

Ditch the Guilt and Design Your Business

A little over a year ago, to the casual observer, she was a successful, ambitious, and driven professional. But her health was suffering, (she was so tired that she was afraid to drive for fear of falling asleep), and she felt like a bad mom and an exhausted human being. So she did something about it.

When Natalie told me her story, I knew I wanted to interview her and share it with you because I meet so many other moms who are pushing so hard. It never feels easy, and deep down, we feel suspicious of anything that comes naturally or feels easy.

Our kids need us, our partners need us, our communities need us, our parents need us… and we approach business the same way. It’s just another drain; just another entity that needs our energy, and saps us dry. “That’s just the way it is”… right?

Not for Natalie. She got pretty sick of that. So sick that she actually had a diagnosable illness. But it was the way that Natalie stepped back and re-assessed her life that really struck me. She didn’t just turn the lights off and go home.

She shares the exact method she used to assess her life and make changes in our interview.

Find out how she did it:

Natalie’s toolkit is available at natalieanntaylor.com

I do this a lot.

Have you ever been facing a decision, known in your gut what choice you were going to make, and then… asked someone else for their advice instead of choosing?

I do this a lot.

I first noticed about 10 years ago, when I found an apartment in New York. I’d been living with Craigslist roommates in Brooklyn for months and I hated living with other people I barely knew. I didn’t know if I could afford a place on my own.

But soon after I started looking, I came across a dumpy studio on 1st Ave and 11th Street. At 180 square feet, it fit a bed, a loveseat, a table, and not much else. There were about 3 feet between the bed and the only window, which looked directly on to the sidewalk. I’m talking eye-level with sidewalk traffic. No setback. The rent was also about $50 a month more than I wanted to spend.

On the other hand, it was on 1st Ave and 11th St. I could walk to work and just about anywhere else I wanted to go. The block was fairly quiet, so there wasn’t all that muchsidewalk traffic. It was a dream I didn’t even know I had to live alone in Manhattan. But then again, it was so small, even by New York standards.

I could say no and keep looking. After all, I’d found this one fairly easily. Or was that a one-in-a-million fluke? …

I didn’t know what to do. (Yes, I did. I’ll get to that.)

So I called my mom and asked her what she would do. She ran through her decision and her reasoning for it.

I remember that conversation 10 years later. Not because of the conversation itself. I don’t even remember whether she said to take it or leave it.

I remember because I had an epiphany after we hung up. That conversation was absurd. PREPOSTEROUS!

HER decision? Not only did she not live in New York, she’d never lived in New York, not as a single woman with no children, not in any other time of her life. And she didn’t know anything about what mattered more to me. Space or location? The chance to live alone or the chance to save money on moving expenses and stay in a new, modern building? She didn’t even know how much I made so she didn’t really know what I could afford.

Only I knew. That meant only I could decide.

Once I realized that, I went with the choice I’d decided on before I picked up the phone, and rented the apartment.

I wish I could tell you this was the last time I faced a decision, knew in my gut what I wanted to do, but agonized for days or weeks because I thought someone else might have some key piece of information and if I only knew it, it might make me see I was walking straight toward the wrong choice.

Someone else, like my mom, who had lots of life experience! She’d rented loads of apartments. (In California. In the ‘70s.)

But still! She loved me and wanted what was best for me.

But she had none of what she would need to make a decision that would make ME happy. As in…. she wasn’t me.

….

What am I saying here? The internet is full of advice.

(Online content:

1. Porn

2. Advice)

You could even see this piece of writing as advice about why you shouldn’t take any advice!

That’s not what it is though. I’m sharing my experience because today I had another aha! similar to that moment I hung up with my mom.

Every day, I face choices about where to spend my time in my own business. Many people have an opinion. Many of them have founded successful online businesses. But they are men. Or they did it 10 years ago. Or they’re childless. Or, or, or…

They’re not me. Only I know. Only I can decide. It was true then, and for me at least, it’s still true today.

Christy Harrison of "Food Psych" Talks About What It's Like to Go Against the Grain

Thanks so much to Christy Harrison for this chat! I’ve been listening to her podcast, Food Psych, since the beginning. Christy works with people to re-connect with their bodies, heal their relationships with food, and to dismantle #dietculture, which “privileges smaller bodies over larger ones and demonizes some foods while elevating others.”

So yeah, just dismantling an entire system of beliefs that permeates almost every aspect of our culture. NO BIG.

I asked Christy if we could chat because I see so many parallels between her community and our community of moms of young children.

Plus Christy shared a key way she deals with the inevitable feelings of discouragement both as an entrepreneur and as someone who is sharing a message that cuts against the prevailing cultural narrative.

Have a listen to the full interview:

For more, check out the Food Psych podcast: https://christyharrison.com/foodpsych

Christy’s upcoming book is called Anti-Diet: Reclaim your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating. Get updates by visiting http://christyharrison.com/book