Speaker 1Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Real Personal Branding Podcast. I'm so happy you're here today. My guest today is Holly McHugh, and she is a sales and messaging coach, and she's a marketing strategist. And I am so excited to have her on today because I actually had her on a couple of years ago, long before I paused my podcast, and her episode was so good. I had nonstop feedback about it because she gave so many applicable tactical ideas while also just making people be able to take a deep breath when it comes to sales. So today we're going to talk about sales. We're going to get a lot deeper with it. Have you ever felt like when you learn a specific framework or a strategy from someone who is maybe labeled themselves an expert, or maybe you think of them as an expert, and you get so stuck inside that framework? Yes, I have. I've always been stuck in that framework. I've been stuck in that framework for a long time. I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time. I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time. And I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been stuck in that framework for a long time, and I've been interview because she just really lays out for you how you can take specific strategies and frameworks and make them your own and what foundational elements you need in order to actually sell and not feel slimy, not feel weird about it. Okay, I'm going to give you Holly's official bio and then we're just going to jump right in because this is such a good interview. I don't even want to take more of your time with this intro. Holly McHugh is an experienced sales and messaging coach and marketing strategist who helps online entrepreneurs be seen as a no-brainer choice for their ideal clients and create effortless sales without the need for paid ads or a massive following. Her signature approach shows clients how to monetize their brilliance through powerhouse positioning, unique messaging, and mastering the art and science of magnetic selling. Holly has a decade of experience working as a marketing strategist for global brands at corporations like Unilever and P&G, where she led the strategy for $200 million portfolios. She's helped hundreds of entrepreneurs. She's seen as the go-to expert in their industry and create results such as over 50% business growth during the pandemic and 15 times their sales in just 12 weeks. Since first starting her business as a side hustle around her nine to five, Holly has created over seven figures in sales and her success strategies have been featured in Forbes, Thrive Global, Real Simple, Marie Claire, and others. She lives in Australia where she runs her business in just three days per week, one-handed around her two young daughters and two-year-old daughter, Holly McHugh. Holly McHugh is a business two fur babies. I'm so excited to bring Holly on. Let's go. Welcome back to the Real Personal Branding Podcast, Holly. Thank you so much for having me, Lauren. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm so excited you're here. You were on my podcast before. It was such an amazing episode. I got such good feedback about it. And so you and I were chatting and we thought, let's do this again, but let's talk about some deeper things. Let's go farther into sales and really talk about it. But I think one of the things that I love about the show is that I get to hear people's stories about how they really started their business, how their business came to be, kind of their origin story. First, before we get into that, I would love to know, how are you doing for real? Because this is the Real Personal Branding Podcast.
Speaker 2I am doing well, but it is winter here in Australia and it is freezing. Perfect. I'm pretty good. Thank you. As good as you can be running a business around a two and a five-year-old, which is crazy at times. How cold is it there right now? Today's not too bad. Today's probably the same temperature that England's having right now in their spring. It has been as low as three degrees Celsius. Oh my goodness. Which is cold, cold.
Speaker 1So, so cold. Oh my gosh. It's June right now as we're recording this. I'm not looking forward to going back to winter anytime soon. So you can have your winter. Okay. So let's back up. Let's start with a little bit about what you do and tell us a little bit about your origin story. How did you get to the area in your business that you're in now, the stage of your business here you're at now?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's really been an evolution. So I've actually been doing business in one form or another online since 2016 now. So it's a seven-year journey and yeah, a lot of changes have taken place in that time. So the... The interesting part is I never actually set out to be an entrepreneur in the first place. So my background is working as a brand strategist for the likes of Procter & Gamble and Unilever. So working on big media campaigns on global consumer brands. It was a really exciting, but also very fast-paced demanding environment. And I thought that that was kind of my dream job. And then back in my mid-twenties, I remember vividly having dinner with friends in London one evening, sitting on the Thames River, chatting about plans for the weekend. And suddenly this thought of, I guess I'll just be happy when I'm retired, swirling around my head. And I was like, wow, okay, that's a really long time away. What am I going to do in between? And I just felt the pressure, you know, and the sense of imposter syndrome and just feeling like a fraud, I think, you know, being in such a big, crazy paced, you know, working environment and constantly questioning everything. Anyway, that was the kind of catalyst for me to start exploring personal development to support myself through that period, which led to me studying NLP and thinking, oh my gosh, I get to choose my own thoughts. Like what the hell? This is amazing. And it's giving me life-changing techniques. And then of course, the next thought was, I want to share this with other people. And, you know, when you are so close to something and stuck in that kind of vicious cycle and that swirl, you don't notice that other people are struggling too, right? You're kind of all consumed. And the moment I could kind of lift my head out of the sand and look around my office space, I could see other people are really struggling with the pressure and the sense of perfectionism and, you know, worried about failing as well. I'd love to be able to help them. And so then I decided to certify as a coach. That was back in 2013. And then I moved from London to Sydney and I was like, I want to do coaching. I want to do coaching. And everyone was like, yeah, but you're at Resume Mesa's marketing. So go figure. So it was like really hard to get into any other form of employment to coach others. And so the only way I could really use these miraculous techniques that would supported me so much with others was to start my own business. And for a very long time, I had no clue what I was doing, but I was able to negotiate a part-time senior brand strategist role, which was unheard of at the time to have a day of the week to spend exploring this new business venture. And over time, my business grew, my side hustle grew, and I had two days a week and I had a job share. So I really had the best of both worlds. Like it was amazing, you know, in hindsight, but that was something that everyone celebrated. You know, my employers celebrated it and my clients celebrated it. And then I've actually evolved my niche three times in those seven years. I love, I love to hear that because so many
Speaker 1people think that they can't change course. So tell me more. Yes. Yes. And niching is a massively
Speaker 2hot, juicy topic of mine that I could talk about for a long time. So I started off exactly where I was at. You know, what did I know? I knew the corporate space. I knew what it felt like to not be clear on what was my purposeful path in a corporate environment and how could I be successful without constantly feeling burnt out and stressed and feeling like a fraud. So that's where I kind of focused initially. I was supporting a lot of women, professionals to find more purpose and clarity around what was meant for me. And did I want to change in my career? And then I had this weird interim period where people were like, I want to do what you're doing. How did you get a side hustle and how are you doing both? And so then I was calling myself a career and business coach for a while, but I was just straddling these two completely separate audiences of sort of aspiring entrepreneurs and sort of professionals. And I would sit at my desk every day and I don't know who I am talking to right now. And I think it showed. And then I went on a business retreat in 2019 and I had some really powerful conversations. And one of my mentors said, what about sales and messaging? This is absolutely your jam. You know, I have an English degree. I've been in marketing. I had the coaching side of things. And I loved to support people to ultimately share their gifts with more people in the world. That's ultimately my whole philosophy is about sharing your brilliance and having that ripple effect. But I had really resisted the word sales. So it actually was probably the best part as planted previous to that retreat of being a sales coach or a sales mentor. I was like, nah, that's not me. I'm not, you know, about all the sales. And that's where I landed on sales and messaging because the way I love to teach sales is so much, so very different, I think, to how it is taught in a lot of the online space. And it didn't feel like it was fully reflective of all of my kind of magic because the messaging is definitely my area of specialism. But also it's like, I just had to reframe what selling can and does actually mean. And I think so many of us have these, you know, negative associations with it. And now I love helping women to sell and men to sell online and to actually change their relationship to it.
Speaker 1I love this. I can't wait to dig into this. What do you think out of all of those times? Because I want to also kind of hear about your story. What do you feel like was the biggest moment of growth within that journey? And what do you think caused that growth?
Speaker 2Oh my gosh, that's a massive question. Do you mean growth in my business or personal growth?
Speaker 1Well, when I say growth, I don't necessarily mean like by numbers necessarily. I mean, what was that time that you were like, oh, okay, now I know what to do. And everything started kind of, or not everything, but a lot of things started making sense and falling into place.
Speaker 2Yeah. I definitely think when I niched down into sales and messaging strategy and I'd finally really claimed my brilliance and owned my specialism and it's just given me so much freedom. It's genuinely liberating when you can just go deeper, not broader on your area of excellence, like trying to straddle career and business. I was never going to be seen as a go-to expert. Months after changing my niche, I noticed how many times I was being referred, how many times I was being tagged in online social media posts of people saying, hey, do you know someone who can help in niching or messaging or selling? And suddenly, I was the person that people were pointing others towards because it was easy because it was so clear and simple about what I did and the impact I could have and the benefits of that. And before that, I feel like I was in this fog of I can help in so many ways. I can help in so many ways. I can help in so many ways. And I feel like I was in this and, you know, but not feeling like you can articulate that clearly, which I think is so, yeah, so many people go through as a bit of a rite of passage. So for sure, now I'm just absolutely in my element. Like I don't have to talk about the things I don't like and I don't have to talk about the things I'm not good at or I'm just not the expert of, you know, there's so many aspects to marketing and business online and there are plenty that I am not the person to ask about, you know, so this really allows me to play in my zone of brilliance. So it kind of was the
Speaker 1tie to everything together. It was like the river that ran through all of the things you were already doing. It was just the, almost like the common denominator among all of those things.
Speaker 2Yeah, it really is because it just comes full circle. Like all day, every day, I get to help people with their words and their copy and their positioning and their branding and conversations and connections. And that really does come full circle with my background. You know, I have an English and French degree. It was always about the words and I love to connect with people and the marketing and the branding background. It really plays a part. And then the coaching as well. So I really do get to, you know, just leverage my skill sets in the best way. And I'm for sure having the best results for clients and in my own business since doing that.
Speaker 1I noticed that it switched from who you helped, which was like corporate and entrepreneurs and stuff like that, to what you do to help them. Yes. Like it changed from who the person was necessarily to the thing that you do that helps both parties or anyone in particular necessarily that is learning, wanting to learn, that specific thing.
Speaker 2Well, I, so today I described myself as a sales and messaging coach for service-based entrepreneurs, which means to date, I have worked with over 50 different industries and niches. I counted them a little while ago and it's probably even more since. And there's so much beauty in the variety and flexibility of that. Like I can literally one week be working with a Reiki healer. And the next week I'm working with a graphic designer. And the next week I'm working with a child allergy specialist, you know, and coaches and healers and mentors and everyone. So it's not like I'm pigeonholing myself into the same type of person time and time and time again, or the same type of business, but I'm seen as that go-to specialist because I laser focused on how I help.
Speaker 1I love that. So why do you think that teaching people to sell is so important to you? Where do you get this drive from? Like what, what kind of defines that drive for you?
Speaker 2Because I really genuinely feel if you have something that can benefit you, other people's lives, and you don't know how to sell that, then you are doing a disservice both to them and to yourself. You know, I feel like all of us have been given certain gifts in this lifetime, and this is mine. And this enables that ripple effect of positivity. Like there's been so many instances where, you know, me working with a client has enabled them to positively impact so many others. And one vivid example that sticks in my mind is a couple of years ago, she reached out to me, she just got her life coaching qualification. She's like, I've got all these ideas on post-it notes, and I don't know what to do next. And anyway, she had a really powerful story and history in her own life experience. And she wanted to support survivors of domestic violence. So specifically women and children, this had been her background and her story. And she didn't know how to get that out there. She didn't know how to share her message and how to bring people on board. And so working together, she was able to get that out there. And you know, she was able to set up an organization that now supports women and children all over the country of Australia, with a panel of experts and specialists. She's written her book, she's been in international media, you know, she's genuinely having an impact. And, you know, this is where we need to just recognize that we can be that door opening for someone, you know, we can just help nudge them in the right direction, give them the tools or the clarity or the confidence or the know-how so they can take the next step. And then all the other people that can benefit as a result of that, you know, we can be that door opening for someone, you know, we can just help nudge them of that. So, you know, it's never just that we're working with one person impacting one person, we're impacting everyone that that person then interacts with as well, for the better. And so for that reason, selling truly is a service. And if we don't know how to sell, it's just it's holding so much back in terms of what we could be contributing in the world. And it is just 100%
Speaker 1the number one skill set to have in our business. It's so true. And I think that the thing I run into a lot with people is that they feel like they don't know how to sell without feeling like a used car sales person, or they don't know how to sell without feeling slimy. What is one thing about sales that you think a majority of people get wrong? Yeah, so this is a brilliant question. I
Speaker 2think what people get wrong is they approach it as a negotiation instead of what it really is, which is an invitation. Oh, I like that. So when we approach it as a negotiation, because that's been our experience on the receiving end from so many other markers in our life, like car salesman, which is the typical example. And it's so true. We've all been on the receiving end of some slimy tactics that just made us want to vomit. And that approach is completely one of push. It's one of push. And when we're in that space, A, that doesn't feel good for us. And B, it kind of has the opposite effect on the other person. They feel pressured, they're kind of more likely to withdraw, step away, step back, say they want to think about it. First is approaching it from an invitation point of view, where there's no convincing because they've already made the decision that they want help in this area. They've already decided it's time for a change. They've consciously started to look for a solution. And they've already decided it's time for a change. And you've simply made it easy for you to be found and seen and heard as the go-to expert that can help them. So that's how I love to teach sales. And it's not how everyone is teaching it online, but it is the most impactful way to get a no-brainer, yes, that feels good on both sides.
Speaker 1Okay. I love this. I know that people have watched trainings. I know I certainly have watched trainings or listened to an expert. Or they are following some framework, kind of like what you just mentioned, that just doesn't feel like it's working for them. It feels misaligned or icky, or it feels like they're not coming from a place of invitation. It feels like they're coming from a place of some kind of expectation. And I was wondering if you follow a certain process or a framework for closing sales, or can you walk us through your kind of your own framework, or strategy for how you help people find a sales process that actually aligns with them?
Speaker 2Yeah. So something that I teach is the magnetic selling framework. So I'm all about how we magnetize ideal clients, not how we chase and harass and stalk them. And not what we just hound people in the DMs. Are you still there? Yes, I am ignoring you. Just leave me alone.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh. We should talk about, we should swap some horror stories too.
Speaker 2Definitely. Yeah. So it's really about instead doing what I call the pre-sell work. So there's a lot of people that focus very, very much just on the pitch, what to say, how to structure it. And I do teach that as well, because ultimately we do need to know how to confidently explain our offers and the value they can bring and words and phrases that resonate with our ideal clients. But if we do the intentional work and the lead up to the pitch and the sales call, and we do that really, really well, the sale kind of takes care of itself. So my magnetic selling framework is four pillars. First and foremost, it's a sales foundation. So it's your niche, your positioning, your messaging, your ideal client, and really getting under the skin of them, actually really feeling you know them so well. And they experience that through your content and messaging to the point where they're like, did you hack my phone? How did you know this? So a lot of people skim over those basics. because those fundamentals, they leap. straight into the launching and the marketing and the shiny stuff but if you haven't done that piece well no one really knows exactly who you're speaking to and a confused mind will always say no right we want people to enter our space if even it's our instagram feed or our website or our facebook group or whatever we're using online and instantly know these are my people instantly know in the right place that you're speaking to me so that's why i bang my drum about messaging so much because that can be achieved really simply and clearly and powerfully but when we're too broad too vague too generic in all of those pieces we're trying to talk to too many different people we're never seen as that immediate obvious no-brainer choice pillar two is the pre-sell so this is my favorite part this is really where we get the buy-in so this is all about how to be seen as that no-brainer and the way that we do that the only way that anyone can ever experience us you know our brand our personality our skill sets our messaging you know we're never seen as that immediate obvious no-brainer choice pillar two is the pre-sell is through our content so this is really where you know however we're sharing our message online and demonstrating our expertise this is this is where it makes all the difference right and a lot of people are just relying on you know just written posts for example and they're not actually giving the behind the scenes snippets of what's it like to work with you seeing you in action having a taster you know it's like when you go into a market you're not necessarily going to buy the block of cheese you've never heard of without first having a little nibble of it and thinking that's yummy i want the whole block expecting people to sign up to you know your one thousand three thousand five thousand dollar plus programs without having any you know experience of how you teach how you work and getting some value it's just not going to happen it's going to be a hard sell because you're having to convince them i'm really really good at what i do you know instead of showing them so the pre-sell is all about getting that buy-in by consistently demonstrating our expertise in a way that's cemented the decision that it is a no-brainer to work together that it cements the decision that you are my person we're on the same wavelength because guess what not everyone is we magnetize the ideal people and in doing so we repel the people that are not for us okay so it's not that everyone's going to love our staff and that's okay so those two components are massively important and then part of the pre-sell as well is how we're pre-qualifying people ahead of a sales call so i'm really a real stickler on this with my clients because you never want to show up to a sales call and know nothing about the person you're going to speak with it's literally like going on a blind date and then thinking can i climb out the bathroom window
Speaker 1oh my gosh i agree i agree so much and i talk to people about this all the time about having questions even when people have to book a call with you just having some basic questions that you know will give you an idea of who they are what they're looking for what actually keeps them up at night and getting to know them before you know them so i'm really a real stickler on this you even have your first call with them it's huge it's huge you don't want to waste your time or
Speaker 2theirs if you actually can't help them so those answers are going to give you all of the clues as to whether or not this is actually a fit to work together you know i've had someone in the past say oh i want help with facebook ads don't ask me about facebook ads i don't even use them use paid advertising this is not going to work or you know people who are just not ready to invest right now okay it's probably not the right time to be having a conversation so making sure that we've done the due diligence on that side but also the second piece that a lot of people miss is you know you might get referrals right so people might talk about how amazing you are to their friends and those friends reach out and say hey michelle said you're amazing can we chat but they actually know nothing about you they haven't first-hand experienced anything from you they're just taking you know jane's word for it so i'm not going to get on a call with michelle until i know that she has gone and stalked me online podcast interviews watch some videos or reels read some content and feels yeah holly is totally the person i want to work with that needs to happen first so i will actively encourage that if they go binge watch go stalk let me know that it feels like i'm on the right wavelength for you and then we can talk oh i love it so much yes so these are the really important elements of the pre-sell and then the next two is obviously the sell itself so the way i teach it is very much that invitational approach really inviting the other person to come in and talk to you to describe what it is they want why is now the right time why is this the right approach for them why is this the right offer what made them reach out to you you know what is it they want and why are they stuck and just really ultimately having them sell themselves into your program and then the final pillar which so many people miss is the follow-up and a lot of people are either just not doing this at all they're not doing it enough or they're doing it really badly because a lot of us feel awkward like we don't want to chase we don't want to harass it comes back to the same associations we have with selling full stop but i love to completely reframe that because actually 50 of your sales are made through the follow-up and you cannot afford to miss that piece so they're the four steps of magnetic selling framework and obviously there's a lot of detail that goes behind those four steps but that's that's the principle of it when you walk
Speaker 1people through the magnetic selling framework do you feel like there are ways to customize it specifically to people so they feel like they make it their own or how do you suggest that someone makes any sales process their own thank you for asking this question because yes absolutely
Speaker 2and look this is i think where people fall into some traps actually in business where they think there's there's only one way to be successful and they fixate on this one strategy or it feels rigid it's not aligned they actually don't want to do that thing so it creates resistance guess what we don't get results when there's resistance and we don't get results when there's resistance towards something that doesn't feel aligned to us we're just not going to do it exactly and i cannot tell you how many clients have joined my programs after working with other coaches or mentors who did just teach the one thing you know the one formula that you know proven to get results every time it didn't gel with them or it didn't work for them and then they come into my world and they're like you mean i don't have to have a facebook group i don't actually have to dance on tiktok i don't have to have you know a 37 point funnel no i mean we laugh but it also and it feels so
Speaker 1obvious but also it's like it's such a trip when you're in it and you are listening to someone and they convince you that they have the only way you know that it's it's funny and obvious to like look at it from the outside but like totally also get why some people get into that pigeonhole where they're like this is the only way i can do this you know so i'm excited to hear what your ideas are for making the very the very fact that there are so
Speaker 2many people out there saying so many different things are the one way is proof of the fact that multiple ways can lead to the same destination yes right so there's one person going seo seo there's someone else going facebook as there's someone else going linkedin they can all work they all can work because at the end of the day all we're really looking to do is to connect to more of our ideal audience with a message that's relevant to them yes and there are endless ways to actually do that and it comes down to what's the way that you love to do that i love facebook and instagram i do not love linkedin i don't even have a tiktok account i don't have a podcast yet i don't you know i don't have a book but there's lots of things that i could be doing right yeah and it's really just about finding the thing where you can have consistency and you genuinely enjoy showing up in that space in that platform in that channel it might be more offline than online you know for the first 18 months of me starting my business i didn't even have an online presence because i was busy making incredible connections and opening doors in my offline networks right so yeah it really is so important if you want to have a sustainable business that you're using strategies that feel good to you and really allowing you to design your business approach and model online and i think that's really important and i think that's on your terms regardless of what other people are doing or saying what would you say to people who
Speaker 1feel like their story or being themselves or being truly themselves they don't feel like it's good enough i think for years of my earliest years of my business i felt and so many of my clients now i notice feel that when they first start they feel like be farther along than they are in order to start selling things or in order for people to trust them and what i try to encourage is for them to be themselves because you wouldn't want to buy from someone who just fibbed to you about about how good they are or something like that you wouldn't want to buy from them so why would you expect them to want to buy from you if you are putting on a show right but what would you say for people who feel like they may maybe aren't far enough along to start selling or to do this process where do you think they should be in their timeline in order to kind of start yeah
Speaker 2like i think you've got to be where you're at trying to be further ahead than you are is what creates anxiety stress and a sense of overwhelm and certainly the imposter syndrome yeah versus owning your brilliance exactly where you are right now right so you know before i hit my first six figures there's no way i could have talked about what it takes to hit six figures so i didn't yeah yeah and when i hit my first multiple six figures the same thing right so what we've got to remember is that people are responsible for what they're doing and what they're doing and responding to your energy and people are buying your confidence and certainty they feel a sense of conviction and congruence a lot of the time unconsciously And you can't fake congruence and conviction. No, you absolutely cannot. No matter what your mouth might be saying, your body is literally like the siren going off. I'm not really. Yeah, so true. And, you know, so unconsciously someone's picking up on the signals that perhaps there's a disconnect here somewhere, right? And so this is why, exactly why, force fitting us into doing things that are not aligned or we don't feel we're in the right space for or the right readiness for don't work. They might sell a few times, but they're never going to be consistent because it's hard work as opposed to allowing things to flow and feel easy because we could do this all day, every day. This is totally our zone of genius, right? So if there was a thing a certain way along, I'd really just encourage you to own where you're at because you, you know, if you are, for example, a weight loss coach, right, you might not be running marathons. But if you have techniques that can help someone who can't even get off the sofa right now to get off the sofa, then you have something of value to share with them. You have something of value to teach them that's already going to make an incredible difference and impact in their lives and set them on a trajectory, you know, to get out of the house and have more confidence and, you know, feel better about their body image and, you know, find a plan that works for them and whatnot. So it's really just, you know, what's the first step you can help someone with?
Speaker 1And I want to point out that, I mean, well, you and I even had a conversation where you told me about how the first year that you had multiple six-figure year, you only had a email list of like 1300 people. Yeah. I'll speak for myself at various times, but also a lot of clients I have feel like, oh, well, I only have 500 people on my list or I only have 600 people on my list. That's not enough. I need to keep going before I launch anything, before I start selling anything. Can you speak to that a little bit and how that happened for you? Like how? How did that actually happen?
Speaker 2I'm just going to comment on the size of list and following first, because this is such a passion topic of mine and it's been a recurring theme with clients lately. But the size of your following does not directly correlate actually to your bottom line. First and foremost, I have never subscribed to vanity metrics in my business. Like I've never really concerned myself with, I need 50,000 and 100,000 followers before someone's going to take me seriously. I focus on serving the people I have. And actually you said, Lauren, to my group, when you came to do a guest speaking session, I've never forgotten it because it's so true. You know, if you've got 800, 1,000 followers, imagine having 1,000 people in a room listening to you. Like you wouldn't think, oh God, there's only 1,000 people here, right? No, never. Holy crap, there's 1,000 people. So first and foremost, it's actually not the key thing, right? I monetize my audience, which is still a small audience. But how better than a lot of people I know that have 10 times, 20 times, 50 times the size of it. I know because I've spoken directly with them. And in some cases, they've actually reached out to work with me. But also, you know, when we are creating content with the attachment to the outcome of a certain number of responses or likes or comments, it's the wrong intention and it's the wrong energy. So case in point, I had a client just the last few weeks who was really resisting creating content. She's like, oh, but you know. I put all this effort into it. And then if no one even watches or comments or likes, then, you know, what's the point? And I said, out of interest, these last three high ticket one-on-one clients you've just signed, did they comment on any of your content? No. Oh, did they like any of your content? No. Did you know they existed before they reached out to book a call with you? Not two of them, right? And so on and so forth. And it's like, okay, well, that's interesting. So you're telling me that there's people out there watching, observing, and paying you to work together who had never been the online cheerleaders whooping on every post, you know? And this is the thing. We've got to shift the goalpost. The goalpost is not to get a like and a follow and a comment. The goalpost is to have an impact that resonates so deeply with your audience that it shifts that perspective and it makes them want to connect with you further. And not everyone who's observing these things, taking them in, are going to publicly say, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. But they're thinking it. They're chatting to their partner about it. They're already thinking about ways to work with you because of it. And we just cannot underestimate that impact. Ripple effects are often felt, not seen. And so just shifting that is a massively important piece.
Speaker 1You make this sound like exciting magic.
Speaker 2It is. It genuinely is.
Speaker 1I love it. I love it so much because it really does feel very aligned with how, the best sales in my business happen. And I love it because I can speak to it and say that it's 100% true. It's 100% accurate. If you are moving in integrity with who you are and how you want to show up in the world and who you actually are in the world, then the right things fall into place. And if you just lay a little bit of a framework into it for yourself and some systems into it for yourself and do it with a genuine, genuine heart and soul, oh my gosh, it's not magic. You can make so much success for yourself out of it. So thank you for that. One thing that I know that people have talked to me about that I've had lots of conversations about is this feeling of, okay, things are working in my business. I am making sales. I agree with everything Holly is saying on this podcast right now. I, I feel this energy. I love this, but now I don't really know what to do next. Like they're in that stage where, they are, they have, you know, the things that they've been doing are working. The sales that they have been getting are absolutely working, but now they don't know how to do the next thing or how to move on to the next thing. Do you have any suggestions for that? Especially as someone who has kind of changed gears a few times?
Speaker 2I mean, it really comes down to what the next thing is that you aspire to, right? Like it really comes down to what's the aspiration and the goal. Like where do you desire to take your business forward? What would expansion look like to you? What does the next level of growth mean? And one thing I would just caution on is, you know, don't move away from something that is working either. How can you do more of that? Is it that you simply need to reach more people? Is it that you need to offer an alternative option that means you can support more clients? You know, if you're booked up to the brim with one-on-one and you're like, it's working, but now I'm booked up again, you know, maybe it's time to scale into something that can serve a group, a group format, or create some, you know, lower ticket self-study courses that brings in another income stream. Maybe it is that we simply need to get in front of more people and the strategy needs to be more around visibility. I love teaching, you know, the power of partnerships, collaborations, win-win relationships that get in front of other people's audiences. You know, that always, always, always brings me more clients. So I think, you know, it's hard to answer with any more specificity without someone really being clear on what, what is the, what next you actually aspire. Because that's so different for all of us. You know, for some of us, I'm like, I want to write my book for others. It might be, you know, I want to reach a certain amount of income for others. It might be, I want to work less hours without changing my income, you know? So it really just comes down to what's the vision.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. I think with a lot of entrepreneurs, it feels like everyone doesn't really know what they're doing when you get down to the real conversations about it, but everyone thinks that everyone else knows what they're doing. And so. So everyone's like, oh, I, we should, uh, I need to follow the steps that that person took because, you know, they had this business and then they started a mastermind and then they wrote a book. And so, you know, I guess what you're saying is there is no right way to pick what's next for anyone. I just wondered if you had like any specific, you know, tips on, on really picking your own path in that or how to, how to even scale with sales.
Speaker 2Yeah. So, I mean, I'll just comment on the fact that, you know, I've, I've worked with everyone from startups to multiple seven figure entrepreneurs and there's not been a single conversation where there's an aspect of, I don't really know what I'm doing here and, you know, needing to refine the fundamentals, which is why I'm so passionate about those foundations, the sales foundations, the niche, the positioning, the messaging, haven't had a single client that has not on some level needed to refine that, you know, no matter how many millions of dollars they're earning. So, so maybe start there. Yeah, oh, yeah. So I guess the one thing I would say in terms of which way to go, always, always, always the one that excites you the most, because when we're excited, when we're just literally obsessed with the things that we're doing, always have energy for it. We'll always show up for it. We will go the extra mile for it. We'll overcome obstacles for it. You know, it's what would you make a stand for? What just really lights you up? What is fun versus the things that we feel? We should do that will create every excuse under the sun not to do because we just don't want to do it. So it's always about where the excitement, where's that energy? Because people are feeling your energy. That's what's infectious to people. So, yeah, I think I think that definitely. But always, I think, you know, when you're looking to scale to the next level, it always pays to just revisit who who am I actually looking to attract more of? Like things are working well, but are these the clients I would love to clone over and over and over? Again, or not, or is there like a couple of them? I'd love to clone over and over again and the rest. kind of do without so you know there's a different personality the different people who are different stages and it's really only through the experience of having a certain number of clients that we can start to recognize okay i really love the clients who come to me at this particular stage and that might allow you to zero in further in terms of your specialism and your niche and call more of those ideal people in because we attract who we speak to online and there's every i'd argue there's almost no one in the world that hasn't got an opportunity to go a layer deeper in the detailed specificity of what they're actually saying and who they're speaking to i just love this answer
Speaker 1so much and i think it particularly also helps for people who are feeling maybe burnt out on the people that they are currently serving and revisiting the foundations part of it auditing yourself almost a little bit in that foundations part can help you figure out if this is even the
Speaker 2person you want to serve anymore yeah and to recognize that it's not just about getting a sale it's not just about getting a yes it's about getting a meaningful yes that you're excited to deliver on a meaningful yes i love that you know like if it's not a win-win because it doesn't feel aligned on both sides it's going to be a lose-lose and do not forget that your success and results are directly related to your clients their results are your results they're your proven track record and you're not going to get results with people you don't feel lit up by working with so true and
Speaker 1i feel like i need to apologize to my listeners because i've said love that like five million times during this interview but i do i love everything that you've been saying and i just really appreciate this angle okay i would love to know this is kind of we're winding down here i have a couple of additional questions for you the first question is what is a myth that you would love to bust about literally anything at all oh my gosh something that you are just like uh i just when people say this i just want to okay i've got one i've got one go for it myth i would love to bust is
Speaker 2you are the niche oh okay i've seen this a lot and the whole myth of you don't need a niche like let's just let's just zero in on this let's just first start with what is a niche because i feel like there's a lot of misconceptions and i put a post on my instagram not that long ago and i said in nailing your niche doesn't mean you have to find a thousand people called kate who live in melbourne own a pitbull and drive a honda the niching side of things what it means is it's just simply being able to articulate what you do and who you do it for okay so you are not the niche you are your personal brand if you binge listen to lauren's podcast you're going to understand everything to do with real personal branding but there's a massive difference between that and that is why no one can ever really replicate the same thing you do even if they're playing in a similar space and they feel like a competitor oh but telling people you don't need a niche and i see this so often online ironically from people who do have a clearly defined niche it's just actually making it more confusing to people as to like well who am i who am i selling to then and when we don't know who we're selling to and who we're speaking to it's really hard to create content it's really hard to say anything that feels like it's landing with any kind of potency now your niche can of course evolve mine's involved three times as i've described it's not that you are pigeonholed till kingdom come in this one space forever it probably will evolve your messaging 100 will evolve as you do in your journey and experience i mean i literally rewrote an entire sales page 12 months later because the one before was like oh no that doesn't sound right at all anymore you know just a year later my own words yeah so that is a myth i really want to bust you do need to know who you're zeroing in on does it have flexibility of course do you have to stick with it forever no do you need to commit to it for a certain period of time so you can get known for something yes can it expand beyond a certain specialism of course but it's you know the more you zero in the easier it is to be seen as the specialist and the no-brainer hmm i will oh really so good so good thank you for sharing you are your personal brand you are not your niche
Speaker 1you are your personal brand you are not your niche words by holly what can people expect from you next what are you really passionate about right now and how
Speaker 2can people support you in your work well i i mean i'm just really passionate about empowering people with the ability to create magnetic messaging because when they create magnetic messaging they literally magnetize the right people to them it's incredible and it makes it easy and it feels fun and it genuinely feels effortless like the number of clients i've had tell me oh my gosh this person actually just popped up in my dms asking how they can work with me and this is how it can be you know rather than you popping up in their dms have them pop up in yours so so that's really kind of the focus of my work it's about getting the yes before the sales call it's about getting ready to invest clients who've already decided they want to work with you so this is my absolute jam so if you want to follow me on instagram at holly mccue this is kind of the whole focus of my work i also have a facebook community called empowered entrepreneurs connect and inspire and i have a number of um you know online courses that can help you just get started on this one of my favorites is stop the scroll masterclass which is really helping you know how to capture attention in those two and a half seconds you have online before someone decides to scroll past so again that's really helping you with those magnetic openings yeah so that there are a number of juicy things that you can get involved with that's awesome
Speaker 1and there's a pdf you want to share with us too tell me about that yeah so i pulled together a
Speaker 2behind the scenes guide of i realized that last year over three hundred thousand dollars of my revenue came from offers i'd sold without a sales page wow yeah both high ticket just google docs and i thought maybe other people would like to know how i did that and it turns out they did so i pulled together a pdf guide explaining exactly how did i make that happen with no sales page bearing in mind again i have a small audience i don't use advertising paid advertising yet um that is set to change as i grow but um yeah so this is just a free guide explaining the exact steps i took to bank over three hundred thousand dollars in my business with dream high ticket one-on-one clients without need for a sales page so if you'd like to get your hands on that i would love to share that with you yeah so i pulled together a pdf guide
Speaker 1share it with you i i we're we're in of course so we'll put that link to the pdf inside the show notes thank you so much for being here with us today holly is there anything else you'd like to
Speaker 2share before we hop off i think the one thing i would just remind everyone of when it comes to sales is that people love to buy what they want oh that's good so just reflect on some of the recent purchases you've made have genuinely excited you to get your credit card out and say please take my money it can be a product it could be a holiday it could be a course or a program there will have been something recently i asked this question in a group and someone said my robot vacuum and someone else said my milk frother you know i don't care what it is yeah but reflect on the steps you took for that to feel like the absolute no-brainer decision where you were genuinely excited to pay someone else because that's the same experience you can cultivate in your marketing and messaging and sales process for your clients
Speaker 1awesome we have to end there because it's so good i could ask you 20 million more questions and we are out of time so you'll have to come back sometime thank you so much for coming on real personal branding podcast holly we are so happy that you were here thank you for having me thank you wow what an interview there are a couple things i want to pull out from that first of all your selling strategy can be customized to you and how you show up how you feel your personal branding strategy should be customized to who you are the second thing is your personal brand is not your niche i think that is really important if you want to go back and listen to that section that was in the part where holly busted a myth for us and i think it's so important for you to understand the difference and understand where holly's coming from with this whether or not you agree with that like she said there's a lot of people who kind of say it differently online we're probably going to hear from some of them on this podcast i think the important thing is you figure out what feels right to you and the third thing i want to pull out is that foundational step i think it's so important i've said that like three times now that i think it's so important but i really do i find that a lot of times when i first start working with a client we have to go back to that foundational step and we have to really investigate and really audit how we're going to do that and i think that's really important and i think that's how they're showing up and who they're speaking to and really audit the psychographics of who they're speaking to those three things i think are super meaningful to me from this interview and i would love to hear what was meaningful to you so please let me know what kind of resonated with you what you took away from this interview i would love to find out so grateful to have holly on this podcast today if you want to check out the podcast notes or you want that pdf that holly was talking about those will be in the show notes on the podcast notes and i'll see you in the show notes on my website at laurendaviscreative.com backslash show go check that out grab that pdf there make sure if you liked the show like yes for sure i want to know But make sure you head over to one of my guests, Instagrams, LinkedIn, Facebooks, wherever you want to connect with them and make sure you tell them that you really enjoyed it on the show. You have no idea how much that actually means to me and how much that means to the guests that say yes to coming and spilling all of their secrets on the Real Personal Branding Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next time.
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