The Top 5 Lessons I Learned in My First Year of Online Business

Slow down so you can speed up. It’s a phrase I heard years ago that helped me understand that taking time to think, reflect and plan is one of the most valuable uses of your time, especially as an entrepreneur. On today’s episode, I’m doing just that. 

I share the top 5 lessons I learned in my first year of online business. We’ll cover topics like picking the right mentors, investing in your own learning, taking action, avoiding the head game, and talking to REAL people – in real life.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

➡️ https://heathersager.com/episode16/

🔗 Grab the latest FREE resources: https://heathersager.com/start

🔗 Browse all episode shownotes: https://heathersager.com/blog

👋 CONNECT WITH HEATHER:

Work with Heather: https://www.heathersager.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to Finding Your It Factor episode number 16 and this episode our, Oh my goodness, it's back to just me, my voice for the next hot minute. Your welcome. This is going to be a lot of fun because it's the end of the year friends and as you've heard it over and over again the end of a decade. Oh my goodness, what a crazy year this last year has been for me, for you probably for so many of us. I just had to take a moment and spend our time today focused on the top lessons I had this year and what they mean for online business moving forward. If you're a new listener of the show, you might not know. My business is fairly new, so officially I started my business last October of 2018 but I didn't start working full time in my business until April of this year, so I guess we'd been at it for nine months. The time it takes to brew a baby. I've had a pretty fun year and I will say I'm really, really proud of what I've created this last year. I also have quite a few hilarious things that I would not do again, a lot of time wasted. But you know, that's all part of the learning process. So today what I'm going to share with you is my first year as an entrepreneur, the top five lessons that I learned that I want to pass onto you because regardless of where you sit in your business, whether you're just getting started or you've been at this for years, I think today's lessons are going to not only resonate with you, but I think there are applicable to any phase of business. And I'm going to carry these forward with me as I head into some pretty crazy goals for 2020. So are you ready to dive in?

Speaker 2: 1:57

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words, they have this spark that lights you up when you're near them? They have the it factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So. Are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to Finding Your It Factor. Okay. So this was year has been

Speaker 1: 2:48

so much fun, so much fun. I've learned so many things. It was honestly, this was like a top 100 list when I started and I really had to be disciplined to whittle this down to my top five things. Full disclaimer, I might nestle a couple extra bonus lessons in here as we go. Let's just see what happens. But I am so, so grateful for all the experiences I have this year. You know, it's one of those things is when you, when you get started with a business, you have an idea in your head of what you're creating. And uh, it usually pivots pretty quickly. Things don't always work out the way that you plan, but if you're open to it, I don't know, man. You can have some really incredible things fall into your lap. And that's exactly what happened for me this year. Let me start off by sharing with you. I think two things that are pretty awesome. Thing number one is, so I started working full time in my business in April of this year and uh, that was also my first five figure month, which is a pretty big freaking deal. I don't know, maybe some people come out of the gate much, much bigger than that. But I was very excited for landing a few contracts right out of my old job and had my first five figure month. I was just celebrated. And it was an incredible thing. But I tell you this because I also want to tell you, in my first month of business, I had the most embarrassing flop. So created an online business. So what I do is I am a speaker so people can book me to speak on their stages. I also teach workshops and facilitate sessions for businesses, for corporate companies or for small businesses. I also teach online workshops. Well, that was my plan, the beginning of this last year. I wanted to roll out online courses and I wasn't quite ready to roll that out yet. And so I had this big idea that I would host my own live workshop here in Portland. So I'm like, ah, no problem. I have hosted so many events over the years in my old job, I know how to produce events. I know how to create a really, really good event. This is like no problem. So I come up with this great idea to how about I take what I learned in some of the courses I invested in around how to launch an online course through a webinar, but how about instead of offering an online course, I offer a live workshop. Yeah, that sounds so great, right? You find people from all over the world to attend your webinar and then try to convince them to fly to your hometown of Portland, Oregon to come to a workshop of a person that they have never heard of in their life. Oh my God, this is a recipe for success. Am I right? So fast forward or let's rewind. It was March. I had this grand idea. I start getting ready for it. I'm doing all the things where I am producing weekly content on my blog. I'm emailing my email list, which is essentially just my closest friends and family that I texted and bribed them to join my email list. So I had like 32 people and I decide, Oh, I'm going to invest in Facebook ads and launch my first webinar to get to this live workshop. So I do what you do, right? You make some Facebook posts and then Facebook tells you, Hey, do you want to boost this post? And I'm like, sure, of course I want to do Facebook ads. So that's what people say I'm supposed to do. So I pay like all the money to start boosting these posts on Facebook and Instagram and I shell out a few hundred bucks and I'm super excited because I get like 75 people registered to my webinar guys. Oh my gosh. Super excited. So I get it, I get them on there and then I have like 50 people show up live to my webinar. Again, super excited based on what I read online. That's really great number and I proceed to teach my online webinar, my live webinar, by the way, where I'm teaching people how to become better presenters, better speakers. I did the entire webinar. I'm super excited. I talk about the live event, rah rah rah, open up the doors and two things happened. Thing number one, the obvious thing. Crickets like literally nobody's interested in my online workshop. Uh, but not me. No surprise there. Number two, the text messages flood in from the few friends and family who came to my workshop where, um, they'd actually texted me during the live workshop to let me know that I was sharing the wrong monitor. As in I have two monitors. One was in full screen mode, which is what they were supposed to see. And then the other one was in the presenter view in PowerPoint where you show everyone, you know, your raw dirty notes like the incoherent coherent sentences, like the, the ugly, dirty things that people aren't supposed to see. Not dirty like that. You silly. I don't have those notes in my PowerPoint, but like dirt, like sentences in coherent, like you don't have things spelled correctly. The capitalization is super sketchy. Yeah guys, I did my entire live webinar showing that screen. Oh my God. It was so embarrassing. I was mortified. And my sweet friends, they're like, no, no, no. It was super cool. We thought you were doing this meta thing where you were showing the behind the scenes of teaching you how to present, like from the presenter's point of view. It was super cool. It was not cool. It was disastrous and I was, I was mortified. I was disappointed. I was so distraught, questioning what the hell I was thinking trying to implement these things that I was learning about online courses. Who was I to try to put these things into play in a live workshop? Who the hell would want to come listen to me, speak, and me present? How could I even post my own event? I started spiraling like fricking spiraling and at that same time I had booked quite a few of live events and people asking me to come speak. So I distracted myself with my really busy travel calendar and I started traveling to different places, speaking on their stages, doing what I do best, which is showing up and delivering really good presentations and I let my online business kind of go quiet. I posted a bit on social media, but I didn't do anything to my blog. I didn't email my my list at all. I barely sent any followup emails about my webinar. I ghosted my list. I ghosted everyone because guys, I was so embarrassed. Now looking back, this sounds so freaking dumb because I have no reason to be embarrassed. I tried something, I tried it and it didn't work. Also, I made a mistake, which was super fricking funny if you think about it, and it was only like 50 people and half of them were like my friends and family. So grand scheme, no biggie, but at the time it was, it was a man that was an ego blow because here's the thing, I'm used to coming from a world where I was really damn good at what I did. I didn't really make mistakes and if I did, I always caught them or my team caught them and we rerouted and reject them before they ever went out into the world. But this was just me and my first coming out of the gate in a big way was an embarrassing flop. And that's how I started my journey as an online entrepreneur in April, in April. And it sent me down a little bit of a spiral, which I'm really embarrassed to admit, but it was a beautiful, beautiful blessing in disguise. So that's how I started my year as a full time entrepreneur that let me lead into you or lead in for you, the five lessons that I learned since that I think are super valuable and quite frankly, these are going to be the lessons that I take as a foundation for every step, every scale that I make in my business moving forward. These things are going to be paramount for me. So here we go. Number one, pick the right mentors and invest in your learning generously. I was very lucky, very fortunate to have been exposed to some incredible mentors. At my old job, but beyond that scope of mentorship, the leaders in the company, the authors and mentors at that company followed. That was my exposure when it came to influence and learning for business. Now I will say I was exposed to incredible mentors, incredible people like John Maxwell, Jim Collins, Michael Gerber, all these people who have incredible insights when it comes to business, but I didn't have a lot of mentorship and insights from women, especially women in the online space. So it was extremely intentional when I came out of the gate that I wanted to find female mentors doing what I wanted to be doing someday so that I could be inspired by them to see what it looks like to be an assertive, strong woman in this space. Luckily, I came across people like Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, Jenna Kutcher, Rachel Hollis. These are all people that I found early, even before I started my business that I started watching how they showed up for their audience, how they structured their businesses, and I took note, I whittled down to the ones I found. The ones I just listed that I found were really incredible mentors for me that I was inspired by, that I had similar values to and I started taking notes, but more importantly, I made a very conscious decision to invest in their courses. Now, full truth, I invested in online courses far before I ever started my business. I started investing in online courses about three years ago. Really wanting to make a big dent in my own professional development in relation to personal and professional growth. As I got closer and closer to starting my business, I invested in courses that were related to my business, so the first course that I invested in was a copywriting course. Then I invested in Amy Porterfield's original course creation course. I invested in B school with Marie Forleo. I had started investing in courses that would make sense as I started grooming my business and to be perfectly transparent with you, by the time I started my business full time, I had already invested close to$10,000 in my own online education. Now I fully fully respect the fact that I'm very fortunate to have come from a background where I had a really established career that I was able to invest that kind of money. I know that I, I'm probably not normal in that way. I work my butt off to get where I was in my executive career. I also saved for it because I wanted to make it a priority. So even if it's$1,000 even if it's$100 whatever you can do to make an investment in your learning, it does a couple things. By actually putting money down and investing in your learning, you tell yourself that you are taking this seriously. Now I will say that with a caveat that you know any online course that I've invested in have not completed in its entirety and I don't need to for it to be valuable. I think that is a myth that so many people have when it comes to online courses. They think that the measurement of the value of the course comes from the completion of the course and that's just B S. You get to pick what you see as valuable and I think learning is one of those things that you jump into it, take what you need and then keep moving through it. So yeah, to date I still have yet to complete in its entirety an online course and I have felt great about every single dollar that I have invested and so should you, you shouldn't have any guilt or grief about not completing online courses now, unless you actually have enough opened up a course, then I would say, yeah, you can feel a little guilty. Maybe put that on your list to come circle back around and dive in to find one thing that adds value to you, but investing in yourself through online learning or maybe that's through a coaching program. Maybe that's investing in a business coach. Maybe that's investing in, maybe that's just showing up for yourself on audible, spending time every single day to listen to podcasts. I did that a ton. That's where I started figuring out the mentors that resonated with me by listening to their podcasts and, and following them on social just to see who resonated. Getting sucked into their funnels to figure out as I moved further and further down their sales funnels, uh, who did I really want to learn from? And that's one of the things I was very intentional about early. I'm even more intentional about it now. I'm only choosing people that I completely align with from a values perspective, only people that I can see myself wanting to hang out with them, only people who I like. I'm not following or investing in any courses of people that I don't 100% stand behind. And that's something that has been a really incredible lesson learned and something that I'll continue to take with me moving forward. Lesson number two, you can consume information and have courses all day long, but the true secret to your success is action. Yeah, it doesn't help you if all you do is pop in the earbuds or turn or hit play on the online courses. If you're only consuming information and filling out checklists. And filling out worksheets and you're not taking any action, it's not going to get you anywhere and you have wasted your time and your money. I'll say that again. If you're not actually going to take action, you are wasting your time and money consuming information isn't going to help you if you don't couple it with action. So this was a really hard lesson for me this year because I did all of the courses, I consumed all of the information. I got in this really good groove where I was listening to the podcast. I have the daily routine, I had everything happening, but I was still in this place of inaction. And if I'm being brutally honest, it came from my bruised ego. When my webinar turned live workshop flop happened, I decided that I hadn't followed the process to a T. so I needed to go back and study the process and I needed to plan out a better way to do it. And so I put myself in planning mode, perfecting mode, thinking about it, mode, taking more courses. Well that didn't work for me. I need a different course. I needed this. I needed that. And then I just found myself spinning inaction until one day I got kicked in the butt quite a bit, uh, by one of the coaching programs I was in and uh, moved myself into action. And that action became a catalyst for so many things in my business. Now let me tell you that a lot of times we sit in this consumption mode, this, this learning mode because we don't feel clear yet. We don't know who our ideal customer is yet. We don't quite know what our program is yet. We don't quite know what our social media strategy is yet. We don't quite know what the insert, whatever it is that you're spinning on right now thing is, but let me remind you of something very important. Clarity comes with action. Every step you take is a step closer to finding more clarity. And the more action you take, the clearer things will become. It is so profound, so freaking true. And I think this is hard for so many of us because we want things to be perfect. And if you're like me and you lived in a life in corporate before, you were used to planning all of the things before taking action because there were ramifications that would happen if you didn't execute it well the first time. Let's be honest, they were our bosses, they were clients, they were all the things of all the people that can jump out of the woodwork and tell you like when things went wrong, here's all the disasters that would happen. Newsflash, you're now an entrepreneur. The only person you have to answer to is you. And the best way to show up as you and test out what works is just do that test. Try the things. So the more action you take, the better off you'll be. And I learned that in a lot of different beautiful ways. Also some very ugly ways this year. I am now fully embracing action without PR, without perfection, action, without perfection. Just keep moving forward. And as long as I have really strong intentions and I'm very aware of what my audience needs and I'm acting in good faith for them, I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I'm not afraid to screw up. I'm not afraid to have typos in my email sequence. I'm not afraid to mispronounce 50 bajillion things on this podcast. I'm not afraid to look like I don't know what I'm doing because the reality is that I do. I know what I'm doing and I'm learning as I go. But the more that I commit to showing up for you, either on this podcast or on my social media or on my website, the the greater the ability I have to help you. Because you're here for a reason. You want to become more magnetic and how you show up for your team and for your audience. And if I don't show up for you, you're not able to show up for them. So I have to act before I'm ready sometimes because it's the only way for us to keep moving together. You see, you follow me here. Your, your audience feels the same way about you. So start taking action and I want you to think about, let's make this actionable right now. What is the thing that you've been sitting on. The project that you know you need to do that you keep procrastinating on. And by procrastinating you keep calling it planning, but you know, you just need to jump in and do the thing. What's one action that you could take this week to get it in motion? What is it? Think about it. Okay, stop thinking about it and go do it. Stop planning and start doing, this is one of my favorite say and I used to use with my team years ago when we would be planning events and there would become this, this point in time. We were so close to the live event that uh, there was no time to implement any new ideas, but my team always had new ideas and there came a point in time where I had to say, guys, this is not idea time. This is do time. No idea of time. It's do time. And that became a thing that we said quite a bit is we welcome ideas. But at some point in time we're no longer in idea time. We're in do time. And I challenge you to think about when are you still sitting in idea time, waiting, thinking, brainstorming when really what you need is a Swift kick in the arse and uh, side note, I've never said arse in my entire life. I have know where that came from. Anyways, Swift kick in the something or other and you need to do, you just need to do the thing. Ask yourself is it idea time or is it do time? It's most likely do time and this will probably pan out in many aspects of your business. Okay, thing number three, lesson number three. The head game is real. That came is a real, this was the most unexpected lesson I had in 2019 is that entrepreneurship all comes down to a mind game. Are you able to stay in the right head space for yourself, for your business and for your audience? Now this pans out in a lot of different ways, but I would say some of the biggest are feelings of being an impostor. Feelings of not being qualified to do the thing that's in front of you. All these negative things that we have on our mind, questioning whether or not we can actually do the thing that we want to do or whether or not the idea is super crazy or that we are, I don't know, all of the negative talk and that head game when you're especially an online entrepreneur and you don't go into an office and you're by yourself staring at this computer screen for the better half of a day, that mind game can really start taking over. So entrepreneurship is a mind game and those who succeed are the ones who can really tap into what they need to be focused on, what they need to be thinking about and quiet all the chitter chatter of the crap I shared with you, I think on an earlier podcast is that I learned from Rachel Hollis that uh, you got a name, that inner voice so you can call her out and tell her to shush it up. And earlier this year I named my inner voice Patrice. Yeah, Patrice. Uh, from the show. You know How I Met Your Mother when Robyn would always scream damnit Patrice. Yeah. That's the voice that I have in my head, or at least that's the voice I've given her. Uh, but I tell Patrice just can it quite frequently now because she still has a very loud voice and she likes to bring it out very often and I have to tell her, Patrice, there's no seat at the table here for you. And that is the thing for you to think about is how much of a voice, how much of a vote are you giving your version of Patrice in your head as a business owner, how much of your time are you spending in your own mind trying to convince yourself that you are worthy or try to convince yourself that your justified in the prices that you offer or trying to will yourself to charge more, or trying to get the courage to actually ask for the sale or to get in front of the audience or to press record on that video, whatever it is in front of you, that that voice is telling you that you can't do it. Tell her to can it. No room in the inn. Patrice or whatever you've called her, she's got to go. And the moment that you accept that and start acting on it, that's what really good stuff starts happening for you and for your business. So my lesson number three was a big one this year. It was a big one that happened right over the summer and I am so grateful that it did because the back half of this year has been pretty dang phenomenal because of it. So can it Patrice, your invitation, it's null and void. Lesson number four. Ya gotta get off the internet and go actually talk to real live human people. Okay. Now this one might sound a little odd, but let me tell you my lesson. So all year as I was speculating, starting this online business and I was getting into all the Facebook groups in the courses and chatting with the people and scheduling Zoom calls and even meeting locally with people here in Portland that might even be in the same that I was in. It all just didn't feel real yet. I don't know. That might seem a little weird, but something about the online space just feels a little like you're playing house a bit. I don't know, maybe that's just me, but it didn't really feel tangible and real and for me the complexity was is I had this online business I was creating, but I also was doing speaking, so I was consulting and doing contracting work to go out and do speaking, and I felt like, Ooh, that was safe. That was familiar. I could go out and make the money that way I could go out and be a version of who I've always been in that capacity. But this online business was all still a little out there. Things changed for me when I made the decision to start attending live conferences, live conferences that had my people there, other online entrepreneurs who talk like me, acted like me, thought like me had similar goals and ideas as me, and oh my goodness. It was the best decision I made all year. So in 2019 I made the investment in a few programs specifically. I'll tell you three of them. I decided to attend to a conference September, October and November, September I attended the Legendary Life Conference hosted by Tarzan Kay and Sage Polaris. October I attended Amy Porterfield's Entrepreneurial experience and in November I attended the Rise Business Conference by Rachel Hollis and all three of these. I was very strategic around why I was going and what I wanted to gain from them, but the beautiful thing that I underestimated was the value of connection with other entrepreneurs. Now here's the funny thing. I have hosted conferences like huge multiple thousand people conferences with big, big, big speakers for a decade. Yeah, that was part of my old life is my team and I produce these incredible conferences and I knew that when it came to those conferences, there were a couple of facets around why people attended, but the number one thing that people got out of it was networking with like minded peers. Somehow I forgot the need for that piece. When I started my business, I forgot the need or I maybe, maybe I just undervalued that. I didn't really think that that could in fact be true. I think if I were being totally honest with myself, that's what I would have. That's what I would have thought six months ago. I didn't need it quite yet. I was still in learning building mode. I was still in consuming mode, whatever it was. Right. So fast forward, I attended a conference in September, and this is going to sound super cheesy, but guys, life fricking changing and I think a big part of that is just the style of Tarzan and Sage and how they run conferences. It's a small, intimate, a hundred person event, if that's intimate for some. Yes, it was incredible. And the thing for me is there I not only got to talk to my real everyday customers face to face and understand what they were challenged by, what they needed, and my mind was swirling with all of these ideas for how I could help them. But more importantly, I connected with people that I want to hang out with forever and ever and ever. I met my business bestie, Katelyn there. Yeah, I know the word business bestie is totally cringe worthy, but it's true when you find it. So Katelyn was my roommate at that event. We met via the Facebook group when she was looking for a roommate. And to be perfectly honest with you, me and my hoity toity was like, I don't need a roommate at these events. I can afford it. I know that sounds super lame to say out loud, but it was true. But then I thought, huh, if I'm trying to meet people, maybe having a roommate would be a good thing. And then I'd have a wing man and I wouldn't be like a loner when I showed up to the conference. So I responded to her initial post and I was like, Hey, couple questions for you. Number one, are you a serial killer? Number two, I don't remember even what number two, number one, are you a serial killer? That was the most important question that I had to ask. And uh, it was a nice little icebreaker. Katelyn never saw the message. So three weeks later she finally responded to me. So I just thought that maybe my question was a little too out there, but we ended up connecting. We met over Zoom to get to know each other beforehand. And Katelyn and I roomed together. I traveled all the way across the country to go to this event in Niagara Falls and I landed, or I got to the hotel after midnight. So she was already asleep by the time I showed up. But the next morning when we officially met and we're getting ready to go to the conferences, I knew immediately that this was going to be a person who is significant in my life. And that sounds super lame to say, but as an online entrepreneur, so side note, backing up real quick, I have some incredible friends in my life. So I'm very, very lucky that I have some incredible best friends. My husband's amazing. My best closest friends are amazing and they don't understand this online world. They're fully supportive of what I do. They listen to all the podcasts. Hi guys, I love you. But, um, they don't, they don't really get this thing that is online business. And if you're listening to this, I know you get it and it's hard, guys. Like it's hard. It can be lonely and it can be exciting and exhilarating and terrifying and all of the feels. Oh my goodness. And when I found someone who not only got that but was like my spirit animal who got me and had similar sense of humor and just, I don't know, thoughts on life, I just was like, Oh, I finally felt seen. And that was powerful. And that to me in that moment, that relationship with Katelyn, hi Katelyn, if you're listening, which I know you are, that was monumental. And it led to me being open to build more and more and more relationships. And the thing that I was so surprised about about this last year was the volume of friendships that I have made over the last six months because guys, umm making friends as a woman, it's not an easy thing. It's not easy. And especially as someone who has a hearing loss and I struggle to connect with other people face to face, which I'm going to talk about that by the way. In the next episode I'm going to share with you all about my hearing loss and how that's transformed what I do today and how I show up today topic for next week, but making friends is a really, really difficult thing and when you open yourself up to friendship, yeah, I think these online entrepreneurial events are primed for just that. We all go like hungry and eager to make friends and so I think they do a really good job. Rachel Hollis did a great job of this. Amy Porterfield did a great job. They really groomed the environment to allow you to fast track those relationships quickly and it's a really, really beautiful thing. So I'm going deep in on this one because it is that important. Building community, building a team of people around you that are other business owners who get what you get, who, who are the ones that you can call when things are hard. It's so important. It's also important because they're the ones that are going to cheer you on when you're not giving yourself credit for the shit that you should be. That's what friendship is all about and you need those in your life. And uh, so I think this lesson here, lesson number four, go find the people and be open to building true relationships. I cannot recommend that enough. Lesson number five, I've got to make this one super quick because guys, I have to go pick up my kids from daycare. So let me end with this one. If there was only one thing that I could have learned this last year, that's the secret to my success and what I see is so many other online, online entrepreneurs be with their success is consistency. It's the queen of everything. Whatever it is that you're doing, if you're sending emails, if you're showing up on Instagram stories, if you're posting on Facebook, if you're building a community on Facebook groups, whatever that is for you, it doesn't matter if you do it once or twice really, really, really well. You have to keep showing up. When you start showing up you build confidence with your audience, that one, you know what you're talking about too. You're not just going to stick around for a hot minute to get a sale and then ghost on them. You show them that you're the real freaking deal because I can't tell you in the last year how many other quote unquote online entrepreneurs I've rubbed shoulders with in Facebook groups who have wanted to do coffee dates or talked about podcasts and all these things and they post consistently for three weeks, four weeks, and then they're gone. God, and then maybe make a comeback after three or four or five months. It doesn't work that way. Let's say that again, max. It doesn't work that way. It's small incremental showings, but done consistently. That's how you start building your authority. That's how you start building your online brand. Don't come out of the water trying to be Beyonce and every freaking moment just show up in little moments, but very, very frequently. So often people say, pick your platform and just keep showing up. For me, I picked a couple platforms. I'm doing Instagram, I'm doing the podcast and I'm doing my email list. Those for me are consistent. Next year I'm adding Pinterest to the mix. Next year I'm adding Facebook more consistently to the mix. I haven't done it very well this past year, but I will next year and it's because I'm actually invested in hiring a team to support me on these things, but I have to tell you guys the best way for you to build your brand and to show up so that you're positioned as an authority, your position, and an expert, your position as the person they think of when it comes to your topic. You just have to have presence. You have to keep showing up. You have to be relentless with it. There was a quote I read at the very, very beginning of my journey this last January and that quote was something along the lines of the early days are all about showing up. It's about consistency. Just get people, cheering you on so you have the confidence to keep going, and guys, that's my hope for you. Where ever you're at right now in your entrepreneurial journey or in your professional journey. Maybe you're not an entrepreneur, but you're just interested in what I'm talking about on this podcast. That's cool too. You are welcome here, my friend, wherever it is that you are, I want you to think about how are you showing up consistently? Because at the end of the day, that's how your audience is going to know you. It doesn't matter how flashy of a presentation you make, it doesn't matter how great of a YouTube video that you make, that one little trick pony thing that you do, it doesn't matter. You don't want to be the girl who peaked in high school or the girl who peaked on YouTube. Whatever the analogy is you want to insert here. You want to be the gal that just keeps showing up, bringing relevant value for your audience, and I know that word value. It keeps getting replayed over and over again, but if you can just show up and add something each day that makes an impact on your audience, maybe it's inspiration, maybe it's motivation. Maybe it's a tangible tick trick. Tip advice, whatever that looks like. If you just keep showing up and offering something to them for them, it's going to make a difference. But the key is ya just gotta show up. And that's the bigger picture here. It doesn't matter what skills you learn, it doesn't matter what tips or tricks I teach you about becoming magnetic when it comes to your communication. If you're not showing up and communicating consistently, none of it matters. So I hope you hear me with that. So it has been an incredible year. I am so grateful for you taking the time each week to listen and invest in yourself, to helping you and your own brand become more magnetic, to reach more people in your audience. You don't even know how much I value you. So thank you so much for showing up. And as you know, the best compliment you can give me is to leave a review on iTunes. It is the place where people go to find and make decisions around what they wanted to listen to next. So please leave your five star review. Leave me a comment. I read all of them. I appreciate you so much. Cheers to next week where I will be sharing with you my journey of my hearing loss, what it is, how it's impacted me, and more importantly, how it's transformed my life and my business. Take care and talk soon

Speaker 2: 40:39

guys. Thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It Factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail Your Next Talk. 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event, so the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or AV snags. Turn the Q and A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager.com forward slash 10 questions[inaudible].