Make Marketing Suck Less for Expertise-Driven Solo Businesses

You do all this work to build relationships.  Get the word out about your business and grow your audience.  Then once you have someone's attention and they are finally following you or joining your email list, 95% of the time, they are not ready to work with you.  Surprise! After you've got someone's attention, how do you keep them engaged and that relationship going strong? Today, we're talking a...

Let's get real. Growing your audience is a huge pain in the ass.  Once upon a time in the wild west days of online business, it was super easy.  Post on social media, run Facebook ads that would cost you a buck, a conversion and instant audience.  Nowadays, forget about it. Finding new people who don't know you exist and enticing them into your world, it's one of the suckiest parts of marketing. ...

Remember the horror movie The Blob?  Where this big, massive, gelatinous blob just rolls through a city sucking up everything in its path - buildings, people, trees, pets - it doesn't matter because it's the blob.  Well, marketing can feel exactly like that.  It’s this huge amorphous thing that, if you are not careful, will suck up all your time, energy, and mental health in the process.  But here...

Here's the dirty little secret about creating a new offer that nobody talks about.  The hard part isn't creating the offer.  The hard part is figuring out how to market and sell it after it exists.  I get why experts don't tell you this little truth. Because “create your signature offer in 4 weeks”, and then spend 21 months figuring out how to market and sell it is a terrible value proposition.  E...

What if you could do LESS marketing in 2025 and create MORE demand for your work?  I know it sounds counterintuitive, but it's possible, and in this episode, I reveal how The Expert Up Club's Marketing Retreat helps established business owners transform their marketing strategy through experimentation and personalized support. Episode Highlights: Why what you do today in your marketing pays off in...

“If I could just figure out the right way to market.”  I hear this all the time from my clients, and maybe you've thought it yourself.  Because I get it.  There are so many marketers out there who are promising you that they have the proven formula or that there is some secret to success in marketing that only they have.  And if you pay them, they will tell you all the secrets , and you'll never h...

What if I told you that 95% of marketing advice out there wasn't for people like you?  If you're following this advice or beating yourself up for not following it, you're wasting time, energy, and resources doing more marketing that doesn't lead to results.  You're unintentionally making your marketing suck more, not less. So how do you know if you're following the right guidance?  Buckle up, beca...

Sometimes when it comes to marketing, we are our own worst enemies.  We are kicking off a brand new series about how we unintentionally make marketing suck more for our businesses.  And sometimes we don't even realize we are doing these things , but there are these tiny ways that we sabotage our business, our sanity with the choices we make when it comes to marketing. Let's jump right in with the...

This week, I'm sharing our most recent episode of Duped, discussing how Dr. Robert Cialidini's book "Influence" has been weaponized in online business.  ******* Do you know what book is one of the most used—and abused—in online business? Many celebrity entrepreneurs and top marketers cite it as influential…which makes sense given its title.   It’s Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Per...

One of the things that pisses me off about online business is how people play fast and loose with words.  A lot of the time, they use words in a way where they don't mean what they think they mean.  And this past year, I've noticed a lot of people talking about messaging and how they help you with your messaging.  But when I look at their programs, because, believe it or not, I take a lot of cours...

“Figuring out how to explain what you do in ways that resonate with other people and connects them to what they're feeling right now is tricky.” Have you ever been talking to someone explaining what you do and they're staring at you like you're speaking a language they've never even heard before and don't even know how to begin to comprehend.  Please know you're not alone.  So many brilliant busin...

“If I decide to use social media, then maybe I'm posting all the time and checking for likes and comments in my off hours. What you choose from marketing can affect your life. And for me, it has been really important to figure out a way to do it that works for me and lets me keep on living the life I want to be living and not feeling too stressed out by my work or feeling the need to get in there...

Let's face it. Experts are made to feel shame about their expertise.  We too often hear things like: >>don't be an expert, be an explorer >>don't be smart, be curious >>don't be an expert, be a human And these things are said by the very people who claim to get experts known and hired for their work.  And it is time, my friend, that we stop shitting on experts because here's the...

“I've been thinking all that time I'm spending over here on social, and I'm not spending really any quality time with the people that voluntarily chose to be in my world by opting into my thing.” Riddle me this, Batman. Why do we spend so much time on marketing that leads nowhere vs. focusing on marketing that works to get clients?  It's probably because everybody on the interwebs is screaming at...

Marketing feels like a time suck of doom.  There's all this doubt.  >>>Is it really working?  >>>Am I getting it right? Whatever right means.  And then despite spending so much time on your marketing, you're just not seeing the results you want to see.  And then there's the beating yourself up of feeling like you're never doing enough despite your best efforts.  And what I want f...

“I went down a whole path that was completely not right for my business, and it was very frustrating, and I wasted a lot of time doing a lot of stuff that wasn't really helpful.” You know what really sucks about marketing?  When you're told to market in a certain way that works for every business. And only after you've done all that work, invested all that money, you find out that ish was never go...

“And then it kinda dawned on me last year, I don't need a lead magnet or an opt in. I think you talked about how every time you create something, even if it's free, you still have to “sell it”. I'm just selling my newsletter. It was like a weight lifted.” Think fast. How many lead magnets have you created for your business?  For this iteration of my business, I have created at least 6 different le...

“I want to make sure that if someone happens to find me when I'm not posting content, that they have a way to hear about me, learn about me - without me having to pump out content to the feed.” Nothing makes me want to dive head-first into a vat of lava like the thought of making a 7-second video to post on Reels or TikTok. And if you feel that way too, please know that you are not alone. And toda...

This week on the podcast, we're doing something a little bit different. A pod takeover. I invited my friend, Michelle Warner to take over my podcast feed.  Her podcast Sequence Over Strategy is the only business podcast that I religiously listen to. Michelle and I are incredibly aligned with how we approach business (and she's also the opening speaker for the Make Marketing Suck Less virtual event...

A special invite to the Make Marketing Suck Less Virtual Event ! Social media feels like a 20-lb weight choking all the joy out of my business. All the "shoulds." All the rules. All the head trash around having the "perfect" hook." Maybe you feel it, too? Here's the deal: you don't have to RELY on social media for audience growth. You've got a ton of options. Finding what works for you is freeing....

“I know that there's this unicorn idea that you can preschedule things months in advance, and preschedule all of your content, and, like, sit down for 8 hours in one day, and record 17.6 reels. But that is a lie unto me, and it never worked for me. And so for me, it had to be. It sucked even worse if I tried to batch content.” Marketing is relentless.  It is something that is never done and dusted...

“I know that I'm extraordinary at what I do. And because I have messaging, because I have my packages, because I have my pricing, I can keep moving forward in confidence in one area of my life”. There comes a time when the shit hits the fan in your life and you just can't keep showing up the way you like.  The first thing that always goes is marketing. Let's face it. Most of us don't have the opti...

“I used to always think - I have all these great ideas and I make these products, like, you know, digital-based products. And if only I had the money that I could actually hire a team and build the thing out and then actually pay money for advertising, I just know it would hit.” If you just build the right funnel, have the right welcome sequence, and the right lead magnet, you can put money into a...

“It was such a detour to go the whole social media, build a course, webinars, free webinars, pitch, cart closed route.  The whole thing was such a detour for me. It seriously tanked my business.” So many business owners have gone down this path only to realize, “Hey. This isn't for me!”  With all the hype around “stop trading dollars for hours” and make money while you sleep, there was something s...

Anytime you decide to work on your marketing message, it's going to require you to dig deep and do some thought work around your business, who you want to serve and what you want to be known for.  If you're like most people, by the time you find this podcast, you've already tried another messaging framework. (I’m looking at you, StoryBrand .)  So before you start digging deep into the 3 Word Rebel...