Make Marketing Suck Less for Expertise-Driven Solo Businesses

Have you ever noticed  how many clichés there are in online business? Scale your business. Grow your audience. Take it to the next level. Make money while you sleep. Do it all while avoiding burnout. Now, if everyone is saying the same thing and relying on these clichéd marketing messages, it makes it hard for you to stand out. If you want to go from being that overlooked expert into being known a...

Today, we are going to the dark side–the dark side of online business. Duped is the podcast that I host with Maggie Patterson. And in this episode, Maggie and I have a fascinating conversation about predatory pricing practices in the online business pyramid scheme.  Let's face it, there’s a lot of downright terrible advice and business practices around pricing and Maggie and I try to debunk them a...

Carving out your unique place in the market is critical. Any messaging expert worth their salt will tell you that one of the jobs of your message is to differentiate your business so you stand out. And so people will understand why they should hire you instead of your competition. You can be the best in the world at what you do, but if people don’t know about you, and they don’t know what makes yo...

One of the biggest lessons I learned in my business early on is to focus on what you can control. There are so many things in business that are out of our control. Like whether that prospective client says yes to working with us, whether or not we land that podcast interview or that TEDx talk. We don’t control whether people open our emails or not. And even though so much is out of our control, we...

My husband and I love to play the game “spot the character actor” when we watch TV.  You know, the actors that make you say, wait, what have I seen that person in? Why do they look so familiar? Because they’ve been in freakin’ everything. But you have to google them to figure out their names and what else you’ve seen them in. And I believe those actors hold the key to how we overcome being the ove...

Have you ever asked yourself, “If I'm so good at what I do, why don't more people know about me” Honestly, I've asked this question of myself a lot and I've become obsessed with figuring out the answer in my own business and for my clients. I get to work with a ton of amazing people who are experts, with years of education, experience, and finely honed skills, and the work they do with their clien...

Did you play MadLibs as a kid? Your partner would ask for a noun, a verb, an adjective, a number, etc. and at the end, your friend would read back the MadLib and it would spit out a nonsensical and sometimes hilarious and/or wildly inappropriate story. Well, the other day I discovered a piece of software that claims it can create a social media post for your business in just three seconds. And it...

Have you ever said to yourself, if I can just get people on the phone with me, I know I can make the sale. But the problem is getting them to that phone call in the first place. I hear this all the time when I'm on a call with a potential client. And it tells me two very important things. Number one, it tells me what they are doing is tremendously valuable. And that when they're talking with someo...

What was the intention behind your last email or post? What did you want it to do for your business? What did you want it to do for your audience? Sometimes we get caught up in posting or emailing for the wrong reasons. We realize that it’s been a while since we sent an email to our subscribers so we draft one quickly and send an email out. We come up with something that we think the algorithm wil...

Let me ask you a question. Did you start your business to accumulate shares, likes, views, comments, email subscribers, and traffic? I don’t know your life, but I’m guessing that if you’re listening to this podcast, you did not start your business for any of those reasons. I started my business because I truly believe that communication can change the world. I knew that if I could help business ow...

Do you have to be on social media to market your business? If you’re becoming more and more disenchanted with social media, know this: you are not alone. The number one question I get asked lately is if there is an alternative to marketing on social media. My clients are requesting marketing strategies that don’t have a social media component because the platforms are demanding more and more of ou...

How much time are you spending on social media each week?  I don’t mean the time you spend doom scrolling or mindlessly looking at cat photos, but the time you spend creating social media for your business. Creating the visuals, researching the hashtags, writing the captions, engaging with other people with purpose, answering your DMs, sharing other people’s work, responding to comments–it’s a lon...

What happens after you get a message that works for your business?  AKA that message is persuading people and leading them to work with you, so it's generating revenue for your business.  How do you get that message that works to the people who need to hear it? The people who right this minute are most likely looking for you, but they don't know you exist? Yet. That's where marketing comes in.  To...

Today's bonus episode of the podcast comes from the "It Should've Been Me" Community Project. Who do you turn to when the messy middle of building a business becomes TOO MUCH to handle? Today, we have Tracey Warren a very raw and vulnerable “It Should’ve Been Me Moment” and what she did to navigate through that moment to remind us all - even when it’s hard - there is a way through. If you've enjoy...

A huge following equals easy sales, right? Eh, not so much. Let me give you an example. Once upon a time in 2019, there was an Instagram influencer with a following in the millions who hung on her every word. She decided she wanted to create a clothing line and she would start with a T-shirt. All she needed for the first run was 36 people to buy a shirt. Sounds simple, right? Except she couldn’t g...

How do you know if your messaging is working for your business? Ask yourself a few questions: Are you making the sales you want to make? Are you closing the deals you want to close? When people show up on sales calls, are they ready to work with you? And is the sales conversation just about the fit? If you answered yes, congratulations! Your messaging is working!  If you answered no, well, you hav...

Imagine this: a friend tells you they’ve just landed a huge opportunity.  And you’re thrilled for them! You’re genuinely happy for their success. But. There’s this niggling little voice in your head whispering, that should be me . And it really is a both/and situation. You can be genuinely excited for someone else and still feel that twinge of envy, knowing that you want an opportunity like that t...

What if the online business game is rigged? There’s such a sense of rugged individualism and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” when it comes to building an audience and building your business. And celebrity entrepreneurs with their huge audiences teach you in their courses that if you want a business and an audience just like theirs, you need to do what they do. You need to show up consistentl...

Have you ever wondered what needs to happen to take an idea and turn it into a TV show? All of the TV that we watch starts as an idea someone had, that they then had to develop and advocate for to finally get it on TV. Sound familiar? What needs to happen to get a show on TV isn’t all that different from what we need to do as business owners to take an idea out of our heads and turn it into a busi...

Pull a hoard of drooling, slobbering, fervent buyers willing to buy everything you have to offer! Yeah. That’s a real headline from a real sales page. Ick. But it reminded me of a question from a member of my email community that asked me, what will replace manipulative, privilege-based marketing in years to come? And the short answer is that we, as business owners, have to learn how to persuade i...

Previously on the podcast, I’ve introduced how to change ‘meh’ into a powerful message, that will set you apart from everyone else who is in your industry. On this final episode of the podcast in 2021, I am diving deeper into 7 types of ‘meh’ messages, so you can start creating messages that will stand out in overcrowded online space. My dear rebels, I wish you a fantastic Christmas holiday and Ne...

If a visitor came to your website without its branding in place, no logo, name, tagline, would he or she even recognize it as yours? If the answer is no, that means you are delivering ‘meh’ messages to your audience. And with  ‘meh’  messages people aren't seeing you and your work. It is about time to start working on your message, so you can stand out and bring your uniqueness into the world. Vis...

In today’s episode, we are moving forward with how to create a demand in your business. If you haven’t tuned into the last two episodes, please do, as this one is a sequence.  Everything we do in business is about communication. You want a message that builds a desire, builds demand for your work, and really engages with people. So today, I’m going to dive into the 3 essential foundations that cre...

If you're a business owner that is almost always at capacity for client work but never quite gets there, do not miss this episode of Rebel Uprising. Today, I am diving deep into the five reasons you want to be in demand and why it is important for your business, your cash flow, and creating consistency.  Visit this episode’s blog post here: https://drmichellemazur.com/2021/11/the-five-reasons-you-...

Are you familiar with a phase of the business ‘’It's time to make the donuts’’?  Some of us don't truly know it's happening to us, because on the surface everything is fine, you are financially stable, but actually, there is an underlying frustration to get more clients, to work with clients, to be fully booked in advance.  In this episode, I will walk you through the importance of making a framew...