Hey, you guys. Welcome back to the podcast. It's been a while since I've done a solo episode, so I'm excited to just chat with you. I like to imagine that we're driving somewhere. I actually get a lot of messages from people who are like, I just took a road trip with you and I listen to like seven episodes on my way to a different state or whatever.
And I love that. I love getting messages like that. So wherever you find yourself listening to this episode, welcome. I'm truly grateful for the work that we get to do. I think about my free stuff like my podcast or my Instagram as like an essential part of what I do. I love working with my paid clients in all the various ways, you know, one-on-one, the Matrix, or The Miracle Mind and other things.
But I genuinely love this, and I hope you feel that from me. Even if we never actually get to work together, I really feel like we know each other and if we ever run into each other, I want you to say hi, and I want you to feel like we have a relationship where I'm supporting you and your business.
I know that sounds cheesy, but that is my goal. That was always my goal is to provide stuff, value, content, thought provoking-ness for you to excel, to succeed. Today, I'm sharing my very famous, no I'm just kidding, it's not famous; but it was interesting to see this on Instagram. I shared a post that was about my 15 minutes a day marketing plan, and I've talked about it before, but I really wanted to designate a podcast for you to figure out how to market in 15 minutes a day.
And this is why it's important. A lot of my clients are moms, some of my clients have jobs or another side hustle on the side as they're building their coaching business. And I think about this all the time because I think it would be easy to believe that marketing takes a lot of time, especially if you hear lingo about funnels and upsells and down sells, and copywriting and launch messaging and launch runways and all this jargon, right?
But I really wanna simplify it, especially if you work one-on-one. This is my bread and butter, still. I still do this. I'm not beyond this. Even as I'm scaling, I still do these things because I am the one that runs my Instagram. I am the one that nurtures one-on-one relationships with people. And so when I say marketing in 15 minutes a day, I really don't want you to overlook it. I don't want you to think it's too simple or that it doesn't work. It does work. I live and breathe this.
So I hope it's helpful, because like I said, especially if you work one-on-one with clients, developing relationships over time. If you listen back to a few of my episodes, I talked about how your business is like a garden in the garden archetype. I talked about in my N-S-I-C-L episode. Need nothing, serve, invite, create, lead. That framework that I teach my clients, particularly for one-on-one clients, it works for basically everything, like the format, but I think especially for one-on-one.
This is really powerful and this is like the “how to,” I'm gonna tell you what to do in this episode, so you can eliminate mind drama. One of the things I get asked a lot is like, do you actually have little mind drama? Like, some of my clients are like, okay, tell me how it really is. Like, I know it seems like you don't have a lot of mind drama, but like, do you? And I really, really don't. I don't engage in that much mind drama because of some of the things that I'm gonna share in this episode.
I hope this episode is about 15 minutes. I don't know how long it'll go. I think it would just be so cool to have a “marketing in 15 minutes a day.” And then the episode is 15 minutes, but we'll just see how it goes.
So marketing in 15 minutes a day. If you saw this on my Instagram post, I hope you saved it. I hope this is an expansion and a deepening of what you already know and are hopefully already doing. If we're not hanging out on Instagram, please hang out with me on Instagram. Type in @itsambersmith, I-T-S Amber Smith. That's my handle on Instagram and I would love to hear from you and I love getting DMs from you.
So go ahead and message me if that feels aligned and tag me in this episode too. If it resonated with you. Other coach friends of yours will be appreciative of you sharing it. So there's my little plug. Share this episode with people that you think would resonate. Okay.
Marketing at 15 minutes a day. Number one. Watch and respond to five people's Instagram who I follow. So this is what's interesting. Some of you're following people who are ideal clients, but because you don't engage with them a client couldn't be created from that relationship. You guys know I teach clients are created, it's not random. And sometimes a conversation, a kind DM, a genuine human comment is all it takes to spark a relationship or to nurture something into a client relationship.
The key is that you're not attached to that happening. So everything that I'm gonna share today, including this number one, which is watch and respond to five people's Instagram stories who I follow. A lot of this is centered on Instagram, but you could do this on Facebook or LinkedIn, right? People that you're connected with.
The idea is that you're responding to something someone else is publishing. This includes family members, this includes friends, this includes old coworkers, old bosses, old clients, people who you're just connected with. Friends. It doesn't really matter. It's people that you follow. You're responding like a normal human.
You're not making a cold pitch, you're not bringing up your offer even. It is just a form of connection. And you have to do this from a place of needing nothing. I think that it's important that your energy is clear, that you're not secretly hoping that they'll become a client. People can sniff that out. I know you can.
When you get a message from someone that's like, hey I love that last post about dah, dah, dah. Like, are you accepting new clients right now? And you just smell something fishy? I get these kinds of messages and I just smell something fishy. I'm like, oh, this person is trying to turn me into a client and I don't even know them.
That's not what we're after. Right here, especially for one-on-one. Especially if you do like intimate type coaching, personal coaching about relationships, money, debt, health. Your relationship with them is so important where they feel that trust with you. And so you have to come from a place of needing nothing.
You're here to give to give, not give to get, and you're here to just to connect. It is about nurturing and that's it. Detachment, okay? That's how we're doing everything. So that's number one: Watch and respond to five people's Instagram stories who I follow, like a normal human.
Don't overthink this. It's just like if they post a picture of their baby, you're like, that's a cute baby. If they post a picture of their dog, they're like, oh, I love dogs. Or if they post something thought provoking, maybe you respond with an answer. It doesn't really matter, but you're just engaging in a way like you would with a normal person.
Number two. Make a post. And the question that I ask myself is not what is the most original thing I can post? What is the most profound thing I could post? I think that's where people get stuck, especially coaches. You're trying to be original in a market where it's not really about originality anymore. It's about your story. It's about perspective and perception, but asking yourself to be original, will just put a stomp on your creativity.
So the question that I like to ask myself is, what do I already know that would be helpful for my client? This is useful for me because I'm always reading, I'm always listening to podcasts. I'm always listening to courses that I have. I'm an avid student and so there are things that I already know all the time.
So do you. You're listening to a podcast right now. And I know I'm not the only podcast that you listen to, and I know I'm not the only like coach, mentor, teacher that you listen to. So there's things that you're consuming that you already know, and so your job is to synthesize or curate information and share it in a helpful way.
I don't mean plagiarize. I don't mean copy, but you're just taking information that you already know and sharing it in the hopes that it helps someone else. That's the whole purpose of content, helping someone else. Especially for you new coaches who are like working on signing your first five clients, you need to have some form of content that's helpful.
And I really wouldn't worry about being original. I really wouldn't worry about thought leadership right now. Right now you could share quotes, models, ideas from other people, and then share a story about how it helped you. I love numbers, so it'd be like five things to know about mental health, five things to know about a healthy marriage, five ways to improve your communication with your five-year-old.
I like numbers because I think our brains understand it better, and it's also useful for you because it forces you to come up with something. So I actually learned this from Brooke Castillo, this idea of super thinking. And I do this all the time, so I'll write in my journal. I'll be like, three things I know about making money as a coach, and I force my brain to come up with it.
Ten counterintuitive ways to succeed and I write it out. Sometimes those turn into a post and sometimes not, but it's helpful for my own brain to do that exercise. So just off the top of my head, five things that you could do right now, I'm doing it. This is like so meta. I'm doing it right now in the podcast, hoping you do it for your posts.
Five things that you know about blank. Three ways to improve Blank. Five things to watch out for when you blank. The idea is you're just asking your brain to come up with something that's helpful. If you're a fitness coach, five ways to improve your workouts, three things to eat when you don't know what to eat, three things to eat to get more protein. If you are a marriage coach, it's like 10 date ideas, three ways to communicate about hard things, two ways to interact with your spouse so that you flirt more. I don't know. I'm just making it up. But do you see what I mean? You're asking your brain to come up with something that you already know.
You're just articulating it like a marketer. You're articulating it like a business owner in a way that's easy to consume for your client. I just shared tons of post ideas right here in the last like two minutes. If you need to go back and listen to a few and see what sparks your interest. The idea is you want something of your own making that people can refer to and see, okay, she's legitimate, she knows what she's talking about, because this is what's gonna happen.
You're gonna start to see it build on itself. If I watch and respond to five people's Instagram stories, they might be curious about who I am, and then they go to my profile and they look at my stories or my posts and they see what I do. I didn't have to tell them to do that. That's just natural curiosity.
You want a safe place to land. You want people to feel like when they step into your home, your profile, your Instagram page, or your Facebook page, or your LinkedIn page, that there's some sort of nurturing, this is who I am, this is how I help, and here's proof in a post.
Number three. Watch Instagram stories from people who follow me. I don't necessarily follow them, but I will go and look at their stories, which is a warm audience, right? It's more engaging, more important to us to have followers and stories than it is just like random people liking a post, right? So I like to engage in stories, not just posts, because it feels more personal to me as well and we're responding like a human.
Again, if you go comment on people who follow you, they're more likely to engage with your stuff. They're more likely to remember your name. They're more likely to feel seen and heard by you. So I really like this one: Watch people's stories who follow you. I said that's why we have posts available every day so they can kind of consume content and feel like they know who you are.
Number four. This is one that I think is very underrated. Make helpful comments on big accounts. As an example, when I was a brand new life coach, I would make a comment on like a Tony Robbins post.
He would make a post about personal power, and I would go through the comment section and respond to comments, or I would add my own comment on the big post. The reason I did this is I got exposed to new faces, new names, new people who I wouldn't have reached otherwise. If they're interested in Tony Robbins, they're probably interested in what I do.
Like I'm thinking of other people that I used to do. Rachel Hollis back in the day. I don't do these things anymore, but this is genuinely what I did. Rachel Hollis, Jody Moore, Life Coach School, Brenda Burchard, people who have big followings. I would just go add value in the same detached way that we talked about needing nothing.
This is about serving. This is about being a lighthouse. And so I would do this because I never knew where it would lead. I had no idea who would see my comment. I wouldn't know who would be touched or impacted. I was just being a lighthouse. So the other alternative to this, if you don't wanna go on like a Tony Robbins Instagram account, maybe you have Facebook groups that you're a part of, go add five valuable posts or comments or responses inside there.
The idea is that you're trying to be exposed to new. There's only three ways that you can sign clients, right? It's people who already know you. There's people who are connected to you in some way. And there's cold. Like cold, warm, and hot audience. You've probably heard this before. Cold are people that don't know you, you don't know them, and you're making an introduction.
This is my version of that without paying for ads. That was kind of my thinking, and like I said, the idea is you're getting your name and value out in the world to people who don't know you yet. So again, that's either a big account on Instagram or different Facebook groups. You're just adding value. You're not being creepy. You're not being weird. You're just adding value genuinely.
All of this requires you to need nothing, as you can tell. When you watch and respond to people's Instagram stories, whether you follow them or they follow you, whether it's making a post or whether it's responding to people's comments, marketing this way. And I put that in quotations, “marketing,” building relationships, adding value. You have to come from a place of not needing a response right away. Or else you're gonna start tracking you can feel the heaviness of that, like tracking each comment. Did someone like it? Did someone respond? If you think about gardening, it's like you're planting seeds and you're not worrying about which seed is gonna grow. You're only planting seeds.
There's a really powerful metaphor that I heard from Melanie Anne Lair, who is one of my business mentors a few years ago. And she talks about how pineapples take, like 18 months to grow or 12 months to grow or something like that, a really long time. But the key is if you plant a pineapple seed every day, it looks like nothing is happening for a long time.
But if you've planted every day, soon you will harvest every single day. And that metaphor really was powerful for me because nothing might happen the first day, but think about the compound effect. My compound effect is insane. I have clients reaching out to me. I have a fully booked calendar.
I'm like living the coach dream because I never stopped planting seeds of value and nurturing relationships in the spirit of love and non-attachment, needing nothing. I'm here to give, to give. And the more you give that way, ironically, the more you get. People will trust you. People will see you as a resource.
They're not worried about you trying to compel them and overcome their objections and force them to buy something. They can reach out to you when they are ready. And I have a lot of evidence that that's a really beautiful way to start a coaching relationship when they are ready.
They've watched your stories. They've observed your posts. They've had DMs with you. They've seen you serving in a capacity that's high value, needing nothing. And they feel like they can trust you and they can reach out when they're ready. And I think it's a really beautiful way, especially for one-on-one, where there's no force, no weirdness.
It's like they already feel like they have a relationship with you. It's such a beautiful way to start. It's such a great way to kick off your work together. And I can't speak highly enough about it 'cause I get to live it where I have clients that have been following me for a long time and when they're ready they send me a DM or they say yes to an offer that I'm putting out.
And we get started in a way that feels truly authentic, where I'm like very invested in them. They're invested in our work together. And it feels like a natural expression of a relationship that we've had. It's like, yeah, I've been following you for a long time, of course we're gonna work together now.
Like I said, I just think it's the best. Especially if you worry about feeling awkward or weird when you're selling. This is my way of combating that with service and love. So I wanted to share it with you. Try it. It takes 15 minutes if you don't have mind drama. So don't let your mind spin out.
Focus on service. Ask yourself the good questions, like, what do I already know? How do I respond like a normal human? What's easy to say? What's something simple I could say here? And if you notice that your mind is spinning out, just know you're probably making it about you. You're worried about how they're gonna see you, they're worried what they're gonna think of you, and that's not useful.
What is useful is just really focusing on shining your light and being the lighthouse, and letting your clients be impacted by you or not, you're not attached to it, and just trust that their timing is their timing, and you can control what you can control. One of my first podcast episodes a long time ago is called Controlling the Controllable.
This is how you control the controllable in a world, in an industry where most people aren't successful. I wish more people would say this. Most coaches aren't successful. You comparing yourself to coaches who are, is not fair. Statistically speaking, most coaches aren't making that much money. Statistically speaking, most coaches don't break through.
And so the way that you increase your odds and actually do the work to become successful is doing things that are within your control. These are things that are within your control. You can't make someone sign, you can't make a client be ready, you can't make someone have the money to pay you, but you can watch and respond to five people's Instagram stories, who you follow. Make a post on your own social media or LinkedIn. Watch five people's stories who follow you. Make helpful comments in the world, either in Facebook groups or on big accounts on Instagram to shine your light.
Those are within your control, and this is binary. Either you do this or you don't. I really like breaking it down for myself to binary things. Vague things is like, was I believing today or not? And you know I teach belief work, I believe in belief work. But sometimes it's helpful if you're struggling to make it binary. Either you marketed in 15 minutes a day like this or you didn't. And if you focus on what you can control one, you're gonna feel better. It feels better to take action than to spin out. It actually feels better to do something that scares you than to be paralyzed and overthink things. And so this was my way of getting out of overthinking and overwhelm, and it served me well.
Like I said, I still do this. I still do this after I've made multiple six figures in my business. And it feels good to me, I like having kind of like a hand on my people. That sounds weird. A pulse like in the marketplace is more what I meant. I can feel them. I know what they're going through because I'm not so aloof.
I'm actually talking to them regularly, so I feel like I know what they're struggling with, I know what they're working on, and it just feels so much better when we actually get started working together. This is available for you too, and so I hope it speaks to you, I hope you actually do it and control the controllable.
I hope you actually give it a try. Like I said, the compound effect is very real. You might not see anything happen on day one, but if you keep doing it and commit to the activities before the results come because you believe, because you need nothing, miracles will happen. And when they do, I'd love to hear about it.
So if you've already done this and have experienced the miracles, send me a DM. I'd love to hear how it's going for you. And no matter when you listen to this, I just love to hear how things are going for you and how this has impacted you. Because like I said, this is my bread and butter. This is what makes me feel confident.
This is what helps me stay focused on service because this really isn't about us. Coaches are guides. The heroes are our clients in their own lives. And this is one way to really remember that. So I hope it helps you. Thank you for listening. As I mentioned before, if it resonates with you, share it with a coach friend. I would really love that. And I'll see you in another episode. Bye.
