Praise for Sandi Krakowski on Her
“Read Their Mind” Book Tour
“I went to Sandi's Read Their Mind Book Tour to wildly grow my business! I knew I'd learn amazing things that would allow me to connect with my ideal clients in a deeper way. Over the weekend, I absolutely learned those things and sooo MUCH MORE!! Sandi's prayers over my life at this event have been such a HUGE blessing to me! Now, I'm utilizing my solution blueprints to help women entrepreneurs manage their online marketing AND weight management goals!”
Pamela Wright
PamelaWrightSolutions.com
“Sandi has helped me find what I am passionate about. I have changed the direction of my business to focus on my analytical strengths. I'm now serving other business owners by freeing up their time and saving them money by taking over all their research needs. Sandi's prophetic gifts of healing and speaking life over people has changed not only my business, but my life.”
Jaime White
ResearchSuccessNow.com
“Sandi became my business coach less than 3 months ago. had a great business plan but no website and no real marketing strategy. By using the info she offered for FREE I was able to put up my own website! The budget I had planned to use for the website was suddenly available to use for coaching. It was a much better investment! The group coaching is awesome! It is affordable and there is incredible support and networking that happens within the group. In fact, my first client was a fellow businessperson in the group!”
Vicki Horner
MyMothersButler.com
“Sandi is an amazing woman! I found her through a friend and started with her free 30-Day Make More Money with Your Blog program and her 7-Day videos. She truly made everything so easy to follow and understand! I moved onto her free Monday night calls, and as I listened and re-listened to them, I knew I had to work more closely with her, so I joined her Gold program. I've made some amazing friends, gained much more confidence in my business and my direction, and dropped my US Alexa ranking from 577,416 to 184,768 in a month and a half. Getting to meet and hear Sandi in person on her book tour was nothing short of amazing--even things I thought I already understood were made that much clearer, and to feel her energy live was a blessing! Staying connected to Sandi's lovingyet-no-BS way of doing business is what keeps me going and reminds me that I am capable of reaching my goals!”
Kerri Randall
HotFunFitness.com
“With all of my technical knowledge and experience, I was lost on how to create a blog that is clear and focused, yet encompasses all of my passions. Now I have a map to follow and a guide in Sandi to show me the way!”
John Hays
xFitForLife.com
“In an industry filled with hucksters and big talking, egomaniacs, Sandi Krakowski has emerged as the clear voice for building strong, stable businesses online. Working with her as my marketing coach continues to open up much more than marketing strategy. Sandi really understands how to build, grow, and enjoy a 6 and 7 figure business. In less than a year, we’ve increased my sites traffic by 1,100% without spending an extra dime, created a stable of new products from the activities I was already doing, and added 30 hours of productive time to my business every week without adding any time to my schedule. That is worth its weight in gold.”
PJ McClure
TheMindsetMaven.com
“Since working with Sandi Krakowski my approach to business has taken a drastic turn. I am not quite sure how I connected with Sandi, but I am sure that it was divine intervention. She is the answer to fervent prayer. As a minister, I always felt that I had to draw a line between ministry and business, but Sandi gives an example of how God should reign in all areas of my life. I got laid off three months ago and didn’t know what to do. Now I have my own business and am beginning to draw the attention of international followers on my blog. With her mentorship, I am beginning to build the foundation for a thriving business. I can’t wait to learn more from Sandi. Each day is such a joy!”
Dr. Debra R. Brooks
HealingEmpowermentInstitute.com
“The first time I came across Sandi, I knew that she was someone I needed to learn from. Not only did she provide me with the daily doses of encouragement that every business owner desperately needs, but she taught me valuable lessons that would help me grow my business, my ministry. In June of 2011, I had the opportunity to attend her Live Book Tour and as promised, I left having gained significant training that not only applied to my business, but skills that I could immediately implement. I thank God that He has given me the opportunity to learn from this incredible woman of God who has no doubt, stepped into her calling! I look forward to much future training with Sandi!”
Jennifer Bennett
MySoulMission.org
”Sandi’s hard earned expertise and no-nonsense holistic approach to business is surpassed only by the passion, sincerity and pure love she brings to the people that she works with. Status quo becomes a thing of the past in a world where Sandi leads anyone willing to do the work on a trail blazing path to success in every aspect of their lives! Jump on board and hang on for the ride of your life!”
Kelly Black
YourRepurposedLife.com
“I attended Sandi’s “Read Their Mind Book Tour” seminar as my rookie venture as a newbie, entering the entrepreneur world. I was blessed to sit on the miracle couch with Sandi evaluating my business plan. WOW! What an honor. Sandi provided me with the inspiration to Believe in myself and my business idea, TheSeedsToSuccess.com which provides personal development to the business entrepreneur! I want to help others grow themselves as people, which will manifest results in all aspects of their lives, especially their business. Thanks to Sandi who fanned the flames of this fiery dream. It is evolving into my destiny! All my heartfelt thanks go to Sandi who stirred my heart to be the success I can be!”
Theresa Baron
“I am a board certified physician transitioning from active medical practice to creating a virtual coaching business. I was looking for an unobtrusive way to connect with my ideal clients, who happen to be professional women seeking ways to create a balanced wholesome life. Prior to working with Sandi, I was shocked to discover that my Alexa scores were nonexistent, despite having a website for almost 2 years. Within less than 30 days of moving the entire content to WordPress; then posting consistent blog updates, my Alexa score is now a little over a million worldwide and 202,000 in the United States! Sandi has taught me to fearlessly execute, create amazing results that continue to propel me forward- toward my ideal client!”
Dr. Eno Nsima-Obot
AskDoctorEno.com
Read Their Mind
How To Hear What The Marketplace Wants And Build A Huge Business
Sandi Krakowski
Published by Sandi Krakowski
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Sandi Krakowski / A Real Change International
Copyright © 2011 by A Real Change International.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, taping, scanning, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher and/or author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of non-fiction. This publication is designed to provide accurate information on the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services or advice. The information is not intended to replace any legal counsel or other professional directives. If professional services or advice or other assistance is required, the services of a professional should be sought.
Cover design: Kim Garst
This book can be ordered by visiting http://arealchange.com
ISBN: 978-1-4661-9645-2
Dedication
There are so many people I need to thank for each role they have played to help me get here today.
All of our loyal customers that we’ve had the honor to serve through the last 14 years. You’re more like family than customers and it’s my honor to mention you throughout the pages of this book. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
My competitors who brought out the ‘warrior’ in me and helped me go farther than I ever thought I could. Every business needs both. Customers and competitors. Thank you!
Bill Glazer, for giving me the ‘map’ to bring this all together and for cheering me on in the process! You’ve been such a blessing in my life and it’s an honor to do business with you. Thanks for being ‘the mentor that makes it happen’ for me!
Dr. LaVonne Atnip, my spiritual Mom and coach who has helped me to pursue my dreams, live in the wild and ridiculous love of God and step into the role of Millionaire Mompreneur with my heart wide open! I love you Momma!
My team at A Real Change Int’l - Rose, Kim, Stephanie, Jon, Tiffany, Victoria, Justin, Kim, Holly, and the countless outsourcers and contractors who make what I do on a daily basis possible.
PJ McClure for taking the messed up pages of this work and creating what we have in our hands today. Thank you for bringing your team together to make it all happen! Thanks for believing in this message so much that you took it on as a challenge so others could receive it! I couldn’t have done it without you.
My amazing children, Jeremy, Justin, and Bobby, who have believed in their Mom even when she didn’t believe in herself. You have loved me through all the phases of my career and made life worth living because of who you are in all your unique special ways. I love each of you so much! I’m so proud to be your Mom and so blessed everyday to see who you are and are becoming!
My husband, lover, friend, the one who comes alongside of me and supports me and tells me, “You can do it, don’t give up,” when I am feeling weary and worn. The man, who has seen me in all of my worst days and because of God’s grace, now lives with me in all of my best days. Alan, thank you for loving me all these years and being the one who completes me! I love you more than anyone else in this entire crazy world we live in! Thank you for always staying faithful and committed to me.
Most importantly, I want to thank my God and my Savior, Jesus Christ, without you this would never have been possible. Thank you for cheering me on, celebrating my victories, helping me to see that the entire world was designed for success. Thanks for letting me ‘play along’ as you have used my mess of a life and my mistakes in business to impact hundreds of thousands of people. If grace isn’t real, what you’ve done in my life is a sheer scandal. I’m so grateful it is real and that you pushed me with your unfailing love to be who I am today! You are the reason I live.
With love and gratitude,
Sandi Krakowski
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Getting Mixed-Up In Business
Chapter 3 Gaga Knows Why, Do You?
Chapter 5 Going Beyond Keywords
Chapter 7 I Know What You Want
Chapter 9 Identify Your Passion
Chapter 10 Your Stage Is Your Purpose
Chapter 11 More Jedi Mind Reading
Chapter 12 The Good, The Bad, and The Awesome
Chapter 13 Ask, Listen, and Speak Their Language
Chapter 14 Activate, Execute and Prosper Daily in Business
Chapter 15 Talk The Through Your Process
Chapter 16 Let Me Show You My Entry Doors
Chapter 17 Release The Gift That God Gave You
Chapter 18 Daily and Weekly Action To Take
Chapter 19 How To Write A Great Bio
Chapter 20 Banner Ads, Mommy Blogs, and More List Building
by PJ McClure
Have you ever had the experience of watching a commercial, reading a newsletter, or hearing someone speak and think, “That’s exactly what I’m going through! How did they know?”
It is almost as if they were reading your mind!
I first met Sandi Krakowski by following her on Twitter. Her posts were engaging and often humorous, but more importantly, she wrote things that hit me right where I lived as a business owner. Though we had never actually met, I felt like I knew her and needed to find out how she could help me.
On the phone she was just as engaging, and seemed to take a genuine interest in me and my situation. Within a few minutes she started telling me the challenges I was facing and even how I felt about them. It wasn’t until later that I thought, “How did she do that?”
That answer is what this book is all about. Sandi is going to share the actual nitty-gritty details of how you can read your clients’ minds, how you can know their problems better than they can, and how you can build a dynamic business as a result.
The subject of reading minds (not literally, of course) is especially exciting to me because my entire business is based on entrepreneurs and business owners getting their minds right. As you’ll discover through these pages, having your heart in the right place and having the right frame of mind are the only ways to know what your clients are thinking.
This is not a new tactic or trendy way to manipulate people. Sandi wants to make you a more effective marketer by making you a more effective person. This is deeper than traditional textbook ramble. There is something bigger going on.
Getting What You Want From This Book
As Sandi’s resident ‘Mindset Guy’, I’d like to offer a frame of mind to use so you can get the absolute most out of this book. Before you begin, you need to come up with your ‘one thing’. What is your “one thing” that you want to get out of this book? Focus on that thing you want to implement in your business right away.
Let me be selfish for a moment and tell you what I want you to get out of this book. If you get nothing else, please understand that you cannot know the who, what, why of your clients until you know the who, what, why of yourself.
The big key to reading your client’s mind is that you’ve got to know who you are, and I’m not talking about in some ethereal metaphysical sense. If you are in a position where you’re repressing things about yourself and won’t face them, you’ll never tap into who your clients are. It just won’t happen. You are cut off from connecting to their needs. That was part of my big breakthrough with Sandi. I said to her, “You mean I can just be who I am and that’ll help? Nobody’s ever let me do that before. It’s kind of scary… kind of cool. I’ll give it a shot,” and it was like the doors were just thrown open.
You have to know who you are. If I know anything about Sandi it’s that she’s somebody who has not been afraid to go face-to-face with the absolute ugliest parts of her life. Instead of turning her head to an issue, she gets nose-to-nose and says, “No. I’m dealing with you now. Go away”. That’s the place you’re going to have to go, too.
You may not get all the way there the first time you read this book, but you’re going to have some tools to start using right away until you get to KNOW WHO YOU ARE. You are going to have some understanding of why you need to do that.
If you’re the person right now who’s saying, “Yeah, I don’t really want to know who I am. There’s some stuff about me that I’d just as soon keep forgetting about. I work really hard not to face that stuff,” – you don’t have to raise your hand, I’ll raise my own.
Here is something that will set the mood for the entire book, because this work is going deeper than any other you’ve read on this topic. Sandi and I both have multiple copies of the most powerful success book ever written (The Bible) and I want to share a verse – Isaiah 43:18.
Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?
Whatever you have brought to this point is an old thing. We’re doing a new thing now. Whatever you brought with you – whatever you’ve been before – you can deal with it. There are ways you can forgive. There are ways you can get over it. You don’t have to take it with you.
To get the most out of what Sandi is going to share with you, please take a couple of minutes to consider the fact that you’re allowed to leave your baggage behind. Be willing to look forward. Sandi will bring things up in the course of this book that – God willing – will make you incredibly uncomfortable. It is the discomfort that helps you find your edge; the edge you need to look deep into your market and see the needs and opportunities, and to fulfill them. Your clients are waiting to trade their money for your solutions. It will never happen until you can read their minds.
PJ McClure
The Mindset Maven
Getting Mixed-Up In Business
In 1990 and ’91, when my babies were 8, 3 and 1 year old, I got this idea that the best thing I could do for our home was get kitchenware that would help me to fulfill my job as a homemaker in a more satisfying, gratifying and multiplying way. I didn’t want to make bread one loaf at a time; I wanted to make bread 10 loaves at a time!
At the time my husband was making $2,700 a month and the mixer I wanted was $900. I thought, “How am I going to do this?” So I pulled from all the grooming and training for business I had received growing up (which totaled less than zero), and said, “I think I’m going to start a business.”
Not knowing how crazy the idea was, my kitchenware business took off. Part of my marketing model was actually publishing a newsletter the old-fashioned way; the way we’ve actually gone back to doing at my company, A Real Change International – a newsletter that arrives in your mailbox. There were 300 women who were reading that newsletter and I put a little excerpt in there that said, “Do any of you want to learn how to bake bread?” Here’s the wild thing about our system at the time… we had to wait for the letter to come back! I wasn’t using email at that time.
Later, someone wrote me and asked if I had ever done anything online through email. I thought, “With what?” This was back in the days of the computer processor and you logged in to a black screen and a flashing cursor. Do you remember those flashing cursors?
I’ll never forget the day that I thought I had broken my brand new computer. I ended up with the flashing cursor, and my 5year-old, blond-haired genius came to me and said, “All you’ve got to do is type w-i-n-d-o-w-s.” So I typed it… and it worked! I was far from an expert.
Not knowing if the email idea was any good, I asked my client base and the response was a resounding “YES!” So I took everybody that was reading the newsletter offline and brought them online. The business was started with no experience. I had no idea what an email was. I had no idea I needed an EIN (employer identification number) to sell anything. I had no idea what wholesaling was or that you could get larger discounts based on volume.
It all started with me asking, “I need one of those mixers. How many of them do I need to sell so that there’s enough in the middle for me to buy MY mixer?”
I spent my first couple of months smoking my profits. In other words, finding every which way to spend the money. “We made $500 in profit? Good, let’s go buy that bread baking recipe. We made a $200 profit? Good, I need that tortilla press.”
There was no plan for the future or forethought on how a business should run. Why did I tell you all of that? Because every day someone asks me, “Is there any hope for me to make six or seven figures in business if I have no experience?” I say, “Yes, you’re looking at it!”
My first four or five years in business I had no mentoring or training. God as my witness, I built my website by going to Amazon and studying thoughtfully, head in hand, saying, “Ok, so they have the things up here that you’re supposed to click on…”
It wasn’t called the header, because I didn’t know what the heck that was. You put your product in there and you put just enough words with the ‘Buy Now’ button, and the words should be a small description? I began thinking, “Alright, it’s really the kind of words that people are actually saying when they’re talking about the product. Oh, ok. I can do that. It’s good enough for me!” I was one of the first people to put Bosch kitchen mixers online.
I’ll never forget when Bosch had said, “No, those are only sold face-to-face. Those are only sold in little mom and pop stores face-to-face. We don’t do that.”
The remainder of the conversation went something like this… Me: “Really? Why not?”
Bosch representative: “Because we have never tried it.”
Me: “Well, do you mind if I try?”
Bosch representative: “Well, it’s not going to work.”
Me, with a quick retort: “What? It’s not going to work? Let me just buy two of them and see how fast I can sell them.” (I am thinking to myself, “One for a customer and one for me!”)
Bosch representative, continuing to push back: “No, we only sell 10 at a time.”
Me: “Ok.” (The whole time I am thinking, “Oh crap… I don’t have enough credit on my card to buy them all at once. Now what do I do?”)
The Bosch guy, seeing my frustration, said, “Have you filled out an application for our 30-day net?” I found myself saying, “Oh no, I’m sorry. As a corporation we have not filled out the…” Then I thought to myself, “What’s a 30-day net?” That’s how green I was in business.
I filled out the application, got the 10 mixers, sent something online to my little list and sold them all. Within the first week we did $8,000 in profits with those kitchen mixers.
I remember thinking that I was following my calling of birthing children, keeping my house clean, being uneducated and not a corporate gal. Following that, I reminded myself I wasn’t smart enough to earn a degree and that I was out of my league. “WOW,” I thought, “My husband, who HAS a degree, earns in just over four months what I just earned in one week.” There I was fighting between my religious training that told me I would be insubordinate moving forward with this to, does my husband know what kind of life we could create here?!
You might be wondering if my husband was threatened by this sudden surge in my income. He was cheering me on saying,
“Go mama! Go mama!”
So the very first year we did over $30,000 in profits. By our fourth year, we did $4.5 million.
Here’s something to think about; every single one of the people who work for us, in some capacity, started by being a customer or a client first. When I ran my online kitchenware business I would watch the women who were buying a lot of my stuff, and for the lack of better MBA-type verbiage on my marketing plan and business, I mapped out a scheme of how things were going to work. This was the title and body of the entire plan:
Find the chicks who are buying the most stuff and maybe they can help serve some of your clients.
That’s exactly what we ended up doing.
We were one of the first who got onto Google. I remember when Overture said that they had a competitor – the two dudes that left college and were going to start a search engine. That’s how we marketed our business. It was 90% marketed online with pay-per-click and a newsletter.
Are you interested in how to read your client’s mind so that you can build a seven figure business with just pay-per-click and a newsletter? Good! Because today, the two biggest modes of marketing that I do are pay-per-click and a newsletter.
Back then we would send out a few postcard mailings. I had no idea at the time that they’re called drip campaigns. My marketing was so basic that I would go into my client base and rotate it in Excel. I would pull 500 names out of the 30,000 in our client base and send them a postcard… that’s it!
I didn’t think about sending it to the people already buying something from us. I did not think to send it to the people who were our newest clients. I was really wet behind the ears and treated the business more like Russian roulette than a plan.
We used 8x10 fluorescent cardstock paper, cut it into four equal-sized pieces that basically said, in simple printing, “It’s Mother’s Day. Get $25 off or free shipping on any item.” We would send the card and reap enormous profits. I tell you that because while I’m going to teach you about how to do different things strategically (everything that I do today is very strategic), I pray that you’ll understand how basic my foundation was. It is so very important to the process, and it could be for you, too.
You can hear a lot more about my foundation in the Social Media the Fun Way course and other CD’s. It’s that foundation that, at times, allows me to just follow the intuition I’ve developed so that I can move quickly. I study what’s going on in the marketplace, ask a lot of questions, and then I fire. I aim later.
Michael Masterson wrote an amazing book, Ready, Fire, Aim, which captures how I’ve been doing business for a long time. If I try to ready, aim and then fire, my shot is pathetic. It is much easier for me to shoot, adjust, and shoot again. My issue was never hitting the target, but I found problems with the targets I chose.
When I built the first part of my business, my focus was on money. MONEY. MONEY. MONEY. We made a lot of it. We also were massively in debt pursuing the ‘American dream’. That single-minded drive for money also had me working 90 hours a week and homeschooling my kids. I wasn’t sleeping. I figured I could sleep when I’m dead. I almost was. Seriously, it’s the truth! I hardly ever slept and it caused me to end up with numerous diseases raging through my body.
In 2001 they told me I had a year to live. At that time I ran into some different business trainers who, like I am doing now, told their story about business and what they had achieved in their life. Among those trainers, Hans and Dani Johnson impacted my life amazingly. They really were like spiritual parents to me for the period that God had me under their wing. I heard things from them I had never before heard. I learned that I was designed for more. The propensity that I have for crossing the line was something God put into my DNA. They told me that I was not fighting with God, but literally fighting against what He designed me to do.
A miraculous healing began in my life and in 2004 I was disease-free. The doctor said, “We can’t figure it out.” I experienced a profound medical miracle and I went back into business. I worked in direct sales for two years and got completely debt-free.
Finding the WHO, WHAT, and WHY and understanding HOW to read my client’s mind came to me when I went back into business. It grew and developed in direct sales and helped me to make $1.8 million in 31 months. Happy ending, right? Think again.
I became sick of the path I was on. I used to think, “I do not care if I sell another diet weight loss kit the rest of my life.” I was tired of prospecting people. Don’t get me wrong, it was GREAT that I broke international sales records. I was proud and happy to help so many people change their lives. However, I still didn’t know who I was and what I was SUPPOSE TO BE DOING!
Taking all of my experience, successes, failures, and the gnawing desire I had felt for years to write, I took the plunge and got into it. It took a lot of encouragement from friends to do it. I never, ever intended to start a company to teach people to do that.
I went through one of the biggest copywriting schools with the intention of learning how to write copy and how to prospect people. I wanted to learn how to speak their language. It was funny because that was the first time I began to hear God saying in my head that I already knew how to read their minds.
“They’re talking right in front of you. They’re saying the words you need to say back to them,” He said. Then I started to feel I knew a bit more than I was giving myself credit for.
Now I want to share it with you.
Starting With ‘Why’
When I began to learn copywriting, everything constantly came back to the WHO, the WHAT, and the WHY. I realized I already knew more than I thought. Who am I writing to and what is their most pressing problem?
In plain English that means things are all messed up and they need somebody to give them a WHY and a HOW to fix it. So I would write copy with that in mind. My thought process was pretty simple, so I didn’t have to do all kinds of market research. I didn’t have to create all kinds of mapped out plans. I would go visit my new online playground and I would visit ‘Mommy sites’ and read what these moms were saying.
For example, I would break out a part of a conversation and work it through in my mind like this: “Well, you know, I mean, it’s weight loss for me after having my first child…” so who is the who? Women. I’m going to hone in on moms, women who have had babies.
The WHAT is, “…I’m so sick and tired of not being able to get rid of this belly fat…” and the WHY is, “…because I want to feel hot with my man again…”
Another mom said, “You know what? I just wish I could get the body back that I had before. Whatever I try, I don’t have enough energy. Whatever I try, I don’t have enough time. Whatever I’m doing, I’m working on it and I always feel like I’m constantly hungry.”
One of my clients, Charlotte Siems, has mastered this niche. Charlotte is a mommy with not one, not two, but 12 children. She came to me wondering whether or not she could market to moms! Let’s see…
Would moms be interested in a coach who could:
- Help them to lose weight without leaving the home?
- Help them lose weight without having to add one more thing to their to-do list?
- Help them finally get rid of the belly fat?
All because they wanted to be hot for their husband again, but (for crying out loud!), their to-do list was already too busy. She began to do the same kind of research that I did. I said to her, “Go hang out on all the different forums and other gathering spots on the Internet.” (I’m going to show you in the next chapter the three biggest tools I used to do this.)
The only thing that’s changed in the 14 years since I first started my company is the addition of social media.
Years ago it was bulletin board systems and forums. Maybe you have been online long enough to remember bulletin board systems? Well, someone always had to moderate everything because there would always be some idiot who traveled around bulletin boards flaming everybody. That’s what they called it back then – flaming. AKA, somebody had a bad day and they take issue because you say you can lose weight in a week. “What?!? Who are you and how can you make such a claim!!”
Now-a-days you have social media, where no one has to moderate anything. You just block them. “Fine, stay fat. That’s fine, you don’t have to have a good day. Don’t be happy, that’s ok.” You can friend and un-friend whoever you’d like.
I began to teach Charlotte, as I’m going to teach you, how to listen for what they are saying. I know there are some of you reading this who believe you have been all over the Internet and can’t seem to find your ideal client. You are now probably saying to yourself, “I can’t seem to find who they are. I can’t seem to find their pressing problem. I would be happy to find it and I would be happy to write to them. I would be happy to regurgitate the words that you say, Sandi, but I can’t seem to find it.”
By the time you are finished reading this book you will be able to find it all!
To this day, I have never had a client that I couldn’t find. NEVER. The reason is, quite frankly, that the world and the Internet are synonymous now. This is not a virtual world versus a non-virtual world. Years ago you had some things online and some things offline. The crease has been removed. What’s online is offline. If there is a business out there, you will find it online with some of the tools that I’m talking about. For example, you heard of me how? There’s a more than 90% chance the answer is online.
Here is an interesting question for you to ponder. If you learned of me online, do you feel like we’re strangers? No.
Isn’t that amazing? All because of a tool like Facebook, I get to talk to you with my wild personality and my pink hair all day long. We get to chitchat back and forth even though we may have never met face-to-face. PRETTY DARN COOL!
I have actually met thousands of people in the virtual and non-virtual world, and frankly, I TOTALLY love it. I love it because through the social media tools I can feel your energy, I can see your smiles, and can see when you do things.
You may think, “Yeah right,” or you’re rolling your eyes. Here’s the really cool thing… after I meet you in person, the next time you post an update, I’m going to see YOU behind your words. That takes it to a totally different level.
Years ago there was a problem because most companies were offline. Today, sadly, there are still a lot of companies that are not online. I’ll take issue with anybody who wants to tell me there’s a niche that’s not online. Everything is online. It’s pathetic in some instances. Drug dealing is online. Prostitution is online. Good things, bad things, everything is online… so it’s REALLY EASY to research your client.
What I want you to think through first is the WHO. Who is my ideal client? Is it one? Is it many? Do you think you have a pretty good handle on that? Do you think there’s just one person or do you think there are many? I’m seeing some of your faces in my mind’s eye and I know you’ve got a phenomenal handle on it, so we’ll just have to ask God to release your self-confidence here. This doesn’t have to be complicated.
Many of the people in my Sapphire, Ruby, and Diamond coaching programs have gone from thinking I have an extremely complicated system to saying, “You’ve got to be kidding me, she’s a millionaire guru online? It’s actually that easy?” It’s just not that complicated. Finding your ideal client is not that complicated either.
I want you to realize that your ideal clients all have the same problem and they need your solution, but why they need it may differ. THAT’S where you’re going to get a bunch of different people.
Since you are among the people reading this book right now, you’re among backgrounds as varied as my coaching clients. We have CEOs, teachers, Beach Body coaches, copywriters, graphic designers, CPAs, writers (who aren’t copywriters), personal development coaches, people who are in ministry of some sort, moms, dads, grandparents and many more. We’ve got self-employed, entrepreneurs, authors, singers, and team representatives.
If we were to think, “Sandi’s ideal client is a small business owner,” that’s not necessarily so. “Sandi’s been in direct sales, so her ideal client must be somebody who’s in direct sales.” No, only about one-third of our entire database (just over 160,000 clients on our house list) are in direct sales.
The reality is, though, that they all have the same problem. They all have the problem that they want to be able to market online without needing a ton of people to do everything for them. They DO want the right people, because if they’re going to try to build it all on their own they’re going to have a nervous breakdown. However, they don’t want to have a $20,000 a month budget, either.
There’s a lot of wisdom in my clients. They’re not a bunch of people who think, “Hey, I need to take out a quarter-million dollar loan, and then I’m going to start my company.” I don’t believe in that. My company is debt-free. If we close our doors tomorrow I don’t owe anybody anything.
If I had to do a bunch of refunds, there’s plenty of money in the bank that could cover them. That has a lot to do with why I flow in freedom, with no stress or worry. I am not constantly saying to myself, “Oh crap! We’ve got to do these invoices and we’ve got to make $8,000 so we can go back and do this and do that.”
I’ve attracted a lot of people who don’t want to spend a ton of money. They have no issue with spending money, but they don’t want to spend a ton of money, and they want to be able to get an understanding of how to get more clients, how to sell more products and services and how to create long-term business.
Are you someone who’s interested in just a short-term business and would like to make $10,000 this month and then go off to Tahiti? There are people in business who are like that. To each his own, but that’s not what I teach. There’s no relationship in that model. I have very few affiliate marketers who follow me. It isn’t wrong; it just doesn’t require that you have a deep relationship with your client. It does require that you understand what they need, but quite frankly, you can go make a lot of money without building a relationship with your customers.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re making some money with affiliate marketing and it’s paying your overhead, cool. My son made over a quarter-million dollars with affiliate marketing and was able to buy his first car and his first house. He worked with me from 12 years old until he went and worked with a couple of other companies. Now he runs his own.
He desired to have long-term relationships with people and not only help them produce a video, but help them saturate the Internet, help them to follow their mission, help them to follow their destiny – a long-term business where he’s not waking up every morning going, “Well, crap. I don’t know if I’ve got enough money for food this week. I guess I better just go sell a few things.”
My clients want to be able to run a business online. They want to understand offline, but they would prefer to run it online. In fact, in today’s market, people don’t even want to go get an office. We run an office because my husband came home from his corporate job to be my business partner and I do believe that our marriage bed will be a whole lot healthier if we both have an office to work in. If we work in the same house 24/7 we will kill each other. We can have a nice, long lunch, but his boss wouldn’t let him get away with it too often.
We rent an office, but not because I’ve aspired to the success of “I’ve got an office and I’ve got a staff.” We have it so that he and another son, Justin, can run the newsletter division and do the printing away from the house. However, a lot of people in the marketplace want to be able to work from their own home office. If you walk into our house you’ll see that one of the bedrooms is my office. I don’t walk in there – or very rarely – unless I’m working. You will not find me there all day. I don’t work 80 hours a week. I work 30, tops. I outsource 80 to 100 hours a week.
I work 30 hours a week and I do it from the comfort of my home office. And I say ‘my home office’ because when I walk into that office, I’m the owner of a multi-million dollar company. I’m a business owner who’s worked for 14 years and I have clients in 142 countries.
My neighbors have no clue. It’s really fun. There are a couple surgeons in my neighborhood with no idea of what I do. They just think, “Who is that chick with the pink hair? She’s always walking her dog outside and she’s always happy. What does she do for a living? She must be a stay-at-home mom.”
Yes, Iam. And I’m also raising up millionaires as I’m homeschooling. I’m going to share a little bit about time and life management in this book, but I save that mainly for my social media course and in my newsletter. I look at a work week – Monday through Saturday – as 60 hours, and 30 hours is what my company gets. My family, my husband, homeschooling, letting Chalene Johnson beat the heck out of my bootie with ChaLEAN Extreme or another fitness pursuit goes into the other 30 hours, so that’s pretty close to the life I have chosen to live.
What’s interesting to me is that my clients all have the same problem. They’re all looking for the same solution, but why they want it is different. Have you ever heard, “If your WHY is big enough, you’ll figure out your HOW?” Do you know what your WHY is? Have you magically figured out your HOW? Me either but you’ll probably find me online quoting that, too, because it sounded really good. I do believe that you need to know your WHY, because just making enough money is not going to do it.
For me, making enough money is not going to do it. It’s seeing my clients free; seeing you impact tens of thousands of people’s lives, that combined can impact millions of people. One way to do that is through organizations like NMC and the Kenya Baby Center that I support.
(In case you are wondering, the website is: http://nmcandthebabycenter.blogspot.com/)
For me, it’s seeing babies like these go to their forever family when they previously didn’t know where they would end up after being in the orphanage. For babies like Baby Precious, in the next picture, to have a chance… that is why I keep going.
That is why, when I want to work all night I say, “No. Endurance, Sandi. Those babies need you to have endurance.” If I was only building it for me, I would work 24/7.
I’ve got babies who are depending on me every single month for their food, and I’m not talking about the ones who live in my home. Those WHY’s are crucial to my life and business, but that WHY alone did not teach me how to do pay-per-click.
As a matter of fact, if I talk about my WHY all the time, my customers get bored sick. If I talk about what I want in business and what I’m doing this for and it’s all about me, my customers are not really interested. The bottom line is YOU are interested in YOUR WHY. God made you that way.
So now that you have an idea about my job – to find out your WHY so I can show you I have the HOW to make you successful – well, hold on tight and buckle up! We are in for a wonderful, crazy ride. We are about to take an adventurous journey together with this book that will change your life.
Gaga Knows Why, Do You?
Can you market like Lady Gaga? Please don’t be offended when I tell you… I doubt it. Like her or not, she gets it. Gaga reads her clients’ minds.
As of this printing, Lady Gaga has more than 13,432,000 followers on Twitter. Those numbers may seem way out of reach, but the reality is, you’re going to have to become familiar with why these kids follow her.
If you look closely for what is going on, Lady Gaga speaks directly to the WHO, WHAT, and WHY of her target audience. She is undoubtedly a free spirit. She is not afraid of controversy, and a lot of people judge her. That’s just who she’s designed to be, and she is a brilliant marketer.
Have you ever listened to the recordings that are on YouTube of what she says to her ‘little monsters’ as she calls them? She tells them, “You’re amazing. There’s nothing you can’t do.”
She quite frankly tells them what all their parents, church leaders, and school teachers should be saying.
She knows that element is missing from their lives so she gives it to them. They are drawn to her because she knows as much about their problems as they do. The result? An army of loyal fans who feel understood, and mega-millions in concert and music sales.
Please catch this – her product is understanding. Not necessarily a solution or anything else they can really apply to their lives. But through her words they relate and draw near to her.
If you went after the same niche, your copy will not necessarily talk about all the shattering pain and despondency of a broken home. The marketing and pay-per-click, the ads on social media where all these kids are hanging out, will not necessarily talk about the shattering effects of divorce. No, it will talk about the fact that these kids are amazing.
You’ll share that amazing geniuses, entrepreneurs, sports figures, and successful people come out of shattered homes. You’ll share that they can rebuild and get up; they can be someone and make something of themselves. Quite frankly, there’s no such thing as, “I’ve fallen so far that I can’t get up.” Lady Gaga speaks that kind of thing all the time. Do you see how important it is to find your client’s WHY?
The quickest way to find the WHY of your client is to first find your own WHY. What’s interesting about finding your WHY is how hard people think it is to do. To find your WHY, look for ‘the thing’ that gets you at the core of who you are. In MY plain English – whenever IT happens, IT pisses you off. Plain and simple.
For me IT happens when someone tries to make marketing complicated. I’ve made millions because it ISN’T complicated. If it’s so complicated then I guess I’ve done it wrong all these years and don’t want to do it right.
When someone tries to make copywriting an algebraic equation, as I listen I think how much money I have made with words and the person speaking to me is confusing me to the point of distraction. That kind of thing drives me crazy and led me to find you. By understanding my WHY and how it makes me feel, I’m better able to understand what makes you tick.
Now, if I was only thinking about how much money I wanted to make and the things it would buy – a new house or a bowl of diamonds – I wouldn’t care enough to work and find you. I love nice houses. I’m grateful for the house that we have and I’m very grateful for diamonds. I’m very, very grateful for these kinds of things. I’m grateful for investments. I’m grateful that my husband can triple the size of my diamond, and yet donated more last month than the diamond was worth.
The truth of the matter is, my frustration point is attracted to your WHY.
For one of my clients, Elvie Look, my frustration point is that people are making things difficult for her. She is an organizing genius. She has the ability to speak on video, show people how to take a closet that looks like a tsunami went through it and turn it into something that is not only organized, but maintainable.
My frustration point is attracted to her frustration point. Organization comes so easily to her, but marketing her services she just can’t seem to grasp well. If organizing comes so easily, how can getting the word out about her amazing services be so complicated?
Another client, Angela Brooks, is a nurse and was trying to market an energy product via direct sales. She said, “Nurses need energy products, so I’m trying to market my energy product just like all the direct sales people.” She continued, “Uplines, downlines, crosslines, sidelines, flylines and ‘whatever’ lines are telling me to do, and no one’s buying the dang stuff!” Everyone in direct sales has experienced the same thing. I asked Angela, “What have you been doing for the last 27 years?”
“Well, I’m a nurse,” she said.
“Tell me more about that.”
“I’m a nurse at a psychiatric ward; a state-funded psychiatric ward.”
Interestingly, my memory went back to my brother, who passed away in 1995. He loved God and got mixed up in a religious mess that landed him in a state-funded psychiatric ward for eight months because he literally thought God hated him.
So Angela was telling me about her situation and I suddenly had a revelation, because I used to visit my brother and pray over him. God took him home when he was 38 years old.
“Tell me more about that, Angela. What do you want to do with nurses?” I asked her.
“Well, I sure as heck don’t want to coach them.” (Notice, because I’m talking to her as a coach, she is starting to read my mind.)
“Why don’t you want to coach them?”
“Too much drama.”
“Really? Angela, how many nurses go into working in a psychiatric ward unit of nursing and end up on psychiatric medication?”
“Way too many to talk about,” she told me.
“Really? They’re not happy like you?”
“Hell no!”
So we began to talk about it. She also talked about her website.
She couldn’t get AngelaBrooks.com so she took AngelaBrook.com and began to look for a different direct sales product that maybe nurses could relate to. The one she found came about because she attended a one-day mastermind I conducted. One of my clients there was putting essential oils on me; I had never really used them before. In the middle of this all-day mastermind I had an ‘a-ha’ moment for Angela. All of a sudden I looked at her and wondered if nurses would be interested in how essential oils work. It’s very medicinal, without going into allopathic medicine full-on.
That day in November 2010 she connected with one of my other clients about representing the oils. By June 2011 she had replaced more than half of her nurse’s salary. HOW?
Angela is not on the phone all day long. She doesn’t have time. She is raising an aspiring Olympic athlete. She did begin to write to her ideal clients about the things that frustrate them… things that also frustrated her. She’s the voice for those who don’t have it. She’s the voice for the patient and she’s the voice for the nurse who wants to say, “This is not fair. It’s not working!” She is the revealer for all these different people and talks about the oils periodically.
She does not need to approach anyone and say, “I’m a psychiatric nurse and you need to buy Young Living Stress Relief and it’s only $37.95. Here’s my link!” Have you ever seen the people like that? “Hi! I sell an energy product! Come on down and buy my energy product! Don’t you want my energy product? You can have energy like me!”
Have you seen anyone do that on social media? I saw a Tweet the other day that said, “I have put 200 people into my downline in one week and you can too.” That is all she posted. I was thinking, “Who cares if you put 200 people in your downline?” I’d like to put just five in mine. Maybe the post should say, “You can put five people in your downline in 24 hours and I’ll show you how.”
Angela just began to share what she’s doing and things that were happening to her. On a flight that was seriously delayed she said, “I just put Stress Relief on, and the dude sitting next me… his headache went away.” The head nurse at her job asked if she was over medicating the patients.
“Are you giving them more Klonopin or Xanax?”
“Why do you say that?” she retorted.
“Because everyone’s more well-behaved and calm when you’re on staff.”
“Oh really? I have no idea why,” Angela said.
I was talking to Angela about her success and she said, “I take the Stress Relief and Lavender Roll-On and walk down the hallway.” She then shared, “When you have a brittle case, get Sacred Frankincense and anoint the doorposts of that room.”
So she just talks about those stories. She just shares those stories and people say, “What? What the heck is it? I need to know about it.”
When you are in tune with your WHY and can talk to others about their WHY, people would say to you as they say to
Angela, “I don’t know what you’re marketing, but I need some of it. I don’t care what it is, but I need some of that.”
Angela has told me, “I had three people come in. I have no idea where they came from. They just bought a kit, and then bought $300 worth of oils.”
I said to her, as I’ll say to you; when you figure out your customer’s WHY, when you find out WHO they are and WHAT their problem is, your next step is to be very careful that you don’t become what I’m going to call a cuckoo-bird. By that I mean when you have a little bit of success and then you change things.
Have you had some success and things are going well, then all of a sudden everything changes? I have. I’m going to tell you a little bit further on, as I discuss doing research on Google, social media, and Amazon, why that might be. A little bit of unbridled excitement can get you in some serious trouble.
Are you feeling really great about understanding WHO they are and what their WHY is?
Next we’re going to learn about three listening tools. You are not going to learn how to do keyword research; you are going to learn how to do listening research.
Listening Tools To Tune Into The Marketplace
Now moving into Chapter 4, one of the big take-aways from the first few chapters should be that you must be comfortable with who you are before you can identify with the WHO, WHAT, and WHY of your ideal clients. I have shared a whole lot about who I am – about my WHY, about my WHAT – to open you up to the idea that whatever your WHO, WHAT and WHY are, it’s ok. It is who you are.
My biggest goals are getting results for myself and for my clients. I’m not a recovering perfectionist, because if you know me at all, you know that I believe perfectionism is actually professional insecurity. Excellence and results in the marketplace are what we want. That means sometimes things may not be exactly as we want initially, but you can get them there as you go forward.
Some of the things that I’m going to show you on Amazon, Google, and social media have evolved for me through the last several years. Even this company, A Real Change International, formally started in April 2010 has evolved from the first WordPress class we taught in November 2009. I went from a header that said, “Putting More Muscle into Your Marketing” to several other related things, with everything eventually evolving into what you see today. It wasn’t really my plan initially to build a business like this, but I kept moving forward, following the WHY of my clients, and asking God to show up every step of the way.
Whenever I write, train or speak I always ask God to open Heaven, because if you only hear from me, we are all in trouble. You don’t want to just hear from me, but you want His strategy in business. As God is my witness, much of what I have learned in business has been from listening to the divine ‘downloads’ (I call them downloads, but you could also call them ‘a-ha’ moments or revelations) that He has given me, and having enough courage to execute no matter what. So if I fall on my face, I can get back up. If I do a failing campaign, I can write another one. If I go do an event and it sucks, I can do another one.
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