Ever feel like you’re stumbling through being an entrepreneur and trying to grow your business? Like you’re always failing? This is something my guest, Alisha Wielfaert, is passionate about talking about as it’s the “Little Failures” that are the part of the journey that allow us to succeed later. We talk about this as well as her incredibly successful presale campaign that made her $7K in one day from her book: Little Failures.
*Note: This is Part 3 of a 4-part series on the topic of Niching Down. Part 1 busts myths about niching down and Part 2 is another guest's example of niching and Part 4 is a Q&A.
Noticing Her Passion And True Calling
Alisha shares about her journey to finding her true passion in life and like most of our journey’s it was a twisty-turny road and not a straight path. While we might hear “choose a major in college” or “pick your niche as an entrepreneur” it’s just not that easy and sometimes we have to follow a path to figure these things out over time.
“We need to go on a journey to end up where we started and I needed to go on the journey but I just wish it hadn’t been so long” - Alisha Wielfaert
Whenever I’m working with students who are trying to find their niche or grow their business, we all want it “right now”...or really yesterday if we’re really honest. We want things to happen fast in our life and business but that’s not realistic. What we really have to understand is that things that are worth it take time but that every step in the journey will teach us something.
**This was also a podcast episode (episode #157. Use the player below if you'd prefer to listen to this message.
Allowing Your Marketing To Open Doors For Your Speciality
Most often when I share about marketing I say a few things and one of them is to make it specific and clear. This is because specificity sells more, when we are clear about what the person can expect to receive, it will be easier for someone to say “yes” or “no” to the offering and that’s what we want.
However, Alisha shares a fantastic take on actually doing something a little different but with the same intention.
“I wanted this to be my first book not because I thought it was ‘the book’ but because it’s the book that’s helping me cast a very wide net.” - Alisha Wielfaert
What Alisha did was to think about this very strategically. She knew her niche audience and had them in her mind 100% of the time but she took a step back and said “what’s one step before that person” so that she could cast a wider net and eventually get to her niche audience.
The Benefit Of Selling Your Offering Before It’s Done
Alisha worked through the Creator Institute that is a hybrid publishing model and part of the process is to have a presale campaign that allows you to fund the publishing process before your book is actually published.
While you might not be writing a book, you can still use this concept. Maybe you’re thinking of offering a specialty workshop but you aren’t sure (1) if it will sell or (2) what elements you should include to make it the best experience for your students. By selling the workshop before it’s finalized and planned you can have clarity on both of these things. You will know you have students and you can then ask those students what they are excited about and hope to get from the workshop and therefore you will deliver a fantastic workshop to them!
“It was so great because I realized what wasn’t in the book because what I was saying to market the book wasn’t in the book.” - Alisha Wielfaert
How To Build Your Audience Before Selling As A Yoga Teacher
Start today. Start before you feel “ready”. This is the message that Alisha shares in this conversation over and over again. She acknowledges that it’s tough and vulnerable but she also says that she had the success she had with her book due to the work she did for 5 years before the book was published.
By building relationships through her marketing she had built up a community of people who were ready to purchase her book when it came out because they trusted her.
“I love to follow my intuition but I love my business so much and sometimes loving my business means doing stuff I don’t actually want to do.” - Alisha Wielfaert
Make Your Marketing Personal & Fun For You
We talked a lot about how marketing is relationship building and how what we want to do in our marketing is to allow people to experience us as a teacher so they can self-select if they want to work with us. Whether you write blogs, have a podcast, or create videos or audios for your audience, all of this allows the person in your audience to learn from you and decide if you are the best teacher for them. It’s not about convincing anyone of anything, it’s about sharing and giving them the information they need in order to choose.
Alisha shared how she tracked the sales of her presale campaign and it was through heart sticky notes and she wrote everyone’s name on them as they contributed. This not alone allowed her a tracking method but also allowed her supporters to feel like they were part of the journey with her. She shared how she was going to be looking at all those sticky notes as she edited the book so that each person would be part of the book. How special is that?!
“This has been an incredible journey and it’s done nothing but strengthen the community I already have in place and invite more people into that community.” - Alisha Wielfaert
Alisha’s $7K In One Day Launch
Audience Information:
Email list - 1,200+
Personal Emails - 400
What happened in prep for her book launch presale campaign
She divided the personal email list into 3 sections: (1) People she absolutely knew would buy and/or support her book launch, (2) People she was pretty sure would buy and/or support her book launch and (3) People she wasn’t sure if they would buy and/or support her book launch.
She personalized a template for 300 personal emails that would be sent on launch day.
She reached out to friends and family through phone calls and text messages and let them know the date of the book launch. She explained how important it was to purchase on the first day of the presale and had them put a note in the calendar as a reminder.
What happened on launch day that made her $7K
She hit send on the 300 personalized emails.
She sent an email to her email list.
She went live on Instagram multiple times
She went live on Facebook multiple times
She posted to LinkedIn
By noon on the day of her launch she had already hit her first goal and by the end of the day she had reached another goal.
By the end of her presale campaign she had sold 342 books for a total of $14,600 to fund her book which exceeded the publishing costs of $9,500.
“If you treat marketing like a sacred relationship and you have fun with it and you are you, consistently, it works.” - Alisha Wielfaert
Your next step
Commit to looking at marketing as relationship building just as Alisha does. Whether it’s writing your first or 500th email to your list, focus on sharing like you would with a friend. Or maybe you post on social media today and share a message that you just want to share, with no call to action at all. The key is that I want you to take action today that will help frame marketing as relationship building, TODAY. Like Alisha mentioned, she has worked on building this marketing muscle for years but now she talks about her email list and her coaching and her book with confidence and this comes from marketing as a relationship builder. So make sure to take action today, not tomorrow, so you can start this too. Your future self will be so thankful!
Until next time, give yourself permission to look at marketing as a relationship building tool and grace along the way. I’ll talk to you soon.
“I love to follow my intuition but I love my business so much and sometimes loving my business means doing stuff I don’t actually want to do.”
- Alisha Wielfaert
Looking for support when you have a little (or big) failure in business?
Thrive (my membership) was created to support and educate yoga teachers who are actively growing their business. When we're looking for growth it's inevitable that we will "fail" along the way and that's exactly why you need support as an entrepreneur. If you're looking for this type of support, I'd love to welcome you into Thrive. Use the link below to learn more and the form to get on the waitlist.