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MICHELLE'S
​ MORSELS

4 Tips on How to Network Effectively

5/31/2021

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Networking can be a great way to build your business by getting in front of more prospects and referral partners, but networking is a skill, and like any other skill, it takes some practice to get it right. If you’ve been networking, but not getting any leads (or clients, or referral partners) from all the networking you’re doing, it might be time to build up your networking skills. Start by using these tips to network more effectively.

Be Strategic About Where You’re Networking

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If you’re not getting the results you need from your networking efforts, the first question you need to ask is whether you’re networking in the right places. There are tons of networking opportunities out there, so before you start signing up for everything that fits on your calendar, take some time to investigate your options. Is your target audience likely to be hanging out there? Your target audience could be prospective clients, referral partners, or both. If neither group is likely to be at those networking events, don’t waste your time with people who won’t buy from you or introduce you to people who might buy from you.

Be Prepared

Make sure you have your business cards with you and that all the information on those cards is up to date.
Practice your elevator pitch. You don’t need to write it down and rehearse it word for word, but if doing so makes you feel more comfortable, go for it. At the very least you should have a few bullet points you know you want to cover. Make sure they’re things that will speak to your target audience’s pain points and make them sit up and pay attention.
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​Be Organized

Have a place to put all the business cards you collect so you can follow up with them later. A lost business card is a lost opportunity, so make sure you know ahead of time where all the business cards are going so you can keep them together while you’re networking.
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Pro tip: write notes on the business cards to remind yourself of the conversation you had with them so you can mention it when you follow up.

Follow Up

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I’ve written a whole blog post about how the fortune is in the follow up, so I’m not going to waste too much time on it here, but it is important enough to be worth repeating. Don’t just sit by the phone after every networking event waiting for people to call you. They might have lost your business card or been too busy to reach out to you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to hear from you. Reach out and see if they’d be interested in continuing the conversation you started at the networking event. Be sure to mention anything specific you discussed with them at the event to help jog their memory.
If you think you’re doing everything right, but you’re still struggling to build your business, it might be time to hire a Strategy Rockstar to help you reach your goals. Schedule a FREE clarity call now to see if coaching is right for you.
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3 Spring Marketing Ideas

5/17/2021

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Spring is a time of growth and renewal, so if you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut when it comes to marketing your business, it might be time to take advantage of the spring season to refresh your marketing efforts with new ideas and a new energy. Here are some ideas you can use to take advantage of the season and inject a little spring into your marketing strategy.
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​Take Advantage of the Warmer Weather

​Use Spring Colors

Color is the first thing people notice, so injecting your marketing materials with all the spring colors (from the floral pastels to the grassy greens) can give your marketing materials a more cheerful appearance. By extension, those colors can make your prospects feel immediately more cheerful, and when they’re more cheerful, they’re more likely to buy.

There’s a reason I made sure my logo (and therefore all my marketing materials) is full of fun colors. It’s because I believe business should be fun, and I want my prospects and my clients to remember that in all their interactions with me and my brand.

​By now, most people are sick of being stuck inside, and that goes double with this pandemic. Between the nicer weather and the vaccine rollout, people are finally getting outside again, and it feels so good! 
You can take advantage of the warmer weather in your marketing material with the right colors as I mentioned in the previous section (few things feel better than wide open skies and grassy fields), but you can also literally take your prospects outside. If you’ve been wanting to do things in person with your clients and/or prospects, but haven’t wanted to risk it, now is the time to get outside and back in person.
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​Clean Up Your Marketing Strategy

​Spring is also synonymous with cleaning. As we start venturing outside again and opening up the windows, it’s a good time to give our homes and offices a good, deep cleaning, and the same goes for your marketing strategy. 
When was the last time you really looked at your marketing strategy to determine what’s working and what isn’t? Is it time to ditch some practices that aren’t gaining any traction? Is it time to try out some new marketing strategies you’ve been meaning to try but haven’t gotten around to yet? There’s no time like the present to try new things, especially when spring is in the air.
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​If teaching yourself about marketing and business development has also been on your to-do list for a while, but you haven’t gotten around to it yet, my online academy might be just what you need. There are free classes so you can try it out and see if it’s for you before investing in the rest of the courses or in private coaching. Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been in business for a while, it’s always a good idea to invest in yourself so you can get the help and resources you need to achieve the biggest dreams you have for your business.
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Goal Setting Tips

5/11/2021

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I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners who have big goals for their business, but struggle to achieve those goals. There are a lot of things that can get in our way when it comes to achieving our goals, but sometimes it’s the goal-setting process itself that’s tripping us up. Sometimes the goals are not specific enough, making it difficult to tell if you’ve actually achieved the goal. Other times the goals are too ambitious, and people fail to adjust the goal to make it more achievable. Let’s take a look at how you can set SMART goals for your business so you can be sure to achieve them and move on to the next steps in growing your business.
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​The first step to setting SMART goals is to make them specific. Don’t just say you want to grow your business or you want more clients. Be specific. How much income do you need/want to bring in? How many clients will it take to bring in that much money? You need a number in order for your goal to be specific.

​Specific

​You can’t determine whether you’ve achieved your goal if you can’t measure the goal, so part of the goal-setting process has to be to make sure you have a way to measure your goal. This is related to the first tip to be specific about your goals, because when your goals are specific, they’re usually also measurable. As I mentioned above, aiming for a specific income level and/or a specific number of clients fulfills the first step in setting a SMART goal, but it also fulfills the second step because it makes those goals measurable.

​Measurable

I love it when my clients set ambitious goals for themselves and their businesses, but if those goals aren’t realistic, they can leave you feeling frustrated and unmotivated when you don’t achieve them. So when you’re setting your goals for the year/quarter/month, make sure it’s a goal you can realistically achieve in that time frame. Big goals are great, but consider breaking them down into smaller goals. That way, every time you complete a step in the process, you can celebrate and know you’re on your way to accomplishing the biggest, most ambitious goals you have for your business.

​Achievable

The final step to setting SMART goals is to make sure they’re time sensitive. If you keep telling yourself you’re going to do XYZ for your business “someday”, it’s never going to get done. Put it on your calendar and map out everything that needs to get done along the way so you have a roadmap to achieving that goal in the timeframe you’ve given yourself.
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Don’t be intimidated by the process of setting goals for yourself and your business. If you’re worried you won’t achieve a certain goal and you’ll feel like a failure, just adjust the goal so it’s more achievable. Setting SMART goals is the first step to laying out a plan to achieve those goals, and as the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish.

​Relevant

It might sound obvious to make sure your goals are relevant, but you might be surprised how many people get distracted with trying to achieve goals that won’t really help them move forward, whether it’s in life or in their business. This is especially true of entrepreneurs and small business owners because there are so many things different people are telling us we need to do for our business that it’s easy to get caught up in tasks and goals we’ve been told will help our bottom line, but in reality don’t have much of an effect. For example, you might want lots of social media followers and/or newsletter subscribers, but if people aren’t clicking through to your website from your social media posts or your emails, are those goals really relevant to your overall business goals?

​Time Sensitive

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​If you need a little more help setting and achieving your goals for your business, it might be time to hire a Strategy Rockstar to lead you through the process. Schedule a FREE clarity call now to see if coaching is right for you.
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3 Productivity Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs

5/10/2021

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It’s pretty safe to bet that at some point in the past week (maybe even in the past 24 hours) you asked yourself, “How am I going to get it all done?” We live in a world where we are expected to do more and more, and that goes double if you’re an entrepreneur who’s struggling to get your business off the ground. You have to be your own project manager, marketer, sales manager, etc. You’re working multiple full-time jobs, and if you’re a parent as well, then you have another full-time job, but you still only have 24 hours in a day.

​The good news is that there are ways to get more done in less time. Let’s start with three of the most basic things you can do:

​Give Yourself a Break

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​I know how hard it can be to take a break when you have a million things to do, but science has proven again and again that humans are actually more productive when we take breaks. So go ahead. Watch an episode of your favorite TV show. Read a chapter of that book you’ve been meaning to read. Play with your kids. When it’s time to get back to work, you’ll be refreshed and better able to focus on the task at hand.

​Know When You’re Most Productive

​I like to tackle my big projects first thing in the morning, but not everyone is a morning person. If you find you do your best work in the afternoon, or even after dinner, then set aside those times to do the tasks that require all your energy and attention. The smaller tasks can be done at the times of day when you’re not at your best, or when you don’t have a ton of time to focus, but instead have 10 or 15 minutes to shoot off an email or update your calendar.
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Remember Your Why

​Sometimes we have a hard time getting through certain tasks because we’re unmotivated. Whether it’s because we’re tired and burnt out, or just because it’s an aspect of our business we don’t enjoy but needs to get done anyway, sometimes just sitting down and making ourselves do it is the hardest part.
​In those instances, I like to remind my clients to focus on their why. Why did they start this business? What were they hoping to achieve, whether for themselves, their families, the world, or all three? When the going gets tough, sometimes it can help to take a moment to stop and remember why this is so important to us and the things that make working through the hard parts worthwhile.
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​Helping my clients get more done in less time is one of my specialties as a business coach. Whether you’re struggling to get it all done, or you’re not sure which of your endless tasks should take priority over all the others, having a coach at your side to show you the way can make your next steps, not just more clear, but also more successful. If you think it might be time to get a strategy rockstar on your side, schedule a FREE clarity call now so we can see if coaching is right for you.
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4 Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

5/3/2021

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You’ve started your business and now it’s time to get the word out, because people can’t buy your great products/services if they don’t know you exist. In order to let people know all the awesome ways you can help them, you need to do some marketing, but these days, marketing includes everything from blogging to videos to public speaking. You could easily spend all your time marketing and not have any time left for your clients, but I have four tips to help you develop a marketing strategy that will get results for your small business.

Know Your Audience

The first step to creating an effective marketing strategy is understanding who your audience is. The world is huge and the internet is almost as big, so the first thing you need to identify is who your target audience is so you can find out where they hang out (both online and off). ​
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​You also need to understand the pain points you’re solving for your clients so you can talk about them in all your marketing materials. Understanding, not just the pain points, but how that pain affects your prospects’ lives and drives them to find solutions is key to getting in front of them at the right time and in the right place, and saying the right thing to convince them to work with you.

​Put the Pain Points Front and Center

Once you have a solid grasp of the problems you solve for your clients and how much that’s worth to them, you need to make sure those pain points (and your solution) are communicated throughout all your marketing materials. Make it clear you understand where they’re coming from, and that you have a way to make their lives better in tangible ways.

​Know What Works … and What Doesn’t

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Any time you do any marketing, you need to be able to measure the results. Know where all your leads and clients are coming from so you can repeat the actions that brought them to you in the first place. If giving presentations tends to get people on the phone with you, but they’re not signing on to work with you, then you need to work on your sales call. If you’re giving presentations everywhere you can, but no one is reaching out to learn more after your presentations, then you either need to tweak the presentation or consider trying a different marketing channel.

​Understand the Power of Relationships

​While advertising tends to focus on getting people to buy, marketing is more about building relationships so people get to know, like, and trust you before your advertising (or sales call) can be effective. Marketing can focus on building a relationship between prospects and your brand, or building a relationship between you and your prospects. After all, as small business owners, we often are our brands, and especially in this Digital Age, your personal brand is at least as important as your company’s brand. So decide what represents that brand. What would make your target audience want to work with that brand?
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Helping small business owners develop and implement their marketing strategies is one of my specialties. Whether you just started your business, or you’ve been in business for a while and are struggling to get the results you need, I can help, so schedule a FREE clarity call to see if coaching is the right next step for you.
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    Why Morsels? 

    Business advice,
    like chocolate chips,
    is best digested
    a handful of morsels at a time.  I think we'd all agree that devouring a lot of either all at once can be too much for the average person to handle..

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  • Services
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      • It's Call Time!
  • About
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    • Where's Michelle? >
      • Past Speaking Engagements
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      • SCORE- Boardroom Business Bootcamp for Businesswomen
    • Free Resources >
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  • Blog
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