Well as you probably already know, we’ve started doing a new feature – where you get to show case your insights and knowledge, help others in the Wire Yourself for Wealth community and also add to the synergy of what we’re building here.
I know you have much wisdom to share, so here’s an opportunity.
Below is a question from a member of the WYFW community, Lynn Silva.
Have a read, and then feel free to leave a comment and share what you think she can do to solve her problem.
To keep it interesting I’m sending the best response a copy of one of my favourite business books: “Getting to Plan B” by John Mullins and Randy Komisar.
“Best” can be most helpful, most insightful, or most entertaining – I’ll know when I see it. 😉
Over to Lynn:-
“I currently do crisis intervention and am so burned out. It’s nights and weekends. I’m a single parent and cannot tell you what I go through trying to maintain adequate childcare for my 2 girls.
It’s why I’m determined to start making money online. I don’t need to be rich. I just need to support my kids. I want to quit and make my money from home and I WILL!!!
I don’t have a steady income…YET. The steps I’ve taken thus far are: I set up a site; I took a social media marketing class, and a writing class.
My site was originally set up to help parents who have, or their kids have physical, mental and learning disabilities or troubled teens. I wanted to help them grow physically, emotionally and financially. I want to help people learn how to take ANY situation and benefit (profit) from it.
My site motto is, “Learn to Diversify & Multiply…physically, emotionally and financially.”
So in the next week, I’ll be doing my THIRD overhaul of my site to emphasize this. I’ve guest posted on one site thus far. This is all I’ve got so far…so I don’t really have a money making strategy in place. All I know, deep down, is that I can take ANY situation, help someone through it and turn it around in a positive light. ANYthing…trauma, anger, physical illness, divorce…anything.
My biggest struggle in obtaining an income flow is finding readers/customers.
Any ideas?”
Lynn Silva, http://www.diversimom.com
Leave a comment to win a copy of Getting to Plan B.
Warm wishes,
Laura Leigh Clarke
a.k.a. the Whole Heart, Whole Brain Business Mentor
Wire Yourself for Wealth
Related Posts
How To Get Your Value Out
How to Create A “Because I’m Worth it” Map That Will Help You Earn More
How To Get Paid What You’re Worth, with the UK’s soft selling expert, Richard White.
Discover Your Personal Money Genius So You can Make More Money with Less Effort- Clear The Way For Uber-Results
Side Step Creativity-Killing Systems
by 
“My biggest struggle in obtaining an income flow is finding readers/customers.” – Lynn
Hi Lynn,
Turn it on it’s head.
Instead of finding readers/customers, just go find someone you can help… this week.
Forget making money from it initially. Consider instead that profit is a symptom, of you helping people.
Andy
Hi Andy,
Clear, concise & motivating suggestion! You pulled all of the complication out of it! THANK YOU! : )
Hi Lynn,
I’ve just taken a look at your website and your question above and had two ideas to help you generate income:
the first thing that popped into my head was “what is the key transformation you are offering your client”. It’s clear you back yourself, and you know you have a lot to offer which is a great start, but it’s less clear, from looking at your question above, and your website, what the tangible change is that your clients will experience. I think the words “diversify and multiply” are great but they perhaps don’s really speak or grab the attention of a struggling parent! So – as you overhaul your website, could you bring a really simple and clear message in there? Who are you targeting and what’s the key transformation they will experience through reading your blog and working with you? What’s the biggest pain they experience that you can solve?
The second thing that sprung to mind was wondering who are your ideal clients that have the money to pay you! I know you’ve said parents of children with difficulties, but can you narrow it down even further? Who are the exact parents who have these struggles and can afford help? Where do they hang out – what other online sites and communities? where else are they spending their money? Once you’ve got this nailed, you want your site and marketing material to be speaking directly to them, so that when they read your material they know you understand their challenges and will be determined to work with you – and being clear on this also means you’ll be able to form partnerships and write more guest blog posts that really fit with your key audience as you’ll have a good idea of where they are hanging out online.
Hope that helps Lynn, good luck!
Jo
Hi Jo! You know, you really just reeled me back in. When I first started this journey, I took THE MOST awesome social marketing course from Tommy Walker. He taught me everything on how to filter out potential clients. Then, when the class finished, I really slacked off and started focusing on my writing and querying. I’m so caught up in guest posting right now that I’ve let a lot of what’s right there in my own head fall by the wayside. You hit the nail on the head and I need to get back to, as Tommy and Jon Morrow say, my ‘social espionage!’ Thank you so much for your time.
Wow. What a noble site. I hope that you succeed because I can see this becoming a great tool for parents. You shared some wonderful insight. But in order for parents to use this tool, they need to find it’s value and that might be hard to do with your current site.
Even with as much work as you have put into your website, it needs an overhaul. These suggestions are only offered to be helpful, not to downplay what you have already done. I remember how I struggled with my first website, and understand that it can take a few iterations to get a good working model.
The first post that I tried to read on your site had a broken link at the title (the “Being Left Out” piece) and the design looked a bit dated with all of the different font colors and dark backgrounds. The side bars on the right were nearly impossible to read on my iPad because of the color combination.
On your Hire Me page, please consider listing the main topics of your blog in your topic list as some people may look at that page before reading your complete blog and might not realize what you can contribute on their target topic.
Overhauling your website is a great place to start because it is what most people will see first, but have you written your own business plan yet? Even a predominantly online business needs some sort of formailzed plan to help identify opportunities and keep the business focused on reaching its goals.
Given your topics of passion, I can see you speaking at local community groups, offering webinars for families, and writing articles for traditional publications, as well as blogging. The process of developing your business plan will help you create an overall strategy to focus these activities into building blog traffic and, in turn, finding clients.
Hi Kammy, Thanks so much for this suggestion. I did do a ‘client profile’…just now…lol. My ideal client is completely different than what I am attracting. A site overhaul is way overdue. No wonder I’m not having success. This was such a great idea and I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. If you saw the client profile and then went and looked at my site, you’d be utterly lost! THANK YOU SO MUCH.
I already know all about turning lemons into lemonade-my whole life has been one huge lemon grove. I’m currently working on becoming a career consultant with a focus on the middle-class. But generally I think you are wasting your time with social media and guest blogging. My reasoning is simple-everybody always thinks they can solve “It”
themselves-whatever it may be and generally they don’t want strangers telling them what to do- and they don’t want to feel stupid because you point out something that seems obvious in hindsight.
I suggest you podcast. Host your own internet call-in show. Be the internet version of Dr. Laura without the racism and moral judgments. I think it will be very cheap…especially now with the explosion of VOIP. Google around and research it. But please, stop wasting your time and money on endless site redos because unless you can afford to do it right…all the others won’t matter. Simple and clean is best. I went to your site and not to be mean, but if were in need of such services, I wouldn’t spend more than .02 seconds on your site. In my personal opinion, it is garish and unprofessional. Take at look at other sites from people who do crisis management, organization and social services groups. Most of them have no bright colors and wild logos.
One other idea, connect with local police forces and youth groups, churches and the priest or whomever. Also, check out group homes and other social net programs. As for being paid, I suspect that without a license to at least practice social work you might have a hard time getting programs to either pay you or take you seriously, so that would be my next step.
Hope this is useful,
Quantella Owens,
The Opportunity Oracle
Quantella! Holy moly! You are harsh! : ) Thank you, because I really needed it. What I’m discovering, with this group’s help is that I truly am ‘burned out’ in crisis and that I need to find a way to transform my skill into business related crises…productivity rates, overhead reduction, the power of teamwork, leaders verses managers, etc. All (or most) of these people are parents who have the various struggles that I’ve dealt with in crisis. Showing them how to excel in parenting and still succeed in their careers is the route that I’m wanting deep down. I just haven’t been able to get that point across. My site does NOTHING to demonstrate that…and yes, the colors…I get it. So thank you so much for your drop dead, no placating type of honesty. I hope we can stay in touch as it’d be great to have someone to touch base with and give me a kick in the pants when I need it. : )
Hi Lynn
You’re allowed more than one website and more than one biz venture, once you have the hang of it.
You say, “I’m a single parent and cannot tell you what I go through trying to maintain adequate childcare for my 2 girls”.
Well, I wish you would – say what you go through to maintain adequate childcare for two littlies when you work non-standard hours. And, if you could make it easy for me to tap into those services, I’d pay, particularly if it helped cut the pain of hunting for good, safe places and spared me the waste of time. How do you do it?
I’d also love to know – what to do in the holidays, for my kids, that’s both fun and affordable? Have you got anything running OFFLINE that feeds into/out of your online capture/sign-up system?
Could you get paid for referrals to those providers? Or create a membership site? Or be paid for getting traffic for vetted and trusted services? Can you/could you put together a plan to have your service ‘be seen, get known, get ahead’ with key players in the childcare industry?
Step back a little. You’re burning out. What would turn that around, even if the website didn’t start to generate money? Anyone else have a similar pain they’d love to have eased?
What would you be willing to buy to have that desperation depart? Can you provide it – and let people like you know about it? What keywords would you be putting in to find the relief you’re looking for? Would you make yourself known at the Citizens Advice Bureaux? Or the info office at the council? Or even the local Chamber of Commerce? (Would you do a breakfast presentation for them so they get to know and promote you?)
At the moment you’re looking at parents of troubled kids who are finding the bulk of their lives being swallowed up in the kid drama, can see how it’s all going, and want time out to stretch parts of themselves that are either numb or atrophied. To develop enough resilience and humour and outside life/interests to cope for however many years it will take to get through the trough with grace and capacity. And they’ll all be different over a core need – how to keep their Selfhood.
Can you guide that? For men? Or women? People between, say, 28 and 38, with average incomes and education for your area, who are dealing with kids who aren’t simply ‘going through a phase’ and who maybe have other kids in the family who aren’t challenged – except by having a ‘different’ sibling.
Are you running classes offline? What kinds of support and development are you offering? If your present client base, from the work you do, is providing you with the direction and inspiration for your venture – what are they saying they want?
In your present ‘industry’ (and it sounds like you want to stay in it) who can ‘hire’ your business? Who has the money? Where are the big players leaving gaps you know from hearing your clients that you’d find it both easy and lucrative to fill?
When you get going – where will you find people to work with, for growing your services and ensuring none of you burns out?
If what you’ve spoken of is the kind of service you want to provide then you need to also build the offline products/services. And your offline presence with the people/agencies who can hire your services or refer you to paying customers.
There’s a lot of people in the area you’ve identified who would appreciate help. Only some of them match perfectly to your skills and talents. The rest belong to other people. Don’t try to spread your molecules too thinly. You can be more effective, achieve more success, with a focused approach.
And – please look after yourself.
Hi Rae,
Wow, I don’t even know what to say here. First of all, you obviously spent a lot of time on my site and preparing your AWESOME response. You gave me so much to think about, but the biggest take away for me is that I am not utilizing my Facebook page, Diversimom to it’s full potential. I need to print your insights out and go through them one at a time. You are amazing and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Lynn, I basically would set up your website and all your services focusing on your ideal cllient: Who is he/she?
Write down anything you can think of regarding this person even down to preferred shops, music, ways to dine and holiday solutions. Anything at all. Include asking: Why does he/she look for your help and how can you make he/she confident that you can offer this help?
Writing to one specific person might seem like a waste of other clients but it makes your communication directed to someone specific – you are not shooting among a crowd of sheep to see which one you’ve hit, but you are going for that specific target. Of course this does not mean that you are not able to take on other clients – this is only going to be your perfect match and you will have others matching more or less this profile who will also come to you…
This is just my two cents, good luck to you with everything! xo
Hi Annette,
Well you definitely hit the nail on the head as far as defining my target customer. It’s something I should’ve done in the beginning. The epiphany that I’ve experienced thanks to all of you is that my ideal client doesn’t match my site at all! I’m ashamed to say that, but hey, I’m a beginner so it’s okay to make a donkey out of myself for a while isn’t it? (If it’s not, please don’t tell me!) Your particular question on ‘why’ this person would need my help is especially valuable as I had not considered that question. So thank you for your time and your help. : )
An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto
a colleague who haad beeen conducting a little homework on this.
And he in fact bought me lunch due tto the fact that I found it for him…
lol. So allow mee to reword this….Thank YOU for the meal!!
But yeah, thanx for spenbding some time to
discuss this topic here on your website.
Great to hear Bob! Thanks for the feedback. Hope lunch was good 🙂