Stop Faking Perfect When Marketing Your Business

Hey there CEOs, Racheal Cook here, host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast and founder of The CEO Collective.

Welcome back to another episode here on the podcast. And today I'm diving into a big question I know a lot of you are having, especially right now in February as I'm recording this, but I have a feeling that this conversation is going to be relevant for the months and probably next few years to come.

And it's this question: Is it okay to keep marketing my business right now? Now, if you have thought about this question or you have put this out there somewhere going, is it okay if I share what I'm doing? Is it okay if I promote my offer? Is it okay if I do my marketing? Then you need to lock in.

Because this conversation is going to be extremely relevant for you, especially as we all have to adapt and adjust. And I don't know about you, but I am not independently wealthy. I do not have a trust fund sitting around somewhere to take care of myself and my family. If I stopped running my business. I am the breadwinner for my business.

I have three kids. I have aging parents. Like a lot of people are depending on me to continue showing up and that means I got to keep going. And so do you. I'm pretty sure if you're listening to this, you are very similar to me in that regard. You need to keep your business going because you've got bills to pay and people that you are responsible for, people that you want to be taking care of.

So let's do that. Let's make sure that we are continuing our marketing, but I want to talk today specifically about what you want to keep in mind at this current time. So the first question I get about should I continue marketing or is it okay if I'm marketing my business right now is all about social media.

And this isn't the whole conversation today, but I felt like I had to address it. There are a lot of small business owners right now that are really questioning their relationship with social media. There's a lot of us that are considering leaving social platforms altogether, especially Twitter or Facebook and Instagram because of the broligarchy.

And a lot of us just simply don't want to be giving them our money or our attention. And I completely understand that sentiment. That is something that I personally have wrestled with quite a bit. But I want to say social media is one of the reasons my business has been able to grow over the last 15 years.

There's a lot of timing that went into my business being able to leverage social media. I mean, when I started my business in 2008, 2009, things were just getting started. So I've been able to ride that wave of Facebook starting and taking off and then Instagram starting and taking off from the very beginning of those.

But what we have seen over and over again is that reach on social media is down overall. Reach is down for a lot of us. And that means people who follow you on social media likely are not seeing your content. They're not able to see your latest updates. So as far as an organic channel for marketing your business, social media really hasn't been the best place to put your time and energy for quite a while, unless you are willing to pay to play or you're going to be super active and working on how to make sure your stuff is seen using the algorithm.

So for a lot of the small business owners I work with, I always tell people, social media is a nurture marketing channel, meaning it goes out to people who already know you, who already know who you are. They've already liked and followed your page or your profile and it can be great for building that know, like, and trust if they see your content.

But if that is not the case for you, if you're seeing that your reach is down, that people aren't seeing your content and it doesn't really seem to matter what you do, you simply can't get your information out in front of enough people to achieve your goals, then we can look at some alternatives as far as which channels you use.

This is actually the topic of a class that I'm teaching this week. It'll be the day before this episode goes live, but if you want to grab a copy of it, I am offering the Marketing Without Social Media training as a bonus for anyone who decides to join us for the upcoming CEO Retreat.

Now, knowing that social media falls under the nurture category of marketing, it really makes me think of two primary things you want to be thinking about if social is not working for you and your business.

The first is leaning into nurturing with connection. Nurturing with connection means going more high touch with building the relationships with your clients. Really stop and think about how did people grow their business and bring new clients in the door before social media. And even before that, before the internet, how they did that was they nurtured with connection.

They built relationships. They spent time getting to know people. They followed up with them. They made sure to get in proximity to them, whether it was attending local events or actually going to their place of business or seeing their clients on a regular basis or seeing their community on a regular basis.

Visibility meant actually getting out in the real world. So embracing that while it might seem counterintuitive, it's actually one of the best ways to help your small business stand out, especially if you are a service based business or a local business. Really leaning into high touch connection as a way to nurture your potential clients is hands down a strategy you might want to consider over social.

The second main way you might want to consider nurturing potential clients is going to be thinking about your core content. What am I talking about with core content? One of the things that's happened with social media is a lot of us end up on this content hamster wheel. We feel like we always have to be creating new content because we have to feed that algorithm.

But the reality is if you're coming up with core content, this is content that lives a little longer. It's generally more evergreen, meaning it can last longer and get more use out of each piece of content. And you're putting it out on platforms that you own. So think about platforms that you actually have control over like your email marketing.

You own that platform. And if for some reason your email marketing service provider stopped being who you want to work with, you can literally export your list of potential clients of your community and upload it into a brand new one. You have way more control over your email marketing. Same with a blog. A blog lives on your website. You have a hundred percent control over where that is.

If you were to lean into audio like a podcast or video, you also have control over those channels. So I currently am sharing this piece of content and I will continue sharing content as I always have. I share it everywhere that I can.

So you'll find it on YouTube. You'll find it on Apple podcasts. You'll find it on Spotify. You'll find it on my website and you'll also get an email newsletter. These are all content avenues that I own and have more control over. And it actually makes it really easier for me to get in front of my potential clients.

In fact, I know from looking at my open rates and my email newsletter and looking at our traffic on our website, looking at our views and our downloads of the video and podcast, I know that over half of my entire total audience sees my content every single week. And if I compare that to what is happening on social media, where maybe they would see only a fraction of people would see it, maybe four to 5 percent of people would see that same exact content.

To me, it makes a lot more sense to invest in the core content platforms that I have control over. So I want to pull back and look at the bigger picture of what is happening in the world and the context we are in as small business owners. This is so crucially important because as small business owners, if you plan to be in business for the long run, if you plan to be here 10, 15, 20 plus years, then you have to learn how to adapt and adjust to whatever is going on in the world.

So this is currently my 17th year in business. I've been in business for myself since 2008. That is a long time. So I have seen some things, I have seen some ups and downs, and I want to point out some key elements that will need to be reevaluated when it comes to marketing your business right now, given the context of everything that is going on in the world.

So the first thing I want to talk about is hyper normalization. I brought this up in a previous episode, but I feel like this is something we need to bring more to the conversation about small business and marketing. Hyper normalization is basically the vibes are off.

We all feel like something's wrong. We're all feeling like there's a lot going on. There's a lot of uncertainty. It feels very stressful. It feels very anxious because we constantly feel like we're waiting for that other shoe to drop. But hyper normalization occurs when the vibes are off. We all have that feeling, but we don't really know what to do about it.

We don't really know what to do about it. And that leads to a lot of people, especially small business owners, acting as if it is business as normal. And right now we are anything but business as normal. We are in the middle of a very uncertain time here in the US. There is a lot going on in the government that is causing uncertainty that is causing a lot of anxiety for people.

There is constant news hitting our feed all the time about new things that are happening by the minute. So things are changing constantly. And when small businesses or businesses in general do not actually engage with what is happening in the real world, it's almost like they're gaslighting us by acting as if everything is just business as normal, as if we can continue marketing in the same way that we had previously.

So I think this is really important for us to wrap our heads around. And I want to go into this a few things that I think are really important for all of us as small business owners. Because it really impacts the effectiveness of our marketing and it really helps us understand where our business fits into the broader context of what's going on in the world.

So the first thing I want you to consider is that media literacy is more important right now than ever before. And I have to tell you, we just don't have a country of media literacy. We don't. There's a lot of people who simply take everything that they hear at face value. There's no fact checking.

There's almost like this crazy game of telephone that is going on, where somebody hears something from some news source on social media or some blog or some Reddit post. And suddenly that starts circulating as if it is true. And I want to engage in media literacy for small business owners because there is going to be a lot that is happening in the government that will impact small business owners.

And if we don't understand how to do the research ourselves, how to make sure that the sources we are reading and looking at are accurate, that they are reliable, that they are fact checked, and that they are non biased, we are going to find ourselves, one, stressing out for no reason, and two, circulating things that just simply aren't true and could potentially cause more harm.

So I want everyone to really think about where you're getting your information from, where you're getting your news from, especially if you, like me, are somebody that people in your community look to for how does what's happening right now impact me. So it doesn't matter what your niche is. Clearly I work with small businesses, so I'm going to be sharing a lot on social media and my other channels about things that I think are going to impact small businesses.

I also work exclusively with women, so I'm going to be sharing things that will impact women. Maybe for you, your niche is in the health and wellbeing space. There might be news that comes up in the health and wellness space that you want to be on top of so that you can communicate it and help your community to understand it.

But it's crucially important that we are learning from credible sources. So I'm going to share a link in my show notes for this podcast, but there's a very well known chart out there that talks about the bias in media as well as the accuracy in media. And you want to choose some sources that you feel pretty confident about.

But again, fact check those sources. Don't be afraid to do a little bit more digging and really make sure that you're getting the most accurate information. There's a lot of websites, podcasts, social media accounts that pretend to be news, but truly, they are entertainment. They are opinions. They are not fact based.

So I think this is crucially important for us to start with, because when you are recirculating this information in your own community, it will break trust if it turns out that these are rumors or that it feels like it's fear mongering. Why am I so on top of this right now? Because panic and fear is not a business strategy, but fear is a tool that is being used against us in order to keep us from owning and stepping into our power and feeling like we actually can impact what is going on in the world around us.

Fear is a tool that is being deployed against us right now. So we all need to step up our media literacy, make sure that we are learning from credible sources that they are fact checked, that they are non-biased. And don't be afraid to double check things before you share or add your own commentary.

I think this is really important because often I'm seeing a lot of small business owners that are just hitting the reshare button on everything that hits their feed and it starts to break trust with your community. So I want you to curate your information, curate your news sources and give yourself time to thoughtfully respond instead of having knee jerk reactions to what is happening in the news, what is happening in the world.

We are going to have breaking news every single day, multiple times a day. We've already had it for the past several weeks. So the best thing we can do as leaders in our respective communities is to embrace that grounded CEO leadership. We want to be making sure that we're informed, but we also want to have time to process and to thoughtfully respond.

Now let's talk about the context of marketing here. The goal of marketing is to build know, like, and trust. That is the whole goal of any marketing is for people to know who you are. We do business with people that we like, but most importantly to trust you. We want to be seen as credible authorities, experts in our respective niches, in our respective fields.

So in times of political uncertainty, of economic uncertainty, people start looking for leadership. People start looking for people that they can trust, that they can lean on to help them understand, to help them process what is going on in the world.

And for a lot of small business owners, this is an opportunity for you to continue being that grounded leader that they turn to, that they trust in your area of expertise and they want your opinion on it. If you are an expert in your space, if you're an expert in your area of business, then people want to know what you think.

But you have to give yourself time to process it. You have to give yourself time to reflect on it. And you definitely want to give yourself more than enough time to come up with a thoughtful response instead of knee jerk reactions. So we don't want to trigger anybody into feeling like everything's an emergency.

That is the opposite of what we want to do. We want to build that trust. So in times like this right now, grounded leadership is what we need. And marketing is a tool that you can use to help position you and your brand as a trusted authority and as the grounded leadership that they are looking for.

How do we do that? We do that by taking care of ourselves and taking care of our nervous systems, making sure that we are being very critical of the information that we come across. We are taking time to process it. We're taking time to really think through it and fact check it, do our due diligence, and then we can present it and support others in understanding how what is happening in the world impacts them.

So right now, one of the most important things when it comes to marketing your business is that marketing needs to be relevant to what people are actually feeling and experiencing right now. When there's seasons of uncertainty, people really need to feel like you understand where they're coming from.

Because if you don't understand where they're coming from, or you're not communicating to them that you understand what's happening and how it's impacting them, they will feel like you are bypassing them or gaslighting them. Like you are ignoring the reality of what is happening to them right now.

So I know this doesn't apply to every single business. There are definitely some businesses where maybe what is happening in the world really doesn't have a whole lot to do with your specific business. But I have a hard time believing that all of us as small business owners, all of us as leaders in our business internally for our teams and as leaders in our community don't have values that are important to us that we want to defend and that we want to stand up for.

So I really encourage you to lean into this grounded leadership. If you have more questions, let me know. I'll be talking a lot about grounded leadership. I'll be talking a lot more about how to manage your nervous system, how to take time to process things because the reality is right now, the more that people are triggered and having those knee jerk reactions, the more harmful it's going to be, not only to our businesses, but it's going to be harmful to our communities and to our teams, to everyone in proximity to us.

So be aware, be on top of what's happening, but make sure you are focused on being grounded and how you are disseminating that information or using it as part of your marketing.

The next piece I want to talk about is this cost of living crisis that we are currently in. Now this ties into what's happening in the world, what's happening in the media, what we are being reported on. We are in a cost of living crisis, and we have been in a cost of living crisis for a very, very long time.

This especially impacts women right now. Think about it. Things that impact women more than any others were finally on the world stage at the presidential election. We finally had things like the cost of child care brought up as real things that we are struggling with. So for a lot of women, the cost of living crisis is so real for us.

The cost of housing, the cost of child care for our kids, the cost of health care. We are being squeezed. So even if you think, "Oh, my people aren't impacted by this," everyone is impacted by this. Everyone is impacted by this. In fact, they're saying for most people in America right now, most people need multiple six figures in order to finally have a comfortable lifestyle equivalent to the buying power of what we had even 10 years ago.

And that's because this cost has simply skyrocketed. People start to think differently, right? They start to value things differently and they start to look for certain indicators when it comes to the businesses that they buy from. And one of the things I think is going to crumble in front of our eyes is the way that many women were taught to market their business.

And that is the female lifestyle empowerment. So this is a concept that my friend Kelly deals came up with a while ago. I have linked in the show notes her entire dissertation, basically on this thing she calls the female lifestyle empowerment brand. But as someone who has been in business over more than 15 years, I have seen so many women leverage these concepts, whether they realized it or not, but they leverage these concepts to build their personal brand.

And now we are going to see a lot of pushback against it. So what is female lifestyle empowerment brand? Well, the first part is female, and this is acting as the perfect woman, acting as the perfect woman. Think about this for a second. Think about all the celebrities, all the influencers you have seen out there.

Think about how many of them act as the perfect woman. They are cis, they are likely white, they are very, very conventionally attractive, they often are very thin, and all of these come together to basically portray what we all consider the perfect woman, what our society has decided is the perfect woman.

And it honestly doesn't even matter if they're white or not, because it is a role that they are cosplaying. It is a role they're cosplaying because let's get real. No one is the perfect anyone. No one is the perfect human. No one is a perfect woman. No one is a perfect man. This is a role they are cosplaying like a character and they're doing it in order to elevate their status because if you are perceived as the ideal, if you are perceived as the perfect version of a woman, of a female, then you have perceived status.

We are going to see a lot of pushback against this as more and more people are asking us to just show up and be ourselves, right? To stop trying to squeeze ourselves into this mold that society has said we need to be and instead to actually just show up and be us. The next piece of the female lifestyle empowerment brand is the lifestyle.

Now, this is a big one for me. I see this all the time and it makes me so incredibly frustrated, but the lifestyle part of this personal branding equation is literally being used against us all the time. And it is being used because it is these small things that are intended to indicate a certain status, indicate a certain level of wealth, indicate a certain level of privilege.

And this is really insidious because it could have been at one point very subtle and very small. So think about the whole quiet luxury trend that is out there or the old money aesthetic that is out there. Both of those things are status signifiers that were very like subtle. You had to kind of be in the know to know if something was very expensive because the old money aesthetic is not about big brands or big logos.

Well, what's interesting is that in the world of marketing, especially the world of women in small business building personal brands is that there has been a huge push towards aspirational luxury marketing. And you've seen this, I guarantee you have seen this out there.

You have seen this when you watch women who have these very lavish and over the top photo shoots, when they are showing off their designer handbags, when they are showing off their fancy cars, when they are showing off their designer shoes, like these are all meant to be signifiers of wealth, of luxury.

And it's really to make people wish or aspire to be like that particular personal brand. It is meant to take our aspirations, our dream of what we could have and basically short circuit some critical thinking to let us believe that if we just did what they told us, if we just bought their program, if we just did their thing, then we too would have the luxury car.

We too would have the designer bags. We too would have fill in the blank. And this is not exclusive to women, by the way, if you are to watch a lot of men in the business space, you will see they pull the same stuff. In fact, if you were to go on YouTube and just search any business advice, I guarantee you're going to see guys with their Teslas.

You're going to see guys with their big houses or private jets. You're going to see stacks of cash. These are all signifiers meant to kind of, again, short circuit our critical thinking and make us believe that if they sell us the lifestyle, then we will believe that whatever they say is how we acquire that lifestyle.

The problem is, honestly, it is a performance and often it is not real, it is not real. We have seen over and over again, if you peel back the curtain, right? If you really study this, you will understand that this is a world where the emperor has no clothes. And a lot of times the people who are using these luxury status signifiers often they don't actually have that level of wealth. They don't have those things. They are renting them. They are renting the Airbnb for the photo shoot. They are renting a private jet for the photo shoot for an hour. They are using Rent the Runway to rent the designer clothes and the designer labels.

So it is all a facade. It is not real. But it is being used against us in marketing on a regular basis. The third part of the female lifestyle empowerment brand is the empowerment piece. And what does that mean? Because we all want to be empowered, right? We all believe in empowerment. The problem with these brands is that they are using empowerment in a way that is very much about empowering the individual and not about the collective.

It is very based in the patriarchal white supremacist view of pull your own self up by your bootstraps. Your success is your responsibility. And the situation you are in right now is all because you wanted it somehow. You were matching that vibration. You called that in and that is so insane to me because the reality is these things are complicated.

The situations we're in right now, the certain circumstances of our life, of our business are very layered and nuanced. And there is a lot that goes into it because we exist in the context. We do not exist in like a bubble where we can just think our way out of any problem or we can just manifest whatever it is we want.

We exist in the context. So the problem with empowerment branding in the context of the female lifestyle empowerment brand is that they are often using the language of feminism. They are using the language of people who are fighting for diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, belonging. They are using that language as a way to sell people their individual success.

And they're doing that while at the same time, still using oppressive patriarchal business practices. What do I mean by that? There are so many times where there are small businesses out there who will use the language of empowerment, who will use a messaging that's all about, go girl, you can do anything, you can have this, you can create the life you love.

But at the same time, they don't pay their team members well. They have unfair hiring practices or labor practices. They might be using unethical marketing or sales practices. And that is the opposite of empowerment. So again, it tends to be this practice that has continued going on in the business space that is very much about, I'm going to sell you a vision, but that's actually not the reality.

And that's hugely problematic. And we're going to see that continue to fall apart because individual success doesn't happen without collective success. Even if you individually can be very successful, that does not translate to everyone around you. And it honestly, even if you individually can be successful, it doesn't mean you're successful in all areas of your life.

It doesn't mean that you actually have the success that you were most going after. It just means that in one definition of success, the outward manifestation of that, maybe being your designer bag and fancy shoes that you can perform that version of success. It's not about the collective.

It's not about collectively empowering people. The final piece of the Female Lifestyle Empowerment brand is the brand aspect of it. And here is where personal branding has just gone too far, because it has become about creating a caricature of yourself that you play in order to be the front face of your business.

And again, can you start to tell why I'm so frustrated with all of this? This is all so exhausting to me that this is where we are as a collective, that this is where we are in the world of small business, that we have to talk about these practices that are honestly so disingenuous. They are designed to get you to take certain actions and they are so out of alignment and out of integrity for my clients and my community.

But it's incredibly easy to kind of be captivated by them. So here's what we're going to see in our marketing and what you might want to evaluate for your own marketing. If you listen to any of this, the female performing the perfect woman, the lifestyle showing aspirational luxury marketing as a tool to get people to buy from you or to signify that you are successful.

If you are looking at empowerment and you're using a lot of language of empowerment, but you're not actually fully embodying empowerment in all parts of your business, and if your brand is a character, it's not a real person, it's a character you've made up to perform this for your community and for your clients, then I want you to breathe a sigh of relief because right now we are going to see a shift towards more authenticity.

You get to be more you. We are going to see people who want you to be more you, who want you to show the sometimes messy sides of your life or of your business or of your journey. We are about to see people crave that authenticity and that realness. They don't want everything to be so polished. They don't want everything to look so perfect because they've been duped by it before and they're ready for something real.

So right now, the best thing you can do in your marketing is to show up a hundred percent authentically as yourself and bring more of yourself into your marketing. Bring your quirks into your marketing, bring your values into your marketing, bring your thoughts and feelings into your marketing and also bring some of your vulnerability into your marketing.

Be open to the fact that none of us are perfect. We are all imperfect. We are beautifully imperfect and people need to see that. That actually is going to empower somebody more than ever is to know that you are an imperfect person and you still can help them. And isn't that beautiful? I think that is beautiful.

It's exactly where I want to go when it comes to how I show up is to show up even more imperfectly for you. The final piece here is to be in community with your clients.

And again, this comes back to how did people build businesses before the internet, before social media, before influencers, before any of that. Now in the last 10 or 15 years, there has been just this massive rise in the small business space of these celebrity entrepreneurs or celebrity influencers. And this is so funny to me because I grew up with small business owner parents.

And if you in the 80s or 90s were to tell somebody that you were an entrepreneur, usually they'd laugh at you and be like, "Ha ha, so you're unemployed, right? You can't keep a job." It was not cool or a status signal to be an entrepreneur, but now that has completely shifted. Now, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur.

Everyone wants to be an influencer. Everybody wants to be that person, right? We want to be famous is the new biggest thing. If you talk to younger generations now, they all want to become famous in some way. So here's the thing, these celebrity influencers, celebrity entrepreneurs, they've all leveraged the power of parasocial relationships and parasocial relationships are pretty powerful, but they can also be a little dangerous. And this is something I'm really attuned to. I'm watching a lot of what is happening right now because there have been a lot of celebrity influencers, and especially in the small business space, especially in the health and wellness space and a lot of different niches.

There are celebrity influencers in those spaces who build almost cult like followings. And that is where it can start to get really dangerous when they build these cult like followings, because again, now they are putting themselves in a position where they have put themselves on a pedestal and people will pay to be in proximity to them, often to the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

And people are willing to do that without doing their due diligence. They become so enamored by this cult of celebrity that it overrides their critical decision making and they just continue along for the ride. And unfortunately, those are people who, after they get on the other side, are the ones going, "I can't believe I just did that."

"I can't believe I spent that much money and didn't get what I needed out of that experience." Over time, what I've seen again and again is these celebrity business owners and influencers who are now on a pedestal with their cult like following. Everybody loves to knock somebody off a pedestal, and honestly, no one has to knock them off the pedestal.

They're going to knock themselves off of it. And especially when they are not in community with their clients. They like being on the pedestal. They don't want to be one of us. They don't want to be relatable to us. Do you remember what happened to Rachel Hollis in 2020? She literally said, "Why would I want to be relatable?"

And that knocked her off that pedestal so incredibly fast. Now, are there still some people who are in that following? Sure, but I have seen again and again, people who aspire to be the celebrity, charismatic leader. They're not wanting to actually be in community with their clients. They're not wanting to be in community with the people who got them there.

And that is a massive issue. And it causes a lot of harm, especially in the small business space, because not only do you have people with these massive followings who are bringing in hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars worth of revenue, but they are basically leveraging that parasocial relationship to an extreme that is causing harm to people.

And that's where I really draw a line. That's where I really draw a line, especially in the small business space where I have heard story after story after story from people who signed up for a 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 dollar a year mastermind only to be told the reason they're not where they want to be in their business is because of their mindset and they don't want it hard enough.

That is such bullshit. That is such bullshit. And we all need to call that out. That is what happens when we take aspirational marketing. When we take this female lifestyle empowerment brand and we short circuit people's critical decision making skills, we lead them to believe that if they work with us, everything will be magically solved.

That is not how business works. And in fact, that's not how any journey works. That's not how any health journey works. That's not how any spiritual journey works. That's not how any journey in your relationship works. There is no quick fix. There is no magic bullet. We all have to be willing to dig in and do the work.

And that work is messy. And it's not linear and it brings up all of our emotional discomfort as we're leaning into that growth edge. So if we are here to lead community, if we are here to help our clients achieve their goals, then the most important thing we can do is get in community with them. Be in community with them.

Get to know them. Build real relationships, not parasocial relationships. So what does that look like? Well, one of the things that I think about all the time, again, I grew up with two small business owner parents and they were growing businesses in the 80s and 90s. So I can tell you that I used to be one of my jobs working in my dad's office was to write thank you cards and anniversary cards. I would sit there for hours after school, handwriting out cards to clients, cards to colleagues and people who sent referrals to my dad's insurance agency. And that is what I want people to be thinking of when we're talking about being in community with clients. I'm not talking about just following them on social media and liking a couple of things.

I'm talking about really getting to know your clients, building relationships with them with boundaries. And again, within the context, there's always context, nuance, and discernment here. As my friend, Randy Buckley always says, but all of us build relationships every single day. And when we build real relationships with our clients, when we get to know our clients, one, generally we can serve them better.

If you really get to know your clients, you'll see more ways that you can support them. You'll start to see how else you can help. You'll start to see what else you can offer to them that will get them ultimately to where they want to go. But being in relationship with your clients means getting to know them personally, getting to know a little bit more about their lives, getting to know a little bit more about their beliefs, getting to know a little bit more about what they are trying to accomplish, like the real underlying reasons they're trying to accomplish the things they're trying to accomplish, not just the reason they signed up for X, Y, or Z program.

One of the things I'm always looking at when it comes to building relationships is how are you celebrating their wins? And how are you supporting them through hard times? So wins could be as simple as they just had a baby, send a card, send a baby gift. They just got married, send a card, send a wedding present. They just had a child graduate college. Send a card. That kid would love to know that you just sent them a gift card for a hundred bucks or something. But often it's those little things that stand out so much because it's showing that you care about these big milestone moments in somebody's life.

And you might not be able to do this for every single person. You might only be able to do this for a small segment of your clients or your community. But I can tell you, when you take the time to put those little personal touches out there, people remember, they remember that you were celebrating them, that you cared enough to say, "Wow, that's so awesome. Way to go." On the flip side is think about supporting your clients during the hard times. Now this is something that's really important to me with my own story. Many of you know my story about when my mom got hurt and the other insurance agents in my dad's district, they circulated his insurance agent number around.

Everybody took his number for a week and all the commissions they wrote that week went to my dad while my mom was in the hospital recovering from her coma. And that is why my dad's business survived, but you don't have to go to that extreme. It could be as simple as if something happens for your clients, are you available to them to support them through a tough time?

If they just experienced a loss, if they just experienced a setback, if they just had a health challenge, you know, we all have things that are going to come up. I have walked through really hard times with my clients. I have walked through the loss of a child with my clients. I have walked through a divorce.

I have walked through a sudden death of a loved one with my clients. I've walked through natural disasters, like hurricanes and tornadoes and fires and one of the things they all tell me is the fact that I reach out and say, "Hey, how can I help you?" And sometimes it's just jumping on a quick call and being a sounding board and being a space for them when they need a little extra support.

Sometimes it's dropping off grief groceries, but whatever it is, get in community and actually pay attention to the big wins and also the hard parts of life with your clients. They will know that you actually give a damn when you show up for those moments. Another thing that comes to mind a lot when it comes to building community with your clients is building an actual community.

And I'm not just talking about having a bunch of followers on your social media or a bunch of people on your email list. I know that community is being used interchangeably with email list or social media following. But I mean, get people together so they can get to know each other. One of my favorite things about the CEO collective is every quarter we host a CEO Retreat.

And I was looking through pictures that our photographer, Kimmy, shared. And I swear, you look through the pictures of the very beginning of the Retreat, when everybody's coming into the room and getting their table, and you will see picture after picture after picture of all of my clients hugging each other.

And it's because they're building real relationships. They're coming in like, "Oh, I'm so glad you're here. How's your mom? How's your kid? How are things going? How was your lunch?" They know what's going on in each other's lives. And even more than that, they start to work together. They start to find ways to collaborate.

They start to find ways to refer clients back and forth. They start to be each other's emotional support system. And that is really beautiful. It's so impactful when you can bring like minded people together. And if you're like me and you're running a values based business, then chances are you have like minded people in your community who would love to meet other people who believe what they believe and who value what they value.

So how can you be the person who facilitates that community, who brings those people together? Okay. Let's bring it all together. Now, recap, how to keep marketing during uncertain times when things are always changing.

One, remember that hyper normalization is very real right now. The vibes are off. People know this deep sense of things being unsettled, things being uncertain, and you in your marketing need to stay relevant.

If you act as if it's business as normal, you are just reinforcing that this is the status quo. And people aren't resonating with that. They want to know that you see what they see, that you're in it with them. And they want you to show up as that grounded CEO leader, who's going to be there for them to look to when they are trying to figure out the next steps forward, so it doesn't matter what your niche is, make sure you are building that know, like, and trust by being incredibly relevant with your messages, by staying on top of what's happening and making sure that if you are sharing what is happening, if you are communicating news to people, that that news has been fact checked, that it is accurate, that it is the most relevant, important thing for them, and making sure that you're doing it with intention and thoughtfulness, not just knee jerk reactions. Panic is not a business strategy.

We don't want to be panicking our communities. We want to be the safe grounded space that they can come to, that they depend on, that they trust. Now the next thing is remembering the female lifestyle empowerment brand is crumbling. We are going to continue to see it crumbling because people are seeing through it.

People are seeing through the facade. They're tired of things being overly polished. They're tired of things being perfect all the time. And they're tired of this fake empowerment where the individual can win, but not everybody can win. That is not what the world wants anymore. They are craving authenticity.

They are craving for us to show up in our vulnerability, to show up in our imperfection, to share more honest, more real what is actually going on in the world and what is happening that is happening in our business and how we're supporting them. They want us to be real. And finally, they want us to be in community.

Be in community. If you do anything else, if you take anything else away from this conversation in today's episode, I want you to be thinking about how would I be marketing my business if the internet didn't exist? You would be in community. You would be building real relationships. You would be paying attention to their wins.

You'd be paying attention to tough things happening in people's lives and you would be reaching out. You would be proactively connecting. You would be bringing people together. So how can you lean into that even more right now with your marketing? How can you be the person that CEO leader who is authentic, who is real, who is raw, who is vulnerable and who is willing to be in community with everybody, not be separate from it, not live over here in la la land where they appear like they're impervious to whatever's happening in the world.

But how can you really be here on the front lines with them as we're all going through this together? I hope this episode was helpful. I know this is a big one, but I think this is so crucially important for any small business owner, because if we stop marketing our businesses, then we lose out the opportunities to make the impact we are here to make.

And that is exactly what we need to be doing right now is to continue showing up, continue speaking out, leading with our values and continue to provide support, hope and connection for our communities. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you let me know any thoughts, any feedback. I am still working on new upcoming episodes. So anything else you want to hear from me, just let me know and I'll see you in next week's episode. Take care.