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Hey, before you dive into this episode, I want to invite you to a free live training that I'm hosting on Tuesday, September 30th, where I'm going to share how to get fully booked locally in three simple steps. The truth is, most business owners really overcomplicate how to get in front of more local people and how to bring in clients. So if you feel like you've been spinning your wheels and you're still invisible, or if you just feel confused and overwhelmed with how to market yourself locally, I'm going to break it down in three simple steps that you can repeat over and over. Whether you're just starting out and you want to bring in your first local clients, or you're ready to get fully booked within the next year. So click the link in the Show Notes to sign up and save your seat. It is totally free and I'll see you there. You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business podcast where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Presnol shares the strategies and the mindset to help you reach more people in your city and bring in a steady stream of clients. All right, let's dive in. Here's what I want you to know. You can build a fully booked business in a year or less. I have clients who I work with inside the localpreneur Academy who come in and do it in six months. I have some who come in and do it in three or four months. It is totally possible. I watch people do it over and over. So the question is, why doesn't it happen for every business owner? Why do some business owners spend years trying to get fully booked? And why do some people never get there? It's because they get stuck in a cycle. They get stuck in a cycle where they end up reliving the same month, the same 30 days, over and over again. And there's never any growth in their business. And if you can keep yourself out of this cycle that we're going to talk about today, then getting fully booked is inevitable. It will happen for you and it will happen faster. So let's talk about this cycle that keeps business owners unbooked or not, bringing in the clients and the revenue that they want. The cycle has three stages. So. So first there is the excitement phase. So this is the phase where you are really fired up and you're really optimistic about a new strategy or a new marketing tactic or just trying something new in your business to bring in local people. Then comes the discomfort phase. This is when it gets hard. The new thing isn't working how you thought it would, or it's not working as fast as you thought it would, and it feels really painful to be here. And then finally comes the jump phase. So instead of sticking with it, you abandon it and move on to the next shiny thing, which drops you right back into the excitement phase, the first phase. So most business owners live in this cycle for years. They're constantly starting, stopping, never staying long enough in that discomfort phase to actually build the visibility and the skill sets that they need to that create clients. And the reason that they live in this cycle for years is because they aren't willing to pay the price of discomfort. They aren't willing to feel uncomfortable long enough. They aren't willing to feel the discomfort of having to learn new skill sets, or they aren't willing to feel the discomfort of having to dig in and do some tedious work, or the discomfort of pushing their brain to problem solve. It can feel painful and it can feel hard. So here's what happens when we enter that discomfort phase. When we're trying something and it's not working how we want to, we enter that discomfort phase and we end up taking one of three exits. So what happens is business owners either go into first off quit mode, which means they, they stop doing that thing altogether. So they start it, it gets uncomfortable, and then they stop, they stop doing like that platform, that strategy, that tactic, that event, like whatever it is they were doing, they just decide it doesn't work. So they pull back and they stop doing it. That's quit mode. Or they go into stall mode. And this one is tricky because this is where you actually keep doing the thing, but you don't get any better at the thing. You just keep doing it at the same level without improving. And this is why it happens. So when we're doing something to market or grow our business and it's not working, we get confused. We're like, I don't know why this thing isn't working. And when we're confused or when we don't know how to make something work, we don't really have to get to work. A confused brain doesn't really like to expend any effort. We don't have to problem solve. We don't have to tweak and adjust. So instead we just keep showing up, checking a box every day and saying like, yeah, I'm marketing, I'm doing the thing, I'm showing up. But we end up stalling out here because we do the same thing every day, the same way. At the same level, with the same effort over and over, getting the same result. So we don't grow, we don't bring in any more clients. We really just keep reliving the same month, the same 30 days with the same results over and over. But we feel productive here. We feel like we're working hard, like we're taking a lot of action and we're doing something, but at the same time we're really frustrated and we're confused. At the same time, we're frustrated that it isn't working while we're putting in all this effort and we're confused on why it isn't working. For example, it's like we're posting over and over, so it feels like we're doing something, but we aren't really digging in and figuring out how to make the post work better or why they aren't converting or what we need to do or say different, differently, or we aren't really going out and learning what we need to learn to to make our social media or posts convert better. So I have my own example of this. Like years ago, when I was first learning Facebook ads, I stalled. I was install mode for a while. So Facebook ads to me can feel pretty tedious in my opinion. It's a lot of like trial and error and testing and theorizing and learning all the things in ads Manager and what everything means. And my brain always resisted doing that work. So at first when I started running ads, I just kind of threw something up there and I just let it run. I just put some money behind it and I'm like, turn it on, let it run. It felt productive because I was doing it, but it wasn't working. It was not bringing me any business, but I didn't really know why. And at the same time, I hadn't gone and like learned how to do Facebook ads really yet. And I wasn't looking at my ads every day. I wasn't looking at the data every day, wasn't using my brain to problem solve or troubleshoot. I really just left them running blindly. And really I just kind of crossed my fingers and hoped for a different result. I was stuck in confusion, but I also didn't want to expend any effort because it felt hard, it felt tedious. And I also knew if I didn't know how to make my Facebook ads work any better, then I just got to tell myself, well, I don't really know how, so I didn't have to do anything about it. Of course, it was easier to just let it run day after day than actually have to go in, learn something, and do the work. Of course that was easier, right? But eventually I had to. I had to decide, like, okay, I need to go find, like, a Facebook ads course that I can learn. I need to spend a couple hundred dollars ads to really test some things and to learn. And I need to, more than anything, like, push my brain. It is hard work, but the payoff of doing the work, learning the skill set, like over the years now, has been an incredible asset to my business. And now I get to take all of that and teach my students how to run ads and hopefully save them a little bit or a lot of the pain that I had to go through. But people can actually stay more comfortable in this stall phase because it gets them out of doing the hard work. They're uncomfortable in other ways. They're uncomfortable in the frustration and in the confusion and in the not having the results. But they. But they get to stay comfortable and not really having to, like, dig in and really push their brains and having to go learn to things that they might not know yet. But the third exit that people take when they're in this. This discomfort phase, so they're not getting the results they want with the thing that they're trying. So the third exit that they. That they might take is the jump phase. And this is one of the most common things that I see really slowing people down from getting fully booked within a year. And this is when they jump to something else to try something new that will hopefully get them a better result instead. So here's how all of this really looks in action. So in the excitement phase, you're really excited, optimistic to try something new to market and grow your business. Maybe your business owner friend told you about this, you know, platform or event or strategy tactic. Maybe you went to a conference and you learned something. Maybe you saw a competitor doing something. Maybe you saw some something on YouTube, on Instagram, and you're thinking, like, this sounds amazing. This is definitely gonna be the thing that works for me to bring in all the local clients. You don't know much about it yet. You've never done it before, but you are hopeful. You see how it works for someone else. So you add it to your plate, you add it to do to your to do list, and you start doing it. And maybe you do it once, maybe you do it a couple times. Maybe it lasts a couple weeks or even a couple months. Then comes the discomfort phase. It's not working how you thought it would. It's not Getting you in front of your local people. Maybe people aren't engaging how you thought you would. It's not resonating, it's not landing. People aren't reaching out, the clients aren't coming. And you're like, wow, this really sucks. And this is where most people take an exit. So they quit doing the thing. They enter quit quit mode, or they enter stall mode, where they just kind of keep doing the thing but don't really figure it out. Or they enter jump mode. And once they enter jump mode, they're right back into the excitement phase. They're excited and optimistic to try something else. So maybe your friends told you about another platform, or you saw something else on Instagram or YouTube or you noticed a competitor is doing something else. And here's the thing. Most people don't realize. Usually your competitor is just as confused as you are, and they're just kind of doing everything, too. So you end up starting again, the new thing. You have new energy, you have new excitement. And again, maybe you do it once, you do it a couple times, maybe it lasts a couple weeks, a couple months, and then you're right back into the discomfort phase. It's not working how you thought it would. It's not getting you in front of the people. People aren't engaging. It's not resonating. And again, you're like, wow, this sucks. And you take an exit. This is where people spend years from the excitement of doing the new thing, the discomfort, neither quit, stall, or jump over and over and over. And it's why they end up not getting fully booked within a year or ever. They spend years just starting and stopping. They don't ever really get good at one thing. They're never visible enough in one area. They don't ever get good at explaining what they do and how they can help their people in a really compelling way in one place. And before they ever develop those skill sets, they jump ship, hoping the next thing is going to be easier or doing something else is going to work better. So the secret here is breaking out of this cycle as fast as you can. It's catching yourself when you're in it and getting out of it. And the way you do that is by staying in the discomfort phase for longer. This is a painful stage. I know that's not. That's not what you wanted me to say. It's not going to feel good to be here. It's not going to feel comfortable. And that's why your brain wants to avoid it, because your brain is going to Tell you it's not working. Stop doing this, go try something else instead. It'll be easier over there. But that is when you get to break the cycle by staying here in the discomfort phase, by sticking with the thing you're currently doing that you're committing to, you force yourself to learn. You force yourself to develop new skills. You have to go learn the things you need to learn. You refine your message, you problem solve, you troubleshoot, you tweak, you adjust within the thing you're doing instead of just jumping to something brand new. And that might take three months, six months, longer, but you will see results because you're doing the work to make that thing work. That's when clients start coming. Your books start filling, you build local demand. You become the go to. You start mastering what you're doing, and then it actually starts to feel good to do it. The discomfort phase doesn't feel that uncomfortable anymore. You start trusting that the thing you're doing works for you. And you see, when I show up and do this, I get this result. But if you don't stay with it long enough, if you keep quitting, if you stall, if you jump to the next thing, then you keep getting the same undesired results over and over, which is no. Clients not being fully booked, not making the money that you want to be making, and you keep not knowing how to market and how to bring in clients. So you have to break this cycle to get fully booked. That's it. Everyone goes through this journey. It really is about being bad at something, developing your skill sets, getting better at it, making it work, and finally getting the result. And if you're willing to stick with it, to do the work, to learn the things that you need to learn, it is possible to get fully booked in months instead of years. And we speed this process up for you even more inside the localpreneur Academy. Because as you are marketing yourself locally, you're developing the skill sets that you need to make it work better. You're learning how to show up as that local go to person and really position yourself as that top choice. How to show the value of what you offer, how to talk about it, how to talk about what you offer. You're honing your messaging and building desire and demand around what you sell. You're also getting better every single day at reaching people who live in your city. It's no longer guesswork. You know exactly who, who your people are, where they are, and how to reach them. And you know how to grow your local audience like clockwork. So you're never questioning, like, where is my next lead coming from? And you're getting better at creating local go to content. So when you're posting on social media, you're not just posting random things or waiting to be inspired or posting fluffy captions. You're speaking directly to your people and the problem you solve. And you're positioning yourself as that local solution. And you're selling confidently, inviting them to come in confidently. You'll learn how to sell in your comp, in your content, in your emails, on your website, so people start reaching out to you. And then you learn how to handle the conversations that come after. And we make the improvement process in each of these areas really doable. You track yourself month after month so you know exactly where the gaps are. I teach you how to evaluate that and you have my eyes on all of your content, on all of your marketing. You get to ask questions or get feedback every single day with this type of support, with learning the skill sets of local marketing, with knowing exactly how to stick with it, with being consistent and getting better at what you're doing, that's exactly how you get booked in months and not yours. So click the link in the show notes to check it out. Come join us inside the LocalPreneur Academy so we can get started right away and I will see you inside. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, I want to invite you to check out my program, the LocalPreneur Academy. This is the only program for small business owners who want to become the local go to in their industry with a steady stream of clients. You can find more information@lesleypressnell.com and I'll see you inside.