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You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business podcast where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Pressnell 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.

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Hello. Hello. How are you guys? Let's make sure we are live and going here and we will get started. Okay. My light is kind of aggressive in here today. I don't know what's happening. Okay. We are going to talk about how to earn more this Black Friday in this Cyber Week. So I am going to share three really common mistakes that I see local business owners make that really stops them from getting the most out of their sales. And we're going to talk about what to do instead. And then at the end, I'm going to tell you really how I am supporting my students through this inside the local Preneur Academy, starting, like next week. Because I feel like Black Friday is like, so close and already here. But it's really going to be the execution and the follow through of what I'm going to teach you today that is going to make the biggest difference. So if you are here, if you are joining me live, I'm trying to see where I can find you guys here on my dashboard. But if you're joining me live, go ahead and tell me hello in the comments and if you are watching the replay, type replay, I like to know who's here with me. And while you're doing that, I'm just going to introduce myself quickly in case anyone is new to me. So I am Leslie Presnell and I am a local marketing coach. I am the host of the Grow your Local Business podcast. I'm the host of this Facebook group that we are in and I help my clients. I work with local business owners all over. I help them reach clients in their city, bring in more clients and grow their business. And I do that in my lifetime membership, the local Preneur Academy. And I'm actually doing double duty with this training. It's also going to be a podcast episode. So hopefully I'm reaching you guys everywhere that you tune in. However you like to hang out with me. So if you're listening to the podcast, you have to be sure to come join our free Facebook group. I'll be sure to link that up in the show notes. And then if you're here in our Facebook group, you have to be sure that you subscribe to the podcast. I have new episodes that come out every single week. Okay. So I really want to see how I can see you guys. I wonder if I can pull it up on my phone. Okay. Yeah, I can see it. Perfect. Oh, see, I can't see the comments in my dashboard. That's annoying. I'm going to open up a new window so I can see you guys. I can see you on my phone. Jenny, Amber, Julie. Hello? I don't know why it's not showing it to me. I'm just gonna open it up in a new window. I don't like feeling like I'm alone here. Okay, cool. I can see you guys now. Hi. I'm just gonna need to mute myself. Okay, perfect. Shelley. Okay, we're good to go now. Okay, feeling better. Okay, let me get my notes and we will get started. Let me move this to a new window. Okay. Then I got where I can see you guys. Okay, let's do it. Okay. Facebook dashboard is weird. It never works right to where I can like see who's here and all the things. Okay, so let's dive in. How to earn more this Black Friday already. We are 44 days away from Black Friday. So Black Friday is November 29th and Small Business Saturday is November 30th and Cyber Monday is December 2nd. And then of course, a lot of people just kind of continue to celebrate, we'll call it to sell and have deals throughout like that entire Cyber Week. It's just an entire kind of Cyber Week thing now. So we're about a month and a half away at this point. So it's really a perfect time to go ahead and start planning for what you're going to do, which we're going to talk about today. But what I want to start with first is really the first mistake that I see. Sorry, I think my. Yeah, we're so. Okay. The first mistake that I see local business owners really making this time of year and in general throughout kind of quarter four is I see a lot of service based business owners saying that or they slow down their selling in general this time of year. And a lot of times they don't even offer or participate in Black Friday or Cyber Week. They say it's just a waste of time and there's just no point. Now if you're here and you sell a product or you're in retail, then this is likely your biggest time of year. Like you live for quarter four. But a lot of my clients that I work with are service based business owners. They're like home organizers, photographers, personal trainers, wardrobe stylists, social media managers, nutritionists, physical therapists, florist Farmers. The list goes on. Tell me what you are in the comments. So I know who all is here. But there's this belief, I have found that a lot of service based business owners have this really sneaky thought that their clients are not spending money on themselves this time of year. That they aren't spending money on their health, on their appearance or their fitness, on their home, their businesses, their education. There's this belief that people are only spending money on gifts this time of year. So I have a lot of people who come to me and say that October and December or October through December are there is their slow season and that their business dips during the holidays. Or they'll say that their clients will say that they want to wait and work with them in the new year, or that their clients want to save money right now just because they are spending money on gifts, or that their clients are busy this time of year. And after just coaching so many people, I always get my clients to tell me the actual facts. If any of my clients are watching right now, they know this about me because they'll be like, yeah, like my clients are just really busy right now. Or they said are all of them said this or everyone is saying that they want to wait until January to work with me and I'll be like, okay, but how many people actually said that? And they'll be like, well, one or two or a couple. So it will truly be like a very small sample size compared to their entire audience or their full client base or all the people who live in their city and could be their customers. But when people say things to us so often, we just take it on as truth and we apply it to everyone. So if one client says something or says this, that they're busy, they're not spending money during the holidays, they're saving their money for gifts. Or if a couple of people tell us this, then we think that all of our clients must think that or all of our potential clients must think that that's just how our brain works. So we have to be onto our brain. Because when we believe this one client or when we believe our brain, we actually do start to have the belief that our clients don't spend money this time of year or that our clients are busy or that they're saving money. And because of these thoughts, we actually slow down our selling. And then we aren't out there making offers. We aren't out there showing up in a really big way this time of year or during Black Friday during Cyber Week. Maybe we throw out like a couple of posts, but we don't really expect anything. And then we just like prove ourselves true that our people don't buy this time of year, that they don't spend money, or that Black Friday and Cyber Week doesn't work for us. But what's so important is for you to see how you end up creating that result based on how you are showing up and selling and marketing. And just notice how you end up pulling back and how you stop promoting, how you stop really thinking of creative ways to like, bring people in and how you may even start focusing on next year instead of really problem solving for, like right now. And how can I get more sales right now before the end of the year? So we just kind of end up letting this be a slower season and we let sales dip this time of year and we don't give people a really compelling reason to buy right now. And then in the end, of course, they'd rather spend money on gifts because we aren't fully showing them and selling them, like, in a really compelling and exciting way. So here's what's actually true. And maybe you need to even write this down and put it on a sticky note. But people, your people want what you offer all year 24 7. There's not a reason that they would want it less this time of year. They may have more objections, and that can be okay. And that's just. That just means that we can double down now on selling and getting better about talking, talking about what you offer so you can overcome those objections in your selling. But you have to tap back into the belief that they want this, they want what you have all the time. Like, yes, they're buying gifts. Yes, they have things going on and the work they do with you or what you offer them is still valuable. So that's the first shift that you need to have going into this season. Going into Black Friday and Cyber Week. Know and believe and go find evidence that your people are still spending money on themselves this time of year. I also think that it's super fun. It's a fun challenge if you, if you have a lower month in your year or a lower season to see how you can turn around and make it your highest month of the year. I always think that's a really fun challenge and it's way more fun to think about that. And if it is this time of year, knowing that you have Black Friday and Cyber Weekend, when people are naturally spending money and shopping and there's just already a lot of hype to really Help leverage all that. Okay, so let's see. A home baker, esthetician, organizer. Yeah, yeah. So services, right? People that people. Services that people would be buying for themselves, and baked goods too, can go either way. People are buying them for themselves. Possibly gifts, parties. You kind of get the best of both worlds there for sure. Okay, so let's say you're on board. You're going to go all in on Black Friday and Cyber Week and put together something really special that your people are going to get excited about. And this leads to the second mistake. And that is a lot of times business owners just really underestimate how much promotion is required during Black Friday and Cyber Week. Like, we've all experienced this on the consumer end. Like, we, we've opened up our inbox and we just have dozens of more emails coming to us. There's so many more posts on social media. There's TV ads, literal catalogs that come into our mail. That's already started happening. The newspaper, that's the one time a year I get the newspaper. Marketing is just amped up this time of year. It's incredibly noisy during Cyber Week and leading up to it. Plus it's also the holidays. Like, people are doing things. They're traveling, they're with family, there's football on tv. People are busy. Like, they're just doing other things. So take in the fact that people are not in their normal, typical everyday routine. Combined with every business is pumping out marketing. It's easy to get lost. And that doesn't mean that there's no point in doing it and that you shouldn't. It just means that it's going to require more, like way more than you think it will. And even on a typical day, I find that we usually still underestimate how we, how much we have to talk about what we sell in order to get people to buy. And even more so during Black Friday. So posting once or twice about what you offer, just know that it might not get seen by all of your people. I actually helped a client this morning inside of my members only Facebook group, and she was trying to sell her baked goods, her Halloween cookies, and she didn't have the sales that she wanted yet. And as we were theorizing, like that was one of the things that I, that I said when I was looking at her Instagram post. I noticed she had only posted about her cookies four times. And so that was my theory that she just had. We have underestimated how much we have to talk about something and she just needs to put out Even more to increase visibility that her. People want it. They just didn't see it yet. Like, we don't think about how people are half looking at their phones. They're watching tv, they're doing other things. They're thinking about what you have. Like, they seen it and they've been like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, I'm going to do that. And then they forget. But then we think it means that they don't want what we have. So then we stop, we pull back. We think we're annoying them if we talk about it more, but it really just means that we need to keep talking about it because they are still here, they're in our audience, and they want what we have. So we have to talk about it over and over, and not just during Black Friday and Cyber Week, but especially during Black Friday and Cyber Week. So that's. That's what's going to be your challenge is to see how much you can promote your offer. And I always tell my people, I'm like, when you feel like you're finally annoying yourself with how much you've talked about something, you're probably just now saying it, like, the right amount. Now. I also know that selling, like, brings up a lot of emotions for a lot of us. It doesn't always feel good because we have a lot of negative thoughts about it. So if that's you, it is likely your thoughts about selling and about your audience that is getting in your way the most. That's stopping you from really putting things out there, and that's causing you to under promote. So definitely come join us in the local Purdue Academy. This is something that we do all the time. I can help you with this, and it will change the way you show up so you'll get better results. Okay, so the third and final mistake that business owners are making during Black Friday in Cyber Week is they're waiting way too late to plan what they're going to do, and it falls through. And I am speaking from personal experience. Like, I remember years ago, I had really big hopes and dreams for Black Friday, and I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to start putting it together to make my graphic or graphics and to send my. To put together my Black Friday email and to start posting about it. And you guys can guess how that went. Like, I quickly talked myself out of it because I just saw how much work that it was going to be, and I just didn't have time at that point because I got started way too late. So I ended up sending one Black Friday email. On Black Friday. And then I sent another email on Cyber Monday. And to my last point, it just wasn't enough. I had underestimated what it would require, and I didn't get the result I wanted. I didn't help the number of people that I wanted. I underestimated how much people needed to see my stuff. And I felt super frantic and stressed trying to do everything on Thanksgiving morning. I wasn't enjoying the holidays. And on Black Friday, I wanted to go shopping. I love Black Friday. I don't know if y'all are really Black Friday people, but it's like one of my favorite things to do with my mom. We were always like those 4am shoppers. I don't think stores open that early anymore. They've gotten better in recent years, but I know it's not for everybody, but I loved doing that type of stuff, and so I just wasn't getting to enjoy any of it because I was worried about creating all of my own marketing during this time. So I tell you this because I want you to be able to enjoy yourself this time of year and get results this time of year versus building it as you go. So it's important that you really commit to having a successful Black Friday ahead. Ahead of time. Decide what your sales goal is and then what's going to get you there. So that means mapping out, getting everything mapped out, getting everything planned and scheduled. And what this allows you to do is troubleshoot in the moment. So if it's Black Friday, if it's cyber no, if it's Small Business Saturday, if it's Cyber Monday, if it's Tuesday, Wednesday, and you're still going and you're not getting the sales that you want, you have. You have time to problem solve and maybe add things in to increase your sales versus you're trying to create as you go. And that. Sorry, that's one of the things that I am really going to be available for my clients this year for, just so they can get the most out of their sales. So I'm actually going to give them a tracker that has all of their promo content in it. So then we can trouble. We can track as they go and troubleshoot as they go so we can add in more things and figure out, like, what's working and what's not as we're actually going through it versus waiting for Cyber Week to be done, and then be like, well, I don't know what happened. We're going to fix it as we go. Okay, so those are the three mistakes. Like, number one, Thinking that people are not spending money or your. Your people are not spending money on themselves this time of year. And second, underestimating just how much promotion and visibility is required during Black Friday. And third, waiting too late to, to get started, to plan and to execute and to get started on all of your marketing material. Okay, so if you have a second to stick around, I want to tell you about how I'm helping my students not make these mistakes this year and then how we're really going to make sure that they can execute and follow through. Because like I said, that's going to be the most important part here. So inside the local Preneur Academy, next Thursday, October 24th, we are going to have our Black Friday planning workshop. So this is going to be a bonus workshop for my members only inside. So you're going to decide what your Black Friday irresistible offer is going to be next Friday, next Thursday. And I actually teach five very specific promo offers that don't require any sort of discounting. Your services. You can offer discounts if you want to, but I think there's really fun and profitable ways that you can go about Black Friday that don't require discounts. So you can still bring in local clients and get a really quick cash injection during the holidays. So we're gonna figure out what your offer is gonna be and then. And maybe even multiple offers. Some people do that. They kind of do different things throughout the week depending on how long their promo is gonna be. But then what we're going to do is you're going to map out your Cyber Week marketing plan. So instead of underestimating what's required, you're going to take your sales goal and overestimate. Like, I just love making things statistically more possible. So we're going to get it all mapped out. Like every post, every story, every email, like anywhere you show up online, we're going to lay it all out so you have an action plan of what all is going to get done, what all needs to be created over the next month. So you're going to give yourself plenty of time between now and Black Friday. And then that's going to be the final phase, is actually creating the content ahead of time so you can go into Cyber Week feeling really calm, really organized, really prepared and confident and excited about what you're offering your people. And we're going to also do just a ton of repurposing so you're not having to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel and reinvent a ton of brand new graphics or post or emails. And then of course you will get access to the Black Friday sales tracker so we can track your promotions and your sales and then troubleshoot and problem solve as we go. So you can just get the most sales versus ending Black Friday and then scratching our head as to why we didn't get results. We're going to get it. We're going to problem solve as we go. So if you are not in the local Preneur Academy, you can join us between now and next Thursday and join us live for that workshop. There will be a replay. If you can't join us live. You'll, you'll still have all month to map out your promotions, but you'll also have all month to work on other things like really learning how to talk about what you offer so that your people want it and that they really see the value. Because if there is one thing that I know to be true and that I've seen happen over and over and over, it's that adding a really fun Black Friday or Cyber Week promo or discount on top of something that people don't fully understand or desire yet, it isn't going to get them to buy. So we have to fix that first. Like we have to get get you talking about what you offer in a really compelling way. So if talking about what you offer feels challenging for you now, then come join us now. And that gives you like the entire month before Black Friday to really work on that. And you'll have me to help you with that as well. And then also it'll give you a month to take yourself through my nine step process to grow your local following by at least 100 new followers so you'll have an even bigger audience to market to during the holidays. So to me, now's just the best time to come in. We have so many exciting things happening in quarter four. We have brand new content coming into the members portal that I'm in the process of recording now. We have workshops that I haven't even announced yet. So now's just the time if you're setting yourself up for a successful holiday season, but also for 2025. Like the work you do now is what jumpstarts you for 2025, not waiting until January. So when you join you're going to get instant access to the entire course and that's where you're really going to learn how to stand out as that local go to person. You're going to learn how to reach more people who live in your city, how to grow your local following, how to create what I call local go to content on social media that's really going to engage your audience and set you apart as that local go to person that local solution and then of course how to sell and convert your people into actual paying clients. And then I teach you how to continue to nurture and generate local leads. So you're going to get instant access to the course and then to all of our bonus trainings too, like how to sell out your local events, how to be more confident on social media, our local branding boot camp. There's a ton of bonus trainings in there as well in mini courses. And then you're going to get weekly business coaching calls with us and then 247 support in our members only Facebook group. So this is where you can ask questions, you can ask for coaching or feedback or edits even on your captions or marketing literally anytime. It's where you get direct access to me to ask me anything anytime you want. So come join us. I'm going to drop the link in the chat. It is lesliepressinal.com enroll if you're listening to the podcast, it's in the show notes. And if you're listening to this and you're like this sounds really good but I still have questions I would like help making this decision book a consult call with me. I all my spots are full for this week but I I do have some spots left on Monday and of Thursday of next week. So that's October 21st and October 24th. There are spots available if you want to grab one of those. I can also put that link in the comments if you want to do that. And then it's also if you're in the podcast in the show Notes. But I would love to talk to you and help talk through anything that you feel like is coming up for you, any questions you have just so you can feel good about making your decision and we can talk about what's really working for you right now in growing your business in marketing. And anything that you feel like is not working, even if you're like listen, I feel like nothing is working, just please help. I will tell you exactly what we would do in the program to help you and really like the top like three to five things that you need to come in and really focus on. Just because it is a lifetime membership program, I like to kind of tell people where they can really come in and kind of prioritize like getting started. So okay my friends, that is all for today. I hope you come join us inside and I will talk to you soon. Bye, guys. Hey. If you enjoyed today's episode, I want to invite you to check out my program, the Local 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 at lesliepresnall. Com and I'll see you inside.