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Hey, do you want to know what's possible for you when we work together inside the LocalPreneur Academy? Before you dive into this episode, I wanted to invite you to book a complimentary consult call with me so we can talk about exactly how your business will grow. And listen, I know hopping on a call can feel really intimidating. I've been there. I know it can be scary, I know it can be awkward, and I don't want you to feel nervous or pressured at all. In fact, I want it to be a really fun conversation. Let's like, seriously, how often do we get an hour just to talk about ourselves and our business to someone who actually wants to listen? I'll 100% lead the conversation so you don't have to be worried about being prepared or even knowing what to say. We're going to look at everything you're doing now to market yourself locally. Even if you don't think you are doing enough or it's not working at all how you want it to. We're going to figure out what's working and what's not working and why, and exactly what I'll do to help you inside the LocalPreneur Academy and how it will apply specifically to your unique business. And I know you likely have a lot of questions like how do I reach more people who live in my city? And how do I get people to stop scrolling and actually engage with my post? How do I get people to take action and reach out to book or buy? And we can totally cover this for sure. And anything else you can think of that's keeping you stuck. And I'll share how I can make the process easier for you to grow your local business. I've been there and I have helped so many local business owners do this work too. So click the link in the show notes to schedule your complimentary consult. Call with me and I will talk to you soon. You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business Podcast where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Presnell 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. Foreign hey, welcome to episode 119. How's it going? I hope your summer is officially off to a great start. I've been getting some stuff done. May was busy in full in the best way and I know we still have like this whole week left of May, but I feel like May should be over by now. I heard someone recently say that the month of May is December with shorts on like every. Everyone is just as busy as the holidays, but it's hot outside. And I guess it's because it's like the end of the school year and it's all the activities and there's like sports and dance recitals and graduations and into school activities, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, all the things going on. May just feels very busy. Busy. Not that any of those things were going on in my life. We have a one year old, so that could probably be part of it. And my parents have recently moved. They actually moved five houses down from us, which is amazing. We are so lucky. And so we've been spending all month kind of going back and forth up to North Louisiana helping them, getting moved out of their house. They were there for 30 years, so it's been an ongoing process. Still not done with that, but. And then just working, getting so many things done. For my clients inside the localpreneur Academy, some new things coming out for you guys. May has just been full in such a exciting way. Um, and actually I was thinking about this last May. May of 2024 was my lowest month in revenue for last year. I mean, we all. Out of all of the months, there's going to be a low month. That doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, but there's always going to be One of the 12 months that is your lower, lowest month in revenue. And I knew that going into that last May was my lowest month. And as I was troubleshooting, I was like, okay, you know, like, people are really busy in the month of May, so I just need to do more this year to be more visible, create some exciting offers for my people. Like, things they can't say no to. Like these really winning the lottery type of experiences for my clients. And knowing that May was my lowest month last year, I wanted to challenge myself to have a really great May this year. And this is what I teach my students. If you have a low month or a statistically low season or a low month, you can either roll with it and let it be, or you can get creative and have a lot of fun and see what is truly possible for you. And I've just seen my students over and over again take their lowest months or lowest quarters or slow seasons and really like what's typical and normal for their industry and turn it into their highest revenue months or seasons. So that's what I decided I wanted to do. I wanted to take on that challenge. I knew last May was my lowest month and and look, last year also I had a two month old. I can literally, I'm. My office is in the pool house and my podcast closet is. Or yeah, my podcast. I record my podcast in a closet. Literally, I can hear her screaming right now in the actual house. So last May I had a two month old, now a one year old. So I am totally fine and proud of the revenue that I had last May. But I thought it'd be fun just to see what I could do in the month of May this year and just to see what was possible. And so far this May, I've already made five times more than I did last maybe. Like, how fun is that? And the result did not come from luck or from hoping that people would just come, but it did come from belief that it was possible and from knowing that people were here and the possibility and the potential were there and knowing I was capable and from knowing I was committed to getting a certain result and then showing up as that person. So it really came from the thought, like, I'm going to make this happen. I can make this happen. And that's really what I want to dive into today and talk about, like, what it looks like to hope for clients versus what it looks like to expect to get fully booked and really the difference in how you show up. And I want you to really think about that for a second. Maybe you even pause me and reflect on it. Like you can think to yourself, you can pause me and journal it out if you want to. But how do you show up when you hope clients will come versus when you expect your calendar to get fully booked? And I know if you're listening, maybe you've never been fully booked before, but I want you to think about the energy difference. How would you show up differently hoping clients would come versus with the expectation of getting fully booked? You show up in a totally different energy. You think totally different thoughts, you feel totally different emotions, you take totally different actions and you create totally different results just from hoping versus expecting. The commitment level is different when you expect a certain result. Hoping is very passive. It's very easy. You let yourself off the hook a little. You don't have to take as much action. You get to just sit back and hope that people come right versus when you expect to get a certain result, no matter what that timeline is. Either you're willing to put in the energy and effort to get there. You're more confident putting in that energy and effort because you trust it will pay off. As humans, we don't really want to put in the energy if we don't think we'll get the result. So anytime we're hoping versus expecting something to happen, this is really just a belief problem. Like, we don't fully believe yet in the result we're creating. And our brain doesn't want to put in the effort if it doesn't believe it will get that result. And that's just how our brain is wired. There's something called the motivational triad, which basically means our brain's always just trying to do three things. It wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. So when you're hoping instead of expecting, you're unknowingly, like, letting your brain run the show. Your brain's like, wait, you want me to post five times this week? Go to a networking event, follow up with these leads, make offers, and you're not even really sure it's gonna work. Like, no, thank you. Let's just stay comfy and scroll Instagram instead. It's trying to protect you by conserving your energy and avoiding any emotional risk. But that protective instinct is also what's keeping you stuck without the local clients. So your job as the business owner is to override that default programming of your brain to say, I'm not doing all of this because it's fun or because it's guaranteed today or because it's comfortable. I'm doing this because I believe it will work. I expect this to pay off. Everything I do is compounding. It's adding up. I am building a fully booked business. And when you expect results and not in a fake, delusional way, or not in an instant gratification way, but in a grounded, committed way, you start to act differently as a business owner. You show up more boldly, more consistently. You try again when something doesn't work, you're like, oh, interesting. I thought that way would be the way it wasn't. Let's just go again. You create your own momentum every single day. You don't wait for people to come to you. You go out and you meet people, you find people. When you understand how your brain works and you can be onto yourself and notice when you're hoping and being really passive in your business, you can start thinking and acting intentionally. So I just want to create some awareness and really bring it back to that initial question, like, how do you show up differently in your business when you hope to get clients versus when you're being someone who expects to get fully booked? And I came up with three different ways I see this coming up for my Clients the most. But trust me, there are like so, so, so many ways. These are just a few of the most common ones that I coach on the most and that I thought the most of us could relate to. And I wanted to call them out so you could really see the difference of what hoping looks like versus expecting. And you could see the energy difference in your business. You could see how you're thinking differently, how you're feeling differently and how you're showing up differently and ultimately creating totally different results. So the first way you show up as when you show up as someone who hopes to get clients versus someone who expects to get fully booked, you don't market consistently. So you're not posting on social media consistently, you're not emailing your list, you're not meeting people in your city. For my students inside the localpreneur Academy, it would look like not following your local marketing plan. And we don't market consistently and put ourselves out there when we don't think it matters, we don't follow through. When we don't expect to get the results, we stop showing up, we'll do a little and then we'll give up. And this goes back to that motivational triad. Our brain doesn't want to expend the energy and give the effort if it doesn't think it will get the results. It's way easier to hope someone comes than to put forth the effort and create the results of getting fully booked. We have to think harder, we have to do the tedious work, we have to put ourselves out there, we have to put ourselves at risk. There's effort involved in marketing, but here's the difference. If we thought it was guaranteed the fully booked clients or a client today, of course we do the thing, we'd be like, oh, you need me to post to go to that event, send that email, do this, do that to get the result done. Of course I do it. But we don't truly believe we'll get the result. So we give up ahead of time. To where? Of course we don't get the result of clients or a fully booked business in the long run. Right, but here's what I want you to think about. What would consistency look like in your marketing if you expected to be fully booked? All right, the next thing that happens when we spend time hoping to get clients versus expecting to get fully booked is we spend our time doing non revenue generating activities. So we do passive behind the scenes actions. So this may look like spending time on branding like picking out our colors or, or Are designing our logo, designing business cards, working on our website, redesigning our website, everyone's favorite, or picking out like new fonts versus meeting more local people, posting on social media, marketing in any way, making offers, talking about what you do, going to those networking events, putting yourself in any of these actual uncomfortable situations, doing anything passive. That's not getting in front of people in your city. That's when you need to be on to yourself. But we feel really busy and productive because we can see like all these assets being built or that course getting completed, like modules getting checked off. We feel so good and productive. But it's all really passive. Like none of it's getting you in front of local people today, right now and potentially bringing in clients. That's why when people are like, how long does the localpreneur academy take me to go through? I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. Like this is not something we just go through and complete. Like it's not a course for you to just take. Like, yes, there's a process for you to learn and skills to develop. But we are implementing as you go and we are taking action. Like you're gonna learn this and then go do this and we're gonna get a result from it. It's not something that you just consume and then go about your day and that's passive. I want you bringing in followers, leads and clients from the get go. That's how you know you're putting yourself out there and doing revenue generating activities because you're actively meeting people every single day. Okay, the third way I see you showing up when you hope to get clients versus expecting to get fully booked is you try really hard not to be salesy and this shows up with you not making offers or selling at all or just not enough. So this typically turns into you giving a lot of value on your social media or in your emails or in your content. Like you're teaching a lot, lots of education or maybe even lots of entertaining. You're spending a lot of time trying to get your audience to like know and trust you versus talking about what you do and how you can help them and inviting them to book and buy with you when you hope to get clients. You play really safe on social media and in your marketing. I see a lot of people posting fun, educational, entertaining content and they just hope that their audience likes them enough to reach out even though they aren't ever really talking about their business or, or how they can help them or like how people can really work with them and they aren't ever directly selling what they do. So this is a really like a lot of hoping. Your audience is really resourceful and really just wants to work with you that bad and really hoping that they can figure it out. But what would it look like? Or how would you show up on social media or in your marketing if you truly believed that what you sold was the best solution for someone in your city right now? Like, you have the thing that they need more than anything, you'd be offering it to them non stop. I hear so many people say I'm afraid I'm going to annoy my audience if I sell to them. But I want you to think about this. I talked to this with my clients the other day. Have you ever really been annoyed by someone sharing something that you needed and wanted? I can't think of a single time in my entire life that I've been annoyed hearing someone talk about a product or a service that I wanted or needed. We get annoyed when we hear people talk about things that we don't want or that we don't need. Like when an infomercial comes on for something that we don't want. That's when we're annoyed. We're like, I just want to watch the show I'm watching. But your followers are following you because they want what you're offering. And if you expected to get fully booked, you'd be like, listen, you better grab these spots. And not from like a fake urgency place. Like, I only have so many spots left. Unless that's true. But energetically, like in your body, you're like, oh my gosh, I know deep in my bones I'm going to get fully booked. And how lucky for these people who are following me right now, listening to me talking about it, they can get a spot on my calendar right now. Like, how lucky for them that I'm available. Because I know I won't always be this available. Like, how amazing. That's the energy I want you to be in. Okay, so think about this. What are the actions you will take this week that matches the energy of someone who expects to get fully booked? I want you to write them down, put them in your calendar, whatever you need to do to commit to them. And I want you to go do them from a place of belief, from certainty, from commitment. Because remember, hoping is really easy. You get to sit back, you don't get to do a whole lot, but it doesn't get you fully booked. Expectation takes commitment. It takes effort, it takes courage, it takes belief. But it's where all the magic happens. And if you want support building that belief in showing up more consistently and taking that strategic action in your local business, come join us inside the LocalPreneur Academy. I'm going to link it up in the show notes. This is where I'll help you build your local marketing plan, implement it, stay consistent with it, and grow a business that gets you fully booked with local clients without guessing what to be doing every single day, without hoping and without trying to figure it out all alone. All right, I will see you back here next week. Go show up like someone who expects results because that version of you is the one who gets them. I'll see you next week. 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@lesleypressnel.com and I'll see you inside.