Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais: Hey visionaries. Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show. I am your host, Leah, and I am very excited to share today’s episode with you. I want to share some things that I do not care about in business that I see a lot of my clients and audience getting kind of hung up on. I can see why and these are all things that I did care about at one point. So I kind of want to share the origin of why I cared so much about it and why I do not now and why you might be able to release caring about this from your own life and business as well. So I’m limiting this episode to four things in business that I do not care about and don’t recommend you care about either. I figured I should limit it to four things because I could see myself going on and on if no one except me. So I had to write it out beforehand. 

Now I wanna kind of give some context here on how I think it’s easier to not care about these things. And how I’ve kind of come to release them within my own life. So I’m very big on goal planning and having a really clear map every month and every quarter actually on what I want my business to look like, how much money I want it to bring in, what I want to sell, what I want to create, etc. And when I was first starting out, I’ve always kind of been like this, but one of the things that really challenged me was not knowing, you know, if my goals would happened? And one of the ways I kind of let go of that energy because it was a harmful energy, was this simple exercise. Now this works for me.

I don’t know if it’ll work for everyone, but I want to share it with you nonetheless. So one of the things that really is a powerful mindset shift if you are trying to manifest a certain amount of money or create a certain amount of income every month is instead of asking yourself in the mornings or as you’re going through your to do list, am I going to, am I going to make it? Am I going to hit it? What if this person doesn’t sign? What if this person doesn’t buy? What if I don’t do enough? What if I’m not doing enough? All of those kind of plaguing questions, which aren’t their understandable questions and not saying that they’re bad questions, but they don’t give off the right energy, that sort of franticness, that sort of lack of confidence is going to be harder to to to bring what you’re looking for into form because people can pick up on it and they will sense your lack of confidence in your own business and it’s going to be understandably more challenging to get them to trust you if you’re struggling to trust yourself.

So this is what I started shifting toward… instead of wondering, will it happen? Start treating your work, your life every day when you meditate, whatever, whatever times those hesitations may have popped up, replace it with the assurance that it’s already done. You’ve already made that money. It is already out there waiting for you. And it might sound like it’s somewhat hard to believe, but if that’s the case for you, then you’re probably too caught up on the fact that maybe you’ve never made that before or maybe you don’t exactly know how to make that before. And I encourage you instead to be caught up in the fact that there’s literally a, an unlimited amount of money out there, an unlimited amount of resources out there. There are people out there making as much money as you want. There are people out there running the business that you desire.

There are people out there living in the way that you desire. So focus on the possibility instead of the anxiety around it potentially not happening. And if you can shift into that energy, that confidence is of remembering that this is already done. It’s already, I like to say it’s already written, like the stories already written for me. Then it can become, it really changes the whole game. It changes your energy, it changes your confidence. It makes it a lot more fun. And from that place that’s kind of sense of confidence is where I was really able to identify the four things I’m about to share with you that are things that I do not worry about in my business. And I highly recommend you do not worry about them either. So let’s dive in and as we go through these, I’m going to often use the example of hitting a certain monthly income goal.

Um, kind of as a reference just because it’s one that I hear about a lot from people and it’s definitely one of the things I see people get the most tripped up on when they are trying to make this goal come to life. They’re constantly worried about how they’re going to make this money if they’re going to make this money, what if they don’t make this money? Where’s this money going to come from? All of these really challenging, fear-based costs. So this really can be applied for any goal that you’re bringing to life with your business. But that is kind of the example I’m going to continue to come back to.

Okay. So the first thing that I do not care about in my business and that I encourage you not to care about either are your unsubscribes and your open rate in your email list. So those of you who listened to this podcast and know me well know that I love email marketing. My email list is my driving force behind my business and I’m really passionate about its power. That said, I do not think that everything about emails are important. You know, I love, you know, marketing because it gives me insights on my subscribers. It shows me where my website people are hanging out. It allows me to pick up on their activity and on their habits and their engagement within my business and do personalized outreach based on that. It allows me to be a much more thoughtful coach because I’m not just selling for the sake of selling, I’m selling based on their engagement, their interest, et cetera. So from that lens, things like unsubscribes and open rates could not matter less.

Now, I am very connected with Active Campaign. Many of you know that I’m a huge fan of the platform. I’ve done a lot of work with them because I’m so obsessed with it and even they are the first to say that open rates are not a metric you should be worrying about that much. And here’s  why we all get so caught up in open rates and I get it. It’s because you want people to be reading your emails. You work really hard to really build your email list. You work really hard to get people on there and it doesn’t feel good if it feels like no one is listening or reading or paying attention. However, all email rates or open rates really show you, is how good of a subject line you have. They do not show you how good your email is. They do not show you how great your email list is.

They have nothing to do with your product or service or your ability as an entrepreneur. It’s literally only about the subject line. So unless you are seeing a very, very unusually low open rate, like I’m talking under 5% constantly or you know, maybe it’s the opposite, maybe all of a sudden you’re getting like a 60% open rate and that’s really great. But if you’re hovering between, I would honestly say 10% or 50% at any time, then you have better things to worry about. If that open rate is going from 10% to 15% or 15% to 20% or 20% to 18%, you just do, um, you know, do, try to make your subject lines exciting. Um, there’s lots of really great resources out there around how to have better subject lines. I think Marie Forleo suggests with every email you write 10 subject lines just to like get the juices flowing about what would be best there.

So if you are really needing to get your open rates up, then there are ways you can do that. But the way I look at open rates and my emails for the most part are that their marketing tools, they are not meant to fuel my vanity of how many people are reading them. They’re meant to be top of mind for people, which is why I email several times a week. I’m meant to be the go to person whenever they’re looking to grow their side hustle or their business or wanting to hit six figures. So I do this consistently. And even if people don’t open every single one, even if people don’t respond to every single one, I know that my marketing is paying off and that it is reaching them and that my message is reaching them. And the reason I know this is because I have invested lots of money in different consultants and coaches and experts over the years.

And I have really devoured a lot of their emails in order to help me make that decision. But did I open every single one? Absolutely not. Did I reply to any of them? I don’t think so. You know, not really. I have people come to me after months or sometimes even years of reading my emails and telling me that now that you know, they know me so well and now that they’ve heard so much of my story and they can relate to me, they are wanting to move forward with working with me, or they’re ready to start their business or they’re ready to scale or whatever the case may be. So take it from me as someone who has both had this work as a consumer, as a client, as well as, as a coach with my own clients. The point of your emails is not your unsubscribes. Or your open rates. It is your marketing. So the same goes for unsubscribes. You know, those people that are on your list leaving have nothing to do with your bottom line. 

So let’s come back again to the example of you trying to, let’s say the example is you’re wanting to have a $20,000 sales month. If you know that your $20 sales month is already there. It’s already written. Why are we wasting any time caring about the 10 you know, 50 whatever the case may be, unsubscribes that are happening from an email that you sent one week, those 50 people are not part of your 20K month. Those 50 people are no longer wasting your money that you needed to spend on an email subscription plan. You know, for a certain amount of subscribers, those 50 people are energetically leaving your life and your business so that new and more qualified ones can come in.

Those 50 people are bettering their own lives by slimming down their inbox so that only things that are serving them are in there. And if you’re not serving them, you don’t really need to be in touch with them. They have nothing to do with that 20K so you can just really see how it’s not worth your energy to focus on them. When you are really focused on a goal and same with your open rates. Your sales email usually gets 20% of an open rate and then this month it got down to 18%, does that matter when you feel so sure that your 20K month is there? No. You know those 2% that didn’t open that usually do still will maybe see your next one or they’ll see you on Instagram or you can reach out to them or there’s other people that are buying from you anyway.

It just doesn’t matter. So I do not care about these things. I even get a little bit upset with my, and it’s not their fault, but when my clients come to me and tell me how many people unsubscribed from an email, I really just want to say you shouldn’t even know that. You shouldn’t even know that number because it’s not worth your brain energy. So that is thing number one that I do not care about in my business that a lot of people do and I recommend getting over if you do. Again, I’m saying this with compassion, having very much cared about this for a long time myself. 

Okay. Thing number two that I do not care about in business is I do not care about advertising for a webinar that I then do on Facebook live. So bear with me here. I know that this is a pretty niche thing to mention, but I’ve heard a lot of pushback from it. So address it. Now, one of the things I recommend to my clients and that I work with them to do when they have a new idea for a product or service, is to do some sort of live stream that is on the topic of the product or service to gauge the interest of their audience before they actually go and create it. This is especially true with an eCourse because eCourses take, you know, upwards of 100 hours to create. It’s a huge commitment and you don’t really want to do that unless you know people are interested in it and that your audience would probably buy it. So a great way to test that out is to do some sort of live advertising, whether that’s a webinar, a live stream, a teleclass, whatever it may be and seeing who signs up, if they show up, if you can ask them questions if they even buy over the live stream, et cetera.

It’s a great way to nurture and gage. So to do that you need to tell people about your live stream. And I love to run ads to my live streams. I do it every single time. It’s a great way to get people that are really interested on my email list, and I just love doing live streams. So when I work with my clients to do this, I often, it will often make sense. There’s different reasonings behind this and it’s different for everyone. So I don’t want anyone to take this as blanket advice if you need advice, reach out to me and my team. But the point is there are circumstances in which it makes the most sense for them to do their live stream over Instagram or over Facebook. And so they’ll kind of ask me, you know, should I be running ads or having people sign up for something that’s public essentially, if anyone could watch it on my Facebook, if anyone could watch it.

On my Instagram, are people going to be annoyed that I’m making them sign up for it? And my answer is we have to get over that. And again, this is something that I was nervous about when I first started doing this. I remember running out to a Facebook live and even telling one of my own mentors like this just feels pushy. Don’t you think people are going to be annoyed? They could have just watched her free. Um, and what I realized is it’s not worth my energy to care because I care more about people actually coming to the live stream, showing me that they have interest in the live stream, getting a followup email about the replay in case they couldn’t go live. And you know, giving them discounts to things that I sell my products and services, which I don’t just offer to anyone that happens to stumble across it on Facebook.

And so there’s so many pros to still having people sign up for a live event, even if it is somewhat public. Um, even if they don’t really see that on the surface level, you know, as the expert that there’s so much more you can do from them. Discounts, you can offer them ways you can give them the replay if you have them sign up for it that you can’t do if you’re just banking on people scrolling through Facebook and watching the whole thing at some point. So I have never had someone email me annoyed, knock on wood that they had to sign up for something that I ended up just doing on Facebook or Instagram. I don’t think any of my clients have either. I can’t think of anyone right now that has. So it’s one of those fears that’s just the fear, you know, it’s one of those fears that I would be interested to hear if someone actually gets pushed back on it.

Maybe could they be somewhat annoyed? Maybe. I mean, you know, I don’t read minds. I don’t know. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter and I don’t care. That’s kind of the point of this episode is I think that it’s a piece of marketing we have to get over. If we’re constantly worried about what other people will think, will they be annoyed? What will they tell their friends? Will they gossip about me? Are they going to have bad things to say about me? There’s only so much you can do to control people’s behavior and if they are spending their energy annoyed that you put something on a social media platform instead of a private landing page, I don’t know what to say. I mean that is not what I would recommend to anyone to spend their energy being annoyed on or annoyed at. So I don’t think that that is our material.

I just would release that of your own responsibility because that seems like a choice in energy and focus that comes from probably something more personal. So that is something that I do not care about and I recommend you don’t either. I recommend you caring about doing what’s most in service to your clients and your email list. And if that is giving them free value in a way that allows them to actually consume it such that you have to email them about something that might be public. So be it, you know, you’re not doing it out of trying to be sneaky or trying to be lazy. You’re trying to deliver them this content, potentially give them a discount on something that you’re offering that could change their life or their business. It has nothing to do with public first private jumping over hoops versus not. It’s out of service. Hopefully they can see that and that needs to be your bottom line.

And just once again, coming back to the example of knowing that 20K month happened. So let’s say you do have this live stream and people come and they love it and they sign up for you, they sign up with you and they help you get to that bottom line. And then let’s just say hypothetically, again, I’ve never actually seen this happen, but let’s just say hypothetically there are some people that then also email and say, I think it was weird that I had to sign up for this when it was actually advertised on a public forum or on a social media platform. Those people are not contributing to your 20K anyway. They are not part of your bottom line and remember it’s already written, it’s already done. So any of this excess stuff is just natural challenges that come with having big goals. You know, big goals have like the law of polarity suggests or states rather, they all have an equal challenge. So this is just part of it, but it is not part of the win. It is also not a block from the win. 

Okay. Next thing on the list of things that I do not care about in business is people go see me on discovery calls. So I hear this a lot from clients where they get really frustrated that they have discovery calls lined up and then someone doesn’t show up and they feel like it’s disrespectful of their time. It shows that the person wasn’t all that serious. They wonder why the person would even bother just to cancel. And in the end they are spending so much time speculating about the behaviors of someone that we all know we can’t even begin to decipher. There’s a million reasons people could have not come to a discovery call. They could have forgotten. They could’ve got called into work. They could’ve needed something with their children. They could’ve needed something with their spouse. They could have had an emergency. Maybe they ended up, you know, having some sort of emergency medical issue. I have no idea. And neither do you. 

So that is why it is not worth your energy or time to try to assume that we know that this meant that they don’t care about their goals, that they don’t care about you, that they mean any disrespect because that’s just putting negativity into your head and it is not worth your energy. There will always be people on discovery calls that do not answer. I’ll just say it again. There will always be, I don’t care if you’re a 8 billion figure business, there are going to be people that don’t show up.

It’s just part of doing business. So why are we letting it take away from our positive energy and from focusing on the people that do show up, the people that do want to do the work, the people that are ready to hear from you, the people that are ready for you to change their lives? They deserve 100% of your energy. And so the biggest thing with this one is to really not take this personally. Discovery call ghosting is part of the deal. You know, we know this in every business. I mean, just think about like, I don’t know, getting your nails done. Your manicurist probably has people not come to their appointments all the time or cancel last minute all the time. Life is busy. Modern life is hectic and people have a million reasons why they might not be able to honor their commitments.

It’s, you can think of it as a bad thing. You can think of it as a good thing. I recommend giving no judgment to it at all. It just is what it is. And the sooner you can not take it personally, the better and more energy you will have to go to those that are really committed and that do need your personality 100%. So do not take that seriously. And most importantly, do not let it stop you from continuing to book discovery calls. I also see this happen where people will take down their Facebook ads because they’ve had people, um, you know, sign up for a Facebook ad and then, and then not actually come to the Facebook ad or not actually come to the call. So they will just take down their ads. That is bad for your Facebook ads because it doesn’t give them a chance to optimize, that is not a good management of your own energy, and that is taking away from the people that will book and will show up when, when you ask them to. 

So that is a huge reason why it’s not worth giving anyone you know, your energy or your your just not, not taking it personally, not giving them your judgements if they don’t come for a discovery call. So again, thinking of that 20K month, if you know you’re going to hit that 20 K month, you are not spending energy on people who do not show up to the call for every call that you have someone not show you, then just know that, okay, no problem. I’m just going to book another. Then reach out to people on your email list. Reach out to friends and family, reach out to someone on Instagram, reach out to a former client and see if they have recommendations.

There’s a million ways you could book another call on that same day. That’s where your energy belongs and if you know that 20K month is coming, you’re excited to do it, you’re excited to, then you know you’re like, Oh well that person wasn’t part of my 20K month plan. I’m excited to meet who is, how can I find them? How can I reach out to them? What are they going to be like? What are they going to need from me? How am I going to change their life? Like get so excited about it, get curious about it. Do not let it bother you. You cannot care about it. You literally do not have the money to care about it, like can’t afford to care about it. 

Okay. The final thing that I encourage you not to care about, especially if you are really going after a big goal are… and you guys probably could have taken the words out of my mouth here, but do not care about your followers on Instagram or Facebook. I spent so long caring about this on both of them for silly reasons. A lot of it was vanity. I will say with Instagram, I worked really hard to get to the point where you could do the swipe up feature because I really wanted to just be able to add links to my podcast and my website and stuff like that in an easier way. So he did work very aggressively to do that. I was on Instagram every day consistently engaging, doing as much as I could, posting really consistently and posting really thoughtfully. Um, but you know, I eventually realized that there’s a much smarter way to get your message out there, which is actually something I am teaching in my new marketing program. 

So if you haven’t signed up for that yet, then, um, go to my Instagram because we have a free webinar for it in the bio and I kind of teach how to make far more of your Instagram posts than just posting them and then hoping that the algorithm is good to you, which no one has time for that. So that is why I’m really passionate about not worrying about your followers on Instagram or Facebook. They have no indication of your actual connection with your followers or your engagement with them. Very similarly to very similarly to what I mentioned about emails earlier in this episode. I have heard from people that they have been following me on Instagram for a long time. They love my posts and now they’re ready to work with me because I really connected with them and I never would have had any idea because they’ve never commented on my Instagram. I didn’t even know they were following me. They’d never messaged me. So your engagement, your followers, it actually has no indication of how effective your marketing is.

That’s why I know that this is not the advice everyone wants to hear. But good advice with deciding what to post on Instagram is one, just be consistent and two, be real. And again, in that marketing training, I’m going to actually share the three categories of content that I always post on Instagram with, I never vary from this. And just thinking about it in this three step framework has made it really easy for me to know what to post because I just don’t have to think about it that much anymore. It’s so long as it follows under one of those three categories and it’s a yes. So none of that has anything to do with your followers or likes. And if you are getting to the end of a month and you are more excited about getting 500 hundred new Instagram followers or a thousand new Instagram followers and not excited about a 20K month, then that’s your, that expresses where your focus is.

If you’re so focused and excited on your followers, then yeah, you probably will be celebrating more followers. But that’s not where I’m guessing you really care about. You care about your business growth, you care about getting your income up, you care about being able to reinvest in your business. You care about making your investments back. You care about being able to hire people. Maybe you even care about being able to make more money to give back to people or to give to your friends and family, whatever the case may be. I am very confident that those things are all a bigger part of your “why” then followers, then a number on a screen that could or couldn’t mean a variety of different things that will never be able to guess because it’s just not knowable, you know, or not knowing what people are thinking about why they are on following us. Just like people not coming to discovery calls. There’s a million reasons why people could or could not be following us. 

So I definitely recommend not putting too much of your energy into your actual follower account. It is so just not relevant to what I’m guessing your bottom line is. It also is so unpredictable algorithms within social media change all the time. It’s unpredictable and unknowable and um, you have bigger things to do in the world. So, consistently bring yourself back to what the version of me who knows this month is already a “yes” caring about, and I’m guessing it’s not an unsubscribe number. I’m guessing it’s not an open rate. I’m guessing it’s not the no shows. I’m guessing it’s not a number on your social media account and I’m guessing it’s not worrying about a potential email from someone wondering why you marketed something some way.

That person that is so sure about their goals is excited about the wins. They’re excited about those lives that they’re going to change. They’re excited about the impact. They’re excited about seeing their dreams come to life and what that means for them as a person, what that means for their families, what that means for the doubt they’ve had in the past, what that means for their lifestyle. Those are the things that you’re excited about. You are not sitting in a yoga class wondering whether or not you’re going to get your income goal, whether or not people are going to be annoyed at your email. You’re sitting in that yoga class going, gosh, what an amazing month I’m having. I’m going to make $20,000 this month. I’m so grateful to be in this yoga class, living my life in a way that I never could have dreamed making more money than I ever made at a nine to five job, making the most of myself, focusing on the things that matter, helping other people actually changing lives and businesses on my own clients and customers. What a gift. What a gift. And with that, I hope that you can find some of your own things that are not with your focus anymore and go and chase the month that is yours for the taking. All right, Visionaries here is to your biggest vision.

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