Episode #27 - Stuck in Your Business? The 4 Questions That Will Change Everything

Episode #27 - Stuck in Your Business? The 4 Questions That Will Change Everything

Are you tired of feeling stuck in your business, unsure of your next step? In this episode, Coach Tina Joy Cochran pulls back the curtain on the Joy-Led Marketing Mini Course to share the first essential step of the Joy-Led Journey: clarity. Discover the 4 powerful questions that will help you define your purpose, refine your focus, and create a business that truly aligns with your faith, creativity, and lifestyle.

This is more than a marketing lesson—it’s your blueprint for building a business you’ll love. Press play and find the clarity you need to move forward with joy and confidence.

✨ Ready for more? Visit joyledmarketing.com to join the free 5-day challenge and dive deeper into the journey!

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Transcript

Tina Joy 0:01

Hey there. Welcome to the JoyLad Business Podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. I am thrilled that you're here. Sometimes growing a business can ruin your work life balance and make you feel like you have to be someone you're not, but it doesn't have to be that way. Business should incorporate your faith and honor the creative rural lifestyle you cherish. That's why I created this podcast to be your personal business coach in your pocket. Here you'll find. Practical tips, insightful interviews, and easy to follow training all crafted to fit seamlessly into your busy life. Whether you're driving, creating, or taking a walk, I'll be right there with you. Now let's dive into this episode and start turning your dreams into reality. I can't wait to share this journey with you. Have you ever gotten totally stuck with your marketing? I know I have. And because of that, I've created a mini course called Joy Led Marketing. What I want to do today is I want to share a lesson from that course for you so you can have a chance to get unstuck with your marketing because it really starts with the first step in the Joy Led journey, which is clarity. So, here is a special sneak peek at the Joy Led Marketing mini course just for you. Hey, welcome back. Now that we've started on this joy led journey, now that you have taken some time to ask yourself, Do I want to really try to do it this way? And you have agreed that yes, you do want to go on a joy led journey. That first step is clarity before we can start building anything. And deciding what technology we need, what tools we need. The first thing we have to do is have clarity about what we want and where we're going. That's what we're going to talk about so what does it mean to have clarity? Well, has this ever happened to you? You've decided that you need a vacation, that you need a break, that you just need a getaway. Well, you can decide that all you want, but until you actually pick some place to go, you're probably not going to ever take that vacation. But when you have clarity that you are going to go on vacation, your brain starts to. Jump into action going, okay, we're going on vacation. And when are we going, where are we going? It starts to ask questions in order to get you where you want to go. That's exactly what we want to do with your business. As you start to make this journey into, I'm going to do business with God. I'm going to have a joy led journey. I'm going to actually believe that I can have a business that doesn't suck the life out of me, if you will. The first step is answering four questions. There are four key questions that you need to get clear on in order for you to know what is this trip that you're going on and where are you going? And guess what? You get to decide. There are no right or wrong answers in what you decide. So, the Golden Heartland Academy members and my clients will tell you there are certain Tina isms that they hear me say over and over and over again. And this course is going to give you probably three of the core Tina isms. That I say all the time. So first, Tina ism is, it doesn't matter what you pick, just that you pick. You see, not deciding is a decision. Does this make sense? Not deciding is a decision that you're not going anywhere. Well, in the last lesson, you decided you wanted to go on a joy led journey. So you've already picked that. Now, let's start picking some more and building some more clarity. So here are the four questions. The first and probably the most important question is why are you in business at all? Now this might seem like a kind of a no brainer question. Duh, I already decided to be in business, but let's be honest. Why are you in business? There's an answer here. You are in business to make money. If. If you are not okay with that, you are in business to make money, then you're going to really struggle here. And a lot of the people that I work with, and in our Golden Heartland community are creatives. We are people that we aren't what you'd call your typical entrepreneurs. We aren't looking to. have these huge businesses that we make lots and lots of money and we have a franchise and we're going to be on Shark Tank. We just want to have a certain lifestyle. Well, we need to settle this money thing once and for all. If you truly don't care, now dig it way down deep here, if you truly don't care whether or not you make any money with the things that you are offering, whether it's services or products, then why are you in business at all? Why not just embrace the fact that what you're doing is a hobby and if it doesn't may ever make any money, that's fine with you. Stop trying to pretend that you have a business and doing business y type sales y actions, and just give your stuff away. Whoa, Tina, wait a second. I set up a booth at this first craft show because I want to make enough money so that I can make more stuff. Okay, if that's okay to be in that space, but own it, that this is a business. And if this is a business, then you need to make friends with marketing and you need to learn how to master marketing and sales so that you can make money. If you continue to pretend. That you really don't care whether you make money or not, and you continue to not embrace marketing and sales and that task that you must do as a business owner, then you're setting yourself up for a lot, sometimes years of frustration, lack being behind the eight ball, working harder than you need to. If you want to receive money. From what you do, for whatever reason, that this is a business and you must master marketing. So the first question you need to decide right now, today, at the end of this lesson is why are you in business? Are you in business to make money? If you are not in business to make money, why is it a business at all? It's not, it's a hobby. Does that make sense? So I hate to put it out there, but the reality is I don't want you to waste any more time struggling and feeling less than because what you're really trying to do is enjoy your hobby. Go enjoy your hobby and give the products away. Stop wasting money and time and effort trying to sell things when you really don't want to do sales and marketing and you really don't want to have a business. That's okay. Remember, it doesn't matter what you pick for an answer, just that you pick an answer. Okay. All right. Question number two, like that one wasn't hard enough. And I mean, this with the most love, right? Part of being a coach. is asking you to think about the hard questions. So question number two, are you trying to sell exact now that we've decided we're going that we're in business and we're going to sell something, what exactly are you selling? Get clear. Now you have three different options. You can sell products, you can sell services, and you can sell both. It doesn't matter what you pick, just that you pick. You can change it over time. But you must start somewhere because confused people don't buy. If we don't know what it is we are giving you money for We are not going to buy it. So get crystal clear on what are you trying to sell? What exactly are you trying to sell? Make sense. All right. Question number three, how big do you want to be now that you have decided you are in business and these are the products and services and or services or both that you are going to be offering, how big do you want to be? Now by how big, what I mean is how much money do you want to make, how much money? Do you need to support the lifestyle that you want? Very often, the people that are in our community are people, like I said, that they're not looking to be 678 figure entrepreneurs. That's not what they're about. They're not looking to grow a big, huge business and then sell it and retire on the beach somewhere. What they're looking at is I have a lifestyle. That I want to support. I have things that I can offer to the market that are worth money. And I want to be able to have a business that allows me to do that. If this is you, then you are 100 percent in the right place. And don't let anybody ever tell you, you don't have a business. Or that it's too small to matter because that's not true, but get clear here, how big do you want to be? How much money do you need? Because that informs the rest. If what you are trying to sell is 1 items and how big you want to be is 10, 000 a month. How many items do you need to sell? Each month, see how it informs the rest. So get clear here. How big do you want to be? How much money do you want to make? And as big as I can, not an answer. If you're not sure what this is, step back and ask yourself, what is the lifestyle that I want to have through this business? And how much money will it take to support that lifestyle? If what you want is to come home and work from home. Now you might want to completely cover what you currently may get your job now, but dig deep there because you might not have to make the same amount of money as you make now, because your expenses will be a little bit different. We dig deeper into each one of these questions in the workshop. I bet I could do an entire lesson on each one of these, but I want you to get the jumpstart to keep on going. So let's move on to the next, the next question. And this is the question a lot of people, marketing people, especially start with. But if you don't know the why you're in business or what you're trying to sell or how big you want to be. This question could get you completely stumped forever. Who will you be selling to? You see marketing as we'll talk about in the next lesson. Marketing is a lot about finding your people. Well, who are your people going to be? Now that you know what you're going to be selling? And you have a good idea about how many of them you have to sell because of how big you want to be. Who is it that you're going to be selling to? There are a couple of things around this. You've heard this word, maybe niche. Find your niche. The riches are in the niches. Well, let's talk about what a niche actually is. A niche is essentially demographics and psychographics of your ideal customer. So another way to say this question, who will you be selling to is to say, who is your ideal client? Who is your ideal customer? For purposes of this lesson, let's think about it as, okay, once I get my business up and ready to go, who am I looking for to be my customer? Who am I going to be selling to? And anybody that everybody who is not an answer, it's too big, too broad. Remember confused people don't buy. So let me give you an example. If you are in a store and you're with someone and that person is on the other side of the store and you're standing at the checkout counter and. You need five bucks to, to finish paying for what you have at the checkout counter. Would you start yelling? Anybody got five bucks? Anybody buy five bucks? Anybody?$5? I need$5. Anybody got$5? Anybody who has$5 and wants to give me$5, that would be really helpful. Please help me because I need$5. Or would you say, Hey Fred, you know whoever you're with, come here. I need to talk to you because I need five dollars. This is what we want to do when we're doing a niche. When we're doing a specific, who are we trying to sell to? What we tend to do when we start a business is we start saying, here's what I have. Here's what I have. Here's what I have. Here's what I have. Anybody want it? Anybody want it? Anybody want it? Does that really attract somebody who can buy it occasionally, but if you really want to spend time and effort in a way that will jumpstart your business, that will get you focused, that will get you in this place where you're not hustling, where you're not coming from lack and scarcity and fear that you're coming from confidence and wisdom and joy and love and peace and saying. Okay. I've created this for you. Would you like it? That's what we're trying to do. So let's talk about what demographics and psychographics are. Demographics are their gender, their age, their location, their income, their marital status, whether they're a dog owner or whether they are a cat owner or whether they have a farm. Those are the specifics. Think of demographics as the outside things that you can see. Those are important and we need them because as we move into tactics and strategies and we start taking action. We need to slice and dice. We need to tell our tools who to look for. And it's really hard to tell the tools to look for what we call psychographics psychographics are the inside stuff, people who appreciate handmade things, how do you know they appreciate handmade things? You've got to dig deeper there and find out the actions because it's really hard to know what people think inside. Makes sense? So we do want the psychographics. We want what they think, what their values are, what they feel, what, what matters to them because we want to be able to speak to them in our marketing. But we need both of these demographics and psychographics to put together. So I hate, I hate just leave you there. There's so much more to that, but let's just start where we start. So it doesn't matter what you pick, just that you pick. So for now, when you're thinking about your who, Think about what do they look like, where do they hang out, what do they think, if you're finding yourself going, anybody who appreciates handmade things, and then we want to dig deeper into here. Once we've started to put together kind of a picture. Of who this who is, then we want to move into something called an avatar. And what an avatar is, is that's the persona. That's the person, if you will, and the name of your niche. The avatar or the persona is pretty important because Marketing is hard. Doing business is hard. And if you think about it, when you know who you're doing this for, who you're trying to find, and you give them a name and you kind of feel who they are as a person. It makes it easier to step out of your own way and do the things that you need to do from a marketing perspective in order to reach them. So let me give you an example. If you are a weaver and you're creating a product, is it easier? To really get motivated to create the product when you know who the product is for, then just creating a product, hoping somebody will eventually buy it. Make sense? So by setting up who you're looking for with the demographics, with the psychographics, and then setting them up with an avatar, now when you get up in the morning, remember our goal is to get you to a place where you can wake up looking forward to this and go, okay. So my avatar's name is Sarah and Sarah is someone who wants to, I'll tell you who the avatar is for my business. So my business is Golden Heartland and we run a business coaching community. Who's it for? Right? What do we sell? We sell memberships and courses for business coaching and community for creative Christian women who want to have a rural lifestyle business. And I call that person Sarah. So when I sit down to do any kind of marketing or teach this kind of class, before I do, I'm thinking about Sarah. I'm praying for Sarah. And I'm thinking, okay, what can I do that will make Sarah's life better? As a creative, It makes it so much more fun to really dig into who is this for? I just cannot stress how important these questions are. Don't jump right to what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? Because you're going to waste time. You're going to waste money and you're going to waste energy chasing things that maybe you don't even want to do at all. So let's put this all together. What does it look like when we put it all together? It looks like this. I am in business to make money. That's why I'm in business. This is a business and I treat it like a business. This is not a hobby. This is not something I'm just playing around with. I will learn what I need to learn, be able to operate as a joy led business owner, and I am in business to make money. Number two, my goal is to make X amount of money per year, month, day, whatever works for you. I will start my business. I will start moving forward in my business by selling. product or services, whatever that signature product that you've decided to start with. And I will look for name your avatar to market to. When you answer these questions, see how clear that can be. And now when someone says, Hey, you know what you should, you can come back and go, Hmm, but that doesn't fit with what I'm trying to do. And you're not wasting any time. Make sense? All right. It's a lot to think about. And as I told you, as we were going through this, this might be a little different than what you've normally seen from marketing training. My job here is to let you get time to pray about this stuff, time to connect with the Lord and time to open your mind to what do I need to think about in order to be a truly joy led business owner, in order to be truly joy led in my business, in order to have a business I can love for a lifetime. And that's what we're about here. Now that we know what the business is that we are building, let's get on to the next level. And. What we need to build and what we need to create To have the tools to market it and that's what we'll do in the next lesson. Here's what I'm gonna do next I'm gonna pray for you. And then I'm gonna give you your homework assignment and We'll get moving forward. Oh father You are so good and you are so kind and I know that I know that I know that I know that I know that I know that You never, ever intend for us to struggle and hurt and push on all of this on our own, that If we will just sit with you and we will open our minds to the questions and ask the questions that you are more than willing to be our partner and tell us the answers to these questions and help us get up starting place and get clarity on why you want us to, why we're in business at all and how big it should be and what we should be selling and who we should be looking for. And I know that I know that I know that if you have given us stuff that has given us Such an unction to bring it to the market that you already have customers prepared for that. Help us to embrace that idea and to recognize that you will walk with us through this in Jesus name. Amen. Hey, if you liked this lesson and you'd like to know more, check us out at joyledmarketing. com. You might find we're doing a free five day challenge and you can get this whole course for free. So jump on over to joyledmarketing. com and check it out. You've been listening to the joy led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. Thanks for sharing part of your day with me. You don't have to walk this business journey alone. Discover others just like you at GoldenHeartland. com. Business coaching community for creative rural women. Faith. Go there to learn more and get free gifts I designed just for you. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this episode with someone who could use a bit more joy today. Remember, your business success matters to me and to God. Being joy led will get you there. Can't wait to meet you at Golden Heartland.