A muddy vision equals ineffective marketing results.
If you’ve ever spent hours upon hours super glued to your laptop promoting your business only to feel like you could’ve spent that time perfecting a messy fishtail braid for all the good it did, something isn’t working.
Often that something is a lack of strategy and planning. A lack of vision of what you want your business to become when it grows up.
Before I can help you create a strategic marketing plan in my upcoming CreativeLive course, Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing, that will bring in hundreds of new followers and customers, you’ve got to have a clear vision of what the dream looks like.
Is the dream sipping a cappuccino dusted with cinnamon at your local coffee shop while you plan and write each day?
Is it running a virtual team of five while traveling Europe with your all of possessions in two suitcases?
Is it spending fifty hours a week in paint-covered overalls creating custom art?
In my course, I’m going to teach you how to double your online followers—your blog readers, your email subscribers, your social media followers. But, that’s not going to put money in the bank if you don’t know what to do with those followers once you’ve captured their attention.
I receive at least one email a week that goes something like:
“I only have xyz amount of time to work on marketing. What should I spend it on?”
Unfortunately, I can’t answer this question because I don’t know their vision.
I can explain this best by giving you some examples of possible business and life goals:
Goal #1: To build a web design business with 10-15 employees in which I teach them how to create our style of websites for our customers. To make seven figures each year to support myself and my employees.
Goal #2: To build a jewelry business with one assistant who can help me with administrative tasks so that I can spend most of my time on creating the jewelry. To make $7,400/month to support my business, lifestyle, pay my assistant, pay for insurance and put away some money into savings. To stop doing craft shows and figure out other places to sell my work.
Goal #3: To build a business teaching online courses and speaking at live events. To make $9,250/month to pay my minimal business bills and support my love of traveling. To never stay in one place more than a few months and travel based on speaking engagements.
Each of these entrepreneurs is going to spend their marketing time differently.
Each of their promotional strategies will include similar things like blogging, emailing their lists, updating their social media accounts, but even the details of those tasks will look different for each of them.
While the entrepreneur creating a business based on teaching online courses might use webinars to market her business and grow her following, that doesn’t make as much sense for the jewelry designer.
And, the jewelry designer might spend a good chunk of her marketing time on contacting shops she wants to get her jewelry in, which wouldn’t work for the web designer or speaker.
The stronger your vision for your business, the easier it’ll be to construct a marketing plan that’ll work for your brand.
That’s why I’ve put together this bonus workbook specifically for Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing.
(To access it, RSVP for my course. Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page where the downloads are and click on “Your Dream Life & Business Workbook.”)
It’s a workbook to guide you through thinking about what you want your business and life to look like, how you want to spend your workdays and what you want to use the course to work towards.
As you’ll soon see, this workbook isn’t just about answering questions. Through working with hundreds of creatives, I’ve found that they do their best work when engaging their right “creative” brains.
That’s why some worksheets encourage you to draw or doodle.
If you don’t enjoy drawing, that’s okay. Use them ANY way that works best for you. Make lists, write with different colored markers or pencils, decorate the pages with washi tape.
Do whatever you need to do to start thinking creatively.
You should do this work before the course begins or within the first week of the course to get the most out of it. I’ll be referring to this workbook often, giving you ways to apply your marketing to your specific dreams and goals.
All you have to do to access the workbook is click right here for my upcoming course. Then, scroll to the bottom of the page where the downloads are and click on “Your Dream Life & Business Workbook.”
Print the workbook, hunker down in your favorite comfy chair with some crafty supplies and start to uncover your dream life.
Once you’ve filled out your workbook, share some pics on social media with the hashtag #bellelive so that I can check it out.
This workbook is gorgeous, April! I’m looking forward to writing and drawing in it.
One of my dreams is for my online business to make full-time income on part-time hours. (For me that would be $4,000/month and 20 hours or less a week.)
Thank you for your inspiration as always!
Thanks Erika! I’m so excited to see what you all do with it–I want to see your drawings and such.
I think that dream is definitely doable. 🙂 I’m here for support!
Can’t wait for this course. I am working hard at diversifying my income streams since turning my blog into a profitable business so now the goal is to have my blog based income equal (or beyond) my part time income as a psychologist before I quit to stay at home with my kids. I just launched my first ebook pre-sale so the plan is to go down that path more and grow my ideal readership.
My dream would be to hand over my daily business duties in the summer months, from June to Sept, so that I can spend my summer with my family and really enjoy the summer. Some parents like to send their kids to day camp, but I want to spend time with them- playing at the beach or spending all of our time camping. After all, they are only young once!
Oh, this looks so lovely! 🙂 I’m beyond excited for this course, April.
One of my dreams is to get featured in Artful Blogging! I feel like it’s such a stretch at the moment, but I can’t wait until the day comes and I look back saying “I remember when that was just a dream.”
Amen to that ! I truly hope your dream becomes reality very soon Amanda ! <3
Thank you, April! I RSVP-ed long time ago (it feels like it) and I can’t wait to begin. I took your blogging course and bought the digital course and those were fantastic.
I can’t wait to make enough money so I can give it all to you in return of your hard work 🙂
Cant wait to check out the downloads 🙂 thank you, thank you!
My dreams include retiring my husband, and buying a home. And in my dreams, I don’t just mentor creatives, but I make money from doing something creative as well.
My dream is to be able to drop my children at school everyday and pick them up. I’d like to be able to take school holidays off without stressing and make about £2000 per month before tax.
I am really looking forward to this class. Thank you so much for making it available!
My dream is to have a business that inspires a life-long love of nature for children, that my own family can be involved in, and that will provide me and my family with some financial freedom.
See you September 29th…
April the workbook is beautiful!!! I can’t wait for class!
My dream is to share my passion for art and inspire others to express themselves through fun mixed media art that makes their heart smile.
Oh, my! The workbook is lovely! 🙂 I am new here and I like everything I’ve seen so far. I’ll keep reading now. Thanks, April!
The workbook looks awesome April! Can hardly wait for the bootcamp! 🙂
Looking forward to this class! It’s been so much fun watching it in development.
My dream is to make a full time living (5k per month to start) helping women fall in love with their real beauty. I want to be completely location independent, so I can go to India and work with women’s movements there or put my toes in the sand while I work on a beach in Bali.
I started this journey with your first Creative Live course and, although its taken longer than I might have liked, I feel like this course is bringing much of what I’ve learned from you (in The League of Supers, the 6-Week course and here on your blog) back into sharp focus just as I’ve made a few big leaps in the direction of this goal.
Your work has changed my life in so many ways and I know this course will help even more creative and inspired women do the same. Good luck in San Fran and thank you for the beautifully crafted workbook.
Beyond perfect, as always, April! Thank you so much! Both this blog post and the workbook are visually stunning. I notice that you’ve put your new water-coloring skills to good use 😉
You’ve nailed me in Goal #2 above.
(I love the comment by Mari-Liis: “I can’t wait to make enough money so I can give it all to you in return of your hard work :)” YUP! )
You have the best advice and information at the right time! This is something I had been thinking about lately. Though we formulated a vision when we started Liftree, I’ve been slightly directionless lately. Looking forward to completing the workbook to revive my mission & vision. And, the bootcamp, of course will be killer as all your other courses! 🙂
Very vaguely, my dream life involves helping people, saving lives, making a positive difference, financial freedom, good vibes all around. Anyone else think I need to get specific about my goals? For some reason…that scares me! I know I won’t get far without that though..appreciate any tips!
Just downloaded the workbook and I’m looking forward to this class!
Thanks April! Looking forward to this class! 🙂
These colors are so soothing, April! I can’t wait for this class. My dream is to use my artistic talents and life coaching skills to help women feel on fire for their lives! Full of zest and vibrance and ready to chase after their dreams. I’d like to support myself financially through this work, move out of the DC metro area to coastal NC, work from home, and spend much of my time devoted to painting and taking care of my mind and body.
Hmm. I did something wrong…I think I RSVP’ed but did not get the access…?
Hey Katharine! Thanks for RSVPing. Try refreshing the course page and scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll find where to click to download. If refreshing the course page doesn’t work, try accessing it from a different browser…sometimes changing browsers fixes all issues.
If those two things don’t work, email me at blacksburgbelle@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get that workbook into your hands. 🙂
April, thank you for this post and the workbook. I’m printing it right now so I can dig in and put pen to paper. I was thinking just this morning that your class sounds amazing, but then I sort of stopped myself and got to thinking more about what I want to get out of the class. I started a DIY and organization blog a couple years ago just for fun as a creative outlet, and now I’m at a point where I really want to grow it into something that can fuel my creativity and support my lifestyle financially.. I want to use my blog to inspire others to live creatively, and am thinking of writing an ebook plus starting to seek out sponsored post opportunities. I’m all about growing my online audience, but am also thinking I should be focusing on setting my goals and getting a handle on a way to monetize my blog first. Do you think your class is good for me at this stage, or should I focus my energy on getting a solid plan and goals in place first?
Hey Emily! So glad you’re printing the workbook…it’s so much more fun to put pen to paper (in my opinion).
So, I will talk about sponsored posts and blog ads in the course, but they’re not really a great way to monetize a blog unless you’re planning on creating quality content every day. To make good money with sponsored posts and ads, you’ve got to have thousands (usually hundreds of thousands) of readers and lots of daily traffic.
My advice would be to start with your ebook idea, because it’ll be a better and more effective way to make money through your blog and business, especially in the long run.
I’d suggest working on your product (ebook) along with my course. You’ve got to have a product in order to generate income and put a lot of what I’m teaching into use, but in the meantime, it’s worth it to learn and start out strong. I would put more of your time into creating your ebook than anything else right now…but that doesn’t mean you stop everything else.
I hope that helps!
I love how beautiful and fun this workbook is! I’ve been tasked to brainstorm my “dream life/day/etc” before but even while I love writing, it still didn’t take. I didn’t see why until I got into this book…Fact: It wasn’t creative enough! With this mixture of simplicity & “artin’ it up” I was able to really get clear on my vision which makes it so much more achievable! Thank you so much for your beautiful work! <3