How to make a personal connection in an online world

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode all about how I make personal connections with my community, even though I have an online business.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST  ●     Having an online business is about more than just a numbers game ●     The practical things that I do to ensure I truly know my members ●     The importance of being accessible and not hiding behind your team ●     I’m thinking of making some changes to the podcast, and would love your feedback on what you love and what you don’t! ●     Next year I will be running two more Your Dream Business Live events, and you can join the wait list now!   THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE You need to show up and let people get to know who you really are, in order for people to really be able to connect with you.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Join the wait list for next year’s Your Dream Business Live Event Drop me a DM and let me know your feedback on the podcast TRANSCRIPT Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How you doing? Did you catch the two part podcast episode I did last week with Niki Hutchison. We decided just to mix it up a little bit and do a joint podcast. So half of the interview was me and the other half of the interview was on her podcast. Also, I've had some really lovely feedback about the podcast episode before, when we were talking about failing in business and the fact of sometimes you have to try things and they don't work. And you just do something else. So if you haven't listened to that one, purely from the feedback I'm getting, I think it's a good one. So go and check it out. This week I wanna talk to you about how I make personal connections with my community, even though I have an online business. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is a few different things is one at the time of recording this last week. Was it last? No. Yeah. Last week was the Insider Experience. And the week before was my event, my in-person event. Like having those people around me is just phenomenal. Like they are the nicest, most amazing humans in the world. And it was so good to meet people in person, not only my existing members, but also new people who listened to the podcast or who followed me for a while. So that was so cool to actually meet people. And then this week, this last week just gone, we did the Insider Experience. And again, it was so nice to welcome all new faces into the club in order to show them what it was like. And lots of them have decided to stay as a member, which is ACE. And I love it so much. I'm so, so honored that that's the case. And I realized when I was doing part of the Insider Experience. Well, it wasn't part of the Insider Experience, it was actually this morning, we did it. We went Live in the group with a few of my members and someone asked a really good question in the chat saying, I obviously know my Executive Club members really, really well. Do I really know the Club Members as well. And. Do they still get that kind of relationship with me. And listening to what the members were saying. I kind of feel like it's a bit like a bit of a superpower maybe that I've got. And actually this falls in line with the fact of. I always suspected, but I'm, you know, fairly positive that I'm a, an empath and can feel, you know, I can feel things. I can feel people's emotions. I can feel people's moods and I can relate to them really quick. I don't know if you're an empath or if you just think I'm talking lot of rubbish, which is fine either way. So yeah, so. I wanted to talk about how to make that personal connection, because what happens when you have an online business is all of the strategy. And all of the focus around a success of an online business is all about numbers. It's a numbers game. And it's all about getting huge numbers of people into our world. And that's how you make money. If you've got a one to many program or a membership, or a course, then obviously the more people that buy the more. You know, obviously the more you make well, that's fairly obvious, but as in, you know, the more it makes sense. So for instance, the work I put into the membership when there was just, you know, a small group of people, right at the very beginning, it wasn't profitable. And to be honest, the time I put into it now, I think my, my husband would argue it's still not profitable, but I love it. So it's fine. I don't mind putting effort in, but yeah, one thing that was really lovely is like I said, some of the comments that came in and one of my new members, Annie, said that, you know, I've only known T for a few months and she knows already who I am, what my business is, what my family life is like and what I'm, you know, and what my struggles are. And my challenges are, which was ACE and so good. So then I was thinking, well, how do I do that? How do I make sure that I can have that personal connection? Cuz for me, it's really important. Because as you well know if you are a regular listener, I have adopted the phrase of the lovely Mary Hyatt. I see you. I hear you. You matter. Well, how do I live by that? How do I actually make sure that I do see and hear people. Because we're not perfect. We are humans and we all make mistakes, but these are some of the things I do probably to try as hard as I can to ensure that I notice people and not just obviously in a sales process, cuz that's just a bit sucky. If that's the only reason you're doing it. But genuinely, you know, cause I can't sell the membership and be like, I'm like this and then they join and I'm like, who are you again? So some of the things that I do to do this is really simple but important steps and it might seem unusual. This is my dog going in and out. So if you can hear him, I apologize. I've got the door open. My husband's not here at the moment. He's missing his dad. So he really likes to be in and around by me. But, and if I shut my door to record this podcast episode, he would scratch on the door and moan and try and open it. So it's safe that I just, you have an occasional tip tap of feet. Every so often. Anyway, so yeah, so I think some of these things are really important. If you want to make that extra effort and you want to really pay attention and it's not just for online businesses, it can be any businesses. But for online, I think in particular it's even more important. So, you know, straight off the bat that I reply to my own social media messages and my own DMs. And I'll often reply with a voice note or sometimes I send a video if my face is okay and I've done my makeup and I'm not feeling too tired. I. and I think that's really important. Now I'm confident that most of you listening to this, if not, all of you are doing that yourself. You are appreciating the people who DM you and you are getting back to them. Sometimes things get lost in the requested bit. So I do have to keep an eye on that. And if I haven't got back to you and you'll start thinking, you're doing it back to me, then please DM me again, because that's obviously slipped through in that. But yeah, so. So I think it's super important that I'm the one who does that, and it is super important in our business that we are the one that does that. There are lots of people out there in this world who hire someone to reply to the social media post and to have those conversations and to manage the accounts. And yes, I have the lovely Becci McEvoy who helps me with the content side, but in terms of the management or in terms of the proactive stuff and the reactive stuff, it's me. So, so yeah, that's the first thing. So obviously I make sure that I'm seen, I'm visible and that we can have conversations. The other thing, which is a bit of a, like, you know, a bit of a tech thing, but it's good is seeing what they've done within your world. So for instance, every time someone downloads something, if they take part in something, if they've clicked something, then we tag them. So being able to see where they came from or what they've done, cuz again, it's just a nightmare. If you have, if someone's been in your world and you haven't acknowledged it. And. I heard this awful story that someone told me the other day, and this is just shocking. And I'm obviously not gonna divulge any of the key details, but someone told me that they'd done a program with someone and it was a fairly smallish program. So I think they said about 30 or 40 people in it. And they were one of those people. And. It was a, it was an ongoing program for a little while. So it wasn't like just a one off course or a one-off day thing, and they'd done it, they'd gone through it. And I think they were still paying to be in something with this person and this person DMed them a voice DM saying, have you seen this course? I really think you should do it. And that was the one they did. So, not only did they DM them to cold sell them a course, but they DM someone who'd already done the course who they would've seen. And it's like, wow. Talk about not knowing who your people are. And like I said, we make mistakes things slip through the net, but if someone is sat on a session with me for some time or multiple times, I'm gonna know who they are. So, so, yeah, so I use the tech side in terms of like tagging and stuff like that, just to remind me, cause obviously, you know, when you get lots of people in your world, it does get a bit tricky try to remember it