Author: Rachel Goldstein

What I Do When Tragedy Strikes

Leave a Comment

Hello to you, and a warm welcome to all of the new members of the Soulful Coaching community!

I’ve been very sad this past week over the tragedy of the Boston Marathon. I have come to realize that, similar to so many members of the Soulful Coaching community, I am a highly sensitive person, and therefore I get very personally and emotionally touched by tragedies happening in the world.

What do I do with my sadness?

I take care of myself and then funnel it into supporting, healing, and inspiring as many women on the planet as I can, so that they can have massive ripple effects into their communities and breed a new world community that values life and love over violence.

And I am just truly inspired by the work that YOU are doing to help heal the world, too. Thank you.

I have a feeling you’re going to love last week’s article – all about how to set priorities in your business for greater success and satisfaction.

Enjoy!

With love,
Joanna
p.s. – Here’s a picture of Penina and I at a nature preserve this last weekend!

Your Time = Your Business

Leave a Comment

Running a business is full of responsibilities and obligations, and it can be easy to lose control of how you spend your time. But how you spend your time determines the success of your business.

If you feel like you aren’t doing what you want to be doing in your business or soul-centered project, chances are good that your priorities do not match how you spend your actual time.

And, if you’re not spending your business time according to your priorities, chances are good that you’ll feel stressed, dissatisfied, tired or disappointed with your work life.

For example, if you highly value developing your network of colleagues, but instead focus a lot of energy and time on operational details, then you are likely feeling harried and disconnected from like-minded practitioners. Or, if your biggest desire is to grow your business, but your time is actually spent running errands and doing paperwork, unfortunately, your life won’t magically open up more time for marketing your business.

You need to prioritize what’s most important & then set the intention to make it happen.

Align your business with your priorities and your values:

1) Clarify What’s Important

Make a list of everything in your business or project that is important to you. This can include expanding your prospect list, developing new programs or offerings, marketing, cultivating referrals, etc. Get specific with this list. For example, instead of simply listing "networking”, perhaps list particular individuals or groups of colleagues who are important to your business.

2) Rank What’s Important

Order your list in number of importance to you. This is now your priority list.

3) Identify Your Top Three

Now, take a look at the top three items on your list. Star them. Ask yourself: Are these really my top priorities in life, or are some of these items "shoulds" or "obligations"? If there are any shoulds or obligations, re-prioritize so that your top three really connect with you on a heart/soul level. Some questions to ask yourself are:

  • Am I excited about this item?
  • How do I feel when I devote time to this item?
  • Is there anything I would rather do than this item?

4) How Do You Really Spend Your Time?

Is the majority of your actual time devoted to the top three things on your list? If yes, wonderful! If not – what are you spending your time doing instead? If that’s not a top priority item: why are you spending your time on it? Do you actually need to be spending time on it, or is it simply a distraction? Can it be delegated?

This 4-step process will help you get clarity on how you want to spend your time versus how you actually do spend your time. It will also help you uncover what’s important and why you spend time on things that are not priorities.

Once you do that, then you can move on to the next level, which is to create a detailed plan of how those priorities will play out week by week in your schedule.

Time To Share…

Leave a Comment

I’m gearing up for another trip to NY in a week, but before that I have been enjoying the incredible Spring weather & energy, and one of my favorite forms of art: theatre. Jon and I, along with some friends, saw a wonderful production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last weekend. Wow, what an intense 3 hours.

You’ll notice that in today’s newsletter, I’m recommending events from THREE amazing women – it’s rare that I’ll highlight 3 in one newsletter, but each of these women and each of these events are so fantastic that I didn’t want you to miss out.

I love to promote women, businesses, and events that I find valuable and think the Soulful Coaching community (YOU!) would love. It’s one of the things that gives me great pleasure, and I’m thrilled that I’m able to share other women’s tools of movement, growth, and healing to so many.

Speaking of growth tools – check out last week’s article – all about taking your website to the next level!

With love,
Joanna

How To Create An Effective, Soul-Centered Website

Leave a Comment

When you take a look around the web today, it can seem like everyone has a gorgeous, amazing website. It can make you feel very pressured to create a fabulous website for your business or project too!

You never want to act out of pressure.

However, if you sense that it’s time to create a new website, or improve your existing one…that’s great, because a well-created website can make a world of difference in your inflow of prospects.

But where to begin?

What do you include in a website? What’s important and what’s unnecessary? What about graphics? Or video? Or downloads? There are so many variables to consider, it can get overwhelming fast!

If you are just terrified of or feel unprepared to have a website, rest easy: you don’t need a perfect, fancy website in order to be successful in your soul-centered project. If you’re ready to create your website or to uplevel the one you already have, great! Let me walk you through the process step by step.

Elements of a Soul-Centered Website

Before you get started, my number one recommendation to you is this: keep it simple.

Once you start to make your website complex, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. When you get overwhelmed, more often than not, you just stop working on it or you beat yourself up. This is not helpful! Remember, entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be plenty of time to add and make things fancier. Here are the real essentials:

HOME PAGE

This is the main page that people will land on when they visit your website. The best use of a home page is to identify who your ideal clients are, to address your clients’ needs and visions of success, and to let them know how you’re the bridge to that success.

  • Be accessible. Make sure your contact information is on every page, starting with the home page. The information you supply will vary depending on what’s appropriate for your particular business, but this may include company name, logo, phone number, email address, social media accounts, etc. This may seem obvious, but this information gets overlooked so many times!
  • Identify your prospect. Have some copy that lets the prospects know that they should be reading it because they are exactly the type of person whom you serve best. You can ask: "Are you a good match for my programs?" You might list qualities of your ideal clients. Describe who they are by identifying their needs and their visions. If you are a yoga teacher, your clients’ needs might be to find tranquility within themselves, to become more fit, or to try yoga for the first time. Their vision might be that they can finally perform a difficult pose, meditate successfully, etc. Speak to their dreams in this section.
  • Reveal the benefits of your service or your product, etc. I like to use bullet points here, just listing all the ways your prospect will benefit from your offerings. You can briefly outline your Brilliance-Based System – lay out, step by step, your system for bringing your clients from where they are right now (their "needs”) to where they’d like to be in the future (their "visions”).
  • Let them know what to do next. You need to always have a clear call to action that invites folks to the next step with you. This might be a call to have people sign up for a complimentary call, or to sign up for a newsletter, or to download an ebook. List the benefits of this and clear instructions on how to do it.
  • Your photo + your presence. A clean, clear photo of you, if appropriate, helps your prospects make a personal connection with you.

OFFERING PAGE

  • This can be called "services," "work with me," etc. You can list in detail what you do. If your offerings are services, be clear about what’s included in each program, and more importantly – what the BENEFIT is. If you include your pricing – and you don’t have to — be clear about it. Make sure nothing is confusing; this is your opportunity to paint a bright and vibrant picture. If your offering is a product, you may want to also use images and photos in this section.
  • Again, let people know what to do. At the bottom of this page, include a very clear call to action. For example: "If you would like to learn how these services can move you from A (your readers’ experiences of need) to B (their vision of success) then do Z (sign up, call, email, etc.)."

BIOGRAPHY PAGE

  • This can be called "About Me," "Bio," "About [your name]," or another appropriate title that’s aligned for your business or project. This is where you get to describe, in a personal way, who you are. You can include your qualifications, experiences, education, and your story about your business. Your biography should be personal, because it’s an opportunity to make a real connection and create a relationship with your readers.
  • Include a good headshot of yourself to continue the feeling of connection with your readers. Make sure the photo is adequately lit so that you are easy to see.
  • If the work you do isn’t appropriate for there to be a photo of you, think about other ways to integrate images into your website. You want images to break up chunks of text. The eye needs to rest from all the text, and also the images will help create atmosphere and energy for your site.

Important Additional Elements

  • Make sure there is a way for people to enter their name and email address (and maybe even their phone number) on every single page of your site. You must have a way of capturing the contact information of people who visit your site and are interested in you.
  • That registration box needs to be somewhere in the upper right hand corner of every single page. This is because research has shown that when people look at websites their eyes will naturally fall pretty quickly to the upper right hand corner. Getting peoples’ contact information is even more important than getting them to read your entire website, because it means you can contact them and let them know about your offerings in a more personal way.
  • Create a free offering to use as an incentive for people to sign up and give you their contact information. This could be an e-book, a report, an audio, a guided meditation, a video, etc.
  • Testimonials are a great way to help prospects feel comfortable with and trust your offerings. You can devote a page on your website to them or sprinkle them around the other pages.

Spring Is Here…

Leave a Comment

Spring has officially sprung here in Charlotte – and I’m loving it. The flowers are blooming, the birds are out, the sweet scent of the season is in the air…and the days are getting longer!!!

I’m gearing up for a busy 6 weeks with three trips to NYC between now and the end of May. I can’t wait to tell you all about my plans – keep posted for that.

In the meantime, I think you’re gonna love last week’s article – it’s how to overcome a block that everyone I have ever met suffers from….enjoy!

With love,
Joanna

Sometimes, It’s The Little Things…That Boost Your Success!

Leave a Comment

In your business or your personal life, do you have a ton of little things constantly requiring your attention?

Things that probably wouldn’t take a huge amount of time to take care of individually, but when added up, seem like they’ll eat up all the hours in your day? These could be annoying little things like dealing with an error on an invoice you need to pay, getting the car tuned up, or returning the printer cartridge that doesn’t fit your printer.

Small things like these tend to occupy and drain far too much time and energy. 

The longer they remain uncompleted, the more they nag at us and take up more and more psychic space. These chores feel like small potatoes, but when you take the time to take care of them, you’ll discover that they have been distracting you or preventing you from making real progress in your business or your life.

Here’s an example of what I mean: One of my recent clients was tackling how to create more efficiency in her workday. She was having a lot of trouble meeting deadlines and returning all of her emails for her small business. When she took a closer look at some of the sources of her workday inefficiency, she discovered that her slow internet connection was eating up a lot of time.

Because her connection was so slow, she was waiting long periods of time to log onto the internet, to send and receive emails, and to do research online. She had been telling herself that she didn’t have the time to call her online carrier and upgrade her connection. In reality, however, this small distraction was actually costing her and her business both time and money! 

Once she took a relatively small amount of time to call her online carrier and solve the problem, she made her workday much more efficient.

There isn’t a perfect time to take care of all these distractions, but you can’t allow that to get in the way of accomplishing your bigger dreams and goals with ease and joy. If you want to make room for success, one of the best ways to do that is to clear away these annoying chores and distractions from your business and your life.

Think about the distractions in your life for a moment now. Are they holding you back from some of your BIG dreams and goals? Ask yourself if, on some level, you’ve allowed those distractions to come into being and get in your way.

Are you using distractions to keep you safe and small? If so, I invite you to eliminate them by using my simple, 5-step clearing process:

1. List distractions. Make a list of the top 3 distractions that are draining energy from your work and the top 3 distractions that are draining energy from your life. For work, these might include:

        -Outdated or broken technology such as mobile phone,
         computer, internet connection or fax machine

        -Unanswered emails or phone messages

        -Outdated or inappropriate wardrobe

For life, these might include:

        -Unresolved argument with a friend or partner

        -Unpaid bills or tickets

        -Not having drapes on your windows

2. List what they’re blocking. Make a list of what each top work distraction is holding you back from. For example: If one of your top distractions is an inappropriate wardrobe, this may be holding you back from:

        -Networking events that will bring in new clients
         or opportunities

        -Applying and interviewing for more satisfying and
         higher paying positions

        -Feeling confident enough to have a conversation with
         your manager about getting a raise

3. Own it. Acknowledge that you have been using each of these distractions as a subtle way of keeping you small.

4. Change it. Commit to eliminating one distraction a week. Take note of what opens up for you once you do so.

5. Keep up the good work! Repeat steps 2-4 for your "life" distractions.

I hope this system will bring you beneficial results and clear a path for your bigness. Please share with me what successes you open up to when you use this process!

A Beginner’s Guide To Writing

Leave a Comment

I’ve was mostly out of the office last week, enjoying Spring break in New Jersey, with my family.

When Jon, Penina and I visit my parents, we stay in my old bedroom. Every now and again, I look through my old journals – I started keeping one at age 7, and it has stuck for over 3 decades now. They’re pretty amazing, and among other things, remind me that my love of writing and self-reflection began at a very young age.


Last week’s article is related to my love of writing – a beginner’s guide to writing soulful and effective marketing copy.

If you’ve been wanting to up your game when it comes to your business writing, you’re gonna love this article!

With love,
Joanna

How To Write Soulful & Effective Marketing Copy

Leave a Comment

Picture yourself at your workspace preparing to write a marketing piece for your soul-centered project. Feel the pen in your hand or the keyboard under your fingertips.

What happens once you begin writing that copy? Do you get stuck? Do you start judging your copy even before it’s on the page? Do you procrastinate in order to avoid doing it? When you finally get that writing done, does it actually work?

Do you wish there was a simple and painless way to create copy that works and that you feel good about?

I know how daunting soulful and effective copywriting can sometimes feel, and the following 13 principles will help you expand your community, earn more income, and feel good about how you market.

Thirteen Foundational Principles for Effective & Soulful Copy

  1. Make it personal. Instead of feeling like your copy needs to speak to EVERYONE in the world, understand that it’s most effective to make copy as personal as possible and to speak directly to your ideal client. Mention your ideal client’s needs and goals, and specifics that let them know you understand them. It can be helpful to choose a current or former client who feels like an ideal client, and pretend like you’re writing directly to them.
  2. Speak in your own voice. Don’t try to sound like anyone else. It’s so easy to see folks out there who seem like a good model and you feel like you need to imitate them to be successful, but that’s not true. The more you use your real voice, the more you’ll be able to really communicate with your ideal client. If you’re sassy, put that sass in your copy. If you’ve got a sense of humor, that should come through. If you’re more tranquil, then that needs to be apparent. Don’t use stock phrases or clichés unless you truly resonate with them yourself. Use your own voice and language.
  3. Most of the time, make your writing conversational. Don’t use formal language because that keeps it from being personal. Exceptions: if you’re writing a proposal for a large corporation or if you’re writing a bio to go in another corporation. For your own marketing, newsletters, your personal bio, etc., keep it conversational and less formal.
  4. Connect emotionally to the writing. The topic of the writing should be something that excites you. Your excitement and passion will be clear to your readers.
  5. Always use client-centered language. Use words like "you" and "yours" instead of "people" or "women", etc. You’re not talking about theoretical people out in the ether. You’re talking directly to your ideal client. Additionally, using "we" is not recommended, because it’s too self-referential. Stay focused on the client.
  6. Use power words and phrases. Words like "ground-breaking," "transformative," "deeply moving", etc., that will catch your readers’ attention. It lets them know that your offering is special and not mundane. The more you can use power words and phrases, the stronger your copy will be and the more folks will pay attention to what you have to say.
  7. Always activate your ideal client’s gap and vision. This means you must address the specific need the client has, the thing they lack. Then talk about the vision of what it will be like when that need is met (by you!). For example, let’s say you’re a professional organizer, and your ideal client is a mom who needs help getting her home or home office organized. Your writing should touch on the need she has to get organized, the difficulties she’ll face without organization, and then describe all the concrete and emotional benefits she’d enjoy if she could get organized. Then you are in a great position to share your offerings with her to meet her needs.
  8. Your call to action must be clear and big. Always have a call to action, whether it’s to sign up for a newsletter or to join a call or to buy a program. Prospects and current clients need to know what to do when they’re on your website, so tell them! The CTA needs to be highly visible, easy to understand, and it’s best to have more than one.
  9. Check spelling and grammar. Always. It’s ok if you have partial sentences if it’s part of being conversational. Just make sure there are no mistakes that you didn’t intend.
  10. Vary the types of sentences you use. There should be a variety of long and short sentences, bullet points, questions, and longer and shorter paragraphs. This will keep the reader’s attention. Also make use of space throughout the copy to break it up a little. Your readers will be overwhelmed if they get a giant chunk of text to read, but if you can break it into little bites, it’s much less intimidating and easier to read.
  11. Find the right length for the copy. There are no hard and fast rules for this because it depends on the type of marketing you’re writing – the length of a newsletter will be different from that of a registration page.
  12. Know your ideal client. If that client is a busy mom who doesn’t have a lot of time, a huge amount of copy will not be effective because it’s hard for her to get through all of it. Adjust the length based on your client’s needs.
  13. Use an angle for marketing pieces & newsletters. This isn’t recommended necessarily for websites, but for marketing. Find an angle into the readers’ attention based on their needs to make it much more urgent and powerful. An angle for a working mom might be her desire to find more family time. An angle for someone new to yoga might be to address their fears around not being flexible, or their need for tranquility. You can use a different angle each time.

Marketing is about connecting and creating relationships. If your marketing copy is not as connective or is not creating the type of relationship with your ideal prospect, then you’ll have a really difficult time being successful.

Soulful copy is not cookie-cutter. It’s something that feels authentic to you. It feels aligned for you, not icky like that proverbial used-car salesman. It feels like a natural extension of you. When your copy is both effective and soulful, you’ll know because it feels authentic AND gets results!

Springtime: Let Go Of The Old

Leave a Comment

I’m gearing up for a nice, weeklong vacation, but not before teaching a very special, private virtual training today to my highest level clients on how to have successful client enrollment conversations. I love that I am able to offer complimentary bonus trainings like this to these fabulous women to support them in going even further with their work, their confidence, and their value. I give 110% when it comes to my clients, and take such pleasure in doing so.

In other news: Your Sacred Business began yesterday, with 40 soul-centered entrepreneurs ready to make big waves in their sacred work. I feel soooo lucky to be leading and guiding them.

Now, I love, love, love this time of year in the Northern hemisphere- flowers beginning to blossom, colors ready to come out, sleepy wintertime almost ready to let go of her grip, and warmer, longer days ahead.

Spring is a fantastic opportunity for us to mimic nature’s cycles…and come out too!

It’s a moment to let go of the old and plant seeds for the new, and that’s exactly what last week’s article will help you do. It’s written about your business, but you can apply this fun and simple ritual to ANY area of your life.

With love,
Joanna

Use Springtime To Detox Your Business

Leave a Comment

Do you get excited when spring comes around each year? I know I do.

This time of year ushers in a period of new beginnings, fresh energy, and the joy of birthing new things into the world. You see it everywhere – the days are longer, the birds are chirping, there are even tiny little buds on the trees.

Springtime also brings a powerful opportunity to clean up & infuse new energy into your business and projects as well!

It is the perfect time to step more fully into bigger and better possibilities for yourself and your future.

How can you NOT be excited about that?!

Sometimes, though, it can be difficult to transition into spring-time energy if you are still in winter-time mode, and feeling tired, unmotivated, and frustrated.

That’s why it’s vital this time of year to intentionally cleanse out the emotional, mental, and spiritual blocks that might have built up over the winter months. When you detox, then you are more fully prepared to open yourself up consciously to the curiosity, joy, and freshness that is so readily available to you this time of year…and amp up your business!

I created this ritual so you can cleanse, renew, and then open up to your full potential to prepare for this magical season! In order to do this ritual, you will need paper and pen, a feather duster (optional), and a potted plant.

Springtime Detox & Renewal Ritual

Step 1: Get Aware of the "Yuck"

Take 10 minutes to journal on all of the things that have become sluggish and dusty for you & your work during the wintertime. Get clear for yourself where the cobwebs need to be swept away to make space for new energy. Consider all areas where you could bring in new energy, including emotional, mental, and spiritual areas. For example:

  • "I’m using the same sales copy for different marketing channels."
  • "I haven’t exercised in a long time."
  • "I’m using the same teachings over and over again."
  • "I keep on making the same Call to Action, but it’s not getting me anywhere."

Step 2: Visualize Your Stagnancy

After you’ve identified all the stagnant areas of your life, take some time to feel yourself under their weight. Really feel in your body what it’s like to be completely covered by dustiness, motionless, heaviness. You can close your eyes and visualize yourself covered with snow or dust.

Step 3: Dust Off the Old Energy

Brush or dust off the stagnancy from your body. You can use an actual feather duster or simply use your hands. Start at the top of your head and dust off any old energy there. Move to your face, then your neck, removing and dusting off whatever got stuck during the winter season, then move down to your shoulders, and so on, all the way down to your toes. Really take the time to shake off, brush away, and release all that has become sluggish, inactive, and weighs you down.

(This can work really well with a partner, too – you can have your partner clean the dust off of you, and then switch).

Step 4: Breathe New Energy into Your Business

When you do the dusting and clearing to completion, you will feel an incredible sense of openness and freedom in your body. Now that you’ve cleaned out the old winter energy, you can really align with and leverage the newness of spring. Take some deep breaths in and deeply inhale the spring air. Let it fill you with energy, and visualize your work being revitalized as well!

Step 5: Plant a Renewal Project

From this place, choose one project that you would like to start right now. As you do this, hold the potted plant in your hands and allow the plant to symbolize this new project you want to initiate in your life right now.

Your project could be anything: maybe it’s a new offering for your business, or perhaps it’s a new marketing strategy, or maybe it’s a new team member, or perhaps it’s simply a new way of "being”, for example – abundant, or open, or healthy. Whatever you choose, focus on it intensely. Close your eyes and imagine this project is the plant in your hands – the project you want to plant in your life. In your mind’s eye, watch it grow and flourish.

Step 6: Nurture that Plant!

Water your plant, and as you do it, allow it to be a ritual of nurturing your new project. Then place this plant somewhere prominent in your home so that you remember to literally and metaphorically water it and care for it consistently every day!