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great day Jerusha Hawk here I want to talk well one I hope you guys are having a phenomenal Monday here in Detroit it uh there was like a massive snowstorm I have not left the house why because it's like freezing outside and yeah there was just a crap ton of snow outside but I just recently was celebrating over a bowl of Froot Loops because I accomplished my goal for this month which was to pitch myself to ten different places and I'm going to talk a little bit about that but I'm really really excited because I submitted my tenth pitch today and I'm very proud of myself um but I wanted to talked with you guys today about how do you actually prepare to start pitching yourself and why having a signature service really does position you as an expert which allows you to make it a lot easier to actually go out there pitch yourself and set yourself up to actually convert clients while doing that so one thing about me is I saw I've been in business about two and a half years now and in the very very very beginning stages of my business like when I was starting to get some traction and like people were starting to see me showing up online more consistently and just being more visible I have so many people reaching out saying like Jay the way for you to grow your business to get more eyes on your business to be able to convert more clients is you need to be using PR less you need to be pitching yourself you need to be doing all this stuff with PR and at the time I almost got suckered in but at the time I really had not yet established a few things in my business which I'm gonna share with you guys I think it's really important to have a few things in place before you actually start actively pitching yourself um but I was like you know I don't I'm not at a point right now in my business where if I'm getting more visibility which so many of us are craving right like so many of us are like Jay you know I want more visibility more eyes on my business that's the way for me to go out there and convert clients but the thing that many people forget is like who cares about getting all that attention if your systems and your operations is not set up to convert every one of those new leads and my at that stage in my business I did not have those systems in place to make sure that if I was getting a bunch it's like having the Oprah effect and I know when Oprah would put people people's businesses went out I went bankrupt or went out of business because they couldn't handle the demand after like after they got the Oprah effect meaning let's say you were like just imagine right now is your business if somebody were to send a thousand new leads your way was your business be able to handle that demand like can't legitimately like if if ten thousand new leads I mean like buying individuals came to your website and came to your business today would you be able to handle that demand do you have the capacity to serve another ten thousand people or like I said or we can scale down let's say a thousand new leads came your way today would you be in a position where you could serve those thousand people answer is no so I'm like Berta I know I got a story this year and I know if somebody gives me a platform I will share my story but there is no way I'm about to sit here and invest in getting more visibility on my business when I don't the back end of my business is not actually set up to monetize and serve all those new leads and that's why I think so many business owners go wrong so I think that that's a that's why I didn't bite those like you know pitches or that I got from PR agents or public relations professionals back then was because like my business isn't set up to do that and I'm like if all those leads even came my way I don't even know which one of my offers I would actually want to sell them rikes in the beginning stages you're just trying to figure stuff out like you're testing new offers you're trying to figure out what's gonna stick you're trying to actually figure out like how cuz I you know one thing we talked a lot about in service is that sell is something called the pop message and like you have a process in place to deliver consistent results to your clients and if you don't have that you know again like it'll be like if you were to get even ten new clients on your roster today if you were to convert ten new clients today would you be able to handle that capacity but would you be able to offer the same level of service to every one of those new clients and you know have your processes structured in a way that gets them all consistent results and for most of us I know for me back then the answer was no I'm like even if I converted ten new clients today your girl would be struggling so that's why I didn't bite the bullet but that doesn't mean I'm like you know let me be patient before I start to go out there and actively seek publicity let me be patient because if I so many people are so focused on I need more eyes on my business I want a larger reach I want to expand my PR like I want to do all these things I need to be more visible from a PR perspective but like if you don't if you can't sell to an organic audience like I don't know what makes you think you'll be able to sell to a cold audience meaning like if people who know you who already like you and who trust you are not buying from you you will have a very very very very very very very very difficult time selling to somebody who does not know you from you know Joe Schmo off the streets that's basically what PR is doing like you're getting in front of cold leads like you're getting in front of people who don't know who you are and if you're not so these are a couple of things that I was intentional on making sure that I had in place before I had this active before I do this proactive and like outreach to start to gain new publicity first thing I did was made sure that I was very clear on what problem I was actually solving with the services that I sold you know this is really really biggest is why I created my program services that so mainly because I think like the things that we teach in my program are like foundational like if you can't do these basic things um like your business is not gonna last like you're not like you're doing cuz you need it one you need to know what problem you solve so back then I was testing out a bunch of different things like I was trying to be an empowerment coach I was trying to help with life coaching I was on teaching Facebook like you know how to eat how to be visible on Facebook I was teaching a corporate dropout program I was teaching a program talk about like how to launch your hustle like I was positioning myself and testing out these different angles of positioning I didn't really know what thing I wanted to be known for like and that's one that's important for you guys is you need to you have to decide what you want your and this is why I know we call this packaging this into a signature service you need to decide what is the one thing that you want to be known for and this is just in the beginning like if you're earning less than six figures a year like this is really really important because you do need to establish the trunk of your tree before you start to build on all these extra branches so it's important for me to first figure out what did I want to be known for what was gonna be the trunk of my tree like the root of what my reputation is built on what is that one thing and what is that one problem that I saw for clients where I can produce consistent results in it and in order for you to get to a place where you have a proven process meaning that you know if somebody were to hire you you have you're not customizing the back end of the process every single time a new client comes on you are walking clients through a proven system step by step to get a result and you're able to produce consistent results that means you're gonna have to do it for a period of time but you're gonna be didn't need to be committed to doing one thing for a period of time so that was really important you know what problem you're solving you need to know and you need to know what is that one person who is your Minimum Viable audience that you're trying to solve that problem for and this was something again it took me time to figure out but this is why it's so important to know who your Minimum Viable audience is because another thing when you think about PR and pitching yourself like who cares if you're speaking but listen you get a hundred speaking gigs this year right like and that's also another capacity thing people are like I want to do more speaking I want to do B you know be more visible like do you even have the capacity to speak more often do you have the capacity to be traveling more often to go to these speaking engagements on all these things right you need it you need to think about your capacity but who cares if you book a hundred speaking engagements when everybody in the audience is not your ideal audience like who cares for me so one thing I guess is let me clarify this it is important to understand what's have a business model you are trying to create and try and execute if you just saw here trying to be famous and like everybody knows you but you ain't got nothing to sell and you're not making no money off of it this live string probably isn't gonna be that helpful for you now if you are somebody who is like no I want to be able to monetize the eyes that I have I want to monetize the followers that are starting to like my pages and follow me on Instagram I want to be able to monetize the attention that I'm getting by selling a service or selling a product you need to be it is very very important that you need to know who your Minimum Viable audience is you need to know what so when you start pitching yourself you know what outlets to pitch yourself to because you know that their audience is your ideal audience and in the beginning I didn't have that clear so I'm like I was working full-time studying for the GMAT trying to go back to grad school and building my business I mean I don't have time to waste just pitching myself any and everywhere when I really don't even know who it is I'm trying to attract and I really don't know what problem it is that I'm solving so that means it's gonna be very difficult for me to even know who I need to pitch myself to because if you don't know those first two things like those are the most two important things for you to nail down because if you do not have those two things down like who cares about getting the interview speaking on the TV channel like being featured in the magazine if it does nothing like it's not producing it's not even setting yourself up to produce any actual results so those things are really really those things are really really big for me and then the third thing is after you know you need to know what problem you solve and you need to know who your Minimum Viable audience is you need to know like the third thing is you need to know what you're actually like how to actually sell right so I know far too often people will be doing speaking engagements we can get workshops like doing podcast interviews and they're getting all this publicity but they have nothing in place to actually sell anything so if somebody loves hearing you speak and they're like okay what can I learn from you next it's like over I got nothing I was just here to get the PR and a custom person looking at you like what you mean and how about me looking at you like what are you doing like if you don't have anything tangible like something for somebody to buy after they've heard you speak like you're shooting yourself in the foot people don't make like and I'm gonna just be very frank okay and like you can ask pretty much any online entrepreneur any entrepreneur really very very very few business models actually make a legitimate profit off the event that they that they host nothing that it's not possible I'm not saying that people don't make money off their events but nine times out of ten people don't make that people don't earn their big dollars from the event they hosting unless seem like a big dog like Rachel Hollis I love watching her and her husband Dave on their little morning show they have an event called rise they sell tickets anywhere from 50 to eighteen hundred dollars they just sold out of seven thousand person events within like four hours so homegirl made a couple mil today we are not on Rachael Hollis status right like we are not you know nine time New York best-selling authors who have audiences of millions like we are not there yet so if you you know if you're trying to make income off of events like you can but like really where people make the largest amount of money is on what they sell when they are on stage that thing that they're selling at the end that's where people make most of their profit like most event hosts and event um people they break even at best on the events that they run but they make their income off the thing that they so after the event and if you are you know what another thing that you need to prepare yourself to do when you're pitching yourself is you need to know what it is that you're gonna be selling like you need to have a solid offer that you are selling and because that now will dictate like okay whatever it is that you're gonna be speaking about on that podcast or on that stage needs to be aligned with the thing that you're gonna be like you know that you want people to know you for and eventually what people to ask you about so then you can sell them into whatever your thing is but let's say you know I I so services that sells the thing that I want to be known for it's it's a simple process for underperforming service providers you know people earning less than $5,000 a month consistently teaching them how to sell using Facebook live and sales calls so if I know that that is the problem that I saw and and the offer that I want to sell and the audience that I want to sell to wouldn't look it wouldn't make no sense if I were to get on stage and start talking about like I don't know I can't even think of something that's not in line with my offer but for me to talk about like you know how to cook quick meals as a as a new entrepreneur while you're still working in 95 I'm really trying are can you think of something but it would make no sense for me to talk about something that's not aligned with the offer that I get right somebody said bundles like it'll make no sense for me to get on stage talking about white but why every girl needs to have a custom wig because I could sell that but like it would make no sense for me to be like you know sometimes people are having interviews like you know I did um let me give it another good example so I recently spoke on the side hustle Pro podcast by Michaela Mackey's if you do not listen to side hustle Pro like you need to go subscribe and add that to your iTunes podcast playlist like immediately but I spoke on her podcast I don't know maybe a month or two ago now so I can't remember how long ago it was maybe a month or two ago and within two weeks of that podcast airing I was able to generate over ten thousand dollars in revenue and it wasn't like it was a paid you know I didn't pay to be on her podcast we didn't have an affiliate relationship going I didn't make any hard cells on the podcast but if you don't know these three things right you don't know what problem it is that you're solving you don't know what person it is that you're actually trying to sell to who your Minimum Viable audiences and if you have not actually packaged an offer that you can sell there's no way I would have been able to convert like convert that type of revenue off that one 45-minute podcast interview and the reason why I was able to do that was because you know if you know those three foundational things that is your end goal you won't be able to know you for that you know people you want to be able to establish your authority in that and you ultimately want to create content whether you're you know that you're speaking on behalf of that leads people to like to want people who want to solve that problem to know that you had the solution and that's what I did right so I made sure that any time I speak anywhere it will be aligned with the court offer that I'm selling so if you don't have those things in place like I would I would have several seats like boo take a sit down okay sit down and get very very very clear on those foundational things and that's why you know I was just patient I was like look if I show up if I keep providing value if I you know invisible on my own channels being organic and if I'm able to establish myself as an expert like one people will just come to you because they will see you right people will people will notice like people notice good people you know I've been featured in Forbes I've been featured in black enterprise I've been featured in my local newspapers like two or three times um I have been you know approached to be on like dozens of podcasts before I ever pitched myself and the reason being was because you know my I was focused on doing me like I was focused on establishing those foundational things and by me being lot of doing my Facebook live videos and also by me creating a signature service which is the thing that I am known for you know the thing that people know me for you know it made it very easy for other people to refer me for other people to be like Jay you'd be dope for this article like I've submitted your name for you like if your stuff is not that clear like if your stuff is not crystal clear where everybody who currently knows you is able to refer you and be able to communicate what it is that you do and the value you provide when you're not in the room like that it should be your primary focus like that should be your primary focus umm it's not so much about you deciding well one you do need to decide what you want to be known for who your minimum viable audience is what problem that you're solving for them and actually packaging an offer that you can sell like you are responsible for that but just because you know it means nothing if other people aren't able to articulate it like and it doesn't mean anything if you're not able to communicate the value of what you do to the point where other people understand and they're able to also like say it back to somebody else and clearly communicate that this is what she does um that's like that's what your focus should be um but now you know I'm at a point now in my business where my sales process is automated you know if anybody who is watching this live stream video I'd say for the most part if you've known me for at least you know a month or two you'd be able to tell somebody else what it is that I do and what problem that I solve and I have a way of monetizing every lead that comes my way now I'm ready to actually start pitching myself right now I'm actually ready so you have to do it so I think so much in the online space you can get you get caught up night you see everybody else I danshi everywhere she on this stage on that stage on that podcast on that podcast in that publication in that publication but like one look just cuz they printed on the pages don't mean they got the receipts to back it up first and foremost and to but you don't you don't know how much work this individual hasn't putting in behind the scenes when the cameras are off when the nights are late like to make sure that they're there they're in a position where they're monetizing everything right like so I think that's really really important for you guys to know and why I think it's so valuable to have a signature service because another thing is when I talk about well I'm that's another rabbit hole died down that that that that Lane tonight but those are just some of the foundational things that you need in my opinion like before you start actively pitching yourself and I'm not saying you have to wait like forever before you piss yourself but like like you know I wouldn't be if you were working full-time or if you only have an extra five hours a week available or whatever like I would not be like that would not be my focal point of where you should be focusing your attention if you don't have those things in place um so I hope this was hopeful I said the other big thing for me to actually prepare me to pitch is I joined Selina sue she's absolutely amazing she's like a heart of gold but Selena sue is and a really really big like public relations expert and she has a course called impacting millions um this is something that I purchased last year because I'm like okay as I'm spending the time figuring out like who my person is what offer I want to be selling community knowing how to communicate like learning how to position myself and how to communicate the value of what I offer I know by 2019 I'll be ready to start actively pitching myself so I joined her program mainly because like look this is not my area of expertise like I was terrified to pitch myself because I'm like what if I get rejected what if somebody denies me what if just nobody responds like I got issues I was scared I was like hmm I might be pitching myself and then uh looking stupid I was really really like terrified to pitch myself and I was fortunate in the beginning I you know up until this point in our business were all the attention the publicity that I was getting people were just coming to me I was like you know I'm already getting out already in Forbes of black enterprise I got to do nothing like I'm good I was wait like no Jay you are not about to play some passive backseat role in your business if you're getting this much like publicity like one I think that's a validation right like it you should be getting people coming to you because your stuff is that clear and other people understand you know the value of what you offer you're enough where you are in demand for me I mean I need to know that I'm in demand before you know I will qualify myself saying I'm ready to go pitch myself I'm gonna have somebody pitch on my behalf but I enrolled in her program because I did not like one I was not confident I was not confident in pitching myself or putting myself out there I didn't know how to structure a pitch in an email I didn't I I just didn't know some of like the basic things that you need to know about pushing and I was like I'm definitely not about to be spending time trying to like figure this out on my own watching some free webinars and trying to poke a piece it together because I don't want to be pitching myself because that's a first impression that I'm making on whoever it is and I'm pitching I did not want to be making a bad first impression because I didn't know how to pitch um so I'm like so I'm a really really really big advocate on invest in experts who specialize in the thing the problem it is that you want to solve and learn a proven process so you can get comfortable on taking that next step and that's what I did right like that's not my area of expertise I'm not about to go try to become a PR expert but I do want to know how to like you know submit basic podcast pitches and how to do some of the basic things and get a few of those under my belt before I you know get to a point in my business where it makes sense for me to outsource that aspect right to hire in a consultant or hiring somebody to join my team to do my pitching for me so I'm just a really really big advocate on um making sure that like if you don't know something one that's okay but to understand your opera understand the value of your time and like just go learn from somebody who already has a proven process who's already like has receipts who's already established their expertise in something and like learn from them and that's what I did so I enrolled her course um like a you know March of last year April of last year and um you know I didn't really even dive into the course until about four or five months after I bought it because I was focused on like getting those foundational things set up in my business first so I waited you know I bought the course knowing that I wouldn't use it right away and waited about four or five months before I started like really diving into her content and like going through things um and yeah so I've been that was probably like four or five months of preparation preparation before I ever sent my first pitch um so I'm just really really thankful for that but that's there's not two cents for y'all today you know how to make sure that you're prepared before you actually start pitching the power of having a signature service and you know I qualify a signature service as a offer that is fifteen hundred dollars or more that solves a very specific problem for a very specific person it's the service that positions you as the authority and the one thing that you want to be known for and this is why I think that's so valuable because when you become known for that one thing you know we have a student right now in services that sells Sophia she has a signature service she's her business is called the debt demolisher but she's known for that like she's known for helping people demolish their debt and when you get known for that one thing like you'll be surprised how quickly opportunities will just come your way because it's clear like it's clear that people know what you're known for they know where you can add value and they're able to like oh you need somebody that does this you need to call her like it makes it easy to refer you and that's really the power of having a signature service it allows you to do that and allows it to make it very easy for other people to understand the value of what you offer um so yeah I hope this was helpful thank you guys for tuning in today uh that's all I got for y'all so I will chat with y'all soon bye ah