Welcome to the year of the Ox.

As planned... I didn't slow down in Dec/Jan and full throttled into 2021 to build momentum.

With the biz dev ground work I spent the second half of 2020 doing out of the way, I was finally ready to "become visible" and start running with my official offer.

To me, that means starting with the basics.

It means becoming visible to the people I already know in my existing network, so I am back on their radar.

The truth is... over the last couple of years, I haven't done a good job of keeping in touch with people I've met and became friends with in business.

Because I had no systems and habits in place so there was no consistency.

Plus all my time and focus went into personal development and health, cus I knew I needed to grow to become the person (and business owner) I wanted to be.

If I didn't prioritise working on myself first, I knew I wouldn't be able to attract the people I wanted.

Energetically, it just wouldn't work. Because in life, you attract what you are, not what you want.

I wanted better quality people around me, so I needed to become that person first.

One of my favourite quotes from Jim Rohn is...

"Your level of success will seldom succeed your level of personal development."

Trust me, I had to do a ton of growing over the years...

The one annoyingly heavy anchor that continuously weighed me down in business was my inability to communicate with people.

My non-existent communication, networking and relationship building skills were standing in the way of the results I wanted.

Those were the important "life skills" I never learned growing up, until I went into business and realised...

"Sh*t, I don't know how to talk to people! But I have to talk to people!"

No relationship building, marketing and selling skills meant no business.

People don't do business with people they don't know, like and trust.

I remember reading books on networking, and thinking "How the hell can I get better at this? Why is this so hard?!?!?!"

It wasn't until I decided to attend all the business networking events I can find in Sydney and continued showing up for a year... that I finally became more comfortable talking to strangers.

Practice makes progress.

Now, it's time to upgrade my skills. Because I want to build a wide AND deep network for myself.

It's one of those "important but not urgent" activities, so it's easy not to do -- like eating healthy.

Meeting new people has become the easy part... and while it's great to meet new people, my goal isn't to have lots of shallow connections.

For me, it's about digging the well before I need the water. Because building relationships takes time.

I'm not "networking" in the traditional sense, because I know how ineffective traditional networking is from experience.

For 2021 and beyond, I'm network building.

It's a totally different concept where I'm deliberately growing a network of know, like and trust relationships with like-minded people who I can advocate for and who are also willing to advocate for me.

"Advocacy" is the key word here.

Because I know that if I surround myself with people who are willing and able to "open doors" for me, I'll be able to achieve results faster and easier because trust is already established.

I'm curious... is growing your personal/professional network on the cards for you in 2021?

If you understand the importance of building your network and feel like we're on the same page, then hit reply and let me know.

Connecting and talking to real people beats receiving emails, don't you think? :)

Anyway, back to the point of this email re: Connection VS Production Marketing...

I did have a point to make about how "building my network" ties back to marketing, and the marketing activities you choose to do to grow your business.

At the end of the day, the fundamentals of marketing and selling is based on relationships. At least that's how I see it.

Your marketing strategy and the activities you choose to execute on should align with the stage of business you're in.

If you're in the start up stage of your business, then focus on "Connection" level activities like sales meetings, talking to prospects, networking, direct messaging etc where you're interacting with people 1 on 1.

Connection level activities are a more direct path to sales, and it's easier for people to do.

This is the reason why most small businesses rely on word of mouth and referral business.

As your business grows, then incorporate more "Production" level activities like building a website, writing blog posts, social media, podcasting, creating videos etc.

Production level activities are generally further away from the sale, but they give you more leverage over time if you produce them right.

Production level activities also require more advanced skills like strategic thinking, design, planning and tech.

This is also the reason why most businesses typically don't get good results with marketing because they lack the skills to pull off production level activities.

Production level activities can also be a distraction for people in the early stages of their business.

Hope that gives you a new perspective on how to asses the marketing activities you're doing to grow your business. And how to decide on the projects and tasks you do depending on where you are in your stage of business.

Ideally, you want to have both in your business.

But you get there by building them brick by brick over time. It's a process.

I am doing both... with emphasis on the Connection level first.

Over the past 2-3 weeks, I flipped into production mode and created a "buyer's guide" for business owners called Hidden Marketing Service Traps.

I created it for 3 reasons:

1. To drink my own kool-aid cus integrity is super important to me.
2. To help people out because I continued to hear bad experiences and "horror stories" from business owners who have worked with service providers in the marketing space.
3. To show an example of my work since this is a "done for you service" I provide for professional service based businesses.

Here's what the business owner's guide looks like:

If you'd like a copy, click this link and you'll get an email with access to download it. Fingers crossed the tech works.

The opt-in page is not yet "live" on my website, but here's the link in case you wanted to check it out : https://jenkuo.com/guide/​

Hope you're having a fab start to 2021.

Stay safe and healthy.

Jen

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P.S. Feedback on the guide is of course welcome.

P.P.S. If you wanna connect personally and explore synergies just reply and let me know. No pressure, if building your network is not something you do :)

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