#235: Seize These Four Opportunities

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you excited about building out your course, your live cohort, your workshop, whatever it is that is going to put you out there in a bigger way. I am here for it, and I’m here to support you for every step.

And today I want to talk about seizing opportunities because I’ve been talking to authors, experts, speakers and opportunities are coming right now, and they’re probably coming for you. If you’re listening to me right now, if you’re putting yourself out there, if you’re giving that energy to the universe, hey, I’m here, I’m an expert. I get results. Naturally, offers tend to come your way, opportunities come your way.

Now, how do you take advantage of those opportunities and where can you look for them? So if opportunities are coming your way, this podcast is for you. If you feel like you’re in a bit of a drought, you’re like, Gina, I’m not feeling the opportunities right now. This podcast is for you because hopefully it’ll spark something for you and get you excited about putting yourself out there in a bigger way.

Now before we dive in, this podcast is of course brought to you by our Done for You services. We are boutique for a reason. We only take a few entrepreneurs, experts, speakers, authors every quarter because we really want to work with you in a high touch way. We customize every piece of how we work with you in terms of courses, marketing, web development, and we are booking out into the New Year right now.

So if you are interested in checking us out and having a chat with me, go to a course Creation bootcamp slash course. I know it says Slash course, but we don’t just do courses, we do marketing and we do web development. Check that out, hit the apply button, do the little survey, and then we’ll chat. All right. Today, we’re talking about four ways to seize opportunities for you as an entrepreneur, expert or speaker.

And what prompted me for this episode was I’ve mentioned before that we work with a number of authors, just incredible authors oftentimes starting out and they’re getting opportunities that they’ve never seen before in terms of podcasts or different media or collaborations. And when the opportunities come, I want you to be ready. I want you to say, Heck yes, I’m ready for this.

Let’s go. So that’s where this has prompted me in terms of working with all these authors. And if you are putting an offer out there for the first time, could be a book, could be a course, could be live coaching, whatever it looks like you want to have that at the ready. Okay. So that’s what we’re talking about today.

You want to show up, you want to be able to put me in coach, say that when the opportunities come up. Now, I mentioned step one here is to make sure your offers are ready. So step one of being able to seize opportunities is making sure you have your ducks in order. In terms of the next step. So, so, so important.

Sometimes I’ll get folks who say, well, I just wanted to write this book. Like I put two and a half years into this book and I haven’t even thought about the next step. Like, I’m here to make sure you guys are thinking about the next step. I do not want to waste a single opportunity that is coming your way.

You have put so much time, energy, blood, sweat, tears into a book. Of course, whatever it looks like, write that entry point for you. I want to see it pay off for you. I want to see the ROI for you. So having those offers and those invites at the ready, what could that look like? Well, one, it could be a free value.

It could be the freebie, the freebie that we’ve been talking about a lot here on the podcast, all linked to some show notes about lead magnets. That’s your cheat sheet, that’s your quiz, your guide, whatever it looks like that you can work into the conversation, whatever your opportunities are. And we’re going to talk about different opportunities in a minute here.

So your freebies at the ready, what else can the free value be? Well, you could talk about your podcast, your video, your weekly newsletter, or a monthly newsletter, whatever that looks like. You could offer something that you’ve done in the past. Oh, my gosh, You want to really drill down on your lead magnet? I have this conversations all the time.

I’ve got a series about lead magnet. Let me send you the link. And David has created a link for me for that specific group of podcasts because I get asked about that all the time. Have those at the ready, have your core content that you know can bring value at the ready. So that’s kind of layer one, right?

Your freebies, your free stuff. Layer two can be a one on one call. Well, hey, love meeting you. I’d love to book a call. Right. So having that at the ready, having your counly acuity, your Google workspace set up in order to those book whatever it looks like for you to book out those calls. And then of course, a third layer can be paid.

Now, when opportunities come, we want to be very sensitive, free, awesome one on one call, money now paid offers. We want to be very delicate to see if it’s the right opportunity to mention money at this point, like, especially if you’re initiating a conversation, you’re initiating a relationship, But have those paid offers at the ready, especially you with low ticket offers where it might be the natural next step?

Okay, so having those three tiers in place, the free, the one on one call and then the paid, then you’re ready, you’re ready for the opportunities. And by the way, part of this is a little spiritual, too, right? And saying to the universe, hey, I can take on things and I’m ready. I’m ready to take on more. I’m ready to go.

And clients, I’m ready to go on different coaching clients in this space or different students. Okay, Let’s talk about for opportunities that I see often come up for our students and our clients. The first is media and podcasts, like I talked about at the beginning of this episode and I love these opportunities because it’s a great way to get in front of someone else’s audience.

You are adding value naturally because you’re talking about your content. If you do these interviews, right, you were talking about how you can serve someone else and you’re also working in the next step. So nothing crushes my soul more is when experts, authors, I see authors do this some time, do a lot of interviews and podcasts, and then don’t mention the book or don’t mention the next step or mention both.

Mention the book and mention the free offer. Or Hey, you get the book. You also get this amazing checklist. You also get this companion mini course that really goes well with the book. You want to make that call to action when you’re doing the media, when you’re doing podcasts. So and you have to make a gametime decision depending on the opportunity.

So if you are contributing an article so I’ve contributed articles in the past and just said, Hey, can I link to my freebie? Can I do a little funny blurb about me at the end, something a little charming, writing out of my typical bio and then say, Well, if you’re interested in taking the next step after reading this, here’s here’s a link to my freebie.

Always ask, never hurts to ask, but definitely ask permission, right? We want to be sensitive. It is their audience that we are in front of. We want to serve first, right? We want to provide value. And then of course we want to give them the next step. We don’t give them the next step that is just hurting everyone involved.

People want to know how do they work with you? Once they fall in love with you, they’re going to want to know, Hey, what is the next step here? Do not leave me hanging and think about what is the next step in terms of each media placement or each podcast. So that’s number one. And by the way, you could also mention a paid offer, not saying you can’t in the media and podcasts and things like that.

Usually it’s an entry level play here and not necessarily like a webinar where you’re going for it and you’re you’re asking for the paid offer, you’re pitching the paid offer. A second opportunity is in person speaking, and I work with speakers all the time. Beauchesne is incredible. Our client, mentor, friend, he gets paid to speak and so Beau is in the upper echelon, but we work with speakers who are doing TEDx acts, workshops, etc. This is an opportunity to put out your freebie or that next step.

If your talk is like I was just mentioning, lead magnets a few minutes ago, or if my talk was about courses and how to get your course up quickly, I could give away a toolkit that I have to save time in terms of your courses, think about what offer goes with your opportunity. A lot of times with in-person speaking, you can also do a pitch and have that ready to go and you can go for a higher ticket paid offer.

Another opportunity is virtual talks and events. So I mentioned authors. We all a lot of times will have a book event. I’ve got a book event for a client coming up this week. Cannot wait. And this is our opportunity to talk about the book, sell the book right, coach people show people how they like to coach people and the value that they can bring.

Virtual events are an awesome opportunity. You get some partners, you get some affiliates, Great, great, great opportunity to get in front of audiences. And then the final opportunity and trust me, there’s more than four just like whipping through four right now are events and live events. So how to do a live event this week. And I’m always thinking as I go into to a live event that I’m attending and I’m speaking at, what’s my outcome?

What do I hope to achieve? How many people do I want to connect with? What am I going to talk up? And I’m going to talk up a lot of free stuff. Like I want to really connect with people. I really want to serve people and I want them to feel like they’re confident in the next step. That’s really my outcome and I’ve thought through that.

So whenever you attend an event, you’re attending conferences, whenever you’re connecting with people, think, What’s my outcome? How many people do I want to connect with? What kind of people do I want to connect with? What’s my leave behind? What content do I have at the ready in order to serve them to the next step? Hopefully this was helpful for you.

I want nothing more than opportunities to start rolling in. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. If there’s a final thought I could give to you. I used to be of the mind. This was years ago that, Oh, people will come to me if they’re interested. But now I’m much more aggressive. I take initiative because that’s what it takes.

That’s what it takes. Because sometimes people are fearful or intimidated or don’t feel like they should be able to work with you. Well, show them they can you open the conversation, You take the initiative. All right. If this has made any kind of impact on you, I would love for you to leave me a review until next week.

Go create, be and be brilliant and get it done.