183 | Answer These 4 Questions to Grow Your Impact Business with Paul Zelizer
This is a special solo episode with Awarepreneurs founder Paul Zelizer. After the great challenges that we collectively faced in the world in 2020 and our listeners faced as values based entrepreneurs, Paul wanted to share the 4 simple yet powerful questions he uses in his coaching work to help his clients get momentum towards their impact and income goals.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Paul Zelizer solo episode
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. And welcome to 2021.
This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. What I usually do each episode, up until now that is, is do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection, someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives.
This is a new feature I want to start experimenting with in the podcast of doing shorter topic specific episodes around questions that we're getting asked by our members and our listeners. In specific, if you hadn't noticed, 2020 was a hard year. And both in the social impact space in the social entrepreneur space, as well as much of the world There was, I've heard it called bifurcation, I think I'm pronouncing that word correctly, if not helped me out here. In other words, some people did really well. And some people had a really hard year, and there wasn't a lot of in the middle. And we saw that in the were printers community saw that in my colleagues in the impact entrepreneur space. And particularly for those who kind of, you know, the air came out of your sails in 2020 want to give so much kindness and compassion about, you know, pretty hard to focus for some of us, many of us as entrepreneurs in 2020, with everything that was going on. And it's a new year, and some of you, you know, have reached out and said, Paul, it's been kinda lean, it's been a tough year, it's time for me to, you know, bring attention to the entrepreneur part of my social entrepreneur. Things like revenue and growing my business in addition to my impact goals, and that was hard to do in 2020. But I'm coming back to that for 2021 without losing the social context, and all the big issues that our members and listeners care about. So what I wanted to do in this episode, is share with you the title of the episode is answer these four questions to grow your impact business. And I want to share with you a simple, it's so simple, but it's incredibly powerful. 4 questions that I use with my private coaching clients as social entrepreneur strategies to help them grow their business. I do one on one and small group mastermind groups for social and wellness entrepreneurs. And these questions really help people drill down, find out what's the, you know, cut through the noise and what other people are doing and marketing strategies and tactics all that's great, but like really get into what is the thing Who are the people etc, and get more return, both for the impact and the income goals per unit that you put it your energy, your resources, your dollars that you invest in your business, I want to help you get the most out of it. So you can keep doing this work, live a good quality of life and help more people. So welcome to 2021. And wherever you landed on, I got a lot of momentum in 2020 was a fabulous year for you as an entrepreneur was a really tough year, maybe even really lean, maybe even scary in terms of just financially very challenging year for you, wherever you landed on that continuum. May this these questions serve you I work with people who are just getting started, I worked with people whose entire business fell apart in 2020. And I work with people who are just rocking it as entrepreneurs, but wanted to have you know, more impact and work on things like their, you know, the wellness and the quality of life. Some of them were, you know, making a lot of money, but their quality of life was you know, work was taking over a lot of their time and attention and they wanted to you know, be more streamlined in what they were doing. So, wherever you are in that continuum, these four questions I find can be incredibly helpful. Lastly, before we get into the questions, just feedback on these shorter, topic specific episodes, if you like it great if you don't like it, or it could be better, great, just like trying to be of service. And sometimes, you know, bringing in a guest and that kind of conversation doesn't get into the nuances of very like a, b, c, d e of the things that our members and listeners are getting to. But if you're finding a you'd like different topics, or you know, this is really working for you, or it's not as an experiment, and I'd love to hear your feedback on this experiment. Okay, thanks so much. Let's get into the four questions. The very first question is why? And all of these are one word because I'm a minimalist, and also, I like to cut through the noise and really try to find the signal to noise ratio really get really clear so that when you're in the marketplace, and your work with clients, you can quickly tell the story of your business quickly ascertain who's a good fit and who's not. And why. Simon Sinek if you don't know his work, go check it out. If you need a reminder, one of the most popular TED talks of all time, his book start with why and his TED talk by the same name, I'll put a link in the show notes. In specific when I use the word why I'm speaking of two things, there are many others that sometimes people, you know, bundle under this, but again, I'm a minimalist, I want to get people like into the work and not spending weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, right on, you know, the prep work. And this is important, but I want to make it simple. So the two things I'm talking about, and why are what are your core values. And the second one is your impact statement. So let's break that down a little bit. One of the best summaries or articulations, of how core values can help you and I wish I could remember his name, I can't, it was in a podcast interview with a navy seal. If anybody doesn't know what the navy seals are, they are an elite military force in the US Special Forces. You know, there's a lot of Mystique around them, whatever. But he talked about being a leader in very challenging times. And you know, you might be jumping out of a plane and somebody might be shooting at you in the middle of the night, like you have no idea what you're going to run into. And no matter how much you try to prep and the Navy SEALs do an incredibly thorough job as much as humanly possible to prepare for very challenging situations, you're still going to run into situations that you just couldn't have imagined. And so your core values help you make fast decisions. And on on the fly in real world conditions where things you know, don't happen the way they are sometimes taught in college campuses, or in a book or you know, what happened to your mentor 10 years ago, right? All kinds of things surprise us as entrepreneurs, and all kinds of decisions that we need to make on a daily basis that can have big ramifications. So your core values are central in so many ways. And he was talking about how, when you're in that fast paced environment, with very, you know, weighty decisions needing to be made in the moment. Knowing your core values is one of the best social entrepreneur strategies in that context.
One of the mistakes that a lot of leaders and organizations make about core values is they try to have too many of them, they try to do too much, right, you're jumping out of a plane, he's like three, or four. And he used to do this with his team, when they were like jumping off the ships or out of planes or helicopters, or, you know, going into these hard situations before they jumped out of the plane, what's our core values, you know, it's kind of like, they'd huddle up and remind each other their core values, and then boom, out of the plane and into the unknown and into, you know, what they were there to do. So, if you go take a look at a where printers, I'll put a link, we actually have five, I wish I could get it down to four, but you get a sense, like, they're very one or two words, and then one or two sentences for each one. Keep it simple, keep it crisp. Think about it. But don't overthink about it, you can change them along the way. But before you do anything else comes back to your core values. Are they lean? Do they make sense to you be sharing with some other people? Do people get what you're trying to say in this very crisp and concise way? So that's the core values and what I suggest. The second thing is your impact statement. Again, keep it simple, don't overcomplicate it, but how do you want to make move the needle in the world and making the world a better place? Many folks who are in the social entrepreneur wellness space, they use these big kind of complicated theories of how they're trying to make the world a better place. And I think of Einstein who said, if you can explain it to your grandmother, then you don't understand it very well. Spoken like a true minimalist, right? Keep it simple. And make it very, you know, a paragraph or two to describe what the work Yeah, what the dent you want to make in the world to move the needle and making this a better place for the children and the grandchildren. So that's it. Don't rush through your why, but also don't overcomplicate it, no matter where you are. You're just starting and you've never had a paying client, or you're rocking it as an entrepreneur, but you're trying to like get things smoother and work on quality of life and you know, impacting more people revisit your core values in your impact statement, or if you've never done it before, start there. Start with why. Second question, Who? So after we know our why, and the core values and the impact statement, you know, needle we want to move in the world. Then I want to encourage you to think about the specifics of who you want to help. Somebody once asked it, who can you best serve? I think Suzanne Evans phrased the question that way a business coach who works with service providers. A mentor of mine says when we try to help Everybody, we wind up helping nobody. Right? Think about that for a minute, we try to help everybody, we wind up helping nobody. I see that a lot good hearted, caring people in the social entrepreneur and wellness space, we want to reduce suffering and increase joy and wellness and equity and inclusion and all that's beautiful, right? And because of your life experience, your work experience, your training who your network is, you know, we're not all equipped to help everybody in the same way, some of us are better equipped to help certain folks, you know, I'm kind of short and stocky, I'm not ever gonna be a great basketball coach, built for it genetically, you know, I, there's other things I do really well. But you know, being a great basketball player that's just not in my wheelhouse. And if I tried to, like help basketball player, I'm not sure that's the right thing. It's kind of a silly example, but just sometimes because of a number of variables. And also just our passion. So specifically, the questions I want to encourage you to play with are, who can you best serve? And really, like, you know, sit with that, bringing your whole self and your whole life experience to that question, including your passion, what your intuition and your sense of spirituality are guiding you on this? And also, who are you most passionate about serving? Right? Sometimes we can do a good job, I'm thinking of somebody who I recently had a conversation with who had very high level experience in the corporate environment, but was a little less passionate about that, then another area that she decided to go into. So bring quality attention to both of those questions. And again, they are who can you best serve? And who are you most passionate about serving? I also want to say this can change over time. So you know, it's good to go back through these questions. It's a new year, it's part of the reason I'm bringing this out, in addition to kind of a reboot, for those who could use that around. What are you doing in 2021. And the last thing I'm going to say about this is oftentimes at the kinds of people that I work with, and you're listening to this podcast, there's more than one, there's like two or three buckets, they're all related. You know, for me, for instance, social entrepreneurs, that's my passion. I've been doing it a long time got this podcast that's well known in the social entrepreneur space. But some of the folks I work with, and some of the things that I offer are more suited for somebody who's a newer social entrepreneur. And some of the things that I've, I've worked on my one to one coaching, for instance, are either very established social entrepreneurs who really want to work on quality of life or impacting more people, or both. And there's different offers, and I like working with both of them. So I have like multiple buckets in the social entrepreneur space. And being aware that there, there's nuances of who I'm most passionate about really helps me in some of the further questions which we'll get into for a minute. So if it's not just one exact person, I'm not one of those people that says yes, to niche it down, and can only help one exact kind of person and don't ever talk about somebody else. That's not what we're talking about here. But I do think being clear about your who will help you grow your business faster. So those are the first two questions. Let's just pause for a minute, I want to say thank you to our sponsors. And then we'll get into the second question. Do you have a business that's wanting to help more people, and you want to live a good quality life, and you want to grow the income and if you do, one of the best things I can recommend is podcasting. Let me tell you why. podcast listeners, they love new ideas are called early adaptors. And they're always looking for new things. They're leaders in their networks. People look to them for some of those new ideas, they tend to make more money, they tend to be younger. And they just tend to, you know, be more connected. If you look at social media, for instance, they have more followers on the various types of social media platforms, or they tend to work in environments where they lead larger numbers and people. So they're, it's a fabulous opportunity to get your impact message in front of a certain kind of audience. And a lot of our listeners are like, wow, I never really knew that or thought about that. In addition, podcasts, the average podcast episode is almost 43 minutes long. So you really have time to get into the nuances and the depth and the different kinds of people you help or the different offerings and you know, give people different strategies for, you know, the topic that you're talking about. It's an incredible medium and the listeners are just, it's hard to explain how awesome they are. So if you'd like to learn how to leverage podcasting, to grow your impact business, whether you want to be a guest or a host, or you want to do both. We're printers has a podcast access team, it's affordable. And we'll walk you through every step of the way. So take a look, link in the show notes. And thank you to everybody in the aware printers podcast success team who sponsors this podcast. Okay, we made it through the first two questions, let's get to the last two questions and talk about how you put it all together what this has to do with growing a business. So the third question I ask is what remember, we are now have spent some time with your why your core values and your impact goals. You thought about your who, and maybe the nuances of a couple different, you know, kinds of people that you're in a really unique position to serve, and you're really passionate about serving, if you're not passionate about serving them, then maybe spend a little more time with that, because it's, you know, growing a business isn't always easy. And that passion and alignment that'll get you through times when you know, you hit some bumps or you know, maybe as a year like 2020, and, you know, feeling aligned and feeling really passionate about helping a certain kind of person? It's one of the reasons I put that question before the what. So knowing your why, and knowing your who, then think about what I know, sometimes actually, a lot of times, it goes the other way, somebody will say Paul, I wrote a book. And you know, now I need to think about marketing. It's not a prices. And if you can at all, try to pay attention to the suggested sequencing here not giving you the answers, I'm trying to give you the questions on the sequence. And I find that people who pay attention to the sequencing do much better if you pay attention, you know, you want to write a book. But you think about your why and your who and then you get into the book, it's going to be a much easier book to market than somebody who hasn't, you know, spent really goes in deep to create a program or write a book, or write a group program. And then like, hmm, now I should probably think about marketing, haven't answered certain key questions. So that's the why of the sequencing. And in specific, what we're looking here are, what are your products and services? And how does your group program your one on one coaching, your online course your book, your you know, supplement your, whatever it is yoga, teacher training, whatever it is, how does it help your ideal client or clients with some of the things that they're either challenged with, or that they're wanting, and they aren't quite sure how to bring about. So that's why it's so important, the technical name for why you want to sync up your who and your what is product market fit, you can do some research on that. There's a lot in said about that. But one of the things we know in the entrepreneur world is when you you know create a thing, a book, a course, a supplement, healing training a, and it's not exactly well synched up with the kind of people you want to help, you're going to have a much harder time selling a much harder time growing your business. So it's very, incredibly helpful and very powerful, to be thoughtful, and intentional, bring your care to your who, and bring that into the design of the actual thing. And many social entrepreneurs, and wellness and healer folks, our listeners sometimes miss that step. And then they can spend months or years spinning their wheels not getting momentum and one of the simplest, most important but under, you know, product market fit. That's something they talk a lot about in Silicon Valley. But it's something that's oftentimes very under attended to in the impact and wellness space. There's not comfortable. So that's why I kind of I don't use the jargon, but you can do your own research on product market fit or just listen to your intuition, right you have a thing. And in one case, a you've really put a lot of care into how your product or service meets the needs or the desires of your ideal client. Well, it's kind of a no brainer that in many cases, most cases, that scenario compared to scenario B where you have a great thing and it has all these bells and whistles and it's super powerful, but it's not. There's a disconnect between the specific things that your ideal client want, the more that disconnect is well who would be surprised that the business Struggling to grow and bring in revenue and help more people etc. So, again, start with your who, and then come to your what the very specific products and services and get into the details as you're starting to build it up. enough that. So again, the sequence is we're now at the last question of four questions. We've thought about why we've thought about who we've thought about your what. Now we're going to get into the how, and this is your marketing strategies being visible in the marketplace? How are your ideal clients going to find about find out about you and what you offer? And think about that question for a minute. And let me repeat the question, How are your ideal clients going to find out about you and what you offer? One of the things I see, especially among newer social entrepreneurs and people who are struggling, is people put a lot of attention into the What can I wrote that fabulous book or this incredible course, or teacher training, great product that's unlike anything else out there? It's awesome, that they maybe have put less quality attention into what I call what's in front of the paywall. Right, so many people are doing a lot of work about the actual thing that you can buy, which I'm a huge fan of. That's one of the questions, it's 25% of the equation here, folks, you're what definitely put good quality attention. But don't under attend to what's in front of the paywall. In other words, if I can't find if I can't experience it, feel it, touch it, use it, get benefit from it until I pay you money, you're gonna have a hard time growing a business. What in this modern economy, we have these incredible tools, right? I have this podcast, it's like, basically having a radio station, my grandparents, our grandparents, or anybody of that generation who was an entrepreneur think you could have your own newspaper or your own, you know, like a blog, or your own YouTube channel, your own TV station, or your own radio station for you know, not a whole lot of money comparatively, we just blow their minds. So we have these incredibly of Instagram and LinkedIn. Oh my gosh, you know, there's a lot of options out there to be visible in the marketplace. I want to just encourage you before you get overwhelmed about how should I do it and so and so said it, you know, video is really hot right now podcasting in 2020 took off super hot, does that mean everybody I meet I say you should do podcast? No, I want you to think about it in sequence. Remember, we're going through a sequence of four questions that build on each other your why your who very important data about where you might want to be visible in the marketplace, what kind of marketing strategy that you want to use, paying attention to the specifics of who you want to help who you want to serve some platforms. You know, let's talk about LinkedIn. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. LinkedIn, you know, is historically been more leaders, people on LinkedIn tend to have more, you know, decision making opportunities and responsibilities and their work. They tend to, you know, be higher achievers are in bigger leadership positions, they tend to make more money. They tend to be folks who really value staying on top of what's happening in their professional field, etc. Compare that to let's say somebody who's on Instagram, right? younger audience on Instagram, very visually oriented, what you do there is different, you know, if you have a visual brand, I'm thinking some of our members who are makers, they, you know, the deck of cards are beautiful candles that I am they does soy based candles and you know, they're just gorgeous. And she's done. You know, most of our a lot of her marketing on Instagram makes sense. It's a very visual brand. And it comes through very clearly on Instagram. And she's marketing to people who also have a certain aesthetic and it works really well and Instagram and LinkedIn might not be the best place for Think about your why, and your who and your what the specifics of those. As you're coming into the conversation of how are you going to be visible on the marketplace and make informed choices. The other suggestions I have in your house is I like to encourage To pick one marketing channel, and have it be your featured marketing channel, some language I came up with, because I saw people getting really overwhelmed. So the idea with your featured marketing channel is just as small businesses, micro businesses, in many cases or even solo printers, we can't be everywhere, or at least not effectively. The idea of a featured marketing channel is like, you know, if you're making a big movie, you one of the first things that a skillful, you know, movie leadership team will do when they get an idea, yes, let's do this movie, they go get the lead actor and actresses, right, who's gonna star in this movie, lots of other decisions that need to be made. And you know, sometimes these things are happening concurrently, but very, very early on, they try to, you know, kind of buttoned down, who's going to be the lead actor, slash actresses, right. And it influences everything else. So many other things. That doesn't mean, you don't want great supporting actors or great music, right? And is a reason that you start there. And I think, the same kind of care and consideration of how you're going to be visible in the marketplace. Obviously, with the word printers, it's this podcast, but a lot of time and care into our guests and learning how to produce a great show and all the little nuances of having a podcast be successful. And according to listen notes, the world's first podcast specific search engine, and we're printers is now a top 1.5% podcast in the world, of all the podcasts in the world, we're in the 1.5 percentile. That's pretty cool. That doesn't happen by accident, and it wouldn't have happened if I was trying to be everywhere. And as I brought more care and attention, and focus to the podcast, some other things dropped away, and I do them less often. And it still works, I'm still able to reach my goals in terms of income and impact, because I chose I made that choice very, in a very informed way. And that means I'm not scattered, I'm not overwhelmed. If something awesome is happening on Instagram, I might find out about it. But I'm not constantly trying to figure out what's going there. I'm bringing the you know, I'm treating this podcast, as the featured channel that is, and really learning how to do that well, and bringing my creativity, care and love to this podcast, I want you to pick a channel that makes sense for your particular why, who and what, and select something that's a really good fit. If you're not sure, and get some help with that, it's a really important decision that will bring you so much ease and help you be more successful at hitting your both income and impact goals. So that's what I got, I just gave you how I work on my clients money. And I did that because I want to help our audience and our community. We're ever you landed on 2020 was a great year 2020 was just terrific as an entrepreneur want to help people reboot, and our worlds, you know hurting. There's a lot of areas that can use healing and positive change. And I know that you our listeners have what it takes to bring that change about. So I hope these four questions can be useful to you. If you have questions about you know, how I work with clients and how you can use this in your specific situations, please reach out, you can use the contact page on the web printers website. And, you know, go ahead and ask away. And also, please feedback. What do you think of these solo episodes? I'm certainly I'm very committed to continuing to interview the incredible impact leaders and skillful social entrepreneurs that we've been known for interviewing. But I want to weave these in. As you can see, it's a little different flavor and we can get into some nuance about specific issues and questions that are coming up among our listeners in a way that an interview format isn't quite as focused. Thank you for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.