The Black Girl Business Bar

This week, we’re starting a new series on sales, mindset, money, and so much more. First up, diagnosing the three main problems for new online business owners.

Show Notes

This week, we’re starting a new series on sales, mindset, money, and so much more. I want to help you get focused on your business so that you can start to make big changes.

We’re going to begin by diagnosing the three main problems in any business.

First up: messaging.

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More on Khalida

Khalida DuBose is a business mentor specializing in sales strategy. As a previous crowdfunding coach, she supported more than a thousand crowdfunding campaigns and project creators in their quest to bring their dreams, passions, and ideas to the world. Now, she focuses on helping women of color who are early-stage online business owners as they navigate the entrepreneurial journey. For more information on Khalida, visit khalidadubose.com. Follow Khalida on Instagram @khalida.dubose. You can email her at khalida@blackgirlbusinessbar.com.

The Black Girl Business Bar is produced by Zuri Berry (@ZMCPodcasts). Music by Vincent Tone and Die Hard Productions.

Creators & Guests

Host
Khalida DuBose
Business + Mindset Coach
Producer
Zuri Berry
Principal Producer at ZMC Podcasts

What is The Black Girl Business Bar?

The Black Girl Business Bar Podcast is for Black entrepreneurial women who crave practical information to implement in their businesses and careers. They want tips and tactics that work and they want on-the-go mentorship that will make a difference in their businesses, projects, and lives.

Hosted by business coach and crowdfunding expert Khalida DuBose, the Black Girl Business Bar is all about letting Black women know what's possible for them in their entrepreneurial journey.

Ladies for the next five episodes. I'm going to help you step up your game. With a five-part series on sales mindset, money, and so much more. So I know these are not our normal topics in this podcast, but March is Women's History Month and happens to be my birth month. And so I want it to just pour into you in a different way and make sure I'm getting you super clear on your understanding of what's happening in your business and how to move it forward. So I'm going to help you to focus like really narrow in that focus on what's happening so that you can start to make big changes.

Welcome to the Black Girl Business bar podcast. I'm your host Khalida DuBose. And this podcast is my love letter to all of you, especially you Black women and women of color.

I'm on a mission to help you thrive in your business and your life by bringing you practical advice, tips, and mentorship that will empower you to make bold moves. I want to see you increase your sales, overcome your mindset blocks and step into your best self as the leader of your business and life.

and just let you know that we're going to talk probably in two parts for this episode, we're going to talk about diagnosing the problem in your business. And I wanted to start off in this place because I think that, well, you guys know, I believe everything starts with clarity.

If you're not clear on things, then all of a sudden what comes in, it starts to be like thoughts and feelings. And we're not even sure if they're true. We're not sure if the thoughts are true and then they lead to feelings. And so you just get more and more and more confused and things just feel scattered.

So my goal is always and my coaching and when I'm here with you guys in the podcast to really like help you to stay clear about what's going on. And so I have just had such a pleasure talking to so many ladies in the last few weeks, you guys hopped on strategy sessions with me. You've been showing up for my lives. I've been getting feedback in my DMs over on Instagram. It's been such a beautiful month, and kind of unexpected because I took off a lot of time from creating content. And so I just really talked to you guys and I heard so much from you and it really got my wheels spinning on how I want to present information.

And so I decided to use March this month that we're celebrating women's history. To really help you to start to build what it is that you want to build. So if you're listening to this and you're a coach, or if you're some type of service provider, this all applies to you, right.

We're in business. And what does it really mean to be in business? What do you need for business? Right? You need an offer, something that you do, right. Or something that you help do, and then you need people. So that's your community or your audience, i.e. your ideal clients. Right? So, however you want to think about that. So you have those two basic things. Those are the two basic things that you absolutely need. You need an idea, and then you need the people. Okay.

So then we need a couple tools, right? And the main tool that we need, in this space online, especially is marketing. Right? So the umbrella of marketing.

And what do we do in our marketing? We show people that we understand their issues, i.e. in our messaging or our content, and we show them how we can provide transformation, how we can take them from point A to point B. It doesn't matter what kind of business you have. That's what we're doing. It's that simple.

We then invite them to that offer. We give them a way so that they can reach out to us, know more about it, or you know, how they can click and purchase. And we convert them into customers. Right? And we do that over and over and over and over and over. And then that's how we have a business, right. A viable business.

So I would just want it to turn your attention to that. Really make sure I ground everything as we hop into this conversation.

I'm going to go over some of the things that I just hear so often, because I really want this to resonate with you. So many things that I hear so often out there in the online space, or even in my coaching. So people start to have thoughts and feelings about their business, as I said, when they're feeling like things aren't going right. So we get the, we get the businesses very basic, but then, you know, I hop into this and I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And I like to really talk to the people who are just entering this space. And by just entering this space, it could be today, or it could have been two years ago. You might still feel a little bit disoriented. It really depends on like what you've been doing in this space and how much time you've been putting into.

And just really where you're at. So people start to have thoughts and feelings about their business. Like this is hard right now. Like somehow the business just feels hard. It's hard to explain what that is, but it just feels hard. Like I am starting to feel like I don't want to do this where it's triggering me.

I feel unclear. You start to feel very unclear, not sure what to do next. Not sure what's going to move the envelope. You know, you're doing a bunch of things and it just feels like you're doing it in Bain. You aren't showing up the way you think you should, the way you would want to, or the way you used to. You start to doubt your offer, your ability to coach your clients, or to even find clients we are done for you.

And you start arbitrarily changing your offer based on what you think people's perception of you is or what you do. . So customers are like, oh, I thought you were this. And well, maybe we should start offering that. Or something happens in your business, right? Whether it's something with your employees or something with a contract or, you know, like a client and you start to lose your confidence.

And sometimes it's something not happening in your business. I can't sell people aren't attracted to me. And so I'm losing my confidence. Maybe this isn't what I was cut out to do.

So then take those thoughts that you're starting to have about your business. This business that's just literally your service that's meant to help people and you start lumping all those thoughts and feelings onto the business. And then where people's thoughts usually go as well is towards their audience. Okay. So just hang in there with me on this one. I'm just really trying to like really paint this picture for you. And they start to say things like I'm not in front of my ideal.

This group of people doesn't invest in themselves. So think about your target audience and think about who they are and you start saying they don't invest in ourselves, right? I'm a Muslim Black woman. Black women don't invest in themselves. Muslims don't invest in themselves. Men don't invest in themselves, right? Moms don't. Single people, you know, single mothers don't invest in themselves. People won't invest just to learn how to have healthier relationships, you know, if you're a dating coach, you know, these could start to be your thoughts.

I need people in my audience because that will increase my likelihood of selling. So this is, you know, I'm having a people problem. Like I don't have enough people.

I need to feel more confident in my sales marketing or my messaging. Or, you know, I'll start to feel more confident when my service, you know, when people buy it or when people like my posts. Or when my, clients actually start to get results. Then I'll feel confident, right? I'm not saying that you can't have a confidence boost as that those things start to happen, but they think I can only feel confident once these things happen.

And finally, you know, under audience, I serve people. So I need to have multiple offerings or my audience won't want to work with me. I need to have this vast suite. So I seem like I'm more I'm more worthy of investing in. Then people start to, you know, lump thoughts onto sales, right?

Like maybe, maybe I'm having a sales problem. And so they lumped their thoughts and feelings onto the sales. I don't understand why people aren't buying from me. I feel like people don't want to be sold to, or I don't even like being sold to. I'm not making offers because fill in the blanks. I've heard like everything under the sun, I've made every single excuse under the sun and deep down inside when I was making the excuse, I always knew the truth.

When I get people on sales calls, I can never convince them to buy from me. You know, somebody actually said this to me. I can never convince them to buy from me. I don't want to feel sleazy when I sell or I do feel kind of sleazy when I feel, I feel pushy. I don't want to force people to do something.

Or people describe their calls when I'm on calls, you know, all I do is I, you know, I answer their questions. I tell them what I do, and then I let them decide. And it's not working, et cetera. So all the stories start to happen. Okay.

You know, I just want to pause here for a moment and I just wanted you to hear those thoughts and feelings. Because I know if you're at a junction in your business where you're feeling confused, something there resonated with you.

All right. So the three areas that I want to really focus your attention in, on to start diagnosing your problem and to make those big moves and just really start to really clarify this for you. There's always going to be things to overcome and business. But it's very important for us to understand, like, what is the problem that we're really going through so that we're not in the weeds with everything else and we're not moving the needle forward.

So I'm going to talk to you about messaging, which is our tool. Remember I said, it's a tool under marketing. And then I'm going to talk to you about audience, which is our people who we need in order to run our business. And I'm going to talk to you about sales, which is transformation of your people. It's the start of the transformation of your people. And it's also the lifeblood of your business. So very important. Okay.

So we need to be very clear on these areas so that we're not like making all these other problems for ourselves because we don't know what's going on. So for this episode, I'm just going to talk to you about messaging and then we're going to hop into the other two next week.

All right. So let's talk about messaging. Messaging is a tool. It's a tool that lets your audience know that you understand what they're going through. It allows you to like showcase your expertise, share parts of your journey that will be helpful to your audience so that they can see what's possible for them.

So they can see how they can go from point A to point B. Essentially you're offering them valuable insights. You might be teaching them something. You might be helping them to have like little shifts that get them prepared to work with you. So if you're starting to wonder is my problem with my messaging. There's a couple of things I want to orient you to questions that you can ask yourself. And you know, me, I love for you to ask powerful questions. So ask yourself the question wherever I'm showing up online, and I'm putting the most, you know, attention towards, are those people engaging with the content? So is my audience engaging with the content? And I don't mean like vanity engagement, like, okay. I just, you know, okay. Yeah. I'm getting like five likes or I'm getting all the likes, you know, and that's it. And this really depends on, like, you really have to think about this with, you know, at the stage that you're at.

So if you're brand new and you have like a couple hundred followers. And you're just kind of getting oriented to the space. You're probably going to get people who just like things. They might, you know, leave a comment in your story if they're looking at your content in story. They might say, oh, you know, yeah, this resonates with me.

Or, you know, oh, I had a similar situation. Right. And you can tell that it's resonating with them, or you might be on day one today and you put something out and you have 150 followers, and you're getting just a couple likes. But essentially, if you, you will know that message is working a little bit, if people start to like, and then comment, and sometimes people, you know, it, it takes different forms. They go from liking to leaving an emoji, et cetera. And again, I think that sometimes people leave comments or they'll slide into your DMS or whatever. And so that can look different. Right. So I want you to think about this in different ways. Okay. Not just nobody asks me a question about this exact post. You know, nobody told me that they agree 100%, but are they engaging with it? Okay. Are people following you? This is a good sign, right? And I want to throw this in here because sometimes people get freaked out when they're getting unfollowed. I love when people who like when a profile follows me and they're like, it's an all in a different language that I can't understand. And they follow me for some reason. I don't know. Maybe they thought I was cute. Okay. They follow me. And then they unfollow me. Great. That's not my. Okay. That person, I can't help them. They might be a woman of color. Right. But how are we going to speak? We don't speak the same language potentially. They might not even be in business. Right. But something attracted them to me for a few minutes and they unfollowed me.

If you're finding that followers who you do want to serve are unfollowing you, that's a whole nother thing. So ask yourself the question is that happening? And the reason why I'm orienting you to that is because a lot of times we're making up stories about what's happening and those things aren't actually happening. So then orient to yourself and ask yourself the question. Do I even know how to capture what my audience is going through? Am I even sure what my audience is going through? Am I sure what their pain points are? Am I sure that I understand where they're at today? What they want changed, what their desires are, et cetera.

Do you sit and struggle to figure out what to say? And I'm not talking about the perfectionist in all of us where we're like, how do I say this properly on my carousel post? Or how can I convey this point really well, in my stories, I'm not talking about that. I'm saying like, do you sit down and you're like, I don't even know what they're going through. I don't know what to say. Like, it feels weird for me to start talking because like, I don't even know if anybody's going to listen because I don't know what's going on.

So sit with that for a second. Ask yourself these questions. And if you find that this is what's going on, you probably have a messaging problem, but the messaging problem really lies in the fact that you don't understand your audience. We're going to talk about audience a little bit next next podcast. But you do have a messaging problem. And the root of that is that you don't understand that your people.

You've probably heard many people in online space say this, if you're into business or if you're trying to start a business, you've probably heard people say this, but it bears listening to this again. You really don't understand your people and there's no way around this. Okay. The simple fix here is to talk to your audience.

It doesn't matter how small that audience is or how large it is. Talk to your audience, get to know them well. And if this is a real problem for you, if you're having mindset blocks around this. Whatever might be happening, you might want to seek support in doing this. With a coach, or if you already have a coach, you know, talking this through with them, bringing this up.

You might want to just get some support on that.

So one of the objections that usually comes up when I talk about this subject is people were like, you know what, but I'm so new. I don't have an audience. How do I even know I'm in front of the right people? So as a business owner, one of those skills that you're gonna have to get really good at is learning how to trust your own instincts. You have to learn how to trust yourself. And this is a great time to practice that and exercise it.

Number one, you need to make an educated guess. I'm assuming if you have a business, you already know who you want to work with. Right. So start from there. Let yourself have a starting point and realize it's going to evolve over time.

You can still make money. I remember my coach saying like her niche has gotten more and more refined over time, but still that didn't stop her from making hundreds of thousands of dollars while she was refining it. Okay. So keep that in mind. You need to make an educated guess about who these people are. Start following them. Start following who you think they are, and then get them on a Zoom call or on the phone and ask them specific questions that you need to know. That's how you would do that.

All right. That's all I'm going to say about audience. I want to stop here and, uh, we're going to come back next week and we're going to talk about the other two areas that you need to diagnose. If you have a problem in which is your audience and your sales.

All right, friends. Thank you so much for hanging out and listening to the Black Girl Business Bar podcast. If you haven't already, hit that follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. I would also be so grateful to you if you would rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts so other women of color can find this very helpful information.

If you found today's episode helpful or had any aha moments, no matter how big or small, I invite you to reach out to me personally at khalida@blackgirlbusinessbar.com. And as always my friends we're dropping episodes every Tuesday. And I can't wait to see you back then.