It’s Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over Coffee with Sian Lennegan (ep. 9)

Who is Sian?

In our latest episode of It’s Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over Coffee we talk with Sian Lenegan of workwithsian.co.uk

Sian is a Business Mentor, member of the Forbes Coaches Council and I help service-service-based business owners and agencies gain an unfair advantage and crack the growth code to getting and keeping more clients in order to build a business that loves you back.

In this recording you will learn that Sian has spent many thousands developing herself and her own knowledge and how that has helped her to focus her skills to develop her clients business and that the key to growing your business is to grow your email list.

Key Takeaways

In this recording, you will learn that Sian has spent many thousands developing herself and her own knowledge and how that has helped her to focus her skills to develop her client’s business and that the key to growing your business is to grow your email list.

Valuable Free Resource or Action

You can learn more Sian at workwithsian.co.uk

Transcript

Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Stuart Webb 0:43

Hi, guys, welcome to, it’s not rocket science, five questions over coffee with Today I’m here with john, then again, I’ve got my coffee in front of me ready to go, Sean, I hope you’ve got you’re ready to go and hydrated. Great. So let’s, let’s start Sean is is a business mentor business coach working with small businesses great passion for giving them that edge in order to get them to understand how to charge more and deliver more for their clients, I think she’s gonna sort of talk about something that she’s got going on this week when we talk about that. So welcome to the to the podcast, Sean. Great to be here, Stuart. And let’s, let’s start by sort of talking about what it is that you find this your biggest challenge your ideal client faces normally before you get involved with helping them.

Sian Lenegan 1:37

So Stuart, my clients are service based businesses or agency owners, and they tend to find that they get stuck into a cycle of feast and famine. And that’s one of the biggest challenges that I come across. When you find that you’re in that feast and famine cycle, you get stuck in the weeds. And it’s really hard to kind of look up and look at the long term view of the business and do the right things at the right time to move the business forward. So I find that is one of the most difficult things. And when I was an agency owner, I’m not proud to admit it, but I got really, really good at feast and famine. But what I was also really good at as when I needed to make the sales, I would absolutely hustle, and I would land 40 5060, even 100k of sales in one month. And then I’d be Oh, all right again. But what I’ve done is I’ve taken that hustle, and I’ve tried to create a roadmap for business owners to apply consistent predictable activities to generate new business and keep existing customers and just get out of that feast and famine trap that I see so many business owners in.

Stuart Webb 2:47

And that’s a really common problem, isn’t it? I mean, we come across people like that all the time. So one common mistake people make when they’re trying to solve that problem without any sort of help.

Sian Lenegan 2:59

The one thing that I find is, most business owners don’t take the time to identify what the right niche and the right profitable niche is for their product or service. So I was guilty of this, I started my first business in the middle of the 2008 recession. And I get it I was so petrified of niching down, because why would you want to exclude anybody from your sales pipeline? Why would you want to leave any money on the table, I completely understand the fear or the barrier, the limiting thoughts around that. But the thing is, when you niche down effectively, you’re in a position where your sales message will resonate, your sales will be so much easier and more effective. And not only that, you can position yourself as an expert so that you can really charge more and just have a scalable business. So that’s the one thing is niching down and doing it in the right way to find the profitable niche for your business.

Stuart Webb 3:58

Right good. Yeah, absolutely. niche is a critical, critical thing for people to find it needs to identify that thing that they can honestly say they have expertise in because otherwise what you’re doing is just repeating what other people have already tried and you don’t really add any value to it.

Sian Lenegan 4:14

Yes. And if you’re standing on the street, trying to sell to everybody, you’re really selling to no one. So one of the exercises. And this is one of the topics I’ll be talking about on my webinar on Thursday, how to get more sales and charge more. You will look at it as if you have a stadium full of your ideal customers and kind of gathering all of the people that are your ideal customers, the real buyers, the power buyers, not tire kickers or the freebie seekers. And if you have a message that resonates with them, you can get out of that red ocean and create a blue ocean for yourself so that you can really, you know, just charge more sales and more effective things are tough. Anyway, why don’t you think harder for yourself?

Stuart Webb 5:03

Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Great. So you talked a little bit and we can come back to that you talked about that webinar that you’re running, but are there other free resources or actions that you suggest that people take in order to be able to sort of start this process of understanding their nation and growing their expertise?

Sian Lenegan 5:23

Absolutely. I’m so passionate about business owners finding their niche and finding the right niche for them, that I’ve created a mini training called nail your niche. And it’s available at Learn rashanna credit UK, so I’ve got a little coffee, it’s absolutely free. Because I just think this is one of the cornerstones that business owners need to get their heads around. And really dig into your ideal customer avatar, and finding out who that is, get absolute clarity on that, so that you can go to where the traffic is. And you can fill up your stadium with your ideal buyers and position yourself as the expert.

Stuart Webb 6:02

I’ve stopped that scrolling across the screen at the moment, Sean so that people can make an add to that if they need to learn, which is quite, there’s quite a lot of quite a lot of syllables in there. And I, you know, I just thought was useful to stick that up. Because now with Shawn co.uk that’s the way you need to go to try that free training. So what’s the concept that book the talk that’s most been impactful for you in your experience?

Sian Lenegan 6:28

So it was really hard to narrow one thing down when I thought about this question. I’ve been really lucky that over the last 12 years of running my agency, I’ve been insatiable about educating myself on business. So I’ve done an MBA with Goldman Sachs. I’ve followed Tony Robbins to America and around around Europe. But the one thing that really stands out for me was in 2016, I was lucky enough to be in an auditorium with Jay Abraham. And he was talking about the three ways to grow a business, there’s only three ways to grow any business. And what what we do as business owners, we tend to focus on the one and we tend to focus on the one that’s the most difficult, and that’s finding new customers. So he talks about looking at your business in three dimensions, finding new customers, yes, but also increasing your average spend, and also increasing the frequency that people buy from you. If you look at your business in this three dimensional way, and you build strategies around the three pillars, instead of always trying to focus on the one which takes the most time resources and money. You can build a business panthenol that, you know, sets you up for scaling your business. And that’s one thing that mind with businesses I work with, they’re missing, easy, quick win opportunities to increase the price is always a big barrier around price. And also to try and find ways to cross sell and upsell their products and services. So that’s the one thing that I would absolutely talk about to to anyone for for a long time. I’ll chew your ear off about that one.

Stuart Webb 8:06

course, of course. Absolutely. Right. So that’s been fascinating. Shana. I don’t know. I just want to put on another little banner down here. That that that I think that three ways to grow a business he just talked about there. They that’s a blog post he wrote about that, that you can you can go and read a lot more about what Shawn’s got to say about that. It’s a really valuable to a blog. Is there one question that I should have asked you, which I failed to ask you so far. So this is your free, free hit for the chance to sort of talk about anything that really I’ve been too lazy to think about myself?

Sian Lenegan 8:40

Okay, Stuart, this was a great question. So if I lost everything, or if you lost everything, and you had to start all over again tomorrow, what is the one thing that you would absolutely focus on to build your business up again? And I can share with you the answer. So the one thing that I would absolutely focus on is list building. We often worry about LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, we worry about our social media platforms. But the thing is, during the US elections, my LinkedIn engagement dropped through the floor, you know, Mark Zuckerberg might change the algorithm again, or Instagram might go down again, and you don’t own your social media following. So you’ve really got to focus on list building and building a list have engaged subscribers and put them on a path to profit so that they will eventually become raving fans and customers or clients rather. So that’s the one thing list building as a business owner, you should always be list building.

Stuart Webb 9:48

Do you know I love that path profit. I might I might steal that one from me, Shawn. It was a great phrase, I should start building into all of my future marketing the past profit. And I think you’re absolutely brilliant at that. That’s great. way of doing it, this building is so important. It’s something I totally agree with you, I have been so frustrated at number of customers of mine that will turn around, I’m spending all my money on social media. And my answer to them is, you’ve never own social media and you never will own social media, you’ll only ever. And the other thing that I think is great about list building, and it’s something I’m preaching a lot about to people at the moment is, you know, with a list, if you actually get a physical address, you can write somebody a letter, and nobody does it anymore. Nobody writes letters to anybody. And you know, if I get a letter through the post is likely to be like one or two of that week, and the others will be bills. And I’m always interested in opening that up and finding out what someone’s got to say. So get back to print media, write a letter, even if it’s typed out of your word processor, put a leaflet in it and send it to somebody, you’d be amazed at the engagement that gives you

Sian Lenegan 10:51

Stuart, I think you should come along on Thursday to my webinar, talking about this a lot about list building, and you know how you can build your dream 100 list and really stand out from the crowd and just win clients. And I’ve got a little story that I’ll be sharing about how I want a 30k contract off the back of a KitKat. So the go

Stuart Webb 11:15

karts are important things. I think every build every business should definitely have a room in their life for KitKat shot. It’s been a pleasure. I really hope you’ve enjoyed it. I hope you’ve enjoyed the experience of working with guys, if you’d like to hear more about these sorts of things, here’s a list that I’ve got where you can go and you can subscribe to that list. And we tell you about upcoming videos where we’re going to be talking to people like Sean who have got great stories, great experience that you can pull upon. Just go to that list TCPA dot FYI forward slash subscribe, get on to the list, which in announces to the world that we’re going to be going live with one of these videos. And we’re going to be talking to people like Shawn on a regular basis. Sean, thank you very much. All the best with that with that video with that webinar on Thursday. I hope you get lots of lots of engaged people there. And they’re interested in helping to build their their lists. Thank you very much indeed. Great speaking. I hope you enjoyed your move. enjoyed your coffee. I’m just about to finish mine. Thank you. Bye bye bye.