How Listening to Your Audience Can Guide Your Next Business Move

Listen to again what people are asking for it listen to what the universe if we want to go there is telling you because I was then trying to pull my fitness business online as much as I could. And it almost felt like I had like a foot on the gas, while simultaneously had a foot on the brake.

This is the Entrepreneur School podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

Welcome back, friend, I'm so excited to have you here for another amazing guest episode on entrepreneur school. My guest today is Amy Koo foul and she is a fitness trainer turned lead generation specialist. And when I heard her journey, I just really wanted to share it with you. Because sometimes we just need to see examples of things happening in real life, to see what the opportunities are for ourselves. And she has made some important shifts created for herself by listening to her audience and actually paying attention to the signs that were around her with respect to when was the time to make a change, to move from the hustle mentality of the first version of her business into what it is at now. And I think that there's so many important messages inside of this story today, as well. We also talked about some great strategies with respect to lead generation, and email marketing and how you can get more eyeballs on your business, which you know, I am all about. So enjoy the episode.

Hey, Amy, welcome to Entrepreneur School.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here.

I'm really glad you're here, especially because you actually reached out to me after hearing me on a podcast I was on with a mutual friend, Amy draw. She was also a guest on entrepreneur school. And I was on her show. And I'm just like, actually want to highlight this first and foremost, because I always make an invitation to people to connect with me and you know, make an ask and put themselves out there. And you actually did that. So yes, yes to you. clapping for you.

Thank you for giving. Absolutely.

Yeah. And so and so when you reached out, you talked about what you do and your story as a business owner. And I thought this is such a perfect topic to bring to listeners on entrepreneur school, because I love highlighting different people's journeys, especially because sometimes we feel like it should be a certain way. And like, we think that you know, Step A is going to lead to step b and it's all going to be linear. And this is how we're going to grow. And then at a certain point, we're supposed to scale, we're not supposed to do one on one anymore. And there's all these imaginary rules that come from Doom scrolling the internet, basically, right. And so you were just sharing with me as well, like your whole journey of what you started in, and how you went from doing fitness. And now you teach business strategies, and particularly lead generation. And so like there's a big spread between those two things. So I love to hear kind of the whole story of how it evolved, and what your signals were that caused you to make the shifts to niching down and to moving into other areas.

Yeah, absolutely. So you're right, I started off. So I started out, I always know is one of those things I always knew. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I think I am a type of person who likes to write my own rules. I think it's kind of a thread through a lot of entrepreneurs. And I started my own business in the health and fitness space in 2011. So I did I worked for myself, I was a personal trainer and nutrition counselor. And like many personal trainers and nutrition counselors, I was one to one. And at the start of this now 2011 This is before you know back in the day before everybody worked at home, as a personal trainer, you're working five in the morning to eight in the morning, those are the prime times and then five at night to eight at night, you know when people weren't at work. So at that point, that split schedule, not ideal but it worked for me ended up building up some clients in the middle. But what it was is that I had a really what the outside looking in would call a successful business. And I grew that for quite a few years, and had a lot of people saying, oh my gosh, you me, you know, said, so great, you're building this business. And again, outside looking in, it looked great. But the reality behind the scenes is that I was working 50 plus hour, weeks, week over week, year over a year. And although from a financial standpoint, it looks pretty good. from a health standpoint, from a lack of sleep standpoint, from an unseen, my amazing personal training clients getting great results. Well, I haven't worked out in three weeks, I'm surviving on cups of coffee, not so good. So it did get to the point where I said, Okay, within my business, I need to come up with some sort of way that I can scale. Because this piece that I'm going on, is not going to last forever, it can't. And I knew this internally, and just to share like a little side story of a lot of times we I think as entrepreneurs as people, we have these feelings that we know something's off. And I was getting this feeling something's off, something's off. But it wasn't until there was a pivotal moment in my now 12 year old daughter, this is three years ago, was nine years old. She came up to me and now this whole time I'm building my business for her, like so many parent entrepreneurs, do we build it for our kids so that we can have this promise time freedom, financial freedom, that entrepreneurship promises. And for me, I always thought if I just hustle a little harder, I'm eventually going to arrive at this place where I turn the corner, and I'm not working 50 hour weeks. I'm not you know, having this to do list that's like forever lawn. But the reality was, every time I would arrive at that place that I thought my To Do Lists would be shorter that I thought I would have more time. You just have more things to solve. You've just graduated to a new level. So internally, I knew I'm starting to not believe the myth that I've been sold. But it was just one moment. I remember it's the moments in our life that we remember just so vividly. My beautiful 10 year old daughter came walking over to me again, she's probably seen the back of my head alone for like two years comes up to me. Mom, can we play Legos? And now there's some Monday afternoon at like three? Mom, can you play Legos. And instantly My heart sank. Because there's nothing in the world I wanted to do in that moment than to stop and go play Legos, my daughter, but I'm also facing this to do list that I already feel like I'm behind on. So I literally said you know, but I don't have I don't have any time right now. But let me pull up my calendar. And let me see when I can slot in some time. So that we can go and play Legos. So I'm looking through my calendar and the next available spot that I had a 30 minute gap was not till Thursday, at three. Without thinking of it. I turned to I said you know what? I don't have a lot of time right now have a Thursday at three. She goes Okay, mom? Yep. What have we got gut punch on that one. Okay, mom walks away to go play by herself. And it was in that instant that I went, Whoa. Things have to change and they can't change tomorrow. They gotta change today. Shut my laptop, went over to her said, You know what, I made a mistake. I have some time to play right now let's play to do lists can wait. Right. And it was that pivotal moment that although I had been feeling these things for quite a while, it was that moment that made me say I need to solve it. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's what they always say like the universe whispers until if you're not listening, and finally yells at you was something like that. And sometimes, yeah, we believe that we can accommodate everything. And we can keep pushing through. And like you said that it's truly like a natural belief to think that at some point, like, it's going to pay off that we've done all this work that we're hustling so hard that we've created, you know, we're fulfilling what we think that we said that we want, then the reality is that there's no like fast track, you can actually just go faster to get to a point, then something's gonna change, you have to actually figure out how to integrate it now. Which is always, every time I say that. It's like, oh, that's so much easier said than done. And it's true. Because it takes it takes more than just, you know, changing your business structure even to make that happen. It takes a shift in your mindset and your ability to now see that you know, your priorities and being really in alignment with your values and to allow yourself to be on a different timeline. Because in order to have the 30 minutes to play Legos, you need to make that a priority. And whether that's actually like scheduling it, like you said, but oh my gosh, so So you had that moment. And yeah, so

Oh, yeah. And I was and so changing niches even because now like you said, I'm in business, so it was really okay, I had this moment that this the way that I'm running things is not scalable. I need to figure it out. started trying to bring my fitness business online. But fitness although yes, there are people doing fitness online. It's not one of those things that translates as well. To the online space as other things, this is kind of like an again, like I just the lesson here is listen to again, what people are asking for it listen to what the universe if we want to go there is telling you, because I was then trying to pull my fitness business online as much as I could. And it almost felt like I had like a foot on the gas, while simultaneously had a foot on the brake. Like everything just felt a little sticky. It wasn't really working. In the meantime, while I'm struggling through this, I had a number of my friends and connections reach out to me and said, saying, oh my gosh, Amy, I've been watching grow your business over this last decade, I'm starting my own business, can I jump on a zoom call and pick your brain that can not click for me like I'm sorry, like, I must be just a little bit slower to catch on than others. But this was like four or five times where people were jumping on these zoom calls to pick my brain. And I'm not thinking much of it. Besides the fact let me help them out. They're coming back and saying, What can I do to repay you that was so helpful, I implemented I'm having a success. And it was after that happened a couple times that I went, Oh my gosh, I'm trying to pull this fitness thing online because I want schedule freedom because I want location freedom. And I'm quite literally having people reach out to me for something that I'm excited to talk about. That gives me scheduled freedom that gives me financial freedom. So as at that point, I said, You're not let me just go ahead continue with the fitness clients that I have. But pivot to really advertising more this coaching. And it's taken off since there and again, it's just I think adapting to what, what you're passionate about. Yes, but also what the markets asking for.

Yeah. And isn't it interesting how that's not what you would have said, your expertise within when you first started, right. And sometimes we get stuck in the boxes that we create for ourselves. And, you know, this is what I'm supposed to be doing not and not allowing this that people are asking you about different things or having a different kind of conversation? And what does that suggest that you should do? So I love I love that you listened to the market and you like gone all in on that, and have, you know, now been able to then get the clients in the business space who have different businesses, and then you're able to see more specifically, what they need, which leads you to where you're at now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's true. It's another thing to get over. It's just in my head. I don't think I ever said even though I had grown in business at that point for over a decade, I had helped, you know, unofficially coached other people to grow their business. I think in my head, I was like, Well, I didn't go to business school. Well, I didn't. So there was this mindset shift that needed to happen to say, you don't need a piece of paper to show that you've done something when you've quite literally done that thing. And once I was able to get over that it made everything else a lot easier. But yeah, so it was growing that I did that for you know, I still have one on one business clients. But then really also starting to recognize now I'm coaching business coaching across what ended up being about 26 different topics. So everything from idea conception to growing a full time business. So how do we price it? How do we create programming for it? How do we market it? That's still a lot. So still need to tighten a little bit. And so after doing that for a while said, How can I further niche down so that I'm not teaching across 26 different things. So I again, reached out to my people. And I said, here's what I'm thinking about doing? What are the areas that you're most struggling with? What do you wish you could see more content on and ran a survey, so ran a survey for them. And from the feedback from that survey, 53% of the people that responded since some sort of client acquisition, lead generation, and like that was the first place at 53%. The second place was like 12%. So it was lit a bunch of different things and came in and they're both. So that was huge for me saying, Okay, let me just dial in even further on lead gen and lead nurturing through email, which is what I do now.

Yes, that's so good. And like not surprising, really. Because without clients, you don't have a business. So finding clients is generally a lot of people's pain points. So then let's talk about some of the strategies that you support your clients with implementing with respect to lead generation, because that is also still a really big, big area. Because the tactically you've got advertising, you've got, like, offline, I like to call it to marketing. There's social media marketing, there's various visibility strategies, which I also talk about and share about. So where do you focus? And what are some of the tools and frameworks that you share?

Yeah, so the secret sauce, I guess we call it the thing that I can't help but doing, you know, really, it just kind of in my bones, I think, is really looking at everything and saying how can we make it more simple? And how can we make it more streamlined because if your business is simple, if your business is streamlined, you can scale it without it costing you all of your hours. So I took that idea and said Alright, let me come up with The framework that I can teach other people that will help them to simplify and streamline their business. And from that work is where came what the framework that I use now it's called the lead generation pyramid. So essentially, if we were to look at describe that it's a triangle, right, a pyramid, the base of that pyramid is audience. So first thing we want to do is how can we get eyes and ears on us in relation to our offer our eyes and ears on our offer. So anyone, if someone never saw you before, they're not on the pyramid. The second they hear about you in relation to your offer, now they are in that bottom layer, audience. So that can look like they follow you on social media that can look like they hear you on a podcast, like we're doing now. Now, they heard about you, I joke, that that can even literally be if you're like really amped about what you do, and you talk to the grocery store cashier, she is now a member of your audience, because she's heard about your stuff. So from there, that's our audience. As soon as humanly possible, though, we want to get people up to that second layer. So that's going to be leads. And I think I see this mistake a lot, is we spent a lot of time building our audience. And we don't get them to the lead point. So that is get them on your email list.

So say, how do you define the difference then just for clarification for people?

Yeah. So audience would be anyone that has eyes and ears on your stuff. The only way that I call someone a lead is if they are on your email list. Okay, because social media could I mean, I like both. I'm not someone that's going to be like, don't use social media. I love social media. But I think it needs to come into play with that email list. Because that's you own the game that you can communicate directly with your people, the percentage of people that see your stuff on social versus when you're dropping into their inbox is drastically different. And I think the biggest thing is to like we see like, accounts getting hacked, we see people getting shut down, that didn't build their email list. And that puts you in a tough position as a business owner. Yep. Totally. Yeah. So now we've got them on leads. So we've developed a lead magnet, we've got them onto our email list. third layer up, we want to then bring them to the point that I call them and aligned prospect. So that is someone that you've been emailing at least weekly, right, so we're sending these weekly emails out with the intention of developing that know, like, and trust factor with them, as well as increasing the desire for what you what your offer is, and decreasing their doubt. So now they're in that aligned prospect space, they're engaging with your content, they're clicking on the links, they might be replying to your emails or opening your emails, they are now at the point that they are getting primed to want to buy the thing that you sell. So your signature offer and so they're in a line prospect. Next in final layer up, that's when their client or customer they've purchased from you.

Okay, so in do you do that through a specific like, email funnel? Like, yes, it or tell me about the sprinkle of simplicity in that, like, I mean, I can follow that it is a simple process for sure. Implementation wise, like, how does that work?

Yeah. So audience members, right. So that base of the pyramid, I generally advice, especially if someone's new in their business, to double down on one way that you want to grow your audience. So these podcasts casting, is that Instagram? Is that LinkedIn? Is it networking, pick one, because one of the mistakes I see too often is people are haphazardly posting on Instagram, and then they're attending a few networking events, and then they might podcast guests once every other month. That's a lot of mental energy. And people, your audience, most aren't gonna know where to find you, because you're kind of on Instagram or kind of on LinkedIn, double down on one. So that's where we're going to make it a lot more simple, and have a very effective one. Lead Magnet, again, I see a lot of people with 60,000 Different lead magnets, come up with your best lead magnet, and have that be the most simple way that you get them onto your email list, your email, week over week, I actually provide people so one of the things that I do for my clients and the members of my memberships, then give them the email templates week over week. So the nurturing of those people is taken care of essentially for you. And then also sales sequences so that when you do have something that you want to sell, you can just implement one of the sales email sequences and then that makes it a bit easier to

Yeah, okay, I want to throw you a like a curveball question with respect to like trends in buying behavior and stuff and as an email marketing strategist, are you seeing like a lot like a difference in length of time that it takes to create a conversion so if we're speaking to marketing language E for the people listening like that means to move somebody from audience to lead to prospect to client like that actual length of time of that journey? Is that longer or shorter or what In today's world, and what are your thoughts around that?

I haven't noticed it lengthening where I would say notice a difference is depending on what your offer is, if you have a high ticket offer, you can usually expect to have a longer time from when they first learn about you to when they're ready to drop $7,000 on your coaching program, for example, versus if you have, I don't know, $19 a month membership, you can expect very likely that that conversion time is going to be shorter. What I would say though, is if you are selling high ticket, there's always we can incorporate a lower ticket offer in there, that's going to kind of be a feeder for that high ticket offer.

Yeah, I love that strategy, too. Because what we continue to always agree on and what we know to be true in the marketing space is that the purchases come when people trust you, right, and trust comes from relationships, and relationships take time to build. So sometimes that means like a different strategy as far as the way that you make a connection with somebody. Because I find personally that, you know, being in a room with people, you get the added benefit of like the body language and like the energetic connection that's happening, even on online space, you get that versus like the one way communication channels like even even email or being a podcast or whatnot. Like you're putting stuff out there, but you don't really know how it's being received and how that's like what's happening. So sometimes it's like a magical thing. I feel like the idea of making sales while you sleep and email marketing, whatnot. And it's like, That's so great. Because you don't even know that somebody is like currently considering purchasing your program or joining your offer whatever it is, because they're over there doing that you're just like giving them stuff versus like having a conversation. So it's interesting to like, combine all of those things together.

Yeah, and I would stick to on that it's like, part of what I try to teach is yes, my main thing that I will preach about every single day is you've got to build an email list, you've got to nurture that list week over week. However, I do think obviously, email, a lot of times, it's just written, I'm playing with incorporating videos into my emails, loom videos, short videos, just to give that face to face. But what I also recommend is, in those emails, be linking your podcast be saying things like, hey, we connected on Instagram, so that they are seeing you in multiple different ways, not just written texts, they're hearing you in long form, they're seeing you short form the and setting up emails that encourage replies. So where did you know 100% of our people that were emailing replying on a consistent basis, it's actually a pretty under 10%. Typically, reply rate is cloud, right? So you know, I throw that out there just a lot of people like but I'm at like, 5% reply rate, that's normal, like it's fine. Know that, but constantly be putting that out there and trying as best you can to make that email a two way communication.

Yeah, and you're so right, you actually have to be intentional about that by by ending it with a question or an invitation to respond. Because I just actually started doing that more intentionally to for that reason to experiment with that. And I actually had somebody email me yesterday who just felt like so compelled, she even had to tell me that I just let me set the thing for you. She's like, I've just come back to vape, from vacation to over 500 inbox, like in my inbox, and I'm like, calling, you know, deleting all the emails, I would literally just not look at them at all. But listen, it was so great. She responded to an email, is it like a week ago? She's like, because yours popped out? And here's why. And I was like, that's, that's pretty awesome to get a response like that. versus, you know, normally I'm like, here's my podcast. Here's the link. Bye, bye. Right. So being intentional about engaging in that way, like you said, because that is a huge aspect of moving people along that journey into being in a position where they're interested in purchasing from you.

Yeah, and I like to incorporate a lot of stories, too. I think story is what lets things it's underutilized with email. A lot of times we're talking about our products, we're talking about this, but incorporating a couple sentences at the start about what you've been up to that week, or what's going on something relatable, then people are gonna start to more quickly know you as a human, not just what you offer. And I think, especially in the online space, I mean, like you can get away with it when I was like one of five personal trainers at a big box gym and someone comes in, and they're a woman and they want strength training. I don't know they're probably going to choose me, right? Because there's not that many options. When we're in the online space, though. It's we need to figure out what's going to differentiate us and it's not necessarily what we offer. It's who we are. Yeah. Can you double down on that? Especially in your email marketing?

Yeah, I totally support that. I'm on board. And I want to ask one more question that I You know a lot of people have when it comes to email, because this is usually the biggest hesitation around, whether like to implement email marketing. And that's how often do I email people and what is what is too salesy and what is too spammy? And what is the, you know, ideal cadence for that?

No, I would say at bare minimum once a week. So set that day and I mail email on Tuesdays, I'm what's called a Two Minute Tuesday newsletter, I send it out. Because what we're really trying to do here is we're trying to as quickly as we can develop the habit of people expecting your email, and opening your email. So that's why I know everyone's schedule is different. I really think if you can do it on the same day, every single week, do that. Because again, they're seeing in the subject line, Two Minute Tuesday, they know Hey, Amy's gonna email on Tuesday. If I don't, they can reach out to me and they're like, wait a minute, you said it's Tuesday, and I didn't get your email yet. That's when you know people are watching. Right? So definitely that I would say for sure, at minimum once a week. I am on a couple newsletters though. This is aggressive, but I am reading and opening all of their emails. They email daily, daily, okay, so I'm not there yet. But it's short, it's 250 Words or Less little Hey, this what I'm up to, here's something that happened to me, here's the lesson that I learned. But what I've noticed happened is that they stay top of mind, I check my inbox every single day, because I'm like, Oh, what's this person up to what? So that's interesting. Another thing I saw recently that I thought was really good. And I'm gonna start implementing this deal, this strategy. I'm on an email list where not only does this person email the same day, she raises Thursdays, every single Thursday, you get an email, but she says in her welcome sequence, expect an email from me every Thursday at 145. What's, how specific, but it's training your people to look out for that at that time and open it, and it becomes habitual.

Yeah, totally. And also, sometimes that's the best way to get yourself accountable, that's when you put it out there, and usually set the expectation, right. And you know, like to just to be clear, a lot of these people who are emailing that much have a team that are supporting them. So if you're solo, then don't feel obligated at all to do that. But I totally agree with you around the need for weekly. And I know a lot of people really hesitate around that they think that that's, you know, they want to do once a month, and it's just, especially if you think of your audience, and if your audience is subscribing to a lot of things, they're going to be used to multiple emails regularly from other people, and they are going to very easily forget that they subscribe to your thing. If you're only emailing them once a month, they'll be like, Who is this? Because I've gotten 8000 emails between last time you sent me an email and now and they're more likely to unsubscribe, at least this one, I think,

Yeah, that's what I found as well. And it's, and I think the thing is, too, it's like you just said people have signed up for this. So they're expecting, and I always go a step further and set the expectation in my welcome sequence. I say, Here's my welcome sequence emails over the next two weeks, you're going to hear from me this many times. After that, you're going to only hear from me once a week. And it's going to be on Tuesdays. So you already let them know up front, this is when you're going to hear from me. The other thing is, even if people don't open every single email that you send, they're seeing your name once a week. And that's huge, because like you said, they're not going to forget who you are. Versus if it's super sporadic. They're probably going to unsubscribe, because they're saying, Wait, who is that person? Wait, why did what freebie did I sign up for? Did I really sign up for their list? And we don't want that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, as we're about to wrap up, I just want to ask you, if you have any final piece of advice, in any of the areas that we've talked about, with respect to shifting your business model to the lead generation, email marketing, what is the one top thing that you want to leave everybody with?

I'm gonna go on email marketing, and I'm gonna say if you don't already have a lead magnet, and at bare minimum, just one, welcome email for your people. That would be where I would advise people to start, because we want to get them on that list. You know, ideally, we want to be nurturing them on that list as well. But for sure, you want to get them on that list. So setting up that lead magnet and setting up that initial email.

So good. Thank you, Amy. Do you if you have any resources to share and where people can find and connect with you? Can you let us all know?

Yes, absolutely. So on social I mostly am on Instagram. So that's @AmyKuph and then if people are feeling like overwhelmed with the idea of email so how should I be emailing? What should I be emailing? I go to sit down to write an email and I feel like I have nothing to say. I want to invite them. I'm giving you all of your listeners, it's a free 14 day trial of my membership, which is the inbox entrepreneur. Essentially, there's a bunch of sent standalone courses in there that help you build out your lead magnet that helps you build out your welcome sequence, as well is every single week, I email you in a template, which is essentially like if you've ever played Mad Libs as a kid 60% of the copy is done for you. And it's just has brackets where you plug in your individual business information so that you don't have to stress about thinking what should you write week over week, it's mostly done. And so they can find that it's amykuphal.com/free.

That's amazing. That sounds so helpful. I hope that everybody goes and runs and grabs that and connects with Amy and actually connects so they're not just listening passively to this. This episode. We love action takers here at entrepreneur school. So go and take that action. And thank you so much for being here and sharing today Amy

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

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