Why Taking a Break in December is a Bad Business Move

Katie McManus: 00:00:00

Don't stop posting about your business.

Katie McManus: 00:00:04

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach.

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And welcome to the Weenie Cast.

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My apologies.

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I won't sing again, I promise.

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But seriously, I know we're heading into the December month, which tends to be chockbox full of holidays and lots of other things that people do, and it's very tempting to believe the myth of this seasonal slowdown.

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It's very tempting to think, okay, well, everyone else is taking a break.

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I should probably hit pause too.

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And logically, yeah, that makes sense, right?

Katie McManus: 00:00:36

Because people are at holiday parties, they're out buying gifts for their loved ones.

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And especially this year, maybe buying gifts from people that they don't really want to buy presents for, that's a different story.

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They're trying to wrap up a bunch of stuff for year end.

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There's a lot going on and you've probably already noticed a little dip, if not a massive dip in your engagement on your social media posts for your business.

Katie McManus: 00:01:01

So logically, yeah, sure.

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I mean, you can absolutely build the case for no one's paying attention right now.

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No one's buying right now.

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You should just, like, shut up shop and restart everything in January, right?

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I think you know where I'm going with this.

Katie McManus: 00:01:16

That's a big fat no.

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Absolutely not.

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And I want to be perfectly clear.

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I'm not telling you that in the month of December, when you want to be spending quality time with family, celebrating the holidays that you celebrate, that you should be off doing work in your business, grinding away, doing a gazillion hours a week.

Katie McManus: 00:01:37

Absolutely not.

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But what I am saying is that you cannot stop being visible right now.

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I know it feels like no one's paying attention.

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We're gonna debunk that.

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But actually, this is one of the best times for you to promote your business, for you to continue banging the drum about who you help, the problems they have that make them the perfect client for you and the outcomes that you'll help them reach.

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So let's talk through why it actually doesn't make sense for you to stop posting throughout the holiday months.

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Now, first and foremost, sure, you might not get a ton of new followers right now.

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And that's actually normal.

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People are busy, they're shopping, they're cooking, they're going to holiday parties, they're spending time with family.

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They're probably not doom scrolling as much as they normally do.

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Which means that the strangers out there who haven't discovered you yet probably aren't going to discover you right now.

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But what it does mean is that the people who are already following you, who already go to look at your content, who are already used to your name showing up in their newsfeed, you're likely to show up far more often for them.

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Right?

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Because I want you to think about this.

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The algorithms are smart.

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Even LinkedIn algorithm, which is janky as fuck, it's pretty smart.

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Its goal is to keep its followers on their site for as long as possible.

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Will the algorithm want to run the risk of showing its user new content that may be hit or miss?

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Probably not.

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But if that follower has a track record of liking commenting on your posts, or at least sitting down and reading and having that pause time on your post, you're a known quantity.

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Your content is far more likely to be shown to your followers right now.

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And believe you me, your followers are still on social media.

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They are still doom scrolling on Instagram, they're still on LinkedIn reading all the posts.

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They might not be commenting as much, but they're there.

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So right now is the perfect time for you to start creating urgency for your followers to take the next step in this relationship with you, or at least start planting the seeds for them to take that step in January.

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And we'll talk about that more in a second.

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But first, I want to talk about something that you and I both know is happening for the people who are paying attention to you who haven't bought yet, they're spending time with family.

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Okay, I don't know about your family, but I think most families have some people in them that you need excuses to get away from.

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There are moments in most family gatherings where someone's hiding in the bathroom.

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What are you doing in the bathroom?

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You're not going through the medicine cabinet for that long.

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I don't care how nosy you are, you cannot stretch going through someone's medicine cabinet for that long.

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You probably need something to read.

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You probably need to like, sit on the edge of the tub and scroll on Instagram for a little bit or on TikTok.

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If you're bold, you might be doing this out in the open, just fully ignoring some people.

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So your people are still consuming social media content.

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They're doing it on the DL.

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They're doing it to avoid conversations.

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But not just that.

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They're consuming social media content around people that they've known their entire lives, people who know them and trust them, who might be your ideal client, even if the person who follows you isn't.

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Can you imagine posting something about your ideal client?

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Someone who feels like they're your friend on social media, sees it while they're at the Christmas celebrations with their family and then turns to their cousin Doreen and is like, doreen, I think you need to see this.

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This is someone that I've been following for a really long time.

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You should follow them and check them out.

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This is prime referral time.

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But your followers can't refer people to you in that moment if they don't remember that you exist.

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They don't remember who you're useful to and the problems that you solve and the goals you help people reach.

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So your content right now has to bang on about that over and over and over and over again because especially this year, people are looking for things to talk about that are unproblematic.

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And talking about someone that you follow on LinkedIn is pretty unproblematic.

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So to summarize what we've already covered, your followers are far more likely to see your stuff, which means that the people who've already built up a level of trust and relationship with you blindly through social media, they're seeing your stuff far more often.

Katie McManus: 00:06:26

They're also spending time with people who know and trust them, which means even if they're not your ideal client, they could potentially be referring your ideal clients to you because they're coming into contact with them within their family systems.

Katie McManus: 00:07:33

We also have looming start energy coming.

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Start energy happens whenever there's a shift that we've been trained on, right?

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So like in the Northern Hemisphere, start energy happens around August, September.

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Right.

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Why?

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Because we were all raised to start school then.

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It's something that we were programmed to feel like.

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There's start energy there.

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You know, there's also start energy around the spring.

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You know, spring clean, get into shape.

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You know, we're coming out from hibernation, the sun's coming out.

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When else do we have start energy?

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The start of the year, January 1st.

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I know it's just an arbitrary date and it really doesn't mean much, but we're so programmed to want to start start new things and start imagining who we're going to be in this next tour around the sun.

Katie McManus: 00:08:24

And I don't know about you, but most people I talk to, when they think about who they're going to be next year, they don't think about, like, the worst version of themselves.

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They're not like, yeah, I can't wait to still stay out of shape.

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Yeah, I can't wait to still be underpaid and underappreciated in my job.

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I'M going to get a worse job.

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Even I'm going to get a job with less vacation time.

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They're not like running their teams and thinking, cool, we're going to make people more miserable, we're going to sell less product, we're going to implement worse technology that makes things less productive.

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They're not thinking about that.

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They're thinking about how they can make things better for themselves, for their teams, for their bodies, for their work.

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And not only that, they're thinking about how they're going to do this.

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And they're not just thinking about what they want, they're thinking about how the they're going to get it.

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I've shared this before a gazillion times, and I'll share it again.

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When I hired my producer for this podcast, Neil Velio, I actually hired him in my head a full year before I ever spoke to him.

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I'd seen him showing up in my newsfeed for, I think, well over a year at that point, and he'd slowly been building himself up as the go to expert in my mind.

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He shared harsh truths that made me trust him.

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So I decided to hire Neil a full year before I ever got on the phone with him.

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By the time I got on a sales call with him, I had to finish the call by saying, shut up and take my money.

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He didn't realize that I'd already made this decision.

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All he had to do on that call was just not f ed up.

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He did a great job not f up.

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And here we are, more than two years later, still going strong.

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I'll bet you anything if you've been consistent in your social media content and people have gotten to know you, they've learned how you're useful to them.

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They've probably already started kind of daydreaming about what it would be like to work with you.

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And here they are, primed for that moment where they realize, like, the rubber needs to hit the road.

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They need to actually get to work on this and make some progress.

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If you disappear, if you don't post, if you don't continue to share about how you can be useful to them, they're going to end up hiring someone else.

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They might hire someone who they don't trust as much as you.

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They might hire someone who's less qualified than you, who doesn't have as good of a track record of helping people.

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You staying quiet and invisible and not posting right now is doing your future clients a massive disservice.

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Because, let's be real, they're probably gonna end up working with you at some point regardless.

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But are they gonna waste money on someone who's not as good as you first?

Katie McManus: 00:11:13

Yeah, if you're quiet right now.

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So you need to continue posting.

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You need to continue posting because people are hungry for their future selves and they want to get to that point as fast as possible.

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And right now is the time where they decide how they're going to do it.

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And one of the leading options for how they're going to do it should be working with you.

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It should be their top choice.

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And lastly, let's talk about December and buying habits.

Katie McManus: 00:12:02

I don't know about you.

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When I go gift shopping for other people, I see something for someone else and then I see something for me, and then I see something for someone else and then I'm like, oh, and here's something that I want too.

Katie McManus: 00:12:13

Hmm.

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And it becomes like that scene in hold that Ghost by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, which, if you haven't seen it's an excellent black and white film where at the end they're counting out money and it's like, one for you, one for me, two for you, one, two for me, three for you, one, two, three for me.

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People are not complicated beings, right?

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How we do one thing is how we do everything.

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When we're in buying mode for other people, we're also in buying mode for ourselves.

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But here's the thing to remember.

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Like the things that you can go out and buy to shop, like, you can put that on your Christmas list and you can ask other people to get it for you.

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mation they want to tackle in: 2025

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You're listening to this episode.

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Another person cannot buy this transformation for them.

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Another person won't know that you're the person that they trust to help usher them to that goal.

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Hiring you is something that only they can do.

Katie McManus: 00:13:11

When I first started my business, I assumed December would be my slowest month.

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I just figured, eh, I won't even waste my time, no big deal.

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Like it'll be busy in January.

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Actually, December historically has always been my record breaking month.

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Every year I make more money in December than I do any other month of the year.

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And it's because people want to start at an advantage.

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There's nothing clean about like starting January 1st and be like, cool, what's the goal I want to have this year?

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How am I going to do it?

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Then you spend a couple days trying to figure out the goal and Then you spend a couple days, like figuring how you're going to do it, but then it's like January 8th.

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And there's nothing magical about January 8th, it's just January 8th.

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You've already lost a week and a day.

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Like, there's no magic start energy to that.

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But if on December 27th you decide, this is the moment when I want to hire this person because I want to be able to start working on this goal January 1st and really keep my promise to myself and hold myself accountable and work towards this massive goal I have for this year.

Katie McManus: 00:14:17

Like, how are they going to do that if you disappear on them?

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How are they going to give you their money in December?

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spend in the calendar year of: 2024

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You disappearing doesn't do them a service.

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business or in themselves in: 2024

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You disappearing doesn't do them any good.

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So here's my challenge for you.

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Ignore impressions, ignore views.

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Ignore how many comments you're getting.

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Ignore how many likes you're getting.

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Go and create nine pieces of content that you're going to schedule in advance so you can take some time off for the holidays that you celebrate, but still stay visible to the people who need to see that you can help them.

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And for simplicity's sake, these nine posts, three of them should be about the pain that they're facing right now with the problems they have that you can solve.

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What's stressing them out about these problems?

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What are they afraid of these problems turning into in the future?

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What are they frustrated with?

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3 of these posts should be about their desire.

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What is that thing that they want more than anything?

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What's the big juicy goal here?

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And what will it feel like when they finally have it?

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And lastly, three of them should be testimonials or case studies about how you've helped people just like them, yourself included.

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Go from point A with all those problems to point W, where they have all the wins, where they've reached the goal, where they have access to that future self they've imagined for so long.

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And the key here is, at the end of each post, you have to have a call to action.

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You have to invite them to buy, you have to invite them to book a sales call.

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And if you're planning on taking, say, December 23rd through December 31st off, and you're not going to be available.

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And remember, you want to have a really strong call to action that reminds them that the time to start is now.

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The time to set themselves up with a plan to actually achieve the thing that they want is right now, not January 8th.

Katie McManus: 00:16:41

He myth busted in a way that I was like, yeah, this guy, like, he's not gonna blow smoke up my butt, which is such a weird saying.

Katie McManus: 00:16:49

Was that actually a thing that people did to, like, try to convince people of falsehoods?

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Doesn't that strike you as very Gwyneth Paltrow?

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Like, who was the Gwyneth Paltrow of what, the 18th century that was blowing smoke up people's butts?

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And how did we go from that to steaming vaginas?

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These are the questions that keep me up at night.