Are you so not a planner and believe that gets in the way you leveraging content to grow your business? Or maybe you’re an overplanner and worry that you’re missing the spur of the moment opportunities that might be popping up? Nicole Liloia shares why she prefers this in the moment approach to content and how you can work it into your strategy!
Nicole Liloia of www.nicoleliloia.com provides strategy + mentorship to women business owners who want to scale through multiple income streams and move from being an employee in their own business to a boss. She founded her first business, which was a therapy private practice, in 2014 after suffering severe burnout in the non-profit world and refusing to ever return to a 9-5. She quickly built up multiple businesses and income streams and now helps other women do the same.
Nicole got her master's in Social Work at Columbia University and has written for Forbes, Huffington Post, and MindBodyGreen.
She's obsessed with entrepreneurship, women becoming wealthy, Apothic wine, and never misses a Taco Tuesday.
Key Takeaways from this Episode
What has your business journey looked like from when you first hung out that digital “come in, we’re open sign” to where you are today?
- I actually started with an in-person business. I was originally a therapist with a local private practice, and I quickly discovered coaching in the online world. I added that into my business. When I really got started, it was very hard time in the online world. It was very vague. I was doing very general stress-management coaching, and growing my practice at the same time. It just progressed from that. I really ended up starting helping people with goal-setting around their business. What I was doing, was having lots of multiple income streams. People saw that, and took notice, and started asking me about that. Then, I progressed into helping people build multiple income streams into their business.
In terms of legacy – what is the big mission you’re here to accomplish with your business?
- I think that it's definitely shifted and changed, but there's still the same thread. I started my business because I hated the nine-to-five world. I had suffered severe burn-out and took time to travel, and when I got back, I just was like, “I can't work a nine-to-five job again. I'm very lazy. Something's wrong with me.” That was so hard and miserable. Then I started my own practice, and I had multiple income streams, different consulting work, and stuff like that, for a few years, even before I started my practice, and I really … That wasn't really true. I liked working on my own terms. I didn't like the bureaucracy of jobs, and I liked the freedom and flexibility of making my own schedule. Basically, the freedom to work all the time in my own business.
- I think the thread there, was when I was working, at the early stages I was really passionate about the coaching piece, the counseling piece, because it really helped me work with women to get out of crappy job situations, to create more freedom. And, obviously that's still what I'm doing, in terms of helping women create their businesses with multiple income streams. I love that it's still the same kind of theme, it just is looking a little bit more different. But, for me, I am super-passionate about helping women become more powerful, and really become more wealthy, and in charge of their own life and journey.
What's the #1 burning question you get from your community about contingency and what-if business planning and what do you tell them?
- A lot of people are just like, “How do I do it?” Basics. I think that most of my clients, they tend to be service providers, whether it's a freelancer, or someone in the health and wellness world. It tends to be someone who is doing all the work. They're basically an employee in their own business, and they don't really have the strong business foundation, or any kind of business strategy, long-term business strategy, is just getting getting clients and doing work.
- I think for a lot of my clients, and for my audience, it really is like, “How am I going to do it? How do I do it? What other income streams are there?”
What is one piece of advice you have for online business owners who see what you’ve built and all the success you’ve had doing it – and want to create their own version of it but have no idea where to start?
- I think it's really stay consistent, and talk to people, right? Talk to people in your audience, talk to other peers who are doing similar work, or share your audience. I think that a lot of us keep us in our own little … We stay in our own little bubble, including myself at times. When you do that, it's really hard to be inspired, and it's hard to know that you're on the right track. I think it's easy to get off track, it's easy to get into overlearning mode, or overthink things. It really is just stay consistent, and connect with other people in your audience, and with people, peers who are working with other people similar to you.
So shifting gears to marketing – How do you stay motivated and inspired when it comes to content creation (especially after all this time)?
- It's so funny, because you sent me some of these questions to prepare, and I'm like, “I feel like I would get an F in content creation.” Because, I think that when I think of content creation, I still go back to the original of writing big blogs that are perfectly set up with SEO. What is really good, is that we can find ways to create content, and once again, starting with what you're at, where you're at, and what you enjoy. Truthfully, I really can get stuck overthinking when I try writing a lot, or creating blogs, or creating a long-term strategy. So, for me, it's just about showing up consistently through video, for my audience, and a combination of thinking about things that I want to teach them, and really thinking what's shown up in my own life in the past couple of days, and how I could tie it together.
- My content style is more in the moment, and I've gotten better too. I think, once again, when you just go with you can do the best, and show up however you can, I do think you get better with long-term strategy. Now I do have a lot of events that combine the strategy piece with the showing up piece, and that's good for me. And then, in the in-between, I can fill in the gaps with just showing up sporadically on the spot.
How does content work in your business. What do you handle and do you have a team that helps? Fill us in!
- What I handle is definitely, obviously, the showing up, and the personal thing of the content. I really do keep it casual, for the most part, although earlier this year, I was doing … And this was really fun, because I think this helped me really stay on track and be more strategic. I was doing a weekly Wednesday workshop, where I would hop on, and I would do a live training every week, on all sorts of topics, like how to follow up, behind the scenes, managing my multiple income streams. I was in Mexico for a couple of weeks, so I did one on how to do the laptop lifestyle. I loved it, because it really made me show up, it really made me deliver a solid piece of content that was more planned-out, and then I was able to put it, and recycle it, on my blog.
- I have a project manager, and then an admin, and she's been really great with then, even just grabbing the Facebook description, and then putting that into the blog, and helping me create the bullet points. Actually, I just had her create, from the descriptions, a bunch Facebook posts, and things like that. Now, we can repurpose the content, and I can put it in a scheduler moving forward.
How would you define a content empire as it relates to your own business and what you’ve built?
- I think a content empire, and I think that, truthfully, I'm in the early stages of it. I've really just gotten to the point where I'm looking at content I've used, I'm looking at repurposing it, I think it's something that you can create, that continues to work for you over time. I think I've lost a lot of content, and, look, it's still out there. It's still on my Facebook page, but I didn't have any systems to keep track of it. Now I'm putting the systems in place, so that I can continue to repurpose things, so that it can continue to bring me people in over time, and it's been really nice. It's been awesome to have this library of workshops, so that if I'm in a Facebook, or I have a client that asks for something, I have addressed it in a topic, I can quickly share that. I can quickly grab the link from my website and share it with them.
Lightning Round
Latest content or marketing tool discovery? One Up
Most profound business book you’ve read? Personal coaching
What is one marketing trend that you're passing on for now? Facebook ads
2018 or 2019 planner of choice? Trello
Where would you invest $5,000 in your business today? Outsourcing, or coaching
