Your goal today is to go looking for problems. You’ll need to identify the problems and challenges that your ideal customer (from Day 16) is facing within your issue/topic (from Day 15).
In particular, what are their pain points?
Pain points are the frequent and recurring problems, challenges, and issues that people experience. Identify where people are frustrated and desperate for a solution within your topic.
How to Make it Happen
The life of an entrepreneur ain’t for the faint at heart, not least of all because your basic job is to solve problems. Large or small, every business is in the business of problem-solving.
For example, when I’m hungry, a bakery business can solve my hunger (and my sweet tooth!) problem. Or, if my closet is a hopeless pile of clothes, shoes and jewelry, a professional organizer can solve my disorganization problem. If I need to talk with people who aren’t in the same room as me, Apple, Motorola, and Google have all kinds of solutions to my communications problems.
Consequently, no matter what business you’re starting, you will be selling solutions. And your customers will need to trust that you can deliver.
Ultimately, identifying these problems will become the starting point for your business. Once you know your ideal customer’s biggest problems, you can start creating solutions. As a result, you will make a positive impact in people’s lives. You’ll also be able to charge a premium for doing so.
And listen, it is okay to make money while also making an impact. We have become so accustomed to doing favors and giving out hookups that it can be uncomfortable to charge people.
THROW THIS TIRED MINDSET OUT THE WINDOW.
If you’re going to start and operate a business, you’ll have to charge people for your products and services.
Today’s goal ensures that, however you make money, you’re also delivering tons of value to people.
Once you figure out the big problems, let me know! You can share this with me on social media by tagging me @shontaviajesq on all platforms and using the #VisionChallenge hashtag so that I can see it. Or, you can comment directly below.
If nothing else, take a picture of your completed workbook page(s) so that I know you’re doing the homework!
Join my support network
Download the app
In addition, studies show that you’re more likely to meet your goals when you have accountability partners! To work together with a supportive community of other side-hustlers, creatives and entrepreneurs, you can join my private group by clicking this link or via the Mighty Networks App.
Download the Mighty Network app by clicking here. Once it downloads, click “Find a Mighty Network” and search for Shontavia Johnson. You’ll find accountability partners and other content there that I may not share elsewhere.
New to the #VisionChallenge? You can learn more about it, and sign up to take the challenge, by clicking here.
Sometimes I will refer you to other books, products or services. While I may be an affiliate of these companies, creators, or authors, these are all things I have used and trust. I would not recommend these things to you if I hadn’t experienced them myself.
That feeling of wanting more but not knowing how to get it is frustrating–especially when your money doesn’t match your mindset. It is tough to be broke with million dollar ideas!
On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I believe my favorite quote by Dr. King can offer us some inspiration when we find ourselves in this space.
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but by all means, keep moving.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have to tell myself to KEEP MOVING so many times throughout my days, weeks and months. If I’m working on a huge project, or dealing with challenges (especially challenging people), or seeing traction with whatever I’m working on, this phrase stays on my lips and in my mind.
I also believe this is great advice when you’re feeling tugs on your heart and spirit.
In particular, for people who want to start businesses but don’t know what kind of business to start, KEEP MOVING is the mantra you should let guide you. You may not know the whats or hows or wheres, but that feeling you have can be your compass.
I decided to write this quick post to list several ways you can keep moving, even if you don’t know where to start.
The truth is, there’s no right answer. You start wherever you start and you go wherever you go. The below list is just a little guidance to get you moving forward.
You don’t have to take ALL of these steps. Just pick a few to get your brain cells firing! My goal here is just to show you that there’s A LOT you can do to get some ideas out of your head.
WHERE TO START WHEN YOU’RE BROKE AND DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START
Brainstorm a list of what excites you.
Brainstorm a list of how you’re giving advice or helping people already.
Brainstorm a list of what you’re good at.
Google “expert at” [any of #1-3].
Make of list of potential businesses you can start.
Google “how to start a [any of #5] business.”
Make a list of potential topics you could focus on in business.
Google “[each topic from #7] expert.”
Make a list on your phone or laptop of the top 5-10 experts that come up in your Google search.
Visit the websites and social media pages of those top 5-10 experts.
Sign up for the newsletters of the 5-10 experts on their websites.
Follow the 5-10 experts on social media.
Watch the moves/launches/online activities of the 5-10 experts.
Watch for who those 5-10 experts are talking about, citing, and retweeting.
Follow those people too.
Brainstorm a list of what you want to be good at, even if you aren’t right now.
Google “how much money does [any of #5] business make.”
Google “how does [any of #5] business make money.”
Create your own platform (this could be a website, email newsletter list, or anything else).
Create a website (this may or may not cost money)
Start an email list of potential partners, clients, and customers.
Create a strategy to email your list of people helpful content once per week.
Create a free Google Sheets account and build a schedule of topics you can create/share content about. Here’s one example for a college & scholarship blog.
Watch YouTube videos about potential businesses and topics.
Subscribe to podcasts about potential businesses and topics. (Mine is pretty great! 😃)
Check books out of the library about potential businesses and topics.
Read blog posts about potential businesses and topics.
Find some accountability partners — you can join my free group at programs.shontavia.com if you don’t have an accountability partner in your area.
If your business idea includes a physical location, go to a place like that in your area. For example, if you want to start a bakery, visit 5-7 different bakeries.
Ask to interview the owner of that physical place that you visit. *They may say no, and that’s okay. Try someone else.
If your business idea is an online business, follow the social media accounts of businesses like what you want to start.
Email a person doing what you’d like to do and ask them a specific question (but not “can I pick your brain,” or an invitation to meet–just one specific question). Even if they ignore you, that’s okay. Again, just try someone else.
Create a list on your phone of business ideas and inspiration.
Screenshot photos of business ideas and inspiration and create a folder for them.
Daydream a life where you have literally everything you want and need. Write it down.
Take your daydream and break it down into things you want to pursue using four categories: (1) your life, (2) your business, (3) your reputation and (4) your energy.
Pick one category from your daydream and list 3 baby steps you could take.
Take those baby steps.
Put a reminder in your calendar for 7 am (or whatever time works for you) each day that simply says “KEEP MOVING.” Turn on the alerts so you see it every day at the same time.
Your goal today is to identify your ideal customer. You’ll literally build this person from the ground up (in your mind!).
How to Make it Happen
As you build your business, it’s important to connect with people who want to hire you, work with you, and buy from you. Marketers have all kinds of tools and resources for identifying the perfect customer. One of the most highly effective strategies is the “ideal customer avatar” exercise.
An “avatar” is an icon or figure representing a particular person–and today you’ll be creating one for your business.
This will require you to envision your ideal customer avatar in as much detail as possible. This information will help you more easily find the real customers who are as perfect for your business as your solutions are for them.
Ultimately, the more you know about your ideal customer, the more effective you can be with your time, energy and marketing efforts.
To get the most out of this exercise, you should do three things:
(1) Firstly, please listen to my yet-to-be-released podcast episode about identifying your ideal customer. I recorded this over the holidays, so you’ll hear some seasonal references! 🎄🎁.
The episode is ~20 minutes long. As such, you may need a little more than 30 minutes today to complete this exercise.
(3) Thirdly, summarize the high points on page 37 of your workbook.
Finally, send me your ideal customer’s name! You can share it with me on social media by tagging me @shontaviajesq on all platforms and using the #VisionChallenge hashtag so that I can see it. Or, you can comment directly below.
If nothing else, take a picture of your completed workbook page(s) so that I know you’re doing the homework!
Join my support network
Download the app
In addition, studies show that you’re more likely to meet your goals when you have accountability partners! To work together with a supportive community of other side-hustlers, creatives and entrepreneurs, you can join my private group by clicking this link or via the Mighty Networks App.
Download the Mighty Network app by clicking here. Once it downloads, click “Find a Mighty Network” and search for Shontavia Johnson. You’ll find accountability partners and other content there that I may not share elsewhere.
New to the #VisionChallenge? You can learn more about it, and sign up to take the challenge, by clicking here.
Sometimes I will refer you to other books, products or services. While I may be an affiliate of these companies, creators, or authors, these are all things I have used and trust. I would not recommend these things to you if I hadn’t experienced them myself.
All right. What’s up everybody? I’m
Shontavia Johnson and this is another episode of The Shontavia Show, where I
want to inspire you to build a brand, business and life that you love.
It’s Thursday. It’s time for me to
give you some thoughts in this particular series of the show. What I really
like to do is answer questions that you have about creating a life, a business,
a brand that you love. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me at
askshontavia@gmail.com. That’s askshontavia@gmail.com.
All right, so let’s jump into the
question for today.
Hey, Shontavia, I hope you’re doing
well. I have a question about social media. I can’t quite get it together in
this space. I post on the major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter, but I don’t really have a plan. I’m not really consistent. I post when
the mood strikes me, but I don’t really know what else to do. Do you have any
suggestions about how to get my social media game together. Brett
All right. Brett, I do have some
thoughts about how you can get your social media strategy together. I’m also
getting mine together too Brett, so we’re gonna work through this together. We
will hold hands and get through it at the same time.
I’m going to share with you my
current strategy, which I got from a “mentor” who I follow on social
media. He is not like a personal mentor, but I’ve read a bunch of his books and
everything. And I have to say I’ve just started implementing some of this stuff
in the past few months and I have seen like some tremendous results that you
know we can talk about a bit.
So the strategy that I’m going to
share, I got from this dynamic speaker, author, and I don’t know even know what
to call him, branded platform, Brendon Burchard.
He’s written a bunch of books. He
does conferences and workshops and speaking and all kinds of things. And, I
attended one of his conferences several years ago and I continue to get his
emails and read his books and that kind of thing.
So the strategy that I am going to
provide was from an email that he sent out, I think it was maybe a couple of
years ago. I have started to implement this stuff with some great results.
So I want to share with you here,
Brett, what he has suggested, how I’m working through those things. And then
I’ll drop some links in the show notes to other folks who I follow to get
advice about social media who include Jasmine Star, Gary Vee,, I mentioned
Brendon Burchard and Marie Forleo is another one.
So here’s Brendon’s advice and I’m
just going to walk through the steps and talk about my experience with them.
(1) So one of his first suggestions
is to go Live every day, or every other day, on your platform where your
clients and potential customers are. So for him, what he says is you should be
going Live on Facebook and Instagram. What Gary Vee says is you should be going
live on LinkedIn and Tik Tok.
I think it really just depends on who
your customers and clients are and where they are and that kind of thing. But
either way, the point remains going live across social media platforms remains
a really, really amazing way to build interest, to get traction and to build
followers. And what he says he would d,o as he goes Live is a couple of things:
Share goals, share his journey, and teach tips for how people can succeed in
whatever they’re working on. And, he mentions that in every other session he’d
mention an opt-in page, if you’re watching live or you watch it later, you go
to a website.
He mentions like www.whatever, that
sends the person to an opt-in page where they can opt in, get a free resource,
and then now they’re on his mailing list.
Those are the things that he suggests
do at least the first thing going Live every day on your platform of choice,
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, whatever that looks like.
This is hard for me in particular.
Number one, because, it really isn’t even about the time. I used to say,
“Oh, I’m too busy to do that.” It’s really not that I’m too busy,
it’s just uncomfortable–to go live, to talk weirdly into a screen. And then
also, I mean this may sound silly, and I know this is true for other people,
especially other women. I don’t always have the right hair, the right makeup,
the right nails, the right this, or whatever. So I feel like, you know, a
little bit exposed, but you just have to rip the bandaid off and do those
things.
And so I’ve started doing this and it
has been wildly successful in my business. I’m not that great at social media,
but I have set a calendar to go Live on a couple of different platforms each
day. Well, not every day, every other day usually. And it really has worked out
amazingly for me. And I’m just a couple months in. So that’s the first thing.
Go Live on your platform of choice.
(2) Number two. Start a weekly blog
or YouTube channel or podcast–not weekly YouTube channel, but a weekly YouTube
blog, I guess, YouTube video series. And, do that every week consistently.
And, what Brendan suggests is, is to
create a significant post, a longer format every single week, cut it up, post
it across social media…the blog, the YouTube, wherever things go.
Create a video, write a blog post
about it, chop that up, posted across social media platforms. Take the video
and create audio out of that video. And then cut that stuff up and post it
across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. If Tik Tok is your jam, he mentions, you
know, using Tik Tok because that is a growing platform too, particularly if you
have a younger audience. And doing that, making one piece of content, a longer
piece each week, and then chopping it up.
This is actually also something I’ve
implemented that has been working pretty well. So like right now, I don’t know
the date that this particular episode will come out, but I’ve recorded it
several months early. So that I could create a database of, or a bank of videos
and audio content that I can post on my website and across social media.
And that really has been brilliant
for me, because, I didn’t really know what to do. Kind of like you. But having
the strategy, I have a calendar and everything. I’ll drop a link in the show
notes if people are interested in looking for ways to get consistent on social
media.
I use a platform called Hootsuite to
post to post to schedule some things. I don’t use Hootsuite for everything, but
I plan some of my posts using Hootsuite. So I might set10 tweets for a week or
two and then I do them all at once and they’d go up, you know, every day or
every couple hours or whatever.
(3) And then the third piece of
advice that Brendan provided in his email was to send an email to your list
once per week, no matter the size of the list.
So that’s something I do. I have a
newsletter called the #MakeItHappenMonday newsletter. It comes out, duh, every
Monday.
I funnel people to my blog, to the
videos, to podcasts, to something, so that I am directing my newsletter.
Number one, I’m providing real
content and real value and then directing folks to my website and to sell my
other content.
So I thought this was amazing advice.
Jasmine Star was another person who I follow on social media and I just like really
respect her advice about growing on Instagram. She’s done an amazing job
growing on that platform. And again, I’ll drop some links in the show notes to
folks who I follow who are doing really amazing work in this space.
So, I hope that this helped Brett. I
hope that something that I’ve said here helps you figure out your social media
strategy. For everybody else, I hope it helps you too.
If you have questions or thoughts
about this, if you want more of my thoughts or if you disagree with my
thoughts, I want to hear from you either way. Reach out to me. It
askshontavia@gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening.
Last year, I had the best of intentions with my social media. I was going to post more often, grow my following, and spend less time spinning my wheels about what to post. It was going to be beautiful–with videos, photos, and all kinds of amazing graphics.
That ain’t happen.
I struggle-bused my way through with no real strategy. And, as I also dealt with issues like body image, self-doubt, and regular hair & makeup, pictures and videos just weren’t in my ministry.
However, toward the end of the year, I decided to stop making excuses. As Jasmine Star says often, I had to make unemotional decisions about my posts and content.
While I’m still at the earliest of stages with my social media strategy, I’ve seen a huge shift already. Above all, I am more strategic, unemotional about perfection–or the lack of it, and following a plan.
On this #ThursdayThoughts episode, I received a question about how to do better and get more consistent on social media. This was timely because this was literally what I was working on with the question came in.
Check it out below.
To summarize the episode, I give three tips I learned from Brendon Burchard that will help you do better–and get more engagement–on social media.
Go Live on social media regularly (some suggest every day);
Start a weekly blog/podcast/video series that you can cut up and post across social media each week; and
Finally, one point of clarification from this episode: I haven’t fully taken the advice of going Live regularly on social media, but I’m creating lots more videos and posting them. Going Live frequently is on the horizon though!
Questions & Action: Create a social media calendar
After you’ve had a chance to watch the video, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!
Please answer these questions for me:
What’s holding you back on social media?
Have you created a social media calendar? If not, could you commit to posting something related to your business and brand once per week? One of the best ways to do better on social media is to create a social media calendar and stick with it.
Please give as much information as you can in response to these questions. I’d be happy to share more tools and resources that help you get what you want. Most importantly, I know the other folks reading this can learn from your experiences! We are all in this together.
Finally, I always say that I’m on a mission to help people build the brands, businesses and lives that they love. We can learn from each other on this journey, particularly when we have accountability partners. This is why I am building a whole nation of side-hustlers, creatives and business owners who keep each other––and me––accountable.
You can join my support network online and via app. Check us out at programs.shontavia.com or via the Mighty Networks App.
First, download the Mighty Network app by clicking here. Second, once it downloads, click “Find a Mighty Network” and search for Shontavia Johnson. You’ll find content there that I may not share elsewhere.
Thank you so much for joining me on this roller coaster of an experience.
I am eternally grateful that I get to do this work with wonderful people like you each day.
