[0:00] Music.
[0:13] It's part four of the compelling content challenge and i think i may have said this every week but this this one really is my favorite of the four challenges i love all of them equally but this one's really fun i want to talk about selling in your stories today and the reason why this one is my favorite is because you plus selling in your stories equals making money i want you to make more money and I want you to make it easily and I want you to stop overcomplicating it and I want you to have fun doing it.
[0:43] And sometimes I explain what I'm up to in my business to friends and family who are not in this weird Instagram marketing world and their minds, they're so confused when I tell them that, they'll ask me, how are you selling stuff? How are you making sales? And I say, I just talk about stuff on my Instagram stories. And that's where pretty much all my sales come from.
[1:05] And now I have a really amazing collection of ride or die fans who I'm never sure if they're buying from my stories or from emails. But one thing is for sure, I'm always selling in my stories and I think you should be too. And I'm going to tell you about how to do that in a way that's, like I said, don't just do it to check a box, but that's actually super fun, and feels like a creative expression. So here's my take on selling in your stories. I've listened so many other coaches teach their methods for this. And I've just found that it can be so easy to overcomplicate this. And the fact about it is that selling in your stories is supposed to be amazingly beautifully simple. And we like to insert our methodologies and tactics and trainings and hacks and things.
[1:54] And I think that's where things start to get fuzzy and unclear. So my hope from And this episode is to give you with three super specific, I don't even want to say it, but I'm going to say like guidelines.
[2:06] Or let's call them ideas or prompts, because the one thing that I would hate would be for you to leave this episode feeling like there are rules to follow or like there are boxes you have to check or like there's a right or a wrong way to sell in your stories. Because I know for a lot of women who I coach, you're probably already feeling overwhelmed by that. You're probably already feeling like, I want to do it right. I want my brain to be able to get excited about this. And every time I post my stories, I want to feel like, yes, this will work.
[2:39] But that's sort of the fun thing about stories is that there's a learning curve and there's getting the reps in just like you would at the gym. And so I don't think it's a fair expectation to say like, just post this thing in your stories and you will magically make sales. I think there's an experimentation to it. And I think there's an art to it. And I think that's a good thing. And that's what makes it feel like a creative expression. And I definitely would not want you to leave this feeling even more bogged down by do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. But I'm going to give you some gentle guidelines that you can follow if it helps you feel like you're on the right path. And people have asked me before what my method or system for posting in my stories in. And I actually think about this often and I'm like, I probably do kind of have like a method or a system, but the honest truth is that I just post whatever the heck I feel like. I just talk about whatever sounds fun for me to talk about today. And so it feels really weird every time I try to teach posting in your stories as a step-by-step process.
[3:48] I think stories are the best part of Instagram, right? It's like, this is where your people are hanging out. And if you think about stories on your personal account if you're like me I have like a separate like personal Kaylin's friends and family account where like when I get on my stories from that account it's like my friends posting pictures of their what they're up to with their kids today and you know the dance recitals and concerts and just like fun random happenings in their lives and that's so fun and interesting to watch and I think when we take that out of our marketing from for our businesses, that's first of all, it makes it feel way less fun. And it will also definitely affect how fun it is for people to watch and observe your stories. But this should feel that easy and natural and it should take the same amount of time as if you were just going to post this on your personal Instagram stories and you know it's going to disappear in 24 hours and not make it a big deal. So like I said, I want this to feel like posting in your stories and selling in your stories can actually be super fun and very simple and super easy. Because you've heard me say it before, but if creating content isn't fun for you, you're doing something wrong with love. So let me start here. There's definitely a mindset.
[5:06] To approach selling with your stories from. And that I could spend the rest of my life talking about. I have so much to say about the mindset and the identity of feeling like you're someone who sells stuff. And I know that's bugging a lot of you down. You feel really weird sharing about stuff that you're selling and it feels new and maybe a little bit unnatural. And a lot of us carry stories around with us about what selling is and is selling good, is selling bad. You may have had negative experiences with sales before that come to your mind that you associate with being someone who sells things that you feel like you would be if you start to sell your offers. So you might have a mindset about selling that you're bumping up against that's
[5:53] making it feel even harder to sell in your stories. So for the sake of not turning this into a 12-hour long podcast episode, I'm going to kind of skip over the mindset of selling today. And instead, I just want to talk about something else that might be happening, which is that you might just be procrastinating selling in your stories.
[6:13] And procrastination is so interesting and fascinating because it can be as simple as, I just don't want to. I just don't want to post in my stories, so therefore I'm not going to. Or it could be something with extra layers that is maybe related to fear about being seen. Fears about what thoughts people might have about you. Fears about doing it wrong and having it not work. Fears about doing it right and having it work really well. All of those are so laery and we could dive into any single one of those. I want you to just have an awareness that that's a thing so that you can catch your brain when it starts to spiral. If you struggle to share invitations in your stories, which I'll talk about in just a second, just know that your brain might like to play tricks on you. And it's probably related to the fear of being seen selling something. So that's totally a thing. But if you are already like, I am on board with selling in my stories. I'm excited about it. I want to, I want to know how to do it better.
[7:13] It's a skill that I'm interested in developing, but I'm still struggling to get it done. Your brain's probably just overcomplicating it. You're probably thinking things like, I don't know what to say. I don't know which offer to talk about.
[7:26] I don't know if my messaging is good enough. And so those are kind of the three things that I want to pin down for you today so that you can feel confident that you do know what to say and you do know if your messaging is good enough. So I'm going to give you some easy guidelines to follow. So first, let's talk about selling in your stories.
[7:44] If that even feels too heavy and intimidating for you.
[7:48] A way that I like to talk about selling in my stories that's a little bit more lightweight and that I think feels a little bit more natural, especially for women, especially for women who, you know, are wrapping their brains around getting on board with being someone who sells their offers confidently. I like to first say, instead of post a sales pitch in your stories every day, because even the word pitch for some of us like makes our eyes twitch. It kind of does for me, honestly.
[8:16] I like to say post an invitation in your stories every day or five times per week because if you're like me I like to kind of peace out on Instagram on the weekends if you did literally nothing else and that was the only thing you did if you took this one bullet point of advice from this entire podcast from this entire podcast like all of my episodes if you literally did nothing else I can pretty much guarantee this would dramatically affect your sales for a lot of reasons. Let me say it again. The invitation, the guideline for you is to post an invitation in your stories every single day or five times per week. So like your job on Instagram, once you share an invitation is done. You can check that box. You have done marketing for the day. You are done. You can put your phone away. The reason why I really like to call this an invitation instead of a sales pitch is because I like to think about selling my offers as if I was putting out a plate of cookies on the.
[9:18] And instead of being like super butthurt or awkward or feeling weird if someone doesn't take one, instead of feeling so rejected and bummed and uncomfortable and like, oh, she probably hates my guts or I'm just not cool enough and all the things, all those funny tricks that our brains like to play.
[9:34] If it's a plate of cookies on the counter and someone doesn't take it, instead of being like super personally offended, I'm like, oh, she probably doesn't want a cookie. Not a big deal. Maybe she already had, maybe her tummy's full. Maybe she's not hungry. Maybe she's off sugar right now, right? Like if someone rejects my cookie, I'm not like super hurt and sad about it. And I think it's useful for you to think about your offers that way too.
[10:00] Instead of posting one invitation in your stories and feeling sad if you don't make a million dollars from it, or if no one responds, or if no one clicks the link or whatever, that you can just be like, cool, no big deal. I just put out an invitation and let people take it or leave it. This also feels really good for me because it's really important to me that
[10:19] what I'm selling genuinely comes from a place of love and service. So anytime I put out even my offers that I am selling, that I am very intentionally monetizing, it's not like I can put that invitation out there with genuine love and care for people. That's like, here's this amazing resource that I've created for you or this amazing coaching package or this amazing whatever. Group, program, membership that I've created for you that will absolutely solve your problems. If you would love one, take one. If not, no big deal. And so that's why I really like to talk about posting in your stories as an invitation so that it just kind of makes it feel a little bit more lightweight so that it feels like it's coming from love and service and it should. And I think it's when our offers start to not feel like love and service that that personal rejection can really get in your way.
[11:14] So again, let's talk about the specifics of posting an invitation because I do think there's some specific things that you should do. But a quick reminder that, again, the purpose of posting an invitation is not for everyone to say yes, but it will get your audience starting to think of you as a leader. You've heard me talk in the last three episodes of this content challenge, the importance of your audience, thinking of you as a leader, thinking of you as someone who's doing something different.
[11:45] Thinking of you as someone who is going somewhere and they would like to come along. They would like to be there. They would like to learn from you. They would like to be in your world and learn how you are doing it. And so I think it's important for you to do this, putting these invitations in your stories in the interest of positioning yourself as a leader in people's minds. And I also think this is important because this will help you get used to asking
[12:12] your audience to do something. Because if you don't ask your audience to do something, that's when you don't make money. If you ask your audience to buy stuff, they will buy stuff, you will make more money.
[12:22] You're already probably thinking, what does that mean? What does invitation mean? Here's what I think it is. It's one of these four things. Either the invitation is respond to this poll in the interest of me gathering market research. I used to do polls that were like fluffy and unimportant just for the purpose of increasing my story views, right? You probably heard people talk about this before. If you post a poll on your first story slide of the day, after your stories have expired, it can really boost your views. I am like so over all of the like algorithm hacks. They don't even register in my brain anymore. But I do really like using polls for the purpose of market research. Like, think about how crazy that is that you can get input from your entire audience in 24 hours. The other options you have for doing that are like sending emailing out a survey, which, you know, people may or may not actually take. And not that every single person is going to respond to your polls either. But I just think that is a very valuable resource that a lot of us are sleeping on. And I really like I do this all the time and you probably see me do this.
[13:27] And I'll actually like gift people, I'll like send them a Starbucks gift card or send them a Venmo gift to thank you for your time and intention responding to these polls, because I do use them for programs that I'm actually creating.
[13:42] So right now, this is just freshly on my mind, but right now I've been creating a digital resource where you can use my chat GPT prompts to help you write a sales page that's really good in 60 minutes or less. And a couple weeks ago I was asking people what should I call this thing that I'm making and I put a few options in a poll in my stories and I just remembered two of the options were sales page machine and 60 minute sales page and more people voted for 60 minute sales page which is why that offer is now named that and so I don't just collect market research for fun I actually really use it for my offers and you can be and in my opinion should be doing this too so that's Number one option of invitations you can share is respond to this poll in the interest of gathering market research. Number two would be download my freebie or my free resource or get access to this free thing by clicking this button and entering your email. That would be invitation number two. Number three would be buy this thing, buy this program, buy this offer, join this group, whatever the thing is that you're selling right now. So that one is interesting because you may or may not be selling something right now. Maybe if you're in the middle of a launch, that's awesome. If you're not in the middle of a launch, you're probably like, wait, how do I still invite people to do stuff? So if you have offers that are for sale, post links, have people buy it, count that as your invitation for the day.
[15:08] Another invitation that you could give people, especially if you are focusing super intentionally on booking private clients, would be book a consult call.
[15:16] That's going to be your invitation today. Pretty much every day for a really long time. And I want you to have fun with playing around with different ways to talk about that, playing around with different ways to invite people or get them interested in why that would be in their best interest. I'll talk more about that in just a second. But I really want you to see that instead of overcomplicating this and making this super fluffy about what does this count as an invitation or does this not? I don't want you to ask me that. I want you to decide for yourself if you feel like this thing that you are sharing counts as your invitation for the day. But what I am really interested in mostly is for you to get in the reps of giving super specific, direct invitations.
[16:00] Because what we all really want, and I started sort of verbalizing this this way because it really resonates for me, really what we all want is for us to be able to share, to say something in our Instagram stories, for example, or in our marketing anywhere and get people to move. We want to be able to get people to do something. Click the link, get access to the resource, buy the program, join the program. And so I do think this is a matter of putting in the reps where just like at the gym, when you first start, you're going to do a few reps and your muscles are going to feel tired and might feel a little uncomfy, but that's not a problem. That's just showing that there's muscles growing here. You have marketing muscles too. And I think it's really important for you to get in the reps of frequently inviting people to get closer to you. Okay.
[16:50] Next, let's make this super easy because I've been in this place too, where I get super confused about like, what should I share in my stories? What should I say? Should I share my personal life? Should I share what's going on in my business? Is it bad if I mix the two? Let's just make this so easy. Your second prompt for your stories is to share what you are up to in your life and in your business. Because if all you're sharing all the time is these invitations, if that's all people are ever hearing from you, that's really good because you are still serving people by inviting them to get closer to you because they need you and they want you. But if you think about just like the stories, if you are on a personal account, you want to see what's up in people's lives and they want to see what's up in your life too and in your business. The reason why I think this is super compelling is one, because people will keep watching your stories when you are sharing what's up in your life because that's so much more interesting than just like sales invitation after sales invitation, right? But also, if you also do this for your business, share what you are working on in your business, this will make it really natural and easy for you to give an invitation. So a few examples. I just got off this consult call and here's what we chatted about inside.
[18:11] Here's an invitation for you to get on a consult call with me next week, right? See how like the invitation becomes so just a natural thing. Like, hey, do you want this too? Here's how to get access to it. Another example, every Thursday I share about my greenhouse call because every Thursday, Thursday's your greenhouse days. So I share about a picture of our group call and a quick little recap of what we chatted about. Right now, I'm not directly selling the greenhouse, But when I am, I will absolutely put an invitation to join the greenhouse immediately after that story or on that story slide or whatever. So I just want you to see how, first of all, your people are for sure more interested in seeing what's going on behind the scenes in your personal life, yes, and in your business. And so if you can peel back the layers and show us what you're up to, it will help position you as an authority, which I'm very interested in, as you can probably gather. But also it will make it really natural for you to give an invitation Here's what i'm working on. Here's the here's the digital product that i've been working on behind the scenes Here's the link to buy it Here's the group program that i'm working on ideating for Here's the link to buy it or i'm going to be opening the doors for it in a couple of weeks or whatever.
[19:26] If you did nothing else If you just focused on sharing more behind the scenes You're probably already really good at sharing behind the scenes in your life or most of us are Maybe you could turn up the volume on that a little bit more, And I would do this instead of, I see a lot of people share, and I used to do this too, like, here's what's happening in my office today, or here's what I'm up to today. And I would share like consult call, client call, greenhouse call, group call, whatever. That's good. I think that's great. But I would take it the next level. Instead of just saying, here's what I'm going to do today, I would give us a recap of what you worked on, especially if you're working with clients and are interested in people hiring you and paying to get closer to you, whether that's privately, whether that's in a group, whether that's in a membership. I would give people a recap of like, here's what happened on said call. That will be way more valuable to help people start to visualize themselves on a call with you. If they're like, oh, she chatted about that with that client. That sounds super interesting. Or that's something that I would find useful. Or that's something that I want and need. It's going to make it way easier when you do give them the invitation for them to move, for them to click, for them to buy sooner rather than later.
[20:38] Okay, guideline number three. I'm really excited about this one because I wanna talk about, I hear this from my clients a lot and I think it's because I talk about messaging a lot, about how important good messaging is. So now all of us are in our heads about is our messaging good enough? And I kinda like that and I kinda don't at the same time because I think it's worthwhile to wonder and I think it's smart to think about and consider, but I don't want it to be like, I don't know if my messaging is good enough so therefore I can't post in my stories today or I can't sell my offer until I know if my messaging is good enough. That's the opposite of what I want to create for you. So let me give you a quick little guideline about how to just a snippet, of a way that you can know, you can check the box and say for sure, yep, my messaging covers my bases. It's good enough for right now. Like I said, all of these principles that I'm teaching you could have a very in-depth course that I could teach about every single one. I just want you to have in the back of your mind some tools in your tool belt so that when you take your pick and you are typing on your stories before you post it, you can go in the back of your mind and be like, okay. Did I post an invitation? Yep. Check. Did I share what I'm up to in my life and in my business? Yep. Check. And did I use really good messaging? Yep. Check. Like I want you to feel super confident about those three. So let's talk about this messaging layer.
[22:04] Like I said, I could go into a lot of depth on this and we can, and we will in the greenhouse. That's one of my favorite places to help my clients with this. I help with this in the launch crew as well, but this is what I want you to use. This is the tool, the tip, the hack, whatever we want to call it. I want you to practice talking about your offer this way, where you will say you can write this phrase one time and repeat it over and over. You can play with rewriting this phrase every time you post in your stories. But basically what you're going to say is get the result that you want. That's super generic and vague, I realize. I'm going to get, I'll share some examples in just minute. Get the result that you want and then you're going to choose one of these four options.
[22:49] So that even if without or in a certain time frame. Let me say this again because if you did this and nothing else, this would improve your messaging instantly. I give you permission to say your messaging is good enough if you've done this one thing. Get the thing, result, experience that you want, as if you're talking to your dream clients or group program members or membership people. Get the thing that you want either. Pick one of these four. So that even if without or in a certain time frame. Okay, let me give you some examples because you could choose one of these four and rock it over and over, or you could play with variations with every single one. So some examples, join my program to learn how to design in Canva. And you could like a lot of people when they're marketing, that's all they say, join my program so that you can learn X. But I want you to just tack on one extra little thing that will really make this land when people are reading, consuming, adoring your marketing. Join my program to learn how to design in Canva so that you can stop spending an hour to create one post.
[24:10] That's it. That's your messaging. Call it good enough. Check the box. Post it in your stories. Put your phone away. Go be with your kids. Okay. Example number two, learn how to set boundaries in your corporate job, even if you're someone who usually identifies as a people pleaser. Right? Like I could have just said, here's my program about how to set boundaries in your corporate job, which is good. If you just tack on this extra little thing on the end, it will get people's attention. It will help them remember your offer and it will help them realize that it's for them. So let me read that one again. Learn how to set boundaries in your corporate job, even if you're someone who usually identifies as a people pleaser. Here's example number three. Learn how to prepare an emergency preparedness car kit without dropping a hundred bucks on supplies. Right? Like that's, yeah, I would do that, you know?
[25:02] Here's example number four. Create a freebie so good people would buy it and set up your welcome email sequence in 30 days. Okay. That's when I was talking about like add a certain timeframe. If someone was teaching a program to help you create a freebie and set up your welcome email sequence, but it took six months, I would be like, I don't have time for that. But if it was like, let's knock this out in 30 days or even like in the next two weeks, I would be like, Hey, where can I buy? Right? So I think for some offers attaching a certain timeframe can be very useful where it's like, hey, if you're already going to be doing this thing that you want to do or you know you should be doing or you're procrastinating, do it my way and do it way faster or in a way shorter timeframe or get the result way sooner than you probably expected or thought that you could. If you're struggling about the desire to tack on at the end, I want you to just think about conversations that you've had with people about this, about the thing that you're selling. What comes up frequently? What questions do they ask you about? Answer like a frequently asked question in this sentence, right?
[26:07] So let's go back to the beginning. If you're a Canva creation coach and you know that people are spending way too much time designing in Canva because that's what everyone's complaining about, right? Everyone everywhere is complaining about how much time it takes to create content. The promise that you tack on is going to be the resolution to that exact problem. Stop spending an hour to create one post. This program will help you do that.
[26:29] Okay, let's recap so that we make sure that you leave this episode feeling super calm and confident about what to do in your stories moving forward so that you can tick all the mental boxes if that works for you. If you want to just feel super confident like you have done enough in your marketing, you can now put your phone away and go live your life. I really want that for you too. So here are the three things. Post an invitation in your stories every day, either to respond to this poll for the purpose of market research, download a freebie or buy some other evergreen offer that you always have available. Buy this specific program if you are currently launching or if that program is currently available or book a free consult call. Those are your four invitations.
[27:13] You're going to just put in the reps and do it over and over every single day. And when your brain starts to go, I'm repeating myself a lot. Are people being annoyed? You can say back to your brain, repetition is basically all marketing is. All marketing is is saying the same thing over and over in different ways, in fun ways, in unique ways, but that's really all marketing is. So if your brain's like, I'm repeating myself, you can say, that means I'm doing a really good job. That means I'm doing really good marketing. If you are repeating yourself, you're doing it right. Number two, share what you're up to in your life and in your business, but not just about what you're going to do today. Give us a recap about what you did and why that's important to those of us who are watching and how you could help us do the same thing if that applies to your offer.
[27:59] And finally, your messaging. A super quick and easy way to know if you're talking about your offer in a compelling way is tack on one of these four phrases. So that...
[28:11] Even if, without, or in a certain timeframe. If you do that, you have Kaylin's official stamp of approval on your messaging. Yes, we could spend a lot of time really nailing down the nuances and the layers of it, but I don't want you to stress about that when this whole thing of posting your stories is supposed to be really fast and easy. So let's keep it fast and easy, shall we? Let's keep it fun and lightweight. Let's keep it friendly and personable and social. Let's keep it focused on connecting with actual human beings because that's what Instagram was created for in the first place. That's why it's called social media, right? Let's keep stories social and fun and easy.
[28:55] Okay, this is part four of the compelling content challenge. I feel like I could add 15 more parts to this challenge, but we're going to wrap it up at number four. I have an episode coming for you next week about kind of just a recap of 2024 for Kaylin. A lot of my students and clients are asking, what have I invested in? What will I be investing in this year? What will I be investing in next year? And I have lots of things that are, I'm always shifting and moving things around, but in really good ways, things are always getting better and better in my business. They are for you too. And so I'm going to just share a little recap of what I have loved and appreciated and what's been challenging and unique about 2024 for and what I'm looking forward to in 2025. So come back next week for that episode and I will see you then.
[29:44] Hey, I hope you loved this week's episode. If you did, I know you would love to be a member of my community, The Greenhouse. It's where I teach you how to build an amazing fruitful life while you build an amazing fruitful business. It is a movement for women who want to unsubscribe from the traditional success path that says that life has to be a struggle. And instead learn how good making more money can get, how fun marketing can be, and how much joy and presence you're capable of feeling as a woman and as a mother. Find out more and join at kaylinpriest.com slash greenhouse. And I'll see you there.
[30:23] Music.
