Hello, welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and happy September, everyone. It is September and it is my birthday month. My birthday is this week. I’m very excited about it. September’s always an interesting month for everyone. It’s back to school. It’s all the things.

And for me, it’s my birthday. And it’s my conscious sun time of year. And we all come into that where we get to feel our own energy. It’s Virgo energy, everybody. It is Virgo season, so welcome. So I had today’s episode planned out. This is largely about visibility and about getting seen online, getting your message heard.

And I had this episode planned, totally had it like, not done, but I had it in my head, had it on the schedule to record it. And then lo and behold, I see an Instagram post from an Instagram influencer this morning as I was preparing to write out my notes for this episode.

And I don’t script out the episodes, but I do have my points I want to make and the journey I want to take you guys on and I have an intentional way that I do that. And this Instagram post pops up. And it caught my eye and it caught my attention and I responded and I had to add it to this because I think it illustrated what I wanted to say in the podcast, which isn’t that beautiful how strategy and authority guides you. I was looking at Instagram and then the perfect thing popped into my experience.

As I was prepping this so it wasn’t about me slaving over the details It was about just responding to what life was giving me. So that Instagram post was by someone who sells Instagram stuff. I’m gonna read to you what it said. So, it was a reel and it said on the video, the things you’re doing in your business that won’t get you to six figures. And it lists out the things, right?

And it had like little penguins dancing under it. And trying to go viral was one of them, which I agree with. Trying to go viral is probably not going to help you make it to six figures. Then she had engaging with competitor content. I would kind of agree with that. I don’t think that’s a terribly great use of your time if you’re doing that.

Then she said, building an email list. This one I disagree with. One of the things that I put at the top of my list is that I wished I had focused on my email list a lot sooner and been more intentional with that. So I don’t agree with her there. The fourth one was starting a podcast. I certainly do not agree with her there.

So her answer to this was, don’t do those things. What you should be doing is you should be on social media. And you should be building a community on social media. And then she had some other things when you read her captions, she got deeper into what that process looks like and she basically goes with the social sales funnel, turning your social media into a sales funnel.

And in that she said that you tighten up your offers, you test your offers, that stuff I agree with. I definitely agree with testing your offers, tightening up your offers, having a well thought out intentional offer suite, all of that. But the social media sales funnel, I’m gonna go through, why I don’t really agree with it, but I’m gonna just stop here and just say, I’m guessing, probably, if you’ve been in this game for any period of time, you’ve tried Instagram.

You’ve tried showing up on Instagram, putting out great content, putting out value, dancing on reels, doing all the things, and if you’re listening to this episode looking for an answer or hoping that there is something in it for you, I’m guessing it probably didn’t work. It didn’t work for me. I’m not going to say I’ve never gotten any business from social media.

Of course I do. Of course I have. But that is not what blew the doors off my business and it was definitely not the only thing that I could focus on. And there are reasons for that. So, I have a difference of opinion with her. And so we’re going to get into it in this episode. So if you’ve struggled with standing out on social media, or you have a podcast that hasn’t taken off, so again, that visibility strategy, that getting yourself out there, putting the content out there that you feel is good, but isn’t getting the attention and the engagement that you feel it should, or that you hoped it should.

Or if you’ve created offers and launch and launch and launch to like three people showing up to your live launches, then stick around because we’re going to dive into exactly why that’s happening and how you can use your design to guide you, but also why that hasn’t worked and what you can do instead.

First, let’s break down what a funnel looks like. She tells you to go and make a social sales funnel, so a social media funnel. Turn social media into a sales funnel. And I have done this. And it has worked. I didn’t find it terribly enjoyable. And it’s always work. It’s always you showing up and you’re a slave to social media.

And I had gotten to a point in my business where I was like, I don’t desire to live like this anymore. I really don’t. And so I had to come back and take a step back and say, how can this change? Is this how it has to be? Or can it be different? And social media is still a big part of my business, but the role it plays has changed.

And that’s because of what I’m going to walk you through now. Let’s just break down what are the typical steps in a funnel. We’re not going to get into the details of a funnel or anything, but we’re just going to go very basically. How does a funnel work? A funnel has three stages, so to speak, and there are steps in between here, of course, but we’re doing this from a really high level.

We’re just touching on this, okay? So this concept of a funnel. A funnel is simply, it’s a prospect journey. How do you get visible? How do they come into your world, the top of the funnel?

Then, how do you take them from that entry door to getting them to walk through the door and hang out at your party for a while? That’s the nurture part. That’s the middle of the funnel.

And then you have the convert part, the end of the funnel, where it’s like, now step into this space and buy something from me. This is where you sell them something. Where they come into your world in a more direct fashion. They have paid you. Now they are working with you in some way. They have now trusted you and said, here’s my money. I want what you have.

So ultimately the goal with a funnel is to sell something. And I don’t care. Even if you’re like, no, I coach because I love it, but we all got to eat. Even if you weren’t charging them for it, you’d be selling them on, I can help you. You’d be selling them on, spend your time with me, spend your resources with me, whatever resources those may be.

So we buy from people we trust. Now notice I did not say like. I have a big pet peeve with know like and trust because I think people focus too much on the like part and they lose focus of everything else.

But we buy from people that we trust and who provide some sort of value for us. Now, the value sometimes gets confused, and this is where the social media sales funnel can be difficult. Because you have to be consistently creating all of this content, delivering value, and then people just consume there for free.

And you’re not really creating a relationship, most of us. There’s not this tight knit group, there’s a lot of noise on social media. It’s a difficult place to stand out on from the start. Now once people know you, once they know you and trust you, then they follow you on social media, you have a different relationship.

Personally, I don’t feel like it’s the greatest place to create relationships. It can work, but usually there’s some other step that happens in there, right? Versus I found you on Instagram, and we talk on Instagram, and I follow your content and that’s it. Works for some people, but like I said, if you’re here listening to this hoping that I have a solution for you at the end, then I’m guessing that hasn’t worked, or hasn’t worked consistently for you, or you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve plateaued.

It’s not that you haven’t made any money. But you got to a point where that got exhausted and then that audience isn’t converting, isn’t moving over, and you’re wondering why. There’s not a ton of visibility into what people’s behavior is because you don’t own the data on Instagram or Facebook or all of those other things.

So we buy from people we trust, right? We buy from people we trust who we think can help us. Now if you are in the transformation industry where I’m a mindset coach, I’m a spiritual coach, I’m going to help you transform your body, I’m going to transform your weight.

All of these that have less tangible results. It’s the squishier realm, as I call it, like squishier results. So even though you might lose weight, a lot of health coaches that I work with will tell me, weight loss is part of it, but usually it’s the fatigue. It’s these other things. They just feel better.

Transformation industry, trust is more important than anything. Because if you think somebody can sell you a tactic or a skill that will make you 5 million dollars, we can bypass the trust part because there’s the 5 million dollar thing.

That often throws the blinders right over, right? And without that we’re left with, you’ll feel better, your life will be better, you will be a more self actualized person, you’ll be able to make decisions that feel supportive to you, right?

That requires more trust. Cause it’s trust you can transform me. And there is a whole other process behind that, there’s a lot more explaining that needs to be done. And the trust that you can transform me, you need to be an authority. In order for somebody to really trust you, they have to see you as an authority. There’s no other way around it. That was something that I discovered.

 I was like, I need to position myself as an authority in my space because there’s a ton of people doing what I do and in order to stand out and to stand out online, what can I do? And this is where human design comes in because I realized the weakness in my message. I wasn’t really an authority to myself.

And if you’ve been listening to me for a while, you’ve probably heard me say this, and if you’re new, you’ll hear it for the first time, but I want you to pay attention either way. You cannot be an authority to others until you are an authority to yourself. There is an energy that comes with being unshakeable, as I call it.

There is a trust that people feel for you because you trust yourself, because you have a grounding that they don’t, that they’re looking for. They are looking for what you have. They are looking for what you’ve created. You are your first testimonial. Are you embodying what you teach or not?

And when you’re asking somebody to take a leap with you, It requires you to be an authority. They have to see you that way. And that’s what human design can help you with. Now, human design can certainly ground you in your own authority of who you are, the decisions that you make, that is self empowerment.

And there are certain aspects of design, like if you have integration channels in your circuitry, self empowerment is going to be key to you being able to put yourself out there in a way that people receive. If you are not self empowered, you will not be able to empower anybody else. Because that’s not how your energy works.

They won’t feel it until you’re there, until you are self empowered. So, what I realized as I was posting really good content, on Instagram, and I was spending all this time, and I was, I felt pressure a lot of times to create, and create, and be on the platform more, and create great content. Then it was all the different formats, and the reels, and all the things.

It occurred to me, that I needed an authority platform. There was far too much noise on social media for me to stand out there on its own. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, which was the other aspect. I didn’t really enjoy being on there all the time. I didn’t want to be on there. And you know what, people can feel that too. And it made it difficult to do my job. And it made me it made it difficult for me to show up.

So I developed what I call an authority platform. Now, an authority platform can be any platform where you’re showing up and delivering a message that’s true to you, true to who you are, true to your gifts, which human design can give you that formula, and that positions you as an authority where you’re standing out and people are recognizing you as an authority.

So an authority platform is where you have your message, your audience, and the key to making that work is messaging. You can make an authority platform work anywhere if you have great messaging. But a podcast automatically sets you apart from everyone else. A podcast becomes your business card.

Whenever you go someplace, I have a podcast. Whenever you talk to someone, I have a podcast. It’s such an easy yes for people to subscribe to it, to say yes to it, to listen to an episode. And if it’s good, they’ll keep listening. And if they keep listening, then you have taken care of a good portion of your funnel.

Because if they keep coming back, you don’t have to chase them anymore. And every listen that you get, you’re in their ears. You are in their ears. I read a statistic the other day, I should have written it down and I’m sorry that I didn’t, but I think it’s something like people absorb 50 more with headphones than they do just listening to something.

You are in their ears. You are penetrating them and their world and their mind more by being in their earbuds. I’m doing that with you right now. We are building a relationship. I am with you in your bathroom as you get ready in the morning. I am with you as you drop your kids off at school. I am with you when you are walking around cleaning your house and picking up.

I’m with you when you’re just laying down and listening to podcasts. If you choose mine, it is the greatest platform for building authority. I wouldn’t be here without it. Now, my results, I have had, and I did talk about this on another episode, but I’ve generated what I’ve roughly translated into about $94,000 from this podcast in the last year, just from the podcast, that is podcast generated revenue, either people who came to me straight from the podcast or people that I met a long time ago who kept listening to the podcast and then ended up buying down the road.

That is the beauty of it. It doesn’t just work one way. It doesn’t just work like they get a bunch of emails and then it’s done. It’s just like the newsletter, but it’s so much more personal. It is so much more of a bond. You feel like you know me, I’m sure. You know my voice. You know when I sound like I’m having a great time. You know stories of mine that are very personal. That is priceless in this industry.

So, this is the key to having visibility, nurturing, and converting your audience. It takes care of all of those stages of the funnel that we were talking about. Now there’s different ways to make each one of those work.

There’s different ways to get visibility through your podcast. There are different ways to nurture your audience through your podcast, and there are different ways to convert your audience through a podcast. It doesn’t do it all on its own. You have to learn. I have learned over time by making lots of mistakes and testing lots of things, how to do all three.

Now, I don’t rely on it for all three all the time, but what I do like is the fact that I can sit back and when I’m not doing some of the other things that I do to fuel my business, that the podcast is doing its job. Like a little soldier out there fighting for me every day because every episode, I’ve created 200 episodes of this show almost.

We are at 199 right now when you’re listening to this. But 199 episodes are out there doing work for me every single day. Instagram can’t do that for you. No social media can. This is the greatest strategy and marketing tool in your toolbox. So those different stages, the visibility, the nurturing, and the converting.

It’s the discoverability, the nurturing, and then monetization of a podcast. If this sounds good to you, that is exactly what I’ll be teaching inside a workshop that I’m doing starting September 18th. It’s a three day workshop. It’s called Unlock Your Voice. And in it, we’re going to teach you how to learn the secrets to launching, growing, and monetizing a podcast in three days. We will be doing the messaging portion on that first day is going to be all about using your human design and how to build a podcast by design. Now, if you’ve downloaded our free guide for podcasting by design, then you know that there is a structure that you can use, but it goes so much deeper than that.

That was the free guide that got your feet wet with figuring out, does this even sound like something you want to do? We focused on type in that. There is so much more we go into and it’s not just human design. I did an episode recently on success and alignment, can we have both? Yes, but if you want success, you’re going to have to take some proven marketing strategies as well.

You’re going to have to use some tools that exist in business in addition to the energetic work. They go together and that’s what we’re going to show you in this workshop. How these pieces all fit together so that you end up with a business and a funnel and a podcast that feels good to you, reflects the best version of who you are and ultimately gets you paid at the end of the day in a way that feels good.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? I know. It is pretty awesome. I have to say, I’m never turning back. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done to start this show and it has opened me up to so many different possibilities and that’s what I’ll be sharing with you starting September 18th in this workshop. So, if you want to join us, which I highly recommend you do, of course, please go to nicolelaino.me/masterclass.

And, and you can always go to nicolelaino.me/podcastlinks. That’s where all of our links are, or you can DM me right now, the word and only the word. Don’t put please or thank you or an emoji or anything in there, or it screws up the autoresponder because it is a bot that’s going to send it to you.

This is just so you can get this really efficiently. Right now, if you’re on your phone, just go to Instagram, DM me. I’m @nicolelainoofficial. Just DM me the word “masterclass” and we will send that over to you. You’ll get an automatic response that sends you the link for that right now. And you can sign up right now.

So I hope you choose to join us there because this is going to be a kickass masterclass, if I do say so myself, more of a workshop. Three days we’re going to show you how to launch, grow, and monetize a podcast and do it all according to your human design. It’s going to be fabulous and I hope to see you there.

So I hope you found this helpful. I hope that this helped you see things in a different way, as I hope that all the episodes do. But I had fun with this one. Thank you for being here. Please subscribe to the show so you don’t miss any. Tell a friend. Share it on Instagram, tag me. I’m @nicolelainoofficial.

Do all the things to help us get the word out about the show. We appreciate you. We appreciate all the support that you give us. And remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakeable human. So thanks for letting us help you become Unshakeable with Human Design today.

We’ll see you next time.