42: Developing and Maintaining a Mindset of Abundance with Megan Grant
Today, we are extremely happy to be talking to Megan Grant. Megan is an amazing entrepreneur! She started her business after getting laid off four times in five years. After the last time, she decided that enough was enough. Megan is joining us to talk about her business, how she grew it, how she qualifies leads, and how to get into a mindset of abundance. We have a very inspiring conversation today, and we know you will enjoy it! Megan Grant’s bio From unemployed to a business owner, here’s Megan Grant’s story, in a nutshell. Megan has been writing professionally for 11 years, sometimes on the side of a 9-to-5, and other times, as her full-time income. However, it was when she got laid off for the fourth time in five years that she made a decision: she’d had enough. At that exact moment, Megan told herself, “I will never be laid off again.” Megan quickly grew her small freelance writing gigs into a full-time income, bringing in new clients and helping more businesses manage their blogs — and she never looked back. Along the way, she realized how much overlap there is between content creation, social media, and email marketing, so she expanded her business further. Megan created her agency, Revenue Spark Digital Marketing, and very rapidly saw herself buried under a mountain of work, so she hired a small team and continued growing her agency. But she wanted to do more. Having worked with so many other professionals over the years, it always bothered her seeing incredibly skilled people struggle. Why are they overworked and underpaid? Why is it so hard to find high-paying clients? Megan was traveling when she wanted, working from where she wanted, setting her own hours, and steadily growing her income. Why weren’t more professionals doing the same? Megan realized the problem. The problem was that she learned much of what she knows simply from trial and error (lots of errors). But people need a leader. She knew she could help them, so that’s what she’s doing here. Megan began coaching other client-based professionals and businesses, teaching them the exact steps that she took to grow a lucrative business for herself. One of her first steps was launching her course — Revenue Spark: A Proven Formula for Landing High-Paying Clients. She’s also made it her mission to provide as much information as possible across her YouTube channel. Since setting out on this journey, Megan has helped professionals all over the world create the business and life that they want — not the life that an employer is willing to give them. Megan’s background Megan’s background is in writing, and that expanded very naturally into marketing. She used to work for the marketing departments of mostly smaller companies and found that when smaller companies struggled or markets were down, marketing was always the first to get cut. That seemed backward to her, because if you are struggling you need to throw even more money into marketing. Losing jobs Although Megan was a hard worker, she lost four jobs in about five years. That was devastating for her. Pivoting In 2016-2017, she realized that she was on the wrong path and needed to pivot. She decided never to work for anyone else again, and she went into freelancing full-time. What Megan Grant does now Megan Grant has an agency where she provides mostly writing services and some social media and email marketing. She also works with other professionals. She teaches them how to grow their businesses in the same way that she did, so they can have stability and security. Building relationships For Megan, building relationships is about tons of outreach. She also has some processes that are running in the background. Putting herself out there She puts herself out there by doing simple, casual things like tweeting or emailing someone to form genuine relationships and provide value for them. Human to human connection More and more, Megan has realized the importance of caring for others and forming genuine, human-to-human connections with people. Organizing things and managing time Megan schedules time blocks to keep things organized and help her manage her time. Creating content If you are creating content in any capacity, you are essentially building up a library of value and resources. Megan built up her library of resources over time. That allows her to reach more people with less effort. Finding her first customers Megan got her first clients by tweeting them, introducing herself, and telling them she wanted to blog for them. She was more interested in forming relationships with those people than trying to sell to them. Trial and error At first, finding clients was about lots of trial and error because, at the time, she did not know how to go out and land clients. She refined her process over the years to find what works for her consistently. How Megan Grant now find clients Megan Grant now uses a combination of LinkedIn and warm emailing to find her clients. She starts by creating a human connection with someone on LinkedIn, and after that, she asks if she can email them to talk about business. Developing and maintaining a mindset of abundance Initially, Megan’s abundance mindset came out of a need for survival. She then stopped using writing platforms to find work and started finding clients willing to pay her what she is worth. Shifting from a place of lack to one of abundance opened the whole world up for her. Numbers Megan points out that you can’t build a business or know if your business is working without knowing your numbers. Dashboards Megan used Google to find out how to track her metrics and create dashboards. A big lesson One of the biggest lessons she learned was that it is about working smart, not hard. Ask for help Megan learned that if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. So, she now asks for help whenever she needs it, and she helps others when they ask her to do so. Qualifying leads Not everyone is a potential client. Megan first checks whether or not she has the solution for someone’s problem, and if she can help them. She also looks to see if they are active in the way she needs them to be. If, for example, they don’t already have a blog, she does not reach out to them. She does not want to try to convince them that they need one because that is too big a hurdle and it will not be the best way that she can make use of her time. Budget She also looks at their budget to make sure that they have enough money to spend. She looks for hints that they have already spent tons of time, money, and energy on building a quality online presence. Building relationships When building her relationships and reaching out to people on LinkedIn, Megan is very concise, transparent, and to the point. She keeps it simple. She tells people her name, what she does, and why she is messaging them. And it works. Connect with Eric On LinkedIn On Facebook On Instagram On Website Connect with Megan On Website On LinkedIn On YouTube On Instagram