Week 2 on Clubhouse – learning new words like Peacocking lol

So the first 7 days was Clubhouse Chaos, I was addicted and and it was a wild ride with not much sleep. Week 2 has been ‘The Power of Clubhouse’ and I have made some AMAZING connections and have some great opportunities building!

As a single mum, homeschooling 2 boys and running the business from my dining room table… I sometimes feel like the movie Shirley Valentine. I am 44 so some might have no idea what I am talking about here! But Clubhouse has given me a new lease of life, amazing conversations, new friends and business collaborations.

I have started to host rooms, be a moderator for others and I have already been approached for global speaking opportunities! I have been open, honest, vulnerable, truthful, helpful and supportive. I am learning a lot from other founders and finding a brand new tribe to help me develop and grow.

I have connected with the lovely Jennifer Gilmour and we connected instantly! We have already hosted our first room and have established that we have so much synergy already. I received a lovely book after I shared that I still hear that voice and still feel fragile after a very painful divorce which lasted for over 3 years. Jennifer is AMAZING and has achieved so much in her business and life! A true inspiration for #AbuseTalk

https://jennifergilmour.com/the-recovery-toolkit/ – By Sue Penna

‘Peacocking’ and ‘Willy Wagging’ are new words and phrases I have learnt lol! I am sure there will be lots of new words that come out of Clubhouse!

‘Put simply, peacocking is “something men do in order to highlight their strong points in order to stand out from their competition,” says dating expert and coach, James Preece. “It’s usually done in order to attract women, much like peacocks show off their feathers to attract a mate (or sales).’

There has been high profile and public arguments which have lead to new rooms discussing female equality, bullying and a call for the ‘Willy Wagging’ to stop! Men have moved over from the big groups to support the women in the new groups who have felt pushed out of the male dominated rooms.

If I am honest I am enjoying the smaller groups with interesting and genuine people / experts without the ego and the constant sales pitch from people who are already millionaires!

I am also loving all of the women who are holding their own, shouting about their success and leading the power of inspiration!

I am loving non business rooms like: The British Accent: How to be an 18 figure founder with @Tash_Courtenay

‘Fun and giggles on a Saturday night!’

Guess the accent was also a fun room and pretty surreal when an actress from Eastenders joins in. Tanya was lovely on air and the room was a fun one to be in on a Saturday night in lockdown.

Then a real giggle with Esther McVey about whipping, but not the whipping you are thinking…

‘The Chief Whip is a political office whose task is to administer the whipping system that tries to ensure that members of the party attend and vote as the party leadership desires.‘

Then everyone had an actor crush live on Clubhouse with Karl Queensborough from Hamilton. I am now going to have to watch this on Disney+ (watched it and loved it!)

https://broadwaynews.com/2020/05/12/hamilton-movie-to-premiere-on-disney-plus-in-july/

ClubHouse Town Hall News: 17/01/2021

1. Jobs for Android App developers – Apply @ jobs@joinclubhouse.com / https://jobs.lever.co/joinclubhouse

2. This week is all about DISCOVERY. Discover people, rooms and clubs that you might like to join. They really want to make sure that you are seeing the things you are interested in. So do follow those people who look interesting and might host fun or informative rooms.

3. Do you behave like you are at work or at a party? REALLY! I am sure everyone knows how to behave in rooms and if you want to be naughty or flirt… Then head off into a closed and private room lol!

4. Clubs – They are going through the club requests so it is just a case of being patient.

5. They are looking at all questions and feedback that is sent in, so if you have an idea or some advice then do contact them @ https://www.notion.so/Community-Guidelines-461a6860abda41649e17c34dc1dd4b5f

Read my Top 10 Tips to get started on Clubhouse @ https://sjpcollective.com/2021/01/12/my-top-10-tips-to-get-the-most-out-of-clubhouse-app/

https://www.shiftstosuccess.com/successstories/success-stories-samantha-poole/

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My Top 10 Tips to get the most out of Clubhouse App

So the new year gifted us a new app and this one is super exciting!

What is Clubhouse? The new community-building for virtual events, global networking and conversations.

“Clubhouse is an exclusive, invite-only audio app where participants can move around virtual rooms discussing business, entrepreneurship, arts and culture, from popular TV shows to the state of the music industry and big social media Influencers too.”

Like any new social media platform it takes time to get used to it… However as all you have to do is listen or talk, then it is by far the best, in my opinion. As you are getting to speak with some of the biggest names in the world! Rappers, Grant Cardone and even Paris Hilton jumps into rooms for a chat with everyone!

Within 4 days I have been a room host moderator, guest speaker, asked Daniel Priestley a question in a huge room and I am making the most amazing contacts! #IamAddicted

ClubhouseApp

1. Do read the community guidelines (letter icon in top right corner) and google ‘clubhouse app’ as there are lots of blogs which have all the latest updates on the app! Get a feel for the app by listening in rooms, get a feel for the speakers, have a look at their bios and enjoy!

Clubhouse Town Hall

2. Listen to Clubhouse Town Hall on a Sunday at 5pm & follow the founders to keep updated … as it will be changing whilst in beta stage. Follow @paul and @rohan Switch the bell on when you tap their photo, so you are alerted when they go live. It was so refreshing to hear from the founders directly and know that they are actively looking at the users suggestions on how to make the App better!

BIO

3. Do your bio – add your links & first 3 lines are the most important. Think about who you would like to connect with – a bit like a dating bio. Add your Instagram & Twitter Links and grow your Insta account as well as your clubhouse account!

• LOOK at other peoples bios for inspiration! I added ENFJ to mine as I would like to connect to other ENFJ personality members.

Search

4. Everything is searchable in your bio – Even emojis – Changing your @ handle makes you more searchable, but you can only change this once! – So search for the people you want to follow / connect with too.

HandsUp

5.Press the ‘hands up’ to join the stage (you have to do this when the room is asked to do to if it is a big group – You can control is as a moderator too)

Never be scared to put your hand up and get on that stage! Say yes then go for it – ask questions – share your story – become BFF’s with your favorite moderators too lol!

• Ignore your beating chest and just go for it! This goes after you have spoken a few times and the hosts have all been nice and friendly so far.

Mute

6. Press mute when you join the stage!!! ( they are looking to automatically mute)

Image from https://makeameme.org/meme/when-they-forget-bfd3b90b9a

CLAP

7. Learn how to clap – Clap when you like what people say!
Hit your mic button on & off when you are a speaker on the stage.

FOLLOW

8. Follow the people in the rooms that you like… but do not ‘follow for follow’ to grow your followers quickly. This platform is not like Instagram and they do not want people to be judged on the number of followers they have!

• Also do not follow too many as you will end up in #FOLLOWERJAIL
  They have standard rate limits and they keep changing them as they do not want this to be an ‘Influencer’ platform. Do not follow everyone and anyone to make sure you can get the best experience at the beginning whilst you find your feet.

HOST & Moderate

9. If you are used to hosting events or speaking on stage – Then own your stage and Start your own group. Collaborate with another speaker / speakers to make it more interesting and to reach a bigger audience.

Start a room – edit the title and invite some friends.

Start a club @ https://www.clubhouseguide.com/

• You have to apply to run a club but it is worth it is you already have a brand that you would like to secure the same name on clubhouse.

Invitations

10, Be careful who you invite into the club – If they get blocked – You get blocked! Invitations are rare so use them wisely. Yes you can block people!

‘We don’t control who joins – YOU do! Invite the right people.‘

@paul clubhouse 2021

MUST NOT DO… Do not record!

#Facts

1. This app has already been valued at £100,000,000

2. Has 1 million users now!

3, It started from an idea – Dream Big & Go Big or go home!

I hope you found this useful – Check out my blog for some more #TopTips and see you in the Clubhouse @StrategySam https://sjpcollective.com/blog-2/

Also check out: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/clubhouse-app-how-to-get-started/

October National & International Days.

International #CoffeeDay – 1st October

Wake up your customers with a great coffee quote post!

#TuesdayTip – Every Tuesday

Post a tip related to your followers that really helps you or your business.

#WorldSmileDay – 2nd October

Post a fab photo of you smiling and tell us what makes you happy!

#NationalTechiesDay – 3rd October

If you’ve been thinking about using a new tool to help you grow your business, this is the time to get it! Or tag a great piece of tech you always use.

#WorldAnimalDay – 4th October

The perfect opportunity for a cute pet post!

#WorldTeachersDay – 5th October

Lets celebrate our teachers? Let your followers know how they impacted you!

#MadHatterDay – 6th October

Ask your followers to share their wackiest ideas! Or your favourite afternoon tea venue?

#WednesdayWisdom – Every Wednesday

Tell our community something interesting about your business @ SJPoole Network.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SJPooleNetwork

#WorldMentalHealthDay – 10th October

Extra important this year! Create a post that helps raise awareness.

#OwnBusinessDay – 13th October

Dedicated to all independent business owners in the world… Tell everyone about your business and why you set it up!

#WorldMathsDay – 14th October

A great opportunity to offer a 2 for 1 discount! Or buy 1 get 1 free!

#DessertDay – 15th October

You know what to do! My favorite is sticky toffee pudding! What it yours?

#SpreadsheetDay – 17th October

Are you a spreadsheet queen? How do they help your business? Or celebrate your VA or PA if they do this for you!

#WorldStatisticsDay – 20th October

Check in with with your followers and engage with new accounts that you are interested in. Analytics and insights are so important for your business and statistics can give you so much valuable information.

#MakeADifferenceDay – 24th October

How can you #makeadifference ? Ask your followers what they’ve done this year to effect change.

#HumpDay – Every Wednesday

Help your audience get through the week with an inspirational quote!

#ChecklistDay – 30th October

I love a ‘to do’ list and I love crossing it out when complete! What is on your to do list today?

#Halloween

Support small businesses selling Halloween goods! Share posts from great bloggers too.

Like this one from Guardian Angels Childcare: https://www.guardianangelschildcare.co.uk/blog/halloween-ideas-for-2020.html

10 things you must do for your business before the end of this year…

Can you believe there are only 4 months and 9 days left of 2020?

For many this year has been a year of major disruption, but it has also been a year of major initiation too. I have found over the last 4 months that there are two very clear mindsets business owners have… Positive and negative. At the end of the day, we can’t just keep sitting here being disrupted and we must be positive about the situation! We must start taking action to move forward and I am going to share the top 10 things I have done to help me stride through 2020 ready for 2021.

1. Profit and loss – I did this in February and realised that my services were not making enough profit so it was time to put my prices up! I now review this monthly and also use a sales CRM to keep track of invoices due and monthly payments received.

• Take time to take an honest look at how much your business brought this past year versus how much you spent and stop being an ostrich about this. This may not be the most fun task, but the last thing you want to do is start your next month without knowing what your finances look like! It can be hard to get an overall picture of your profits and losses without using some form of tracking software. Most banks or your accountant will have advice on the best one for you to use – Xero or Quickbooks are some popular platforms for this.
• Regular cash flow forecasting can highlight where problems occurred in the past and where there could be improvements made for the future. However, most importantly, a cash flow forecast will give you a good idea of the health of your business cash flow at a glance.

2. One year and then five-year business plan – I always do a 1-year business plan and for the last 3 years I have achieved my goals. Set the financial goal and then work out what you need to do to achieve this goal.

• Sit down with your team and put together a business plan for the next year.
• Pull together some financials and create goals. Are your financial projections still in sync? If noticeable changes have occurred, edit your business plan to reflect them.
• Put together a detailed business strategy for how you will attain those goals.
• Then every month – Stop and check it! Are you hitting all the short and long-term goals, and the objectives you had for your business? If you are not then you need to focus on what is working well in your business.

3. Have a 12-month Marketing Strategy – Social Media is changing every day and so is the technology you can use to grow your business. You need a great mix of advertising across print, online directories, social media, podcasts, and radio too. This is why I set up my business like I have, so I can help lots of small businesses advertise affordably and to their target customers.

• Referrals have made up 80% of my business this year!
• Social Media Management has to be a priority – Update your social media presence and stay visible.
• Evergreen content that you can use across multiple channels is going to be the best PR for your business over the next year.
• What has had the most engagement over the last 6 months and focus on more of that – Make analytics your best friend and engage, engage, and engage!

4. Build a great team both Freelance and employed – I am lucky to have a really great team now that is a mix of Freelance experts and my first employee this year too! Outsourcing is helping my business grow and I would not be where I am today without my awesome team!

• Make a list of what you enjoy doing and what you do not and make a list of everything that you spend time doing. This should include work-related tasks, marketing, projects, goals, etc. Identify any things that you no longer enjoy doing or that might be distracting you from working toward your bigger goals. Then eliminate extraneous time-suckers.
• There’s a difference between working toward something worthwhile and simply wanting to finish something in order to feel disciplined. A great trick I learned last week was to put £ signs next to everything on my to-do list and do the biggest £££ first! This will help you figure out which activities and projects are the most important and rewarding to you. Is there a project that has lost steam?
• Is there a task you can outsource or delegate? I promise you that once you can let go… It will be the best decision you ever made!

5. Customer engagement, feedback & testimonials – Whilst I am fully focused on customer engagement, I find it hard to ask for feedback and testimonials. Testimonials are amazing though and when you do ask for them, they remind you where your strengths are and how your support is appreciated!

Top Tips I will be adopting this year:

• Send out a handwritten thank you card.
• Create an email campaign that converts.
• Visit your customers in person.
• Spend a few hours each week reaching out to your best customers or future prospects to prepare for the future.

6. Find a mentor or coach – Investing in a mentorship programme and listening to many of the great coaches podcasts recently has seriously helped me define my business model and grow in confidence.

The specific benefits of being mentored include:

• being encouraged and empowered in personal development
• being helped to identify and achieve career goals
• being helped to identify and correct gaps in generic skills and knowledge
• increasing your confidence
• developing and maintaining a broader perspective on career options and opportunities
• having access to a good role model who has the experience
• developing your own mentoring/coaching skills

7. Listen to the advice they give you and implement it as soon as possible! How many times have you been given advice by an expert and not listened? Or listened but not taken action?

L-isten – I-mplement – S-ales – T-eam – E-ngage – N-iche

• Work on all of the above and you will notice a massive difference in focus and growth!
• With thousands of business podcasts available for download and more created every day, it doesn’t matter who you are, what level of experience you have, or what industry you are in. There is a podcast available right now that can benefit you in some way.

8. Focus 100% on the business and how you can make it better – As soon as Covid-19 hit the UK and we went into lockdown I knew things had to change. I found a great Business Growth Expert and made a bootstrapping strategy plan.

• Get to know your business inside and out, and bootstrap as much as possible to get through what is left of 2020. Focus, grit and sheer determination are the qualities which are going to get you there…So keep going!
• Get better at creating content and do an equal amount short term content (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter posts) and long term content (Pinterest, Blogs, Podcasts, LinkedIn Articles, YouTube, and saved Facebook Lives).
• Look at your systems, can you implement automation?

9. Never be afraid of a failure or a mistake – This year has made me realise that I have made quite a few mistakes along the way and some of them have been very painful indeed. However, I have grown so much over the last 3 years and these mistakes have definitely made me stronger and I have learned from every failure!

• Good businesses don’t thrive by playing it safe. And failure is a natural risk when you push the limits and try new ideas. But failures can also lead to huge leaps in efficiency and profitability.
• Take some thoughtful risks and study a failure thoroughly to discover the little jewels of knowledge and experience that you wouldn’t have known otherwise! It’ll make you and your business better…I promise!
• Never quit after a mistake or failure, try again and again until you get it right!

10. Have the courage to step out of your comfort zone!

There is a lot of content and advice here but I hope you find this helpful. I have learnt a lot over the last three years and I would now like to help others in the early stages of building a business. If you think I can help you then feel free to book in a call @ https://sjpcollective.com/book-a-call/

“Samantha is an asset to any business small or large. She has built her contacts from nothing and really sees the importance of social media marketing to get the business known. Her knowledge is golden. She helps businesses grow, think outside the box and, has many angles where they can be seen. Samantha just gets you the minute she meets you. Her personal input makes you go far. Thank you Sam for all your input over the years.” Carol – LinkedIn

7 Reasons to support small businesses through COVID-19 and beyond.

It has been a super tough four months for many of my clients, friends and myself… I just wrote this for my magazine so I thought I would share it here too.

1. Family Business

Many people set up a business to fit around their family or for a better work / life balance after years of corporate life. This business supports the owners families and it takes a lot of strength and organisation to run a successful small business. So when you support it, you support lots of little people too.

2. Excluded from Furlough

Many small businesses had to close for 4 months to be able to claim furlough and for many this was just not an option! Many have had to change their business models and go online, and some have had to create something totally different. There has been zero support for LTD businesses and we have already seen some close and staff lose their jobs. There have still been bills to pay and in some cases nothing coming in for over 4 months to cover these fees. 

3. We do a happy dance

Honestly, ask any business owner and they will all say the same… 

“When you buy from a small business, an actual person does a little happy dance.”

The feeling you get when you create your own business and make your first sales is just amazing! A lot of energy goes into starting up a business and the proof is in the pudding, happy customers make happy business owners!

Gift Cards are a great way to support our local businesses too. Buying a gift card from a local business and saving it to use in the future is an immediate way to put cash into your favourite shop, salon, theatre or restaurant and recommend it to others. It is also a great way to show business owners how much you appreciate their work and a gesture of customer loyalty in uncertain times.

4. Passion & Why

Most small business owners are driven to succeed; they want to see their businesses grow, from startup to established business. Drive is a very common characteristic among successful entrepreneurs because starting a business can be challenging, and some challenges call for a moderate amount of competitiveness, determination, and motivation. This is why we need to support them and keep their motivation alive, lets celebrate these movers and shakers!

5. Handmade with love

No two handmade items are exactly alike. Variations in color, shading, texture, shape and grain are inherent in a handmade item. No two items are alike, so that every single one is one-of-a-kind. This means that every handmade item you purchase is also one-of-a-kind. We have some amazing businesses in Milton Keynes who make everything from soaps to beautiful keepsakes. 

See Thefollysoapco.selz.com for details

6. Long hours and sometimes 7 days a week

While many companies follow a standard 9-to-5, 40-hour workweek, entrepreneurs find themselves working at odd times of the day, many times more than 40 hours per week. For new or aspiring entrepreneurs being bombarded from all angles with the “entrepreneurial grind” on social media, it’s hard to know how many hours entrepreneurs truly work. 

7. Iceberg sacrifice

Success is an iceberg. There is what people see on the surface: confidence, wealth, beauty, relationships, seniority. Then there is what people don’t see hiding below the surface: persistence, failure, sacrifice, disappointment, good habits, hard work and dedication.

“By supporting locals, you’re directly putting money back into your own community. You’re funding great ideas and ventures that can only exist if we support the makers, entrepreneurs and go getters!” – Samantha Poole 

To support your local businesses see: www.mumsrate.com for our Local Business Directory.