blog

Do you love being awesome, mama?

I mean, do you love keeping your clients happy, saving time, and helping people achieve greatness?

Well, today on FreeMamaTV, we’re doing a deep dive on three amaaaaaaaazing tools – like THE BEST VIRTUAL ASSISTANT TOOLS – you absolutely need to have in your business if you want to be a rockstar. And no, today I’m not talking about Google, Gmail, Gcal or anything else in GSuite. We’re going BEYOND Google, Mama.

Even better — all three of these tools are FREE, and they are incredibly powerful. I’ll show you exactly how I use these tools in my own business, and how you can use them to delight your clients every single day.  Seriously, these are the best of the best virtual assistant tools, and you’re going to blow your clients away!

Check it out – The Best Virtual Assistant Tools – on FreeMamaTV!

Be sure & to subscribe to FreeMamaTV so you can be the first to know when a new episode airs!

P.S. If you want to know even more about becoming an expert, check out this video I did. Before you become an expert, you have to choose a profitable niche and if you haven’t done that yet, you’ll want to watch this episode of Free Mama TV! And don’t forget to check out my latest blog post — all about what to do when you need to make $6,000 cash FAST! I’m breaking it all down for you, the exact steps you’ll need to take, and what you will need to price for your services – check that one out here!

All this week, we’ve been working on goals.  
You’ve shown up. 
You’ve been present. 
You called out your limiting beliefs.
You threw away your old goals, and set new ones.
BIG goals. 
You learned about breaking them down — from BIG HUGE 5-YEAR GOALS all the way to what to put on your Daily Five.
And now it’s all about the execution.
Doing the work.

Which can feel overwhelming and lonely. But it doesn’t have to.

A few months back, Jordan and I opened the doors to the Free Mama Squad for the first time, and you’ve already seen us brag on the amazing Mamas who joined and are CRUSHING IT on the inside.

Well, now is YOUR chance to be a part of this awesomeness…

…And that’s not even the most exciting part. 

The Squad itself is already fantastic. The Mamas in there are posting daily wins, and the entire experience is nothing short of amazing. 

But there’s MORE that we can do, and one of our BIG 2021 goals is…
Launch the Free Mama APP. 

Of course, we want it to be EPIC and INCREDIBLE and the app you can’t live without, so we’re thinking accountability pods, opportunities to exclusive trainings, an interactive productivity planner, a chance to get in on day one, and alllllll kinds of goodies.
 
And if you want to get the updates on this project as soon as they happen, then you need to be part of the squad. 

Hold up, Lauren, WHAT IS THE SQUAD? Are there sports involved?
No sports — unless you want to consider competitive ice cream eating a sport. (I fully support this decision, if so.)

No, The Free Mama Squad is where you go when you want support and positivity combined with accountability and guidance so that you can take real action. 

It’s not just YOU GOT THIS GIRL and gifs. (Although, obviously we have that.) It’s also, HEY GIRL HERE IS YOUR STEP-BY-STEP BREAKDOWN OF HOW TO DO THE THING and I’M CALLING YOU OUT BECAUSE YOU SAID YOU’D DO THE THING and HEY LET’S SIT DOWN TOGETHER AND DO THE THING.

It’s where you go when you know that failure isn’t an option, and you want to hang out with other people who know that, too.

And it’s just  $47 for all of this goodness.

PLUS ALSO the first beta testers of the Free Mama App will OBVIOUSLY be people who are already IN The Squad, so if you LOVE the idea of being an early adopter and getting your hands on new stuff before everybody else, THIS is how you make that happen.

I have no idea when we’re going to open the doors to the Squad again, so THIS is your opportunity to join us. 

P.S. If you missed the challenge this week, you can catch up here. You’re not too late — start now, and join the Squad for real success!

If you want to be a highly paid freelancer, do you know what you need, mama?

Specialized skills. 

And one particularly in-demand skill right now is content marketing. So if you’d like a shortcut for breaking into content marketing 101 for small businesses, then you’re going to LOVE today’s episode of FreeMamaTV.

We’ll cover:

• What content marketing is
• How you can get really good at content marketing in a short amount of time
• How your content marketing skills can help your clients make more sales

Basically, you’ll get everything you need in order to add a super-cool skillset to your bag of tricks so that you can charge more money and grow your business when you unlock content marketing 101 for small businesses.

Watch this episode FreeMamaTV to get all the goods — so you can get your next client!

Be sure & to subscribe to FreeMamaTV so you can be the first to know when a new episode airs!

P.S. If you want to know even more about becoming an expert, check out this video I did. Before you become an expert, you have to choose a profitable niche and if you haven’t done that yet, you’ll want to watch this episode of Free Mama TV! And don’t forget to check out my latest blog post — all about what to do when you need to make $6,000 cash FAST! I’m breaking it all down for you, the exact steps you’ll need to take, and what you will need to price for your services – check that one out here!

Believe it or now, we’re halfway through the third quarter of the year, mama.

Which means that Q4 is just around the corner.

Which means that it’s just about time to start thinking about 2021. 

Now, you might be thinking, Um, Lauren, PLEASE. I can barely keep up with the constantly changing landscape of 2020, and there is NO POSSIBLE WAY I can start thinking about a WHOLE DIFFERENT YEAR. 

I get it. I do. 

But the thing is, 2021 is going to show up whether or not you plan for it, and the one thing I can promise you is that if you DON’T plan ahead, you will DEFINITELY not hit your goals.

I do ALL of my big picture planning in the fourth quarter. I look at everything I want to accomplish in the next year, start figuring out the calendar, and then work on creating interim goals that move me to the big picture objectives. Then I can figure out the specific tasks that go into the smaller goals, which feed into the bigger targets I’ve set for myself. 

And yes, OF COURSE things change along the way. Sometimes, a global pandemic forces you to rethink things.

Let’s say that you need to come up with $6000 in the next 45 days. When you need to make money fast, what will you do?

Here’s a hint: this is math.  

1. Look at your current offers and pricing
2. Do the math.

Maybe you currently offer a retainer package for $1000/month, and you know that the work generally takes you about 20 hours to do.

So, you’d have to sign on 6 clients at $1000 each, and be able to fit an extra 120 hours of work into your month. 

Will that work? 120 hours a month is about 27 hours a week — on top of whatever you’re already doing. 

That might be hard. 

So… could you come up with a different offer based on your current skill set? Can you figure out something you can do that delivers $2000 worth of value for your clients — and that takes you about 10 hours a month?

You’d only need to sell 3 of those. 

And they’d only add an extra 7 hours of weekly work to your schedule.

Now, you might be thinking, Lauren, for the love of all things chocolate, I don’t have a service I can offer for $2000. And if I did, I CERTAINLY would not know how to sell THREE of them.

To which I say, If you absolutely had to figure out that $6000, I bet you’d get pretty darn resourceful. When you need to make money fast, you do what you need to do.

Buuuuut, as long as the need isn’t totally urgent, what if you put some planning time in? What if you sat down and decided, Okay, one of my goals is to HAVE a $2000 service to offer. 

• You can charge $2000 or more to build a funnel.
• You can charge $2000 or more to write an email sequence.
• You can charge $2000 or more to do a brand overhaul.

So, how can you get from where you are now to offering those services?

This is the difference between working ON your business — actively planning for your growth and figuring out how to hit your goals — and working IN your business, where you’re just doing the client work, head down. 

Next week, we’re kicking off a LIVE goal-setting challenge in the Free Mama Movement Facebook group. 

You’re going to have access to all of my BEST strategies for setting REAL goals that move you towards the things you really want to achieve, and you’ll learn how to break each goal down into the specific, concrete, actionable steps you need to take. 

If you do the work you’re going to be READY for whatever crazy thing 2020 throws at us, and you’ll know what to do when you need to make money fast.

Are you in?

Head over to THIS THREAD in the Facebook group and drop a gif to show me that you’re in!

P.S.We’re kicking off the week together, starting on Monday! Yep, from now on my Facebook Lives will be on Mondays at noon central, not on Thursdays! Mark your calendar so you don’t miss it. See you in the group! 

P.P.S. – Did you see this week’s episode of Free Mama TV? It fits perfectly with this blog post, it’s all about becoming an expert – which is something else you need to consider when you need to make money fast!

How cool would it be if you could establish yourself as an expert in anything?

I mean, just think about it: mama, Expert. 

Looks pretty good, right? 

Okay, well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: it’s absolutely something you can do, and I’m going to show you how. Provided, of course, that you want to become an expert in something related to your freelancing business, and not, say, an expert geologist or a car mechanic.

If you’re intrigued, then head over to FreeMamaTV and watch this week’s episode, which will let you in on the secrets ALL experts — even the geologists — know. 

I’ll also show you how to fast track your expert status and get other people to see you as the expert you are, even if you’re fairly new to your field. 

It’s all happening on FreeMamaTV, so tune in!

Be sure & to subscribe to FreeMamaTV so you can be the first to know when a new episode airs!

P.S. Are things feeling hard mama? Sometimes when you’re going through the thick of things, it can feel like your mountain is never going to end — I’ve been there too, mama. And I’m actually talking about in my latest blog post! Head here to check it out!

Have you been feeling heavy, mama?

I’m not talking about the stash of Graham Crackers and Nutella you’ve been snacking on. (Maybe that’s just me?)

I’m talking about feeling trapped and lost and alone and overwhelmed — heavy. 

The feeling we’ve come to associate with 2020.

About a decade ago, I heard a pastor describe this feeling, and the description has stuck with me ever since. 

When you’re in that dark place — whether it’s diagnosed as depression or “just” a bizarre side effect of living through the present day craziness that is 2020 — it feels a lot like climbing a mountain by yourself. 

You look up, and all you see is more mountain. 

Even after you climb for hours, days, and weeks, every time you stop and look up, there’s just more. 

You start to think that this is all there is. You’re never going to get anywhere. It’s always going to be this hard, this lonely, this exhausting. And you’re always going to feel like you’re not making any progress. 

What you have to remember, when you’re in that place, what you have to tattoo on your hand so you can hold it up and see it, is that every mountain has a summit.

And on the way to the summit, you will eventually hit a ledge where you have more perspective. Where you can look back and see how far you’ve come, and look ahead and start to see the summit, the peak, what you’ve been working towards. 

More than that, you have to remember that behind every mountain is a valley, where the terrain is flat and smooth, where you’ll be able to catch your breath and regain your strength.

It’s really, really hard to believe in the summit — not to mention the valley — when you’re staring at a wall of sheer rock. 

It feels like those things are a dream, and that you’re never going to get there. 

Here’s what I want you to know. 

1. You are not alone on the mountain. Even when it feels like you’re all alone, even when you can’t see anyone else, you are not alone on the mountain. 
2. You don’t have to compare your mountain to someone else’s. No one has the right to tell you that what you’re going through isn’t hard. There are times in life when even “small” problems feel overwhelming. Your mountain is real, and it is significant, and it has nothing to do with other people’s mountains.
3. You can do this. Even if you don’t think you can, you can. You can survive this, because you are amazing and strong and fierce. 

When you feel alone, jump into the Facebook group and lean on the support of 30,000 women who are all climbing mountains. Whether you’re looking for someone to join you in a commiserating bowl of ice cream or a celebratory glass of wine, you’ll find your people.

When you start to compare your mountain to someone else’s, STOP. Just stop, and focus on YOUR journey, one foot in front of the other.

When you don’t believe in yourself, borrow my belief in you. 

If you don’t know the story of how the Free Mama Movement came to be, the short version is that my business was born from a terrible loss — I miscarried my third baby and was devastated.

I’ve been on the mountain, mama.

I’m living proof that you can get through this, and that’s why I’m totally happy to believe in you until the moment you’re ready to believe in yourself.

P.S. If you’re looking for more community and support, definitely keep your eyes out for next week’s email. Something really cool is coming!

So, mama, if you’ve been in this online business world for more than a minute, you’ve probably had someone ask you the question at least once.

What’s your niche?

Now, if you’re afraid of this question, you don’t need to be. Even if you’re not totally sure what a niche is, or how to find a niche as a freelancer, you’re not alone — and this week’s episode of FreeMamaTV has you covered.

You’ll learn what a niche is, how to figure out your own niche, and how to make sure that you’ve chosen a profitable niche right from the start.

Plus, you’ll get the inside scoop on the BIG mistake most new business owners make when they try to niche down for the first time.  

If you’re ready to learn how to find a niche as a freelancer — and make more money in your business — head over to the YouTubes for this week’s FreeMamaTV episode.

Be sure & to subscribe to FreeMamaTV so you can be the first to know when a new episode airs!

P.S. Did you hear…we might be buying goats?!