Christine Hansen is an award-winning business coach & consultant running a boutique service for online entrepreneurs, creatives and coaches who want to embrace their inner lazy, profit like a pro, and add philanthropist to their list of credentials—without ever undercharging or feeling like they have to be anyone but themselves again. She combines smart strategy and deep soul work so that you can grow and scale a business you love.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Christine Hansen about combining strategy and deep soul work to scale businesses.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– Why business should be all about making money while keeping it simple.
– How people are changed when they build a business.
– Why people need to look at themselves and makes themselves come first.
– How there are people who are looking for exactly what you offer and how you offer it.
– What the pillars to building an online business are and how to execute them.
Connect with Christine:
Links Mentioned:
christinemeansbusiness.com/course-sample
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@bychristineh
Instagram
@bychristine_hansen
Facebook
facebook.com/sleeplikeaboss_
LinkedIn
Linkedin.com/in/christinehansen
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey, welcome everybody. It’s Rob Kosberg her. I’m excited to bring you another episode of the Publish, Promote, Profit Podcast. I have a great guest for you today, Christine Hansen. She’s an award-winning business coach and consultant, runs a boutique service for online entrepreneurs, creatives, and coaches. She’s been featured all over. She’s a sought-after speaker for over a decade, spoken on the Ted X stage in France, been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Business Insider, National Geographic, and now finally the Publish, Promote, Profit Podcast. Christina is also the best-selling author of Sleep Like a Boss, and has a new book coming out in January of this year, focusing on her online business, coaching and consulting. We’ll talk a little bit about that too. Christine, thanks so much for taking the time, and great to be with you today.
Christine Hansen:
I’m excited. Thank you for entrusting me with the ears of your listeners.
Rob Kosberg:
What is the name of the book you have coming out in January? Talk to me about the topic of that because that really is your expertise now. We do want to talk a little bit about the book that you published five years ago because that has done some cool things for a business that you’re no longer focused on, but you still own. What is the new book? Let’s start there and start with your expertise.
Christine Hansen:
My new company is, Christine Means Business, but the book is called We Mean Business. That’s really what it’s about. It’s about creating a business, but in the online space. It’s always been my passion. I always enjoyed building businesses and helping others. It’s just something that I naturally enjoy doing. I know a lot of people have a passion to start a business. They know they want to bring something to the world, but then there’s a lot to it. Most of the time we have a skillset, an expertise, knowledge, but the whole pieces of running an online business, suddenly having all kinds of different departments, having to do it all yourself can be very overwhelming. Sometimes you underestimate it. We Mean Business is basically a very, very practical guide, all-encompassing, on all the different pieces of building a business. People can go through it chronologically. They can also just pick a chapter of something that they focus on. We really go from the nitty gritty of marketing, to tech, to planning things out, content creation, but also into personal development and personal health, making sure that you actually still like yourself, and also the business you are creating. The book, I think it’s really going to be very, very fabulous. At the same time, I’m also creating a hybrid of an audio version with an audio course. I love audio, so I really want to merge the two together. It’s going to be fantastic for everyone who is interested in building a business online.
Rob Kosberg:
So, it is exclusively focused for online entrepreneurs, right? Those that want to maybe control their schedule more, maybe build something large, but also perhaps be a solopreneur that has a great lifestyle business.
Christine Hansen:
I’m all about making a lot of money while keeping it very simple. I feel a lot of the time people have big visions and they make it really difficult or very complex. More than once have I seen people who started out with me suddenly, yes, having success, but also having so many people on payroll and so many plates to spin that it’s not fun anymore. I really am proving some strategies that help you to create a foundation that you can easily grow, but not in a complex monster way. You can make a lot more money later, but without your ROI or without your profit margin being just as small as it was when your business was small. I think that is really something that I’ve observed a lot, that has scared me a lot, that held me back because I didn’t want to become a huge team business. I’m not a team player. I don’t like it, but I do love my business being very profitable, but very simply structured. That’s really where the book is going towards.
Rob Kosberg:
With Christine Means Business, is your focus on any particular demographic? Do you find any demographic that is more attracted to this idea of working online, being focused in an online business? And as a follow up, I want to talk through the pillars of building it but talk to me first about who’s attracted to this kind of thing.
Christine Hansen:
That’s a very good question because typically what we do in online marketing, and not just in online marketing, in general when you start a business, is when you start out to write something or to produce something, create your perfect person and write it for them. What I’ve found is actually that a lot of the time, you create a whole beast on an assumption or on lots of assumptions. That can go tremendously, beautifully wrong. I’ve seen it over and over, where I assumed, I knew who I was catering for, where I assumed, I knew who would be interested. Then, as I started to work with people, as I saw who would be attracted, I figured out it’s completely different from what I actually set out to do. I had to recalibrate. Instead, what I did this time, and what I now do consistently in business, and what I teach my people, is that I always create for myself first. I always create from what I want, what I think I would have needed, what I had been looking for. It’s just for me. So, my formula is really for me, for you, for us, but I am at the center of my own universe, to be honest. If I don’t like it, then it doesn’t work. That was a little bit an issue with my first book, where I went more from, which was Sleep Like a Boss, which was what the Sleep Like a Boss company, where I went more from the marketing, okay, I’m going to provide something for others to have it drive business towards my business, which it did. It’s a very different perspective. I feel a lot better about this one. Also, because when I talk about it, I am just a lot more excited about it.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s interesting that we’re going down this path. I have a very good friend who is a very well-known speaker. She was approached by a traditional publisher to write a book, and on a particular topic, and to a particular audience, which she did, and the book became very successful, a major bestseller, perennial bestseller, hundreds of thousands of copies. It attracts to her exactly the wrong person. Obviously, a lot of money has been made from the book, but the book is not attracting the kind of client that she actually wants. To your point, people really need to think in terms of what kind of book they want to write to attract the right kind of client to them in a business that they’ll really enjoy. I like that. The pillar is me, you, us, is kind of the idea. I don’t think there’s anything selfish about that. I think a business should be created to serve you and not the other way around. Now of course, it needs to serve its customers and its community, and hopefully make a positive difference in the world but who wants to do it as the owner and the founder if they’re not having a good time? That sounds horrible.
Christine Hansen:
Exactly. It happens all the time. I’m really surprised, or not even surprised anymore, but a little bit heartbroken when I see people after five, six years in business, when everything starts to go very well, and they’re actually tired of it. They’re tired of who they attracted all these years. Now these people are serving them. It’s not that anything’s wrong with the business, and even the opposite, it can be very fruitful but then you’re at this crossroads. I actually need perspective and I need to decide what to do. Will I continue with this, with a business that serves me very well, but it’s not actually exciting me anymore? Am I burning it all down and I start again? Do I change different things? What I really try to do is to really work with people and lead them and guide them to try to avoid that as much as possible. You are going to change, we all change, especially when building a business. There’s no bigger personal development journey than being a business owner. I think your core values will stay the same and actually being brave enough to use those first, that is a great step.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s talk a little bit about the nitty gritty. Obviously, you need to figure out what you want first and who it is that you want to serve. That is absolutely the place to begin. How does someone actually go about doing that? I talk to clients all the time that have been wanting to write a book for a long, long time, and yet really struggle with: What should I write? I feel like I have 10 books in me, but they don’t write any of them. It’s a very common kind of thing. You wrote your first book and you’re unhappy with it. It did good things for you, but it’s not what the second iteration is. What is the process of self-discovery, if you will, to figure out your core values or to figure out where your business should be going?
Christine Hansen:
I think it can be very scary in some ways because we are so not used to actually looking at ourselves and to putting ourselves first. It’s just a concept that we haven’t grown up to do. You try to please others first. They choose what they want. They choose their specialty, work towards their specialty because that’s what is interesting to them. I think that’s the first step. The other thing is not to be afraid of then standing behind that idea. One metaphor that I use, and I stole that from Anne Lamott, and it’s a lighthouse metaphor. She talks about the lighthouse, and the lighthouse is there to shine its light to lifeboats, and then but a lighthouse itself stands firm to the ground. That’s how I see us as business providers, as experts, whatever we bring to the world. We shine our light with who we are, with what we offer. You have to trust, and it’s just a truth. We are billions of people on this planet, but the people looking for exactly what you offer, the way you offer it, are already there. It’s your job now to help them to see you, to find you, and that’s it. It’s not your job to wobble down to the beach and to rescue others or persuade them to work with you. It always goes wrong. It always ends up with ungrateful clients and who are looking for a way to wiggle out of their contracts or whatever. I think that mindset of, “Okay, I know who I am, I’m actually brave enough to stand my ground.” I’m showing up to be found, but that’s it. I’m not here to find clients or whatever, but rather, I’m here for them to find me and them to see if we fit. That changes so much in the whole relationship and in who you are and how you value yourself. Then we’ll see this depending on how you grew up, with what kind of voices you have, for example, I’m just a negative person. It’s obviously also up to you to decide whether you want to stay that way or whether you want to change. You can change at any time. It’s always a choice. I know that some people are very firmly grounded in that belief, but a belief is just a belief. It’s not a fact. You can go as deep as you want. I’ve been doing forums and I’m still not done, personal development. I’ll probably change again in five, 10 years, and that’s what I tell people when they ask me, “What’s your five-year plan?” I’m always like, “I don’t know.” I change, every five to 10 years, I change directions completely. It’s just the way I live my life. It’s just the way I allow myself to do that versus asking for approval, seeking approval maybe, not asking it, but secretly seeking it. Once you have the realization that it’s just you in the end, that helps a lot, I feel.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a deep thought. Let’s go back to online business. Talk to me about the pillars of We Mean Business. What are the pillars of building an online business? Once somebody figures out who they’re meant to serve and they’re excited about moving in a direction, what are the things they need to pay attention to?
Christine Hansen:
So we talked about the first pillar already just now, which is branding and niching. That to me, figuring out who you are, that’s branding, and it’s niching at the same time because you’re unique. Number two, that I find it’s really important that a lot of people don’t like doing, but it’s really important, is to actually really brutally and honestly face your numbers. I find that a lot of people have issues with what to charge. Even if they have an idea, to be brave enough to charge and it all comes from actually knowing your numbers, how much you need to make, and then how much you want to make. Also, really analyzing how much time you collapse for the person that is purchasing from you, or how much joy you create for them, or whatever it is that you sell. Knowing your numbers, knowing your time, then you can create packages, that’s the second pillar. The third pillar is then the online world. The online world is complex. People will throw all kinds of terms at you, funnels, and lead magnets, and CRMs, and ESPs and all kinds of things. In the beginning, people are just like, “I’m panicking. I don’t know what this means.” It’s about getting to know how all these pieces connect, how they talk to each other, what the traditional way was, the typical lead magnet, immerse, funnel, sale, how that is also changing in a way, how you can change it to a way that’s completely you. I will be changing pretty much everything to audio, not much written left because funnily enough, I’m an author, but I really hate writing. I have a ghost writer writing it for me but that’s given permission to play around with that as well. Then we have content creation because in the end, you do need Google to be your best friend. It will take a little bit of time. Google is not a one night stand. It needs some wining and dining. You need to feed it content. You need to woo it over a few months, at least. So, I’m giving certain tools of how you can do that as easy as possible, or as efficiently as possible without you spending time on that. The last one is global outreach, things like this, things like being on podcasts, collaboration, all of these things to make sure that you get new people to find you, which is your job ultimately, that and working with people who already trust you. Those two things are essentially the only thing you should be spending time on at the end of the day. Those are the five pillars from content wise. In the book, I also go into how to stay healthy, not in terms of, you need to take vitamin C or anything like that, but what are some typical traps that we can face, when especially as solopreneur in the beginning, with all the things to do with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, with pandemics happening, with things turning your world upside down? How you cannot predict, but how you can be aware of these things and navigate them.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s a great platform for people to build on what you just outlined. So tell me, moment of truth here, I’ve been in the online space for a long time, probably like you, we spend millions of dollars on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, advertising, paid advertising. In the beginning it was so hard, such a failure. I spent so much money, lost so much money, did it so wrong. How long did it take you to kind of start figuring out which pieces worked, and you started getting a positive ROI from your marketing and all of that stuff?
Christine Hansen:
So, interestingly, ads never worked for me, especially because I was, Sleep Like a Boss, Facebook, YouTube, all of those guys would see the word sleep and they would automatically assume it was some dodgy sex site. You had a picture of someone sleeping, it would be nudity and profound language. It’s literally just someone sleeping, you perverts. In the health space, I have to say right now, it is very, very, very, very, difficult because there’s so much censorship. Even if you push your ad through, they won’t show it to anyone. Getting your relevance score up, it was a nightmare. It was like every expert, they just hit a wall. I actually dropped paid advertisement for Sleep Like a Boss completely. So, all the successes that we got were through PR and through global outreach. We did a really good job, partially because I launched strategically in February 2016, which was when Arianna Huffington launched The Sleep Revolution. It was very easy to me to ride her piggy tails on that. That’s how I consistently build momentum. I always look at what’s happening, what kind of trends are happening, and then when journalists and so on can’t get access to the expert or the phenomenon, then I just swoop in, and I just write a post about it on LinkedIn, or on Medium, or a podcast episode. That’s how I get a lot of traction and how I get featured in all of these magazines and so forth. It was very easy for me to build a huge platform that way. That’s what I still do with Christine Means Business. This business, I officially only started this year in January 2021. Things like these, like podcasting, getting to know people that way, relationships with journalists, that helped me a lot more and is a lot more cost efficient than the ad spend. Having said that though, I am trying again in the first time in years with Facebook ads with the self-liquidating funnel, with a very different product, nothing to do with the book and we’re starting on first of December, 2021, so in a couple of weeks, we’re going to start and tweak because I’m going to wait after Black Friday, what people learned, as everything is changing all the time. It’s one of my favorite quotes. It’s the internet, who the hell knows? It’s literally the wild west. We’ll see, but I’m excited to see what they’ve learned, and then trying things out, having a budget.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s testing. I think the right attitude to have towards it is number one. You’re not failing, you’re testing. Some things work. I think it was Edison who famously attempted 10,000 times to create the electric light and eventually did. He found the test that worked. It’s the same for us. Your business, Christine Means Business, is a lot different than the sleep business, and certainly there is a big market for your services. I bet it will work. I know a number of people that do free-plus-shipping funnels, you can use your book as a free-plus-shipping funnel. My book has been a fantastic self-liquidating offer, SLO, and I bet yours could be too.
Christine Hansen:
That’s how it’s designed. That’s the audio course that goes with it. Getting people to know me, then establishing myself at a second level, which is where experienced entrepreneurs come in. I think you need to have a big vision and then see how the different steps work towards that. Some people will get lost throughout, which is fine. I also think you do need to know from the beginning even, even starting with the smallest piece, what your ultimate goal is. That way, you will already position yourself in a way that is going to alienate some people, and that’s totally fine. It’s going to keep the right people in your sphere.
Rob Kosberg:
Like a magnet; attract the correct ones and repel those that aren’t a good fit. I know that your primary focus is not Sleep Like a Boss, and both that book and that business, but you did use that book, and that book has attracted clients and customers into that business. Talk to me a little bit about what you did there, what some of the successes were around using your book to get customers, speaking engagements, PR, whatever it was that built that platform.
Christine Hansen:
I think the book opened the door for a lot of speaking engagements. I have always been converting very well from public speaking. It’s one of the things that I just like doing. Working or talking to teams for speaking opportunities, telling them we will be bringing books that people can get either at a discount, or we can do it if you still have publishing and you have it in stock, then you can share part of the sales. That was very often one of the things that sealed the deal to get exciting speaking opportunities. I think that was the way that I liked using it the most. It’s also astounding how people use the book. I just had a speaking engagement for EY, previously Ernst and Young, one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, and for EY Luxembourg, I had a talk. I brought a box of 10 books in there. I was like, “You can afterwards do the giveaway, whatever you want to do with them.” Weeks later, I saw someone, and he was like, “I read your book.” I was like, “How?” He was like, “Yeah, but someone from a friend to a friend knows that I have trouble sleeping and they got your book at that talk, and so they gave it to a friend, who gave it to me.” I was like, “That’s fabulous.” I was like, “Well, my team members will take care of you.” These books are just awesome. I think they are always great gifts for people. They are no brainer investments. Having something in your hand can work really, really great as giveaways. They’re awesome too. If you have clients to give them as a little bonus, you have them. You have the eBook version. You don’t need to put any effort into it again, but it’s a great bonus. We have Black Friday coming up, but whenever you want to do it. I’m not a big fan of discounting, but I am a big fan of adding value, so books are awesome for that. For me, using it to seal the deal for speaking engagements has been my favorite way of using the book.
Rob Kosberg:
Great advice, Christine. Thanks for being on. Let’s give some links. Where can people learn a little bit more about you, when the time comes in January, get your book, that sort of thing?
Christine Hansen:
You can find me at christinemeansbusiness.com. I have actually a course, or book sample, an audio sample for you. If you go to christinemeansbusiness.com/course-sample, you will get something for your ears. It’s basically a first introduction and chapter of every section of the book, where you’ll hear me talking and adding some thoughts of mine. It’s very casual, so it’s fun. You can listen to it wherever you want to go. I am on pretty much every social media platform. The most stalking one would probably be Instagram. I think if you watch my Instagram stories, that’s where you get to know most about who I am. Then on my website, you have the blog where you get to know about the business. That’s how I kind of split my different personalities.
Rob Kosberg:
Thank you. And thanks for the free gift. If anybody wants that, christinemeansbusiness.com/course-sample.
