Business coach, strategist and founder of Introvert Glow, with other strings to her bow including Career Avengers, this week we welcome Lisa Russell, powerhouse for introverts in business!
Meet Lisa
Lisa helps introverted online coaches, course creators and service providers who feel like they’re somehow failing with extrovert marketing strategies. She shows them introvert superpowers and how to create strategies that play to their strengths, to build thriving online businesses.
Sounds epic, right? And when she says “extrovert marketing strategies”, she means the massive extrovert bias in the world of online marketing. You know that feeling of shouting into a void, everyone insisting that you must do Facebook lives every day, posting on social constantly, etc? Yes, all of that. It’s exhausting.
It’s energy sapping and can make us feel like we’re not cut out for online business, but it’s also coming from people who are extroverts. A huge number of the digital marketing big names, and online successes, are extroverts – so it can be hard to see the wood for the trees if you’re an introvert trying to figure out how to market your business effectively and make yourself heard.
What we talk about
Lisa’s epiphany of just not doing the shouty marketing any more. Hating Facebook Lives with a passion. Things that are natural and unnatural for introverts and extroverts.
Gaslighting from gurus (!). The misconception that introverts are quiet, shy and antisocial. Sticking up two fingers to the stereotypes (yay!).
What introversion and extroversion actually is – based on where you get your energy and recharge, not how sociable you are. If you are the kind of person who needs time alone to recharge your batteries, that’s a sign of introversion.
What introversion looks like in business (often a preference for the written word, needing to manage energy around peopling, less “reaching out” to randoms are signs!).
Figuring out what is energetically draining for you and finding workarounds. Responders versus initiators. Creating systems for initiating content (we love a good system, as you know!) so that creating content takes a minimum amount of energy.
Condensing the stress! Running your business how it works for you – developing strategies to make that happen. The fact that you can look at others’ blueprints and then pick and choose what works for you – you don’t have to do everything.
Listening and resonance
Listening to your own energy to find out what it is that you want – rather than listening to all the information out there which is often conflicting and may not be right for you anyway.
Lisa talks a lot about learning to listen to your inner guidance system and your own resonance, and we really like it – it ties in with our discussions about intuition, and going your own way in business and life.
Introvert glow vs extrovert sparkle – a lovely way of describing how introverts thrive.
Resonance – listening for the resonance of the path that’s right for you and will align with your energy, and finding that that’s actually a very physical experience. Tuning into it – because learning that is a skill.
Recognising those physical signals when something feels right, by going back over things you’ve done in the past which felt good, and finding out what your own physical responses are – and the flip side, of how it feels when something’s missing or you’ve made a decision that isn’t aligned with you or what you want to do.
It’s a beautiful way of finding the right path.
Networking, public speaking and peopling
Connecting authentically with your audience – however that comes most naturally to you. Whether you’re raising awareness of your business, wanting to make a new friend or selling your new programme, it’s all about connection.
Going deep and having quality conversations with a small number of people – where there’s trust, warmth and safety. Meaningful conversations with positive outcomes. Breadth can make depth difficult to attain. Revising expectations around social interaction – different parameters to what we’ve been taught to expect.
Introverts may not speak to as many people, but they do have fantastical firework conversations which leave both us and our conversational partner buzzing – this is the best way of connecting, marketing, whatever you want to call it, for introverted humans.
Connecting with your why
Connecting with your purpose and passion beforehand – be in the right place for a meaningful conversation. Know what it is you’re trying to get out of networking, and what the specific reason is for you attending.
Preferences on your clients and attracting fellow introverts as clients. Related to this, putting boundaries around how you communicate if you want to – if you prefer emails and Loom videos to live zoom calls, that’s totally ok – just communicate that to your clients & enquiries.
Perhaps even make those preferences a feature of your service – they might just appeal to exactly the right people.
Glorious feedback – people saying thank you for making this, this is so needed, I can relax, a weight has been lifted. This definitely counts as a glorious moment 🙂
Being the introvert coach for the ones who want to play, bring their imaginations out and be fully present, and bring their whole selves into their business unapologetically.
Not needing a box! Be you shaped, isn’t that a wonderful thing?
Alignment feels very central to this whole conversation, and given your business is yours – then really, you can only run it how it works for you!
Can you help Lisa?
Her methodology concentrates around three areas: alignment, systems and strategy. When you get those three things together for introverts with the underpinning energy, it brings everything together.
But those three pillars spell ASS – and it can’t be a signature ASS method 😀 Any suggestions or ideas are welcome – pop them direct to Lisa, in the comments or to us by email and we’ll pass them on!
Alternatives to social media
The day we recorded this episode with Lisa, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp went down for around 24 hours – and it was carnage. Here are Lisa’s suggestions for alternatives to social media which may work better for introverts to get their message out:
Podcasts (yay!) – natural conversation, real time, bouncing off each other
Email – over the years lots of people have declared it dead, but it’s thriving, and will continue to thrive. It feels more personal – like speaking to one person at a time.
Partnerships – referral arrangements, collaborations, things where you partner with one person but each access lots of other people in the process – this can be extremely rewarding, and has the benefit of the one to one connection & depth, but breadth from accessing each other’s audiences.
Marketing by delight – impressing one client so much that they want to shout about you from the rooftops, because this is an epic strategy when it works! People love recommendations – so if you can make yours amazing, definitely do that.
Energy and sensitivity
You never know what will come out of a good conversation – and if you manage your energy so you can have the buzzy, rewarding conversations and not be exhausted, you’ll get great results because you’re being the best version of you.
Something like 70% of introverts are also HSPs – highly sensitive people. (we are intrigued but utterly unsurprised by this). If we can tune into this energy and not overwhelm ourselves, we can fly!
Don’t be afraid of your introversion – use it as a superpower.
One other thing Lisa advocates is setting boundaries around what you do and don’t do in your business. One of her “don’ts” is Facebook Lives – she wants the advantages of them, but without having to do them live. So she uses OneStream to record the live and schedule it later – so she can check in with a cuppa and respond to questions in the comments, rather than trying to multitask and hating every moment of it.
We didn’t rehearse this, but the three of us have three different social platform preferences. It’s like magic!
In short – listen to your energy, sometimes introverts will meet and ironically act like extroverts, and make the choices that work for you – the bespoke mix of things in your business which mean you can’t wait to get in there and get working on it.
Definitely a strategy we can get behind!
Get more Lisa in your life
Find her at Introvert Glow
Get the free Introvert Strategy Playbook
Head over to her new membership, Introverts Ignite
Career fabulousness at Career Avengers
She’s also on Facebook at Introvert Glow and has a wonderful free group too.
And we promised to link to the magic that is OneStream, for #livenotlive streaming!