In The Paradox of Choice (the Most Watched TED Talk by me) psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that too much choice leaves us paralyzed and dissatisfied.

That’s my experience, whether with clothes, restaurants, or even time. Since I started my company in 2015 that feeling is even worse: at any moment there are dozens of other things I could/want to do. This FOMO isn’t solely the providence of entrepreneurs; we ALL have multiple goals we want to achieve.

But my inability to complete goals seems inexcusable. After all, I work for myself. I get to decide how I spend my time each day. But all that time, all those decisions, all the goals I could be crushing… it freezes me. I wonder: if I had less time to #goalcrush, would I crush more goals?

Maybe that’s why Chant’l Martin, goal-crushing extraordinaire and founder of Thrive Lounge, has learned to bring remarkable clarity, single-mindedness and strategic thinking to achieving her goals. After all,

• From 9:00-6:00 she is a marketing analyst for a multi-billion dollar fin tech firm. #casual
• From 6:00-9:00 each night is one-on-one time with her daughter.

Which leaves… not a lot of extra time for crushing additional goals, like building her side-hustle and writing her book.

Or maybe it’s because Chant’l is a smart, humble, resilient woman who knows herself and has applied hard-earned discipline to her life, I DON’T KNOW.

The Goal Doing Book

When I heard that Chant’l was writing a book about goals, my reaction was: Great. 🙄 Someone else to tell me how to commit and break tasks down and make time blah blah blah. Sigh/yawn.

So why did I volunteer to be an early reader? It’s my inner masochist! I want to crush my goals, but it’s so haaaaaard and I know David Allen has good ideas, but I always fall off the wagon and end up feeling bad about myself. But maybe this time it will be different!

Turns out… IT WAS.

I zipped through the draft of Chant’l’s book in an hour. I actually LOLed. And by the end? I didn’t feel like shit, I felt power. Through Chant’l’s clear process and reassuring voice I could actually see myself choosing a goal that matters, planning for it intelligently instead of like an ignorant fool, and then… achieving it. Gasp.

Goal Doing: Practical Advice For Goal Setting, Action Planning and Achieving Your Dreams by Chant’l Martin is available NOW on Amazon and she’s selling it for just $.99 for the first week! I loved this book so much I want to eat it for breakfast. Chant’l’s personal stories are funny and relatable, her goal-setting process is clear and doable, and her guidance is inspiring yet gentle. Go buy a copy here. It’s gold.

Reading the book made me even more excited to interview Chant’l on Marketing Minutes, my Facebook Live interview series (real marketers share their real successes and failures so we can make strategic choices and dodge fail-bullets). Sure enough, Chant’l shared the best marketing strategies she uses in her side-hustle, Thrive Lounge.

Watch the full interview here, or read below!

A #GoalCrusher’s Best Marketing Strategy

“The best thing that I’ve done is marketing on Pinterest. Having all my content on Pinterest immediately exploded the amount of traffic that comes to my site.”

Pinterest gets lumped together with the usual social media suspects, but calling Pinterest a social media network is a misnomer. It’s actually a search engine and works more like Google than Facebook. Whether you are a service or product provider, your ideal clients are searching for what you offer. If they’re searching on Pinterest, will they find you?

Head to Chant’l’s Pinterest page and you’ll see a smorgasbord of content about what Thrive Lounge offers: goal-crushing, vision-boarding, life-improving. But in addition to sharing her content on Pinterest, Chant’l offers a relevant freebie that she knows will engage her prime target: a free Big-Vision checklist.

“Even better is connecting Pinterest with a relevant freebie that people can download from your website. Once they read through your content and like your stuff, give them something more they want to see. Once you give them that, they are more likely to join your email list and have the opportunity to know, like, and trust you.”

This is a popular strategy, known as “in-bound marketing” or “lead generation.” It’s a very effective way to build your email list and nurture relationships with new people. The key to doing it well? Strategic thinking and empathy.

How to Design Your Automated Email Sequence

Not surprisingly, Chant’l’s process for creating her automated sequence involves strategic thinking about goals: your goals, your prospect’s goals, and how to achieve them.

Step 1: What is my goal?

When someone comes to your website, what do you want them to do next? Figure out what that is and make it a no-brainer for your visitor to take the next step. “Don’t make your website visitors think about what they need to do,” Chant’l says. “Take the thinking out of it and offer your visitors a simple journey to get what they want from you.” (Click to Tweet!)

This is a brainstorming/journaling step. Ask yourself, what do I want to happen? What is my goal? Then make it as easy as possible for your visitors to take the next step.

Step 2: What is their goal?

Now it’s time to exercise your empathy muscles. What is someone else’s goal when they land on this piece of your content? What do visitors want to know more about?

Head to Google Analytics (Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages, then choose your date range) to see what your top three posts are about. Now you know what people are coming to you for. Ask yourself: how can I make this easier for them?

This will help you create content that will urge your visitors to take the steps that support your goals. #doublewin

Step 3: Set up your autoresponder sequence

Chant’l created several sequences for the email subscribers she gets from her freebies:

Sequences A: Welcome + teach

“When someone reads my blog post and joins my email list by downloading the freebie, then I teach them more about who I am and what I do. I teach people about creating your vision, vision boards, and goal setting. Someone new to my list gets all that information slowly but surely in an automated email sequence. It’s a welcome and teaching sequence in three emails.”

Sequence B: Selling

“From there I try to see if they want to learn more by buying a product. I have a three-part sales sequence that tells you about the products I offer and what’s in them, what you will learn and gain and how it will transform your life. Then if someone buys a product, they are removed from the sales sequence, because nothing is more annoying than getting emails about buying someone you already bought!”

Sequence C1: More teaching

“If you don’t buy, next you’re put into another sequence that continues to nurture you over time. I don’t sell anything else, but I give valuable information, more content about goal setting and vision boards to help you continue on your journey even if you don’t want to buy anything from me.”

Sequence C2: Product follow-up

“If you do buy, you go into another sequence asking what you learned, what more I can do you help you, and how can I support you further.”

Sequence D: Nurture the relationship

After these 3-part sequences, Chant’l has 10-12 follow up emails with short but helpful content. Sometimes it’s articles from elsewhere on the Internet, sometimes it’s her own articles. The goal: “find the right content to match with the right person at the right time.” (Click to Tweet!)

Will emailing this often make my email list hate me?

It might! …And that’s a good thing. Why?

If a subscriber doesn’t need your information anymore, frequent emails make it easy for her to opt out. On the other hand, subscribers who still want to learn from you stay warm because you are touching base with them regularly. This makes it more likely that they will turn to you to ask a question, share a resource, or buy a product or service.

Automated sequences keep your list primed and ready, full of people who want to what you offer. Those who do not will self-select out of your community.

How long does it take to create these freebies and sequences?

Chant’l worked on her sequence part-time, in the evenings, early mornings and every Sunday. Having such limited time to work with made it critical that Chant’l was clear on her goals, her visitor’s goals, and what she needed to acheive them.

Design and create your freebie template: 3-4 hours

For Chant’l to set up, create and design her template for the first time took several hours. But once it’s created she never has to reinvent the wheel. Having a style-guide for your business, including brand colors and fonts, will help this design process go quickly. But if you don’t, remember that done > perfect!

Create relevant freebies for each blog post: 30 minutes

Now that she has her templates, she can create freebies for new blog posts quickly and easily.

Write and set up 3-part email sequences: 6 hours

Chant’l estimates that it took about 6 hours to create and implement her automated sequences in ConvertKit. The process breaks down like this:

• Brainstorming: 1 hour
• Content writing: 2 hours
• Content editing: 2 hours
• Uploading into email service provider: 1 hour

Chant’l’s #Winning Editing process:

Chant’l has a four-part process she uses to write her content:

• Content edit: what do I want to say? What am I teaching or offering of value?
• Line edit: make sure there are no typos, nothing’s off, and add some links.
• Wine Edit: that’s where you add your personality. Drink your wine, think about chatting with your girlfriends, and consider: ‘what am I going to say to let my personality out of this?’
• Final proofread (“you might want to look one more time sober because you never know what you wrote during the wine edit”)

On the “Wine Edit: I talk differently at the bar with my homegirls, and I want to insert THAT personality into my content. That takes time.” (Click to Tweet!)

Avoid Any Marketing Strategy that Feels Bad

I don’t recommend doing things that don’t feel right for you. Because that’s where you can get caught up. Really listen to yourself and what feels good.

Chant’l says: “I used to be really into Instagram. I saw how many people were selling t-shirts and all kinds of cool things, and I thought, ‘wow, these Instagram influencers are living the life!’ So I started going out and taking pictures. I even created a meet-up group to take pictures around the city. I was posting everyday with the 50,000 hashtags.

But I realized I felt so much pressure. I don’t have time to be on IG every day, I’m a side-hustler! While some people love it, it felt forced to me, not genuine. I could not for the life of me pull myself to continue to do it. I loved the conversations on Instagram, but feeling forced to post every day sucked the life out of me.

When I pulled back I was able to put the time spent on IG into my ConvertKit automations. The time has to come from somewhere. Stop the things you don’t enjoy doing, and be honest with yourself, then go into the areas where you feel strong. Even if someone else is seeing success, that might not be where my success is. If it doesn’t feel good, stop it.”

The Best Marketing Is Embedded

When I asked for the most effective marketing strategy that has ever worked on Chant’l, she said:

“It’s advertising on podcasts. Recently I’ve been listening to a ton of book podcasts. There’s one called Rocking Self Publishing, by a British man with an amazing voice, and in every single episode he advertises his girlfriend’s book cover design company. He says, “Inspired Cover Designs, full disclosure it’s my girlfriend’s company, go over there and get your cover.”

Now if I’m listening to ‘go to Inspired Cover Designs’ four-five times every day for a month straight… now that I’ve written my book, the only place that I’m going is Inspired Cover Designs. I didn’t even go to Google. The first place I go is the place I know. He talks about her pricing and everything so not only do I know where to go, I know how much it costs, and there are no surprises.”

You Can Crush Your Goals, Too

One of the reasons I like Chant’l so much is her approachable, you-can-do-this-too tone. Also, she always makes me laugh. But there’s nothing Chant’l has done to crush her goals that you and I can’t do. There’s no doubt that Chant’l works hard, but she does fun things and goofs off, too. When I talk to Chant’l and hear how someone like me has made it happen, it gives me the kick-in-the-brain/pants I need to stop making feeble excuses.

So get thee Goal Doing: Practical Advice For Goal Setting, Action Planning and Achieving Your Dreams, give yourself some time to think about what you want, and drop that marketing strategy or vague goal you have to force. Finally, make screwing up and dropping the ball sometimes part of your plan. That way, you really cannot fail.