S309: 6-Figure Online Business Secrets as a Digital Nomad with Nadine Fowler

In this episode of the Remote CEO podcast, I sit down with Nadine Fowler, a successful business and marketing coach. Nadine shares her inspiring journey of leaving her job to build a six-figure online business while embracing the digital nomad lifestyle.

We delve into how she aligned her business with her personal values, set effective boundaries, and made crucial mindset shifts to achieve financial freedom. Nadine also reveals how she’s never sent a cold DM and leverages content marketing to attract clients and establish a unique voice in a crowded market.

Whether you're exploring digital marketing, social media marketing, or seeking to become a digital nomad, this episode offers some HIGHLY valuable insights.

You can find Nadine here:

Instagram

Website

Grab her Free "Become In Demand" course on how to create excitement, momentum, and drive DM inquiries directly through your content: Download Here

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About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up into your new role as CEO by building an online business that works for you - not one you work for.

Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, an online business mentor, e-commerce founder, mental health advocate, and full-time digital nomad. 🙋‍♀️

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Nadine Fowler's Journey
• 2:56 Transition from Virtual Assistant to Coaching
• 5:12 Realignment and Rebuilding the Business
• 11:12 Establishing Boundaries for Success
• 18:18 Mindset Shifts and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
• 25:42 Transforming Mindset for Success
• 27:38 Reengaging an Audience After a Hiatus
• 31:33 Creating Disruptive Content Strategies
• 34:19 Finding Your Unique Voice in a Noisy Market
• 42:59 Building Freedom Through Sales Content

Transcript

Sophie (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Remote CEO podcast. Today I am joined by Nadine Fowler, a six figure business and marketing coach who helps online service providers and coaches build profitable offers and attract solar line clients without cold DMs or outreach. After going from fully booked in just six weeks to hitting six figures in a year, Nadine now teaches entrepreneurs how to create sales content that drives demand, momentum and inbound inquiry. So I'm very excited.

to talk to you today. So welcome, Nadine Thanks so much for joining me. I'm super excited for this conversation. And we've already had a brief conversation before we started recording, and our lifestyles are very similar. So this is going to be a good chat. Do want to just go into a bit more detail, tell us a bit more about you and your background and where you've come from?

Nadine Fowler (00:30)
You can see how much more havin' me.

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to tell that story of the fact that I wasn't like everybody else when I started my business. I actually had a career of 11 years that I loved and it was completely different than this. was very much therapy, psychology based and I loved it. But then I remembered thinking to myself, since I was 21, I always used to travel. I got my degree at 21 and 21, I gave my notes into everything and took off the travel. And then every two years until I was 27, 28, I would just give my notice.

and leave and I come back completely smashed broke and I was like my god there has to be a way to combine your love for travel and doing a job that you love it can't be that you always have to make a choice in choosing one thing that you have to do for the rest of your life and I remember sitting in my job once and thinking this can't be it like as much as I love it this can't be it for the rest of my life so I always see those narratives online where people are like I started it because I was in my nine to five and I absolutely hated everything and I wanted to make a change whereas for me it was more

I love it, but this can't be it. always, I always, for anybody who watches Love Island, I always make that reference when Wes Nelson was like, I'm happy, but could I be happier? That was always the part from my life that really started the part of my business because I was like, okay, how can I start this? So yeah, when I started, I did a virtual assistance course actually. And I was like, okay, a little bit of a side hustle. I love to travel. It'll get some money in and.

Sophie (01:54)
Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (02:10)
I almost immediately realized as a virtual assistant if somebody was to give me their admin, I would probably cry and I would rather never have that. Have a client give me their admin than have that business. So I niched into social media management initially and then I loved it. I got my first client through my content in two weeks and then in six weeks I was fully booked. By month seven I was already hitting my 5k months and in between that part I'd say about two months in.

I started to get approached and I had no intention, but I started to get approached by people who were like, hey, Nadine, I don't want you to do my social media management, but can you teach me how to do it? Can you teach me how to create content? And that was actually where I saw the change and the pivot for myself from social media management into full-time coaching. And that's really when I got to seven, when I got to seven months in and the five pay months, I completely pivoted away from social media management into coaching. And then I never looked back.

And yeah, it was an incredible journey to be honest, because I was that person whose business took off before they even realized how successful it was going to be. And then we were saying it before, before we even started recording about realizing when your business doesn't align with your lifestyle anymore. And then when I took off traveling, I very much realized, okay, this business does not light me up. This business is successful. Technically I had money, I had clients, I had a wait list.

And I was like, no. And I burnt the whole business to the ground. let the contracts finish. And then I rebuilt it for five months later when I came back from traveling. And within that, that 12 months of restart and I hit my six figures. So, and it was probably the E like, no, I'm not going to say the easiest year because my God, it took so much, but the realignment made it so much easier to actually go forward because the clarity that I had. And I felt like the alignment that really.

brought better clients for me that I felt much more like soul aligned with. The work was lightening up more, the transformations they were having and that I was supporting clients to get were even bigger than before, that it made the growth and the happiness that I felt in my business 10 times better. So yeah, that's a little brief introduction into summary of my life.

Sophie (04:22)
I

love that and I'm really inspired by hearing your story because I feel like we have a lot of crossover. I also went travelling when I was 21 and that was my first experience into this world but before that I had already had like a...

Nadine Fowler (04:27)
Bye.

Mm-hmm.

Sophie (04:37)
I didn't go to university, right? Like I started working when I was 16. I was a buyer's admin assistant at Ralph Lauren when I was 18 and like up until 18 to 21, I had like quite a serious like corporate job in the fashion industry. And then I was like, well, I haven't had any life experience. Let me go traveling, sack it all off. And then as soon as I came back from traveling, I got my job straight back and then ended up continuing to work back up into this career. And

I also got to a point in that career where I was like, I love traveling too much. I want more for this. I want more of this in my life. And I would do the same exactly what you did. I never quit again, but I would incorporate traveling to my work. So I worked for a while between New York and London. Then I moved to Italy for work and was constantly trying to find reasons to travel, basically. And at one point, I think I was on a plane every weekend, which is just insane. And then it got to a point where I was like, OK,

I could continue working my way up in this career. Like it's not like I absolutely despise it. I wasn't built for corporate world, like definitely not. And I was, but I could have easily have gone into like a startup fashion company and that would have probably been fine. But exactly the same feeling. Like I had this like urge to do something is that there must be more. Like I must be able to combine these things that I love. And I kind of accidentally started my business because

I'd quit my job to go traveling just before the pandemic started. And then the pandemic came, I couldn't go anywhere, I was jobless. And then I was like, well, what can I do? Like I have this skillset and I started exactly what you did, like started freelancing and offering services within like that e-commerce space. And then same thing, same thing, like realize there's more problems that everybody's having that I can solve. started like mentoring and coaching. And then it just kind of like built from there.

And then over the past couple of years also had the realization that actually the business that I've previously built when I lived in London, when I was more kind of like in this hustle, let's go mode, no longer works the lifestyle that I want to live. And I've recently just burnt my business to the ground and rebuilding. So I feel like there is so much alignment. So I'm really happy we're having this conversation because it's so good, I think, to like.

One, you're ahead of me, I'd say, like you've already done the burn, you've already rebuilt. So it's really nice to see like from my perspective, like you're expanding me and to see what could be possible for me going forward. But also it's very relatable, like the comp, I'm sure like some of the things that you've gotten through and the things that I've gone through. So feel like we can definitely bounce some ideas, especially for any other CEOs or business owners that are also going through similar challenges. So it's really nice to have you here.

Nadine Fowler (07:16)
believe me girl, the road is long and I don't think anybody ever knows everything 100%. But yeah, I would say like the initial stages of burning it down. I remember when I came back and everybody was, I was done. Cause in my head, I thought if that's the dream that I was working so hard. You know, your first years of business, they're probably the ones that you are working your most because you are the smallest fish in the bigger pond of this industry. So you're trying to figure out how do I stand out? How do I make sure people choose me?

Sophie (07:38)
Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (07:45)
Why would somebody choose me instead of that person who's five steps ahead of me? How do I make sure that I can back up my pricing with my experience? And all these things come into your mind. Your imposter syndrome is screaming. And when you're rebuilding your business, you go back through that. And I was like, I don't want to go through those motions anymore. And I remember when I came back and my friends and family were like, Dane, you were so good at it.

Sophie (08:03)
Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (08:10)
Like, look at the success that you've had. Look at how much money you've pumped in. Look at how much time and effort you put into this. It's your baby. Like, just because it didn't go the way that you wanted it to the first time doesn't mean that it can't be what you want it to become. And I remember it like, no, I'm going to go back to my old job, you know, my nine to five. Like, I didn't work a nine to five, but I worked like an eight to four. And I was like, OK, I'm going to go back. I loved it. What's the big deal? And then I was like, no, Nadine, you put too much into this. You need to...

You need to figure this out. And when I rebuilt it, I've had all of those same emotions. was like, I'm again the small fish in the bigger pond. And what direction am I going to go in and who do I want to work with? It's going to actually align me better. And I remember the first week that I came back, I put out an offer the first week that I restarted and five people reached out and inquired. And they were five people that I had that were in my audience previously. But sure, I had let my account go dormant for like five months.

Sophie (09:02)
Amazing.

Nadine Fowler (09:09)
So I thought it was going to take me months, but the reputation had superseded. And then before I even had the, had the business ready, I knew it was already, I knew I had already built up an audience of people who knew I was good at what I did. And it was just a case of now repackaging and rebuilding to the direction that I wanted it to go. And it was before I always was like, I felt like I was snowballing with the business growing, but just allowing, was following whatever clients want. built offers built on based on what clients wanted.

Sophie (09:26)
Definitely.

Nadine Fowler (09:37)
The direction of the business was always based on what clients needed and adding in or taking out whatever didn't suit the client. But I never thought about myself. I never thought, how is this going to suit me? So when I realized that the man was still there and people still wanted to work with me after time had passed, I was like, okay, how am going to rebuild offers that suit my life? Structure the business so that I'm not working seven days a week, every single day, taking calls on a Saturday just because it suits a client to do it rather than Monday to Friday when I actually want work.

All these revelations just happened. was like epiphany after epiphany when I realized business gets to be the way you want it to be, not the way you just think it has to be based on how everybody else is working.

Sophie (10:16)
No, and the good thing is like you're not rebuilding from zero ground zero, right? Like you've got all of these lessons, you've got all of the learnings, you've got all of the failures, all of the successes that you can take and put those into this new thing. That's how I'm trying to look at it from my perspective. I'm like, well, I've done all of the things I'm about to redo. I've done them in another capacity and they've either worked or not worked. And I've got so much data to suggest how I should do it differently this time around.

Nadine Fowler (10:20)
to do.

Sophie (10:42)
And I'm excited that gives you like more confidence in the things that you're about to offer because you've almost tested them in your previous business life. You've tested the waters. You've got like some proof of concept.

And you can then rebuild it into exactly like set your boundaries this time in the way that you want to be working. how different like compared to that first business that you set up to how your business is looking now, like what are the key differences that you can see from like an enjoyability basis, I guess as well, because you said like, you know, you were designing around your clients before now you designed it for yourself. So how, how does that compare?

Nadine Fowler (11:23)
in every way, or form. Like I was the yes man for like at least almost two years in the first start of my business. But the first year I was just getting off the ground. And then the second half of year two, I was just, my God, I want to increase my prices. my God, somebody said yes. And I would almost feel like I needed to prove I was worth the higher price investment. So I still was operating from an older mindset of being the yes man. the client cancels last minute. No problem at all. Let's reschedule to whenever it suits you better or.

You can't afford that container. I'll create a container on the spot that's going to suit you better. And I almost felt like that the bigger I got, the more I had to justify why somebody should invest in me and that I was good enough to be invested in. And even when I started to increase my prices and people started to come over the line, that yes, man just got stronger in me rather than owning like, my God, okay, no, I am good at what I do. People are investing because I'm an expert in this. My results speak for themselves, my personal results, my client results.

Sophie (12:04)
Mm.

Nadine Fowler (12:20)
I wasn't owning that authority. wasn't owning my expertise. was just, I fell into this trap of justifying why people should and that pressure to keep delivering whatever clients needed got bigger. The bigger I got, thought it was going to go the opposite way, but it didn't. So it made me the biggest, the biggest yes, man I've ever become. And when I came back compared to what the business used to be, like if clients said to me, I don't want to, I run my business on a seven.

They wrote it. I never wanted to create a nine to five in my online business. Even today, I don't take calls on a Monday or Friday. I don't. I only take calls on set days like Wednesdays, Thursdays are my call days. Tuesdays are my overflow days where if I want to take extra days and I have my week set up that I'm tired from the weekend because maybe I've been with friends or family or busy. I don't want to do face to face work on a Monday. So I don't. Friday is the exact same. Maybe I want to take my flights on a Friday. So I don't take calls that day.

Whereas my business before, I used to open my Calendly link and I would have times from nine to nine. And if a client wanted to book in, one client wanted to book in at three o'clock in the day, then I'm that person who can't do anything until that meeting's finished. I would just sit quietly and let the entire day be dictated by when that one client wants to take that call. And no work would get done because of the anticipation. I didn't get to live my life or go to the gym or do other things or.

yet everything would come to a halt because all I could think about was serving the client rather than serving myself. So having those boundaries in place made a huge change for me. And also I suppose around what I call offer boundaries, I always talk to clients about setting pricing boundaries, offer boundaries. For example, the pricing boundary would be, I am not working for less than this amount. I know my minimal value is this and I will not go under for anybody. If you can't reach that.

That's okay and I'm okay with letting you go if that's not something that you can invest in right now. That doesn't mean you won't in the future, but I need to be okay with that if I'm no longer going to be that person that slashes that price. I set a pricing boundary, I'm not working for less than this and I'm okay if it's okay with you to let you go at this moment if you don't want to move forward. Whereas before, you said to me, no, I can't afford that, I would create a random offer on the spot.

And I price it at the price I pulled out of sky that was based on what I think you would say, yes, we're, and I just wanted to get all clients over the line. And it actually worked against me because I realized how much work I was putting in. Like, I don't know anybody who puts as much effort in as a coach as me, like the depth, and that's not based on me. It's from the feedback from people who've worked with coaches. They've paid three times of me and said, Nadine, I've come back to you every time because the amount of support you give me is like unmatched. And I knew that.

deep down, but before I was just like, I just want any clients. And now I was like, no, I value the work I'm putting out there. The same will offer boundaries. think that was probably the biggest difference I made. If I'm honest, I scrapped any offer that I didn't think was transformation based. And what I mean by that is I used to think one off offers or power hours or three week intensives were like the easiest things to sell. And in theory they could be because they were the cheapest.

but they weren't the things that got my clients the longer term results or the bigger results that I wanted them to get. So I actually made an offer boundary where people cannot work with me for less than four months. And that was a big jump considering that I used to sell power hours and three week intensives and one month accelerators. But when I set that offer boundary, it meant I only worked with people who were visionaries, people who saw what they were capable of, knew the lives they wanted and knew that that would only come from having long-term support.

that it didn't come from like ticking a random box and me waving a magic wand. And suddenly they had a bunch of inquiries and a lot of money. came from really understanding that the progress was in the work. having that offer boundary, those pricing boundaries gave me like an ideal client boundary almost of who do I really want to work with? And it gave me a really sharp vision of being okay to let clients go who didn't align or saying no to clients who didn't align because I was only making space for clients.

who did fully align with me and therefore I just got much more. I don't know, it felt like magic. The fire was back in me. The fire really ignited back when I realised, like, I don't need to continue this way just because it's the way I've always done it.

Sophie (16:37)
Yeah. Well, I couldn't resonate more. Everything you said is the exact same thing that I've gone through with my own journey in business. And I think it's one that so many go through, particularly service business providers, there are, especially, I don't know if you agree with this, but like, especially in the coaching mentoring space where there are so many...

people not showing up and delivering the work that some people are promoting, that there is this expectation or this fear that you don't want to let somebody down or push somebody away because they don't fit, because actually they could be really good for them. And you know that you can deliver, but then they might go to somebody else and maybe not get the same experience that you could offer. So there is also, feel like sometimes, that underlying thing as well. I definitely have felt that from my own perspective.

But I think there is like, I wish somebody had said to me five years ago when I started, boundaries are the most important thing that you will ever set. Because like, again, I did the exact same thing. I went through like two years of massively undercharging myself trying to fit everybody into like custom packages that like just weren't actually serving me, but they were serving other people.

And like, it's exhausting. can't run a, there's actually, you're creating yourself a job. You're not creating yourself a business. You're creating yourself a job that probably you don't actually enjoy doing every day because you've built the job for somebody else is benefit. So I think it's like boundaries for me now are like my number one priority. Like me, my mental health is my number one priority. And then I will.

accommodate the business to fit that because otherwise what's the point? Like why am I doing it if I'm miserable? Do you know? Like I'll go back to my...

corporate job where I was dealing with politics every day, like if I want wanted to be miserable, like it's just, it's just no point for me. So I think go you for like being able to hold those boundaries, set the boundaries and figure out like what works for you because there's a lot of people that won't like a lot of people will just stay in that like comfort zone and not get out and shift their mindset enough to be able to set those boundaries. So was there a specific thing that you had to work on with your mindset to go from?

to be able to set those boundaries or do feel like you already kind of knew that that was something you needed to do and you just went for it?

Nadine Fowler (18:47)
I don't know, mindset, it was, I don't know everything about my mindset had to change, like literally everything. But one of the things I always like preach and I'll preach it to like put some of the cows come home is it's not enough to have a mindset shift. It's not enough to know and even recognize what the issue is or where your block is in your mind. I always say that confidence comes from confidence. So learning how to actually like if I have a block in my mind and I uncover it.

Sophie (18:52)
Okay.

Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (19:13)
I always need to match that with a practical way to see it happening in my life. So I do this with clients. I do it for myself. If there's something that I, if I'm having an imposter syndrome day where I'm like, who am I to have this or who am I to charge this or who am I to even think that I can have a minimum of four months to work with me when other people have like these one off strategy calls for a thousand euros. And I'm like, yeah, but I want the four months. That's my baseline. That is my offer boundary. Who am I to have this in the first place? I look for the evidence.

So, well, from my mindset, and this comes from the 11 years in psychology based, like, therapy services, but the evidence that I look for is, well, what can clients achieve with me in those months? Well, from the evidence of people that I've worked with, in evidence of me, what has, how people achieved in those time sets? And then I apply that practically to how I communicate that related to how I support people. So everything in my mind had to shift, but I always needed to see the practical side of how I could apply that.

Sophie (19:46)
Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (20:09)
day to day because when I just had the mindset shift, I needed, I had so many blocks. Like I had the same questions. Why would somebody pay me? Why would somebody choose me when there's more experienced people out there? Why, or is this going to take away my authority or my experience or how people view me or perceive me that I did burn down my business, that I didn't uphold the things I say to people to do, or that I had to make changes because I was unhappy even though I helped people to build.

their dream businesses that make them happy. Would that take away if I was vulnerable and opened up to my audience how I wasn't happy in the way I tell people to do things and that I needed to make changes for myself the same way I help people. And I was like, I was almost drowning in these fears that it was going to take away from me. That if I showed these vulnerabilities and these changes that it showed that I didn't have this rock solid strategy and this rock solid mindset.

people would perceive me to be weak or that the things that I said weren't true. But it actually had the opposite effect because it actually increased my leadership. I felt in this space where people could follow my journey, watch me rebuild my business, watch me rebuild my mindset, really call myself out on things that I believed two years ago that I no longer believe now and why my mind had changed.

How did I, why did I undercharge? And why did I think it was okay to do that? Why did I think it was okay to let people book in seven days a week, no matter what time it was? Why did I think it was okay to make on the spot offers to sign a client who didn't value what I had already told them I thought was gonna suit them best to get the results? Why would I rather have signed that person than let them go? What did I make that mean about myself?

So I had to completely rebuild everything mindset wise to really understand who I was trying to become. But then the flip side of that was, okay, how do I apply that practically now so that I can actually show myself that these mindset breakthroughs actually mean something. And that's where all the boundaries came in. That's where holding those firm boundaries like with my offers and my prices where everything came into play. Because once I had them mindset breaks of how much do I want to earn? And why can I not say that unapologetically?

Why can't I say that I deserve to pay this amount of money or that I want to earn 10K months or 18K months even in my case or 20K months that I now have. But at the time the max I had ever gotten in was like 4.5K or 5K or 7K and I never reached that 10K mark. Why was I not, why did I feel guilty for talking about money? I remember it took me two and a half years to start integrating money content marketing. I never spoke about money in my content ever.

It was almost like a guilt or a shame I felt associated with talking about money. Money I made, that my clients made. But yet when I started to integrate it and I had to understand where was that shame coming from, it was because the bigger goals I had set, I never thought I was truly going to reach them. So it felt weird or icky to me to talk about those money, that money, because it was like, okay, well, I've hit this peak and I almost thought I had peaked at five K months when I started my business in my first year.

that when I started integrating money marketing into my content strategy, it felt like this big weight had lifted off me because now I had so much more transparency in what was happening for my clients and myself. And that all came from really unblocking those money mindset things that I had and the relationship that I had with speaking about money and what talking about money meant for me. And that all came back into charging the offers that I had, the kind of clients that I had, it all fed back into itself.

So yeah, everything, everything about my mindset, I had to change to get to the point where I am, everything.

Sophie (23:51)
Yeah.

No, I think I think the mindset piece is like so underrated, like how important it actually is. And I also have a mental health business. So I have done a lot of like the whole like cognitive behavioural therapy style exercises in terms of like money, money mindset blocks and just general mindset blocks of helping back through like entrepreneurship, because I feel like they are that they're the best way to like

Nadine Fowler (24:11)
you

Sophie (24:18)
reprogram and reprocess the things that you need to work through. And it's interesting that you said about like, confidence comes from competence because earlier on I was actually recording a podcast episode for the mental health business and it was a confidence coach and she said the exact same thing. had this conversation twice today, which is amazing because that just like proves that it is completely true. It comes from like understanding, like you can only

Nadine Fowler (24:34)
No way!

Sophie (24:45)
present in a certain way that you understand possible, right? And then from that, you can then like work out what is holding you back and then try and figure out a way through it. And then it comes from like taking actions to actually make the thing happen. So until you start doing it, you don't know how comfortable you feel with it. And then you can kind of go from there. So I think that's a prime example of that.

So yeah, it's interesting to have that conversation that twice a month. I love it. Like it just proves, hones in on the message. So in terms of you mentioned earlier, around when you went back and you started like reshifting your business in that over that year and you were worried because obviously your social media had been dormant for five months. You weren't sure whether people would still be engaged with you. How did you warm them back up? Because obviously I guess you came back with a new message, you had new offers, all of that stuff. So what was your kind of approach to that?

Nadine Fowler (25:12)
That's so funny.

Sophie (25:38)
to attracting new clients through your content.

Nadine Fowler (25:43)
I think I decided that the exact same way when I started my business initially, I was like, it's the exact same kind of steps that I took when I started my business, the very first post that I put out, the very first week of posting, I had the exact same mentality. How do I make sure I stand out among what everybody else is saying? Like when I started my business and I was a VA, it was all, what is a VA? What reasons you need a VA? Five reasons, five signs that you're overwhelmed and need a VA. All these.

these posts that I felt like I was drowning in. And I remember one of the very first posts I put out that week, I was like, no, I'm not going to sound like everybody else. I'm going to pinpoint exactly what everybody's thinking. And I remember the very first post I put out as a VA was what is passive consumption? And I spoke about how, because I knew that my ideal client at that time really enjoyed that idea of having really high engagement. And I went against the narrative.

And I said, well, you really want, you really want high engagement, but actually a bulk of your viewers are going to be passive consumers. And you won't even know they exist until they reach out to inquire with you. So if you're only gauging how well your business is doing based on how many likes and comments you get, then you're actually completely missing out on a big bunch of people that are going to buy from you eventually. And I remember I, the exact same mentality I came back with, I was like, how can I disrupt the narrative that's happening in this very moment? How can I make sure.

that what I'm about to put out is what I've become known for. So both times, very first time I posted on when I came back, the first thing that I really wanted to understand was what did I want to become known for? What do I want from the beginning that I want to become known for, that my office become known for, and that my message becomes known for? So I had a look online and I was like, okay, what is the average person talking about nowadays? What do I truly feel about that? Am I just going to follow the crowd and be like, yeah.

Sophie (27:19)
Mm.

Nadine Fowler (27:37)
Let's go for more engagement or make the sales or DM inquiries or whatever people were saying. Or did I want to really talk about what I truly believe in? And at the time when I'm a really big believer in content marketing and make it like organic content marketing, making sure that you can create on demand, predictable sales directly through your content without needing to depend on referrals, word of mouth or being at the mercy of anybody else except for what you can do. Because that is how potent a content strategy can be for your business if you know how to do it.

So I was like, no, I'm not going to go down and start teaching people how to navigate sales conversations, which is something I do do. I'm not going to get on and talk about how to like ramp up referrals and, and all these funnels and all these other things that people do and that I can do for clients as well. want to be known for people who want to create on demand, predictable sales. So I just went and looked at opinions about other things and I wanted to be disruptive. So I put out content that I knew would go against what

majority of people were saying, but in a way that I believed it. Not just for the sake of it. And you see a lot of people pointing out like controversial opinion, but I think, and then they just move. I just wanted to help people to understand the way I thought my methods, my processes, why I thought that way and why I thought it was going to help people. And that in itself create attraction because it's a bit like everything else in the wider universe that's happening. People just want difference. They want to see

that you can talk about this subject, but in a way they haven't heard about it before. Even if you are repeating something that's not like none of us are reinventing the wheel. But I remember that first week, like I started putting out things about inactivation content strategy, the difference between a content strategy that gets you views, clicks, likes, versus things that actually move your audience. And I had proof of that because within that week of applying the same strategy, I had five people inquire of the same week coming back. So I don't, I don't just say, share your opinions or be disruptive.

Sophie (29:05)
Mm.

Nadine Fowler (29:31)
Do it with proof. Have proof that these things are happening the same way with the passive consumption. I didn't know it obviously at the time when my first time when I was releasing, but I knew it based on the fact that I understood buyer behaviors and that I had a good basis of sales psychology. So the first time that I put out the passive consumption and then two weeks later I had my first client through my content that I had not even realized was gonna become my client. That was proof of itself. And then that week I was like, no, I'm gonna prove based on like you said.

I wasn't starting from ground zero anymore. I was coming from data that was backed up and things I knew failed, things I knew didn't do well, things I knew did do well. And I said, okay, what do I want to become known for and how am going to communicate that? And how am going to back that up? so that's pretty much what it was. It was how can I be disruptive? How can I put a message out there that's going to catch the attention rather than just go with the flow of everybody else?

Sophie (30:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's so important. It's like social media, there's so much noise, right? Like I've always struggled with social media. It's never been my thing. Like personally, I don't really use it. Like I know that I need to be there for business and I have got quite a lot of clients through social media. Actually, most of my clients previously, like with the e-commerce stuff came through LinkedIn because I've got a much bigger following on LinkedIn than I do on like Instagram or TikTok, for example. But I totally...

Nadine Fowler (30:43)
Thank

Sophie (30:47)
get the attraction marketing piece. I've just personally never been able to quite nail it on Instagram, for example. But I think the key point that you're saying there is stand out and have a very clear message that you are putting out there because there's so many trends. Like the reason I don't enjoy it is because there's so many trends. There's so many people just speaking about the same thing just in different ways. And I'm just like, my God, like.

Nadine Fowler (30:52)
you

Sophie (31:09)
I'm bored. I don't want to consume this is is so boring to me. So if I come across a content creator that is speaking a little bit different, then I pay attention because I'm like, okay, cool. Like that's, that's the exact type of person that I would I would gel with because I don't follow trends. want to be around people or like influenced by people that are disruptors that are saying something. And obviously, then you're repeating that message consistently, and you're really honed in on the person that you're speaking to and the person that you want to attract.

in which case they're coming to you. I think what I see a lot of online business owners do, and I think I'm guilty of this as well in the past as well, because like I say, social media, not my forte, but like, is speaking to too many messages and like talking to all of the different people that they could potentially attract. Like you've obviously got very clear on exactly who it is that you want to be targeting and the message that you want to put out and the way that you want to be perceived by those people. So I think what advice would you give people like that are struggling to kind of

come up with their own individuality, I guess, on social media when there is just so much noise to cut through.

Nadine Fowler (32:13)
Yeah, I would say the first thing I always say is what do you want to become known for? That is always the crux of it because people think niching down has to be a particular woman in a particular age gap or a particular industry or a particular thing. It's not. Your niche can be a core problem you become known for solving or a core goal that you support clients to go to get to. And the clients can come from all walks of life. But then the niche becomes not just your who you've been helping, but the core problem or desire.

Sophie (32:17)
And.

Nadine Fowler (32:43)
and then your niche method of how you do it. And people always say to me, I don't have a niche method, I just do it. That's their autopilot. People who are good at what they do, they do it on autopilot. So it's not until I ask you to take a step back and actually tell me, everybody has a framework, okay? Spoiler alert, everybody has a process. If you do certain things in a certain way, even if it's on autopilot, you have a framework. You just haven't named it a framework, or you haven't named it as a process. But everybody has a niche way that they do it.

They have a, even if you and I do the same thing and we teach the same thing, there's going to be a way you do it and a way I do it. That's on purpose. So you need to get really confident and comfortable becoming known for that method of how you solve that particular problem or get to that particular goal. So if I got you to finish a sentence of, my God, go to X. If you want to be helped with X, she is incredible at X. What would you say? How would you fill in those gaps?

Because when you start to understand that your niche of standing out is more than just a woman in her 40s who has kids and a family and wants to grow her business, that is not the case. What is that woman's core problem? What is that woman's core desire? And how do you want to become known for doing that? Do you know what your core signature method of doing that is? And repeating that message of how to stand out because even if you and I, and there's 10 of us standing, I am not the only business and marketing coach in the online space.

But yet 200 plus clients have come to me directly. Directly through my content, I have never called out reached anybody in my whole life simply because of how I describe that. Simply because I've become known for the main problem I solve, the main solutions and my methods. People like the way I do things. They resonate with the way I speak. They resonate with the way that I describe something. doesn't have to be completely different than the other 10 business coaches standing beside me.

Because the difference is the uniqueness is that nobody does it the way I particularly do it. And being known for that main priority problem, as I call it, and that main priority goal, and your main priority method, that is going to be your standout niche. It's not about the woman in her forties with her kids or the male in his fifties or his twenties and wants to go to school and wants to go to college. It's not about that. The demographics of who you're to target is not going to be the niche thing that then helps you to stand out.

first step is understanding those three key parts. What do you want to become known for? What do you want people to say, oh my God, go to her if she is incredible at this. If you want help with this, you need to go to her. What's the first thing that comes to mind? Because it can be 10 things. That's the thing. There are always, it's like Pandora's box when you start working with somebody. There's gonna be 10 things you can start working with somebody on. But if you were to sit me down with the main problem that I come to you with, what would be the first thing you tell me I need to work on?

Sophie (35:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (35:30)
What do you think is the main thing? The first thing somebody needs to work on, that will become the priority problem that you become associated with because in your opinion, in your method or your framework, that is the first thing I need to solve. Then what's the next step? And then what is the next step? And that is how you develop your signature method that you become known for, the signature problems and the signature goals. So yeah.

Sophie (35:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

You need

that. You have to have a point of difference. You have to have something that is so unique to you and that people can really relate and resonate with. And that's really the only way to cut through this crazy world of social media that we have in front of us. is just so much, obviously, and rightly so, there's so many people doing very similar things, but people will come to you. people used to always come

me specifically for like e-commerce stuff because of they liked the way that I would show up like I was their friend. Then we were having a conversation in their living room, for example, like that's the feedback I generally get about this podcast. Like people listen to this because it feels like they're listening to a friend, just have conversations about business. Like quite a lot of my clients would describe that as.

she was like, like a best friend that I could talk about business with kind of thing. Like it was kind of like that relate ability rather than, you're coming to me because I've worked for XYZ brands. Like, no, no, no, it's because you relate to me in whatever, whatever way doesn't really matter. Like whatever message I was putting out at the time, like you relate it to that message and you understand like me at the core rather than the offer that what I can solve for you essentially, because people, when it's like,

buying into a service provider like we both provide, like it's about the person you're working with, like either way you're probably going to get the results, like, but if you don't resonate or like the way that person is working with you, then that's going to be way harder for you to get the results because you're not going to absorb or respect the person that's giving you the support and the advice. So I think it's so important. Like people choose people, people resonate with people. So if you can.

show up in the way that you want to show up and present the message that you really strongly feel for. There are going to be naturally people that are attracted to that. I think you've put that really nicely. really like how you phrased that because I think it's so obvious, it's like not enough people do it. Not enough people do it.

Nadine Fowler (37:52)
Yeah, I think it also comes into

that idea of people want to be liked by everybody. if I'm quite direct, I'm quite blunt, honest, direct. I say it like it is, I'm not going to sugarcoat things and I call people out on a lot of things and I will hand hold you, will hold space for you. But if I think you're just purposely not, if I think you're doing the bare minimum, I'm going to tell you that I think you're doing the bare minimum and I will support you to see all these other ways that you can be doing things to support yourself.

Sophie (37:58)
Yeah.

Nadine Fowler (38:19)
But if you want somebody that's more, I don't know, less direct, somebody that needs a more cushiony way of approaching you, somebody who you want to burn sage with on the webcam and like sit in silence and meditate, more than likely that I know that even if you did sign with me, we're not going to blend. We're not going to go because our values don't match. Our way of working doesn't match. So it's better for people to know who you are and the way you describe things and how you work from your content.

before they come into you, then showing up as this vague, worn down version of yourself. And then by the time you even at that client does sign, you are just button heads and everybody will know this. Everyone has signed a client that you just don't work well together. You don't gel, you you don't, your, your fires don't light the same way and you feel almost like the person's uncoachable or they don't like the way you do something if you're like a done for you service provider. And they question all the things that you do because you simply don't gel.

because you came up as a watered down version of yourself and they thought, I like this watered down version, but you can't stay that person. So what I always go back to is what you want to become known for. That's in your specialization, but it's also in your method and your way of how do you do that? How do you approach that? How do you think about that? And why do you think that way? Because that's going to approach, that's going to help people to really filter down if they like you or they don't. And then when you get on that call, it's not like,

you're a different version of yourself online than when we talk to each other. And vice versa. You don't want people in your world that are like you find very difficult to gel with or you dread the call every week because you're like, my God, here's another hour of somebody that's going to drain me. It's the opposite. So the more you can show up as yourself and what you become want to become known for and how that brand persona is for yourself, the more clarity and you're going to have an easier time to come.

Sophie (40:11)
Yeah, definitely. I love that. That's super important. And just to kind of summarize everything you said there around like sales content, like somebody that wants to create more freedom in their life and create a business that works for their life and not one that they work for. Like what would your best bit of advice be for somebody that is kind of like just starting out on this path and wants to start using sales content to build their freedom based online business?

Nadine Fowler (40:36)
The first thing was if, get to the point where you can see the person that you want to work with in your mind. If you sit down to write content and you don't have a clear vision and you feel like you're almost blending multiple different clients you've worked with or multiple people in your mind. So you start talking to yourself, which a lot of people do when they're trying to write content, you are going to find it very difficult because you're going to place limited beliefs of different people or multiple problems that they've had. not everybody has the same problem in the exact same way.

If you get to the point where when you sit down, you don't have one clear person that you're right into, then you don't have enough clarity. And that clarity is going to hold you back because then you're not going to understand what kind of offers they need, how to connect what you do inside those offers to get the results that they want. You're not going to understand the end transformation they're looking for. And therefore you don't know what you want to become known for. So if you start from the beginning of what do you want to become known for? What problem do you want to be known for? What goal do want to become known for? And then work your next step to be, who is your ideal client?

for this? Who has this problem? Who has these goals? What does that look like specifically for them on a day-to-day basis? Not just I want to be confident, but I want to be confident enough that in my marriage it's okay to have fights and not leave. Or I want to work as a social media manager specifically for e-commerce because I really enjoy the product-based side of things. Be really specific in what that looks like and if you don't know what that looks like, go get help with it.

because it's not enough to just keep going to master classes and figuring it out around along the way. Get to the point where you can rhyme off who you're speaking to because everything else is going to come off. The way that you build your offers, how you speak about your offers, the way that you write that content is going to come so much clearer and easier and flow so much better when you have that clear image in your head.

Sophie (42:24)
No, it's so true. It's 100 % true. I think that's brilliant advice. And thank you so much for sharing it on the podcast. I really appreciate it. And I've really enjoyed chatting with you today. It sounds like we have so many crossovers and I really resonate with everything you've said. So thank you so much. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you further?

Nadine Fowler (42:38)
I'm going to leave.

You can find me on Instagram, Nadine Selena Coaching. My website is Nadine Selena Coaching too. I think everything has the same handle. Yeah, but my main ones are my Instagram and my website. So people can find me there. There's lots of free resources on there as well. If you want to have a look at them. They're all about building sales, content strategies, ideal client clarity and creating demand for your offers.

Sophie (42:57)
I'm Amy.

Sounds great, amazing. And just one last question, what's next for you? Like where are you taking your business next? Like what about life and putting the priorities of your life first? What's your next plans?

Nadine Fowler (43:18)
I've actually prioritised, which is kind of the opposite of my last two and a half years, but I prioritised being in one place for longer than a month. I am long, don't get me wrong, and it's a first world problem to have, but I've been travelling to different countries for the last two and a half years. think I've spent like six weeks is probably the longest I've spent somewhere in a very long time. And after two and a half years, I'm like, okay.

Sophie (43:26)
Yeah, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir right now.

Nadine Fowler (43:45)
I want some basis. So I'm figuring out my basis. I want to do kind of like a six months, six months split, six months in the summer, six months of enjoying home. And yeah, then it's just going to help me to really be productive in being present in my business. Cause now it's all about expanding what I already have. I don't want to release any new offers. I don't want to do anything like that. I just want to expand what I have and get that clarity. And I think that is going to come from having the choice to stay in a place for longer than six weeks. So that's my plan.

Sophie (44:13)
Yeah, it helps.

It definitely helps. feel, I've been bouncing around for about the same amount of time and I'm also in that position where I just want to be in one place for a while. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to see where you decide those spaces to be and where your business goes next. But I really appreciate this conversation and thanks so much for joining me.

Nadine Fowler (44:21)
You got it.

Thanks for having me. Take care.

Sophie (44:35)
Thank you.