5 Marketing Assets That Keep Working When You Can’t

Right now in business, we can be everywhere and be doing everything online and feel completely, completely exhausted from doing all of the things.And at the end of the day, we could possibly have nothing to show for it because we can be everywhere online and still own nothing at all or have it snatched from you basically from all of the places that we're trying to show up on now.This is so important.If you're trying to grow a business and you're trying to do it sustainably within your real life circumstances, whether you are working a side hustle, whether you are working your entrepreneur business as a founder or creator, and this is your your thing, you would never want to wake up in the morning and find out that all of your contacts via Instagram or on YouTube just disappeared.You would feel so deflated and frustrated.And of course if you're like me, you'd be like, we get up and we keep going and we keep trekking.But this is the piece that I think many of us miss and need to pay more attention to.Especially now with how technology is moving so fast and things easily break and get stolen.If you do not have the proper foundation for marketing assets to help you have a sustainable business and and help you have a profitable one that does not interject or affect your capacity in the long run, you can be everywhere and still own nothing.And we want to make sure that if you decide that today you are going to be looking for a job or tomorrow you're going to start a new type of business, you want to be able to talk to the people and have the resources that you can easily pivot, easily switch over easily.Take a pause if you want because you have built a business around foundations that compound and are interchangeable.And that is what this episode is all about.Hello, my name is Nikita Williams.I am your host.I am a business coach and strategist helping women living with chronic illness and helping people having different varying capacity who are in the health and wellness space.Coaches and as well as service based creatives define and create a simpler path to growing a sustainable and profitable business by not doing everything but doing the most important things that help you compound in what you're doing so that it can serve you now and well into the future.

Are you tired of hearing business advice that completely ignores what real life looks like when you're navigating chronic illness?Autoimmune disorders, flare ups, medical appointments and just life.Lifing business with chronic illness is for entrepreneurs who know they're capable of building something meaningful but need a way to do it that actually works with their body, not against it.This podcast brings you honest conversations with founders, CEOs and other bosses, sharing their strategies, adaptations and lessons they've learned while building businesses alongside chronic illness, including what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they had done differently before burnout forced the lesson.I'm your host, Nikita Williams, a globally ranked podcast host and entrepreneur who's built my business while navigating chronic illness and helping others do the same without sacrificing themselves.I created this show to open up the conversations most business spaces avoid.The promise of Business with Chronic Illness is simple to show you that you can build a thriving business with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit.You're not behind, you're building differently and you're in the right place.

Okay, so today I'm going to talk about the marketing assets every small business owner, entrepreneur, founder needs to have in their business as a solid foundation.And in case life happens or you change your mind or wherever you are spending the most time of your life on like, for your business is also protected.And I'm going to start with kind of defining some things first and also talk about the objection that I'm hearing currently.What will always be important is where you are specifically building.Are you building on rented land or own land, like something you can physically own?So rented space in my definition is social platforms, algorithms relying on other people's audiences.They are useful, but they can change overnight in a minute.They can change in the middle of an Instagram life.They can literally change at any given time because you do not hold the lever for when those things change, right?That is rented space, owned assets, things that you control that can keep working without you, quote, unquote, always being on, are things that can compound over time.And they can also be something that you can transfer.Like you can move it from one thing to another thing.And they can serve both in your personal business life, your career.They help you develop skills.They are really powerful things that you want in your business, your life, career when it comes to making money with limited capacity or, or just making money on the side because that's what you need to do.Marketing should help you make money, not take away from your business in the sense of take away from your ability to make sales, right?So some of these platforms that we're going to talk about today, they help you make money, but they can easily be snatched away from you if you haven't built the foundation that makes, that makes that rented space actually leverage and valuable.So this is important because living with chronic illness, the one thing I have learned is that I need multiple ways of being able to connect with my people that doesn't rely on someone else's decision of how I need to show up.One of the ongoing things I hear from my clients is like, they get frustrated with the algorithm, they get frustrated with the tools that they're using and they haven't used some of the other tools that are a bit more solid and, and actually kind of like your own piece of real estate in the online little world.And when you are maybe going to be in the hospital or maybe when your parents are getting older and you need to shift from being the face or doing all of the things live, you need to, you know, watch your mental health and support yourself.The shift is going to look and feel different.But your business shouldn't suffer because of it in the sense of that you no longer have something that's working for you when you're off of the screen or a way to reach out to your audience in a very authentic, real way that you can still make sales from if those platforms decide to sunset to leave change completely.Whatever the case may be, the reason why I talk about this so much with my clients is because many of them have built their business solely on social media.And I again, I'm not against social media.I think obviously it's a great tool and it's a great place for you to kind of get discovered quickly and it's a great way for you to start to build the foundations I'm going to talk about today, but if you don't have them, it's just setting you up for more frustration when your life is going to change, because it's going to change and you need multiple ways of being able to connect and sell your offers and your business.The other objection that I hear when I start talking about marketing assets that every business should own, especially right now in the age of AI, is that none of these things that I'm going to talk about are going to still be here in the future.And let's set some of those things straight.Everyone online is announcing like the one thing you need or the one thing that's dead.For example, I don't know if you're scrolling social media like me, but people are saying like, you know, ChatGPT and Cloud killed this and killed that and no longer did this.And it's killing blogs and killing websites, it's killing email and people are saying, like, email is dead, podcasting is dead, blogging is dead, websites are dead.Like, everyone is saying something is dead, and it's all because of AI.AI is so much better.And I think we need to ground this in reality, okay?Websites are not going to be obsolete because of AI.What's true is that they're going to change what the job is going to be, but they're important.AI, you guys, is pulling from the content that we've already created.It is pulling from all the information that we have put on the Internet.And what AI is actually doing in the background is creating patterns and systems and connections that make it easier for us to get some of these things done faster and quicker and finding what we need faster.But they're able to do that because websites exist, because blog posts exist, because YouTube exists, because of all these things that are supposedly going to be dead because of AI.It needs those things as a source.So what is true?More people are going to be asking AI for different answers to their problems and their questions.And that's great for us.If you can be found because of answering problems that people are asking and you have a website or you have some type of platform that makes it easy for them to connect their problem to your solution.We love that for AI.We love that, right?We love that people can find you because of that.What's really missing when we hear this information about these tools that we're currently using are going to be obsolete is that again, AI pulls from sources, your website transcripts, blogs, reviews, and reads whatever it is and tries to find the context and the intention and bring them together to give the user who's asking about this problem or looking for the solution or this desire and then sends you to you.Sends them to you, right?And so this is why it's even more important to have the website's job is changing, and it's the source of truth for a lot of responses AI gives, right?And so that's why it's important to kind of ground this claim that all of the things that, you know, were once upon a time important are going to go away.It's not true.Ask all of the AI people.It's just changing what these jobs that we're using are going to do.It's kind of like horse and buggy.Back in the day, the horse and buggy got people to and fro, right?The mechanism of how that happened has changed dramatically.Now we have cars and motorcycles and all these different ways, but guess what's still available.Horse and buggies, bikes like our feet.It's just how we get there.It looks a little different.Sometimes it's faster.This is a similar concept that I like to think about with AI.Okay, claim number two.Social media is the only thing that matters when it comes to growing your business.Now, what's true is that it is one of the fastest ways to be discovered by people who aren't actually intentionally looking for what you have.That's very true.Somebody can be scrolling and be like, oh my gosh, I didn't know I need this thing.Or oh my gosh, I like her vibe or their vibe.Great.Number one, one of the best ways to do this, what's missing is that you don't own that platform and it demands constant output in the way they tell you to do it.Okay, the, the reframe I want you to capture here is that social media or any type of platform that's a tool is a distribution channel.It can be an asset, but it's only an asset if you leverage it or connect it to something that you own.Okay, claim number three.AI means you don't need any of the things that we're going to be talking about today or any of the things that people are talking about.It is just going to do all of the work for you and you're just going to be sitting there and talking to AI and it's going to fix all of problems.If you believe that.I'm sorry.I'm so sorry.It's a lie.It's not true.Here's what you need to know.AI will make creating content and starting a business super easy, fast and even cheaper to do.Right?But what it's going to need is to have someone direct it to create filters to manage it and understand what it's doing as much as it's doing right?The real value here is that it still needs your discernment, it still needs your guidance, right?And people still need to feel trust, they still need to understand you.They need to build, to get to know if you're the person to help them solve their problem.So trust and having a real point of view and having a lived experience and stories and skills that solve problems are always going to be what humans need.Okay?So every claim that I just mentioned, there's a.There's someone on the Internet telling you that that strategy is ridiculous and doesn't matter, but the facts are the facts, right?You still need what you need in order to grow a business.It's just that Those jobs and the way we view things are going to look a little bit different.Channels change, tools change.If you were using ChatGPT and you were using the, what is that?The GPTs when they first came out, case in point, they are phasing them out to add to a different tool within their system that now has to be updated.If you use those, why is it so important about what I'm going to share with you is because you spend a lot of time and energy on that.And if you don't have a place in your business where you own that IP and those thoughts and the way things are supposed to work, you are creating, creating double work.And you're also missing out on ways to leverage what's in your brain, what's in your stories, to bring in sales.Okay?So don't chase the channels and the tools.Own your brain, your experiences and your assets that you're giving those tools to use.Make sure you own them somewhere.Okay?AI makes doing whatever it is we're doing a lot easier.It doesn't make it easier for people to believe you if you don't have the foundations that make that possible.Okay?And if AI is the new front door, it's going to be reading your website, it's going to be scouring the Internet for your social content and your long form content, your transcripts and your reviews, and you want to make sure that it's giving your person the right answer and pointing them back to you.Okay?So five assets I'm going to share with you today that are absolutely necessary, especially if you want to grow a business that's sustainable, that lives within your capacity, and then can help you stay profitable.No matter what happens with the channels, that will consistently change because that's what they do.Number one is an email list.Now, you guys, you guys, y' all should know this already, but I feel like I have to say this.I was on a interview a few like a few months ago with someone that is in Libsyn and I was reaching out to apply for one of their jobs.And one of the conversations we were having was really interesting because they get people who have millions of downloads in their podcast, they get people who have millions of YouTube watchers, but they have no email lists, they have no way to communicate with these people outside of the platforms.And it baffles my brain because one of the first things I used to teach my clients when I was back in the day doing in person events was like, you need to capture people when they are saying yes to you in person so you can continue to talk to them after they leave your table.And this is no different after they leave your podcast, your YouTube, your life.You need a way to talk to these people who spent some precious time or money.You need a way to communicate with them.And for now, it's an email list as well as text messaging.Text messaging is also becoming a very useful tool in converting, keeping that nurturing, connecting, creating sales.So you need to build that list so that you can continue connecting with your audience.No one can take that away.It's literally like having a list of people that like you have bought from you, who are entertained by you, who want their problem solved by you, is literally cash in the bank and it is yours.Okay?So the one audience, this is the one audience nobody can take from you.So you want to have a backup of this audience.Like you want to have it in your email list and then you also want to.Every month I do this every month.You also want to have that list backed up to a database that you have access to that you have it and you own it, right?You want to start simple to grow this, ask people to join your email list for updates.I know some people will say that doesn't get people to do it, but some people do do it right?You can add an exclusive edge to this where you can tell people to join your email list and you only exclusively send coupon codes or you send recipes, or if you're a health coach, maybe you send specific protocols that you have seen that's working or you share your insights on what's been happening in the health and wellness space.If you're a creative entrepreneur, you might be sharing things specifically that's changed with technology and things that you're noticing for your clients now in 2026 or 2027 or whatever you're listening, whatever year that you're listening to this you want people to buy into.Getting onto your email list for a couple of different reasons is yours, you own.You own that database.Two, you can sell in the middle of the night in the hospital bed, on a road trip, on your phone.You don't need an algorithm to force you to do it a certain way.You can literally write it up, send it, or text it, right?This is where what I believe, business is personal becomes really legit for real, an asset in your email because your, your stories shine, how you solve problems, how you help people create, get what they want, how you build trust and you sell without being weird and pushy and salesy happens so much easier in an email or in a text message if you're doing it right.And AI can actually help us draft this up.But you want to keep your story and your voice and all of those things intact so that it doesn't sound like it's from AI.One of my favorite coaches in this space is Kirsten Roldan, of course.She is the founder of Million Dollar Email.If you want to connect with her and do her course, I think you should go through it at least once.You will change your mind about one, feeling salesy about sending emails and two, really understand how to send emails that connect and nurture and help you make money.Okay, so I'm gonna put that in the show notes.I'll have a link there that you can use that will be my affiliate link that you can check out.I highly recommend you join it.Just for learning email.It's a skill of being able to talk and connect with people.And it's your skill that you literally can take to any job, any career, in any way, shape or form that you need.It's also a consistent, low lift way to create momentum and sales in your business.When you don't have the capacity to learn a new tool or new algorithm Shift it is Chef Kiss.Okay, asset number two.Now I might get some flack about this because if you're just getting started, this probably isn't the first thing to do because you don't know what this website is even going to say.But if you've been in business and you're making around, let's just say 50k, 100k, 80k and you don't have a website, we need to have, we need to have a talking about, right?A website or at least a landing page has a job to do and it's a couple different ones.Okay.It helps you get found by people searching for your solution, like searching for their problem to be soft.I don't know how else to say that.It's just how it works.If people are looking to find a resource for what it is that you do, if they don't see a place that they can find that easily, you're not going to be found.And you know, social media is great, but social media is accidental.It's not intentional all of the time.People search in there, but they don't always search specifically for problems.They search for ideas, places, locations.But when you're a service based provider, people are looking specifically for those things.Even if you're a creator, if you make things, people are searching for something specific in AI or in Google.Right.They're looking for something specific.And Google first goes to long form content, it goes to website data, and then it goes to like all these social media platforms, all those different kind of things.So if you don't have a website, you might not be found.You might not be found.So your website should say who you help, what you offer and what they need to do next to connect with you.It needs to be clear, it needs to have a primary call to action on working with you and joining your email list or some way that you can continue to nurture and grow that relationship.The AI piece of this is that an AI can make up a beautiful website within a second.Really can.You just need to make sure that it includes those things that I just mentioned, that it's clear, it doesn't say sound like AI, it sounds like you, it's practical, it's nuanced and that there is SEO and AEO basics in that website.So that makes it easier for you be found through keywords and long tail keywords and things like that.Now some of you guys might be hearing like AI and SEO are competing against one another.They have all said if you do the research that SEO is very much aligned with aeo.It's just making sure that the agents are understanding your website enough to make that understanding of what the intention of the searcher is looking for versus what you provide.So there is a little bit of a change in the way that you might put your website together.But SEO keywords, long tail keywords, those are all still important and still matter and they also help with you being found, AKA through AI.One of my favorite tools for building a website that I've been playing with and I'm going to be launching my new website soon is on Lovable.I love that tool.It's a great place that you can use, especially if you're just getting started and you're also wanting to use something that you can kind of play with.If you want to get really fancy into how to like move it from lovable into a place that it can be hosted and easily updated.That's a whole nother conversation.But there's a lot of tools out there that are free that make this easy.It's a must as far as being found by people who are looking for what you have to offer to solve to fix the problem.Number three, assets.It's obviously an offer or telling people like what it is that you do like.I find that a lot of people, yes There are creators out there creating and doing things.But even a creator needs to be clear on what their offer is like.Who are they trying to be, who are they trying to attract, who are they trying to talk to as a health coach or a creative service provider?This is also important for you.You, you need to know who you clearly are selling to, who you're not for who you are, for what it costs and what you are going to be doing to get marketing.This is yours only.You can shift and change this.Nobody can.Like, people can copy us all day long.But how you deliver that and how you do it is yours.Okay?Your lived experience makes an offer.Your lived experience and your expertise are what makes an offer really like your piece of real estate.It's like having a house and you go in and you renovate it and it's yours now because it's got your stamp on it.That's how important it is to have a clear offer and a place that the offer or what it is that you do is somewhere online, right?And when I say somewhere online, preferably on a website, and if you're only using social media, it needs to be clear on how people work with you, how they click on the link to get there.Asset number four, long form content.I have kind of sprinkled this into all of this because without long form content, it makes it really difficult for you to grow.Your email list makes it really difficult for you to grow or to create a website.It makes it really hard for you to be found on AI or SEO.It makes it kind of close to impossible unless you're just relying on your social media.Now, social media is optional.I love social media.I'm on there, optionally, I'm on there off and on.The thing I want you to think about is if you're solely creating content on social media, that's a lot of energy and a lot of effort.If you are not using that content and putting it somewhere off of social media, don't be one of those people who wake up tomorrow morning and find out that your account has been banned and you can't even get access to what you've already created.Back up that stuff, y'.All.Back it up, back it up and reuse it for your content on your platforms that link directly to your brand and your name.A long form content asset is a podcast, a blog, a YouTube.Yes, podcasting.YouTube and blogs are technically on channels, right?They're on channels, they're syndicated, they're put on a place, they are channels.However, however, an RSS feed is yours.You can download it and keep it.Also, you can create that content on any platform.As like when I say platform, you could create it on your desktop and it's yours.You can use it to repurpose it, put it somewhere, wherever you want.It's not going to get lost because someone decided, you know, that Instagram no longer wants to be in business today.It's not that kind of place.So once you make it once, you can use it as many times as you want.Repurposing it, creating content from it, going deeper with it, it is an asset that's really powerful.Why this is amazing in the AI world right now, transcripts and long form content give AI plenty of your actual expertise with intention and relevance to draw from when people are searching for content that needs to solve their problems.And it's easy for them to know that it's a real human when they're pulling from you, the person, right?So I know a lot of people are using long form content now with AI, they're creating it like prompt wise and going ham on that.But even platforms, the channels that we're talking about, like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are really being strict on those things, not being really allowed or being pushed because they understand the human connection is a powerful one and people can tell the difference when something is AI and it's not.And then if they find out that it's AI, people feel like baited and switched and that's not a good look for that company either.Like the company that they're playing creating this on.So the more authentic you can use this tool, AI to help you create long form content.Great.One of the ways I do it is like I give it a outline that I'm talking about, I ask it to give me an outline of what I'm trying to share.So that makes it easier for me to create the content.I use it to do research and pull information.I verify that information and then I might use that to share it in my content.But it's a powerful tool and it does make it work way faster.And also this is a body of work that you can literally use to recommend to other people.Like this is how I built my business or this is what I'm using to grow my business, whether in a career field or just as an entrepreneur.And my last asset is number five, which is testimonials proof y'.

All.

I, I realize that y' all don't like to ask for testimonials.I don't understand this.It's a funny thing to me because if you are worried about being ethical or being trustworthy, one of the easiest ways to do this is to get testimonials.Ask people to tell their stories and their results in their own words and put it somewhere where it's visible and where somewhere you can keep it safe so you can keep sharing it in different ways.These testimonials are proof of your skills being able to help people solve their problems and get what they want.So it's not the last thing that should be on your mind.It should be one of the first things when you start working with clients and it is your asset.It's like we look at reviews when we go to restaurants, we look at reviews when we book a flight somewhere or hotel somewhere.Why aren't we making this a priority in our business when it comes to working with humans?So collect them.Create a system, a simple form for a win.When my clients finish with me, they get a questionnaire that asks them for feedback.That's important too.And it also asks them to share their experience.And I often ask them to share it in a written form and in video form.So now that it's like this is a real human and this is their real thoughts, it makes it so much easier for me to say yes.I have experience and I have helped people.Here's the evidence, here's what they say, right?This is yours.This is an asset.If you've worked with one client, if you've worked with a hundred clients and you don't have any testimonials, that's one of the first things I would do besides email.It would be like the second thing I would do because one, it helps to get into conversations with people.Two, you can see if these people could be your clients again.Like hello, you helped them once, maybe you can help them again.These are assets that you can consistently work with and building a sustainable business that can help you be profitable.Okay, and you want to use all of this because it helps you manage your what you have better without expending yourself on platforms that may or may not be here tomorrow or may say you're not allowed to be here.Okay, so here's a quick self audit for you I want you guys to think about when it comes to your content or your marketing systems in your business.If social media disappeared tomorrow, could people still find me?That's a real question.Can I reach my audience without an algorithm?Does my website or do I have a website that Tells people exactly what they need to do next to get in contact with me to solve their problem.Right?Do I have a system that follows up with my leads or with my past clients?Because those are the things you own.You have their name, their number, and their phone numbers and their emails.Are you consistently reaching out with them?Is my proof or testimonials or the.The, the evidence of my work visible for other people who are thinking or considering working with me available to help them when it comes to deciding?I recently updated my Instagram profile and I took all of the old archives down, but I kept my results archive up and just updated the COVID because to me, that's like evidence, proof.It's mine of like, hey, this is outside of my website.This is another place that people can find to be like, hey, Nikita's a good coach and she can help you.So you might be thinking, I don't know if I can do all of these things.Nikita seems like a lot.I'm talking about five things.You can easily start working on these things one at a time.I recently had a client in this past year who has resisted having one long form content and emailing.And she has, she has tripled her clients.Like, she has three times her clientele because of adding these assets into her business.And it's helped her in a season where she couldn't be on social media as often to still be able to make sales and have conversations with people.This is why this is important.It protects your mind, your sanity, and it also protects your ability to make money in your business.Okay, so if you have low capacity, medium capacity, or a bit more than you usually do, here's what I want you to think about.Do you have an email list and are you emailing them?If not, get that up and going.That's number one.Number two, do you have a way to connect with people outside of social media that they can find you?Like a long form thing, Start with one blog post, start with one episode, start with one, I don't know, sub stack even.But put it on your website first, right?Put it on a place that you own first and then put it on the other places next.If you have more capacity, I say make sure that you have client testimonials on all the places that you are.And if you haven't gotten any, start reaching out to those people and start sharing that to your email list and putting them on your website.That's going to help you create more leverage for your evidence and also put you back in front of the people that enjoyed your work and potentially put money in your pocket pretty quickly because you're having conversations with real people, not just people who might happen upon you at 1% of your followers on social media.Okay, so these are important things for you to have in your business.The marketing assets that every business owner really should have to protect your energy, your capacity and your profitability.So if you have any questions for me, please go ahead and like go to the Show Notes, join our free community and the free community is a way you can reach out, ask me questions or you can also join my free exclusive email where I send things about how to grow a sustainable business the simple way without over complicating your life and feeling like you have to be quote unquote on all of the time on my create your abundant path email list.And this email is really designed to help you figure out what systems and tools you need to have in place to make it easier for you to step away or to continue to grow without it meaning more from you, but something that feels good.Thanks for spending this time with me.Every week on business with chronic illness we talk about building a business that works with your body and your guide capacity.So come back next week for the next conversation.If this one helped you share it with someone who needs it and if you would like to work with me or connect with our community and continue this conversation.

The links are in the Show Notes.

And you can find us@CraftedToThrive.com I'm Nikita Williams, your host and stay tuned for the next episode.