Teri Holland is one of the most talented professionals I have ever had the privilege of working with. She is an inspiring public speaker, a top podcaster, a superb coach with so many tools in her toolbox, and an extremely funny and insightful person. Teri has a unique way of engaging others that makes you want to keep the conversation going, and from my point of view, one of those people I knew immediately I wanted to work with.
To make a long story short, Teri was feeling lost.
You see, one of the biggest challenges for talented and capable people who can be successful in whatever they want is that it can quickly become too much. Too much for their clients to understand, and too much for them to manage and maintain. So, midway through our first meeting I just told her directly what I think in four words: It is too much.
On one hand, she was relieved because I immediately saw and put into words what she felt. On the other hand, she was a bit stressed because she didn’t know yet where to start to clean up and how to streamline everything in a way that would not have a negative impact on her very reputable business.
Back to our first meeting. After we talked about the problem, I opened my notes from the preliminary research and outlined what I thought were the possible solutions, and we started to work together a few days later. We focused on two key areas:
The first was the interaction point between who she is and what her goals are on a personal level, and how her brand carries her there. Think about it as the interaction point between Teri as an individual and Teri as a brand, and the need to sync the two in order to effortlessly reach her goals.
The second was to take everything and implement it on the strategic level and on the brand identity level, to make sure that her clients understand the “new Teri”. Now, let’s talk about that “new Teri”. It wasn’t new; it was always there. She has always been her. But when you do too much, you lose focus, and when you lose focus, you lose yourself to your business due to the effort. You exhaust yourself and open the door to burnout, which makes it easier for you to lose direction and, sometimes, even motivation.
We met once a week and streamlined everything.
So, we set goals and expectations and understood how we would measure them. I gathered a ton of information and we put together a SWOT analysis. At that point, we identified the exact areas we needed to target. We knew what needed to be done, and started working on the strategic level. We created a new brand promise, a new value proposition, and a new set of values. We tested it with a questionnaire, identified the direct and indirect competition, properly identified the target markets, and created a customer journey for each segment. Based on that, we formed and shaped a methodology, a focused set of products and services with proper segmentation and hierarchy, a set of messages for marketing and branding purposes, new keynote topics, and on our way talked about differentiation and innovation.
Then, we moved to the implementation part. We recreated her brand’s visual identity with an amazingly talented graphic designer and started working on her new website: we outlined the pages, layout, and content (visuals, texts, and videos) and started developing it together.
With high-level professionals like Teri, it is not about reinventing the wheel; it is about simplifying the mechanism so it can roll effortlessly.
Here are two things I recommend you to do:
Follow Teri Holland on social media. She is an inspiring professional and a very funny person. You can thank me later for introducing you to her Good Morning reels.
Keep in mind the difference between hard work and effort. I talk a lot about effort and used the word “effortlessly” twice here. Many people confuse hard work with effort. Hard work and discipline are essential to reaching goals. However, constant effort leads to burnout.