You're getting this e-mail because you decided to snag my Ultimate FREE Guide on How to Dominate Instagram Organically (a.k.a NO BOTS and NO FAKE FOLLOWERS!)

Because at the end of the day... if your followers are fake, your engagement is fake, and everything is a facade... then you're really just talking to yourself.

Especially if you are using Instagram for your business, the #1 way to be successful is to create a REAL community with REAL people who are actually interested in what you have to say.

Trust me, nowadays you can easily tell when things are fake. Just use apps like Social Blade or Ninjalitics. When I used to work with influencers at my corporate job, I would literally have to filter through all the fake vanity metrics to ensure my PR campaigns had the best real and authentic content creators. It's not that hard to weed this type of stuff out. So Linh, I just wanted to give you a heads up: Don't use the fake strategies.

Anyways, you're not here for my rant. You're here for the guide, so just DOWNLOAD HERE.

Let me know if this guide helps you at all - just shoot me a DM @vanessalau.co on Instagram :)

• Vanessa | | [training] starting NOW. | Dương Thị Diệu, we’re minutes away from kicking off the How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) training.

Where are you, Dương Thị Diệu?

Stop reading this email and...

Jump right into your seat for this LIVE training.

Remember, there are no replays so… scoot into the room right away!

See you on the other side,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™

@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Jumping in a few minutes early is always a good move because if there’s anything I know about tech it is that it can be temperamental and boot latecomers out. I’d hate for that to happen to you! Remember, I’m sharing the exact same framework I’ve used (and taught to hundreds of coaches!) to build a successful 7-figure business so you can give pushy, salesy, and frankly, copycat techniques the side-eye. Let’s do this, Boss! | | What if I give too much away for free? | Dương Thị Diệu,

Have you ever had this conversation run through your mind?

"Man, all the information is the same in this online space... I should probably start doing some unique content to stand out...

But what if I give TOO much away? Who will pay for my services and products then?

What do I do... HELP!"

If you’ve had this conversation before, then you’re in good company.

As an entrepreneur, you’re likely using social media to help you get visible...

And a lot of times you’re going to need to push out content in order to attract the right prospects into your coaching or consulting business.

But what content do you post anyways?

As someone who has...

Grown my Instagram® account to over 100,000 followers...

Grown my YouTube to 300,000 subscribers...

AND made multiple 7-figures in business revenue...

All in LESS than 18 months...

I’ve learned a thing or two when it comes to combining business with content creation.

Here’s the truth:

The reason WHY I have BOTH the vanity metrics AND the SALES to back my business up is because I know the difference between content that gets me followers... vs. content that gets me PAID CLIENTS.

Do you?

If you don't, then I want to teach you how YOU can differentiate free content vs. paid content, so that you too can reap similar results for your business.

You can get started by watching my podcast episode here.

In this episode, here's what I'll cover:

• The deadliest form of content MOST rookie entrepreneurs THINK is good for business but actually HURTS their business instead ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣
• The ONE THING you NEED to start doing in your content strategy to capture MORE leads instead of blocking them ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣
• What to do INSTEAD so you can get BACK on the right track and create content that works FOR your business goals, instead of against it

You can listen to it here.

If you've been rattling your brain as to how to masterfully create content without cannibalizing your PAID content, then you won't want to miss it.

I hope it helps!

Knowledge is power and I can't WAIT to give you more of it,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | “..spent every day crying because I was unhappy with where I was in life.” | I remember the first time I invested in a coach, Dương Thị Diệu.

I hired my first coach and even though, I’d Z-E-R-O money coming in, I knew I had to keep my mindset game strong.

(Click ‘display images’ to see how I did that)

The point of this story-in-pictures is that…

… making an investment always feels scary.

And honestly, it should.

Because you’ve got skin in the game and now you need to step up to show up.

And there’s another reason why investing can feel scary.

👉🏻History.

In the past, you may have signed up for courses and found they’re 99.9% fluff and 0.1% content.

BGA grad and cosmetology coach, Taniqua shares your history.

"I have taken other courses and have paid thousands of dollars (literally) for business coaches that promised to help me to build my business, my brand and to leverage social media but they all failed!!"

Taniqua overcame that fear because she knew she needed to "take the leap". She just needed the right guidance and know-how.

Here’s how it all went down for her… 👇🏻

"In December of last year and spilling over into the new year of 2019, I literally spent everyday crying because I was unhappy with where I was in life. I felt like I fell into a rat race that wasn't for me and everyone was cheering me on to grow in corporate life.

At the same time, I was torn because I knew that there was something greater and something bigger for me.

I discovered Vanessa in January and I found that she had a program. I told myself that the next time she has her enrollment, I don't care how much it cost I will find a way to join.

Every day I listened to at least one of Vanessa’s videos on Youtube at work.

The next month, in February, I joined a salon and enrolled in the apprenticeship program.

This was huge because for 3 years I talked myself out of doing this but Vanessa helped me to take the leap.

In May, I turned in my resignation letter.

In July, I transitioned from full-time to part-time.

Prior to BGA, I had ideas floating around my head and in several notebooks. I had an idea of what I wanted to do but one, I was afraid to ever test it out and two, I did not know how to piece it together and to turn it into a business and three, I felt like no one would listen or ever need it. SO grateful that today that is not the case."

Taniqua had been burned by past experiences of investing in courses that didn’t pay off.

But she knew she had a bigger purpose in life.

So, she did her research, made the investment, committed to taking action and then... cha-ching!

When we chatted with her, she had FOUR salon clients and 2 beta clients.

How amazing is that?!

She’s not the only one…

… it’s time to binge-watch these Bosses share their real, raw, and yes, radical success stories. Brittani (whom you met in my last email), Alex, Becky, Taniqua, and all the other BGA graduates you see, in some way or the other, where you are right now.

Wondering if they should take the leap.

Wondering if this investment will be worth it.

Wondering if they’d finally have the clarity to create a successful, thriving business with clients who want to pay them and hire them, over and over again.

But the difference is…

They stepped up because they were D-O-N-E wasting another second creating content endlessly for social and not seeing money 💰in the bank.

They did the work even when it made them feel uncomfortable. Growth’s never comfy. ;)

They believed in the system and put it to work without letting doubt stand in the way.

Because at the end of the day…

BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 is ALL about using a proven system and applying it to your business so you can succeed using social media.

Here’s what’s even MORE important. 👇🏻

BOSSGRAM Academy™ isn’t your run-of-the-mill "business" program that has an army of affiliates to talk it up. The kind where, the students’ success stories are all recycled and rehashed, and the results, are vague and intangible.

BOSSGRAM Academy™ is a success because our students are a success.

We don’t let random affiliates promo BGA because our students are our BEST brand ambassadors.

Now go watch ‘em do their thing here.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | "Dương Thị Diệu needs to know this ASAP!” | …."as an entrepreneur, I felt so alone in my journey.

I felt like nobody really understands my vision, nobody to really understand what I'm trying to do and what I'm trying to pursue.

And the goals I had in mind, um, didn’t really match with, you know, the general people that I hang out with.

So I just felt so alone in my pursuit of building my own business…"

Can you relate to this, Dương Thị Diệu?

I get it. I totally do.

Building a business isn’t for the faint-hearted. If it were, everyone would do it.

There’s a reason you want your own business.

There’s a reason you’re juggling 975349 balls in the air while trying to keep it all together.

There’s a reason and that is why you don’t want to (and shouldn’t have to!) settle for anything that isn’t 100% designed to help you succeed.

And yes, Instagram can be a big part of your growth strategy but let’s be honest…

Vanity metrics don’t mean SHIT. ❌

Insta-fame doesn’t pay the bills. ❌

10K followers may feel good but 10K clients is waaaay better. ✅

Which is why even though BOSSGRAM Academy™ gives you the tools and strategies you need to turn your IG account into a lead gen machine, yenno, the truth is…

… it’s not really about Instagram.

That’s right.

I know, I know, I can hear you go,

"Wait, what’s up with that, Vanessa? I thought you were the OG IG Queen."

Well, that IS true but here’s what I want you to know…

I couldn’t have built my million-dollar business in 12 months’ time if all I did was post pretty pictures.

I had to get uncomfortably close to knowing who my ideal client was and what did they want to hear from me.

I had to dig deep inside to uncover exactly what I wanted to be known for.

I had to know just how my clients were going to find me, and why they would want to fling open their hearts AND wallets for me.

And THAT is why BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 works. Because it isn’t based on "hacks", outdated "techniques" or templated, cookie-cutter captions.

It’s based on a solid foundation of knowing who you serve, what you want to offer, and how to make that happen. And yes, you’ll use Instagram to do that.

So ready-to-pay clients DM you and hire you. FAST.

That’s exactly what these Bosses found out too!

Results like these 👆🏻 are possible ONLY because they’re based on a B.S-free, strategic system that helps you fast-track your success.

To quote one of our students, BOSSGRAM Academy 3.0 is a "whole other beast".

So let me SHOW you how you’ll do this with the all-new, all-updated BGA 3.0.

I’ve recorded this for your eyes only.

Prefer reading?

Head right here.

The bottom line is…

Unlike other generic business programs and coaching services that only give you a bird’s eye overview of what you need, BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 is,

"... THE NUMBER ONE ROADMAP for any online coach! This is a whole other level of strategy, mindset, and the key components of being a successful online coach.

From understanding how to tactfully use Instagram®, to research to closing a client on a call, this is a MUST HAVE for any coach who wants to pursue (building) an online empire." - Nadine, BGA grad

Click here to get STARTED!

(Or watch this video walkthrough!)

Waiting to high-five you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Dương Thị Diệu, when you choose BGA, you choose a program that is trusted by hundreds of your fellow coaches.

Coaches like Cherry Tung who shared, 👉🏻 "Before joining BGA, I didn't even want to be a coach!

Since joining BGA, I've grown to learn a lot more about coaching. During my first 4 months of learning in BGA, I not only launched my Beta program in the middle of COVID-19 (February), BUT I also launched my official coaching program and made $10K in 19 days... all during COVID-19, in April, which is also a busy season for my full-time corporate accountant job!

I'm someone who has purchased numerous online courses before, but BGA is the only course that I can say, hands down, is worth EVERY single penny. Yes, I did make more than 10x my initial investment within 4 months, but I also got a lot more clarity around my niche, my coaching business, and made lots of great friends within the program!"

Are you ready to stop feeling lost, lonely, or scared Dương Thị Diệu?

Ready to stop worrying you’ll burn either your brain cells or your budget out?

Ready to make those "I JUST SIGNED MY FIRST PAID CLIENT" posts?!

Start here. | | FOMO no mo’ | Ever look at all the "influencers" in your niche and wonder if there’s a secret "code" they all know about and you don’t?

Or maybe, they’re all part of a "cool kids’ club" that you weren’t invited to?

Yenno what I mean.

The biz coach who shoots to the top of the IG feeds and posts crazy client wins on their IG stories WITH the screenshots to prove it like no one's business…

The health coach who lands million-dollar clients, thanks to an IGTV series!

The side-hustling mompreneur who’s been featured in Forbes and is getting leads left, right, and center....

You feel FOMO crawling up your back like a spider you can’t see. 🥵😱

You stalk their stories, scroll non-stop through their feed and "save" their posts in your "Inspiration" folder.

You then spend hours reverse-engineering their secrets. Trying to swipe "best practices" but the truth is…

… it’s not going to work. For you. Ouch!

Sorry if this sounds harsh but y’know me.

I’m all about telling it like it is. With tough love.

Here’s what you need to know…

… best practices can only take you so far.

What you need is a customized growth plan that focuses on your life, goals, and vision.

What works for me may not work for you, if you’re a mom with toddlers running around or if you’re working a 9-to-5 and building your biz on the side.

That is why I created BOSSGRAM Academy ™.

To give you a blueprint for business success on your freakin’ terms.

Why?

Because unlike other programs that have no concern about YOUR busy life and schedule…

The BOSSGRAM Academy™ is built for you to use a proven, streamlined process at your own pace…

WITH drumroll pleaaaaseee … access to a supportive community AND killer bonus bag you can tap into whenever you get stuck.

FOMO, no mo’. 😎

Now, you’ve heard from BGA grads how the program changed their life and business, but since you’re still reading this email, it means…

… you got questions, Dương Thị Diệu.

And I got answers.

Maybe you’re thinking…

➡️ What’s new in BGA 3.0 that I can’t learn from all the YouTube videos that Vanessa shares?

Great question! You can totally do that BUT I do reserve my best money-making strategies and how-tos for BGA students.

YouTube is the tip of the iceberg.

There’s SO much I have (and need to!) share with you so you can go from having zero offer or idea of what your niche is, to booking your first paid client in 90 days or less!!

Like Vivyen said, "It’s nice to not have to cold DM and hear crickets for a change."

Dương Thị Diệu, creating YOUR profitable business plan WILL NOT come from YouTube binge fests.

➡️ Why do I need another program? Shouldn’t I just hire a coach?

Ooh, this is juicy! So, here’s the thing… From my experience, I actually got faster results with a well-designed course than when I worked 1:1 with a coach.

Why?

Because… 1) There was a very clear structure to follow, 2) I had worksheets and tutorials I could always refer back to, 3) I was able to contact OTHER people in the program to brainstorm and network and 4) I was able to work at a faster pace because my 1:1 coach was no longer my bottleneck.

In other words, I wasn’t WAITING for my coach to tell me what to do next, and instead, I had the FULL program ready in front of me so I knew EXACTLY what I had to do next.

In addition (and this is BIG!)... most coaches who charge less than $10K are actually still starting out themselves.

Would you rather get proven strategies from a coach who scaled to multiple 6-figures in her first year for $997 OR would you prefer to drop $2K or more on a 1:1 coach who may be using you as their guinea pig? The risk is yours to take, Dương Thị Diệu. 🤷

➡️ I’ve taken other Instagram programs. How is this going to be any different?

Most Instagram programs focus on giving you a mixed bag of "hacks" to boost your vanity metrics and while that may feel good in the short-term…

… in the long run, you want followers that turn into paying clients. Amirite?

This is why BGA 3.0 is the ONLY business-focused Instagram program that gives you BUSINESS SKILLS that last a lifetime.

Tomorrow, if Insta decided to pull the shutters down, you wouldn’t be left wondering what to do to get clients.

You’ll know exactly how to find prospects, sell to them, and market yourself as the perfect solution to your ideal client’s problems.

Sure, we do focus on Instagram in the program, but the truth is… there’s SO much more than just hashtags or using cool captions (which, btw, we DO teach).

You want a solid set of business skills that turn you into the CEO of your business (which, btw, we ALSO teach 😉).

➡️ I’m worried I’ll fall behind. I work a fulltime job and literally have no time.

I get that. SO many BGA students and grads are aspiring corporate escapees and are juggling building their business while working full-time.

This is why BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 comes with a made-for-you program schedule to help you implement based on the time you DO have.

And here’s what you need to know, every step in BGA has been tested out by not only me but your fellow coaches.

Like Eddiana who had a baby AND a job she didn’t love

➡️ What if it doesn’t work for me?

But… what if it does?

What if the program does work for you, Dương Thị Diệu? What happens then?

However, if you are worried that it may not be the bees’ knees for your business, here’s what you need to know…

You are protected by our 60-Day Be the Boss of Your Business money-back guarantee.

There is a reason BGA has an enviable student satisfaction and course completion rate.

It works. But you need to put it to work.

➡️ How do I explain investing in this to my partner/spouse/family when my business isn’t really bringing in any money?

Your partner(or family) is right to worry about your investments. They worry because they care.

But tell me this… What feels worse?

Explaining to your spouse that you’re making an important investment in your business to speed up the results so you can start making money in 90 days or less…

OR explaining to your spouse why your business STILL hasn’t made any money in the last 6 months?

As mama to fur babies, I can tell you your business is like a baby in SO many ways. Not only do you need to feed it with the best possible nutrition, but you also need a village to raise a baby.

With BGA, you get the best possible education your business needs to thrive and grow AND you get a community to lift you up and support you.

➡️ How will everything in BOSSGRAM Academy™ help me succeed?

It’s so cool you’re asking this because you and I both know, you have no time to waste and the last thing you need is a bunch of bonuses that inflate the price of a program but add zero value to your growth.

This is why EVERYTHING you get in BGA is designed to act as "building blocks of success".

Each lesson, each module, and each phase in the program is strategically designed to help you go from zero to your first paid client (and more!) IN 90 days or less.

It’s not theory. It’s all ACTION. It is literally the EXACT roadmap I’ve used on myself and over hundreds of clients and students to go from zero to hero $$$.

It’s your time to swat FOMO away and create success for your business the way you see best.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | [challenge] Sign your first (or next!) paid client in less than 90 days | Hi there Dương Thị Diệu,

Here’s a fun challenge for you…

By now, you know your enrollment in BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 is protected by our "Be the Boss of Your Business" money-back guarantee.

Which is why I’m challenging you to put the pedal to the metal and step into the 3.0 version of yourself.

Protected by our guarantee, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Because when you step into the 3.0 version of Dương Thị Diệu, here’s what I know will happen.

In about 30-45 days from now, finding clients who want to pay you what you ask for will NOT be a problem…

… neither will hitting those milestone revenue goals, one after the other, be a challenge. … AND you’ll NEVER have to deal with posting on IG and getting… crickets!

Yes, I’ve seen the future and it’s bright, Dương Thị Diệu.

Here’s what else I can see.

Dương Thị Diệu 3.0 doesn’t...

Wake up feeling exhausted and stressed because they need to make the 45-minute commute to a dead-end corporate job that sucks every ounce of sanity from your soul.

Spend every second offering "free" coaching calls and then, scrambles to pay the bills every month.

Scroll through an endless loop of IG stories and YT videos consuming content and wading through overwhelm and confusion.

Yes, Dương Thị Diệu, future YOU doesn’t have these problems.

Because future YOU has BOSSGRAM Academy ™ 3.0

Full disclosure: That may lead to a very different set of problems.

"Problems" like...

😱being booked out for 6 months,

hiring your first project manager 💯,

💃🏻picking between Bali or Paris for a 3-week vacay,

deciding whether you want to offer VIP retreats or host an in-person event. 🔥

"Problems" that come with growth, momentum, profit.

CEO-level "problems".

Now, if you’re all like, "Hey Vanessa, I don’t wanna be the CEO of my biz. Back off!" I’ll step away. (Seriously, tap here and I’ll shut up about showing you how to succeed with BGA.)

BUT

If you’re ready to show up, step up, and take control of your social media presence so you can start letting your ideal clients know you’re ready for them.

And you’re all set to dive into the 6 modules that I’ve strategically created and laid out for you and start implementing them like the bosses on this page here…

… then I promise, I’ll do EVERYTHING in my power to arm you with the mindset shifts AND the strategic know-how you need, so you can become the CEO of your business.

The window of enrollment on BOSSGRAM Academy™ is narrow. Brooklyn-back-alley-narrow…

… which means you need to move it, move it…

LET'S DO THIS!

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. BOSSGRAM Academy™ 3.0 is where second-guessing, self-doubt, impostor syndrome are snuffed out with a lethal combination of strategy, clarity, and mega mindset shifts.

It comes preloaded with core content, bonuses, and a ridiculously supportive FB community.

Wrap up your enrollment and get started INSTANTLY. | | BGA 3.0 is on its way out ? | Heads up: This is the last time you’ll hear me bring up BOSSGRAM Academy™ for a long time.

Yep, the narrow window to join this coach-created, coach-trusted program is gonna slam shut when the tick-tock ⏰ hits 00:00:00.

With that outta the way, let me tell you what I want YOU to know and yes, I’m again sharing pics from my journey.

(Enable ‘display images’ so you don’t miss out!)

Now, you may be standing right where I was not so long ago. In a corporate job. Wondering whether you should take that leap and if so, will there be a safety net to catch you.

Or you may be starting out with your Insta account or YouTube channel, wondering if anyone is even going to notice. Yep, been there too.

The truth is…

While our life situations may not be the same...I understand exactly how you feel.

Boss, it took me SIX freakin’ years to start my YT channel.

I don’t want YOU to sit on your dreams for that long.

Because here’s what I know…

When you invest in yourself with BGA 3.0, you don't just enroll for another "gather-dust-in-the-archives" program.

Why?

Because you’re DONE.

Done wondering HOW to take the next steps to set up a successful coaching business.

Done worrying about WHAT to post on social or continuing to create content endlessly only to watch it disappear into the void.

DONE day-dreaming about your business day-after-day-after-day while boxing your brilliance in a cubicle from 9-to-5.

You’re getting started.

And if you believe in starting strong, starting smart

Join BGA 3.0.

By joining BGA, you keep up the momentum you kicked off when you punched in your details to get emails from me.

You keep up the commitment to building a successful, thriving coaching business so you can finally create the life you want for yourself and your family. You keep up the promise you made to yourself that THIS year (in all its craziness!!) will be your year.

Whether you jump ahead and join us or decide to wait for the next round, I want you to know…

… I appreciate you, Dương Thị Diệu.

Ready to virtually high-five me as we celebrate your growth?

Let’s do that here.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Doors to BGA will not open for a while after this.

By now, you know BGA 3.0 is the program you need if you’re ready to get:

✅As clear as Lake Tahoe on who you want to serve and most importantly, how you can attract them to you with Insta as your lead-gen machine.

✅Super strategic about your positioning and messaging so you aren’t confusing your prospects and sending your ideal client running in the other direction.

✅Hyper-focused on the business tools and metrics that matter instead of focusing on every shiny object that slides across your screen.

And… you’re ready to do ALL of this while being supported directly by me AND cheered on by a community of like-minded, laser-focused coaches and creatives who are committed to creating a life of purpose and passion. 🔥🔥

Complete your enrollment on the page here and let’s keep up that momentum, Dương Thị Diệu. | | question? | We JUST pulled down the blinds on the BOSSGRAM Academy ™ window and while I’m virtually high-fiving everyone who joined us, I noticed you were missing.

(Yes, my email elves like to keep tabs!)

Which is why I’m reaching out to find out - what happened?

⏰Was it not the right time for you?

Was it that I wasn’t clear about how BOSSGRAM Academy™ can flip the script on your business success?

Or was it something else entirely? 🤔

Whatever it was, Dương Thị Diệu, I want to know.

Not because I’m nosy or anything but because when you share with me, it helps my team and me to grow, improve and make the shifts we need to make.

Would you please help me out with this? 🙏🏻

Just tap the link that sums up your sitch the best…

It’s not the right time for me.

The program is perfect. I just don’t have the funds for it right now.

I want to know more about Vanessa and what she brings to the table.

Want to tell us more about choosing not to join us this time around?

Take our short 60-second survey right here.

Regardless of what held you back from joining us this time around, Dương Thị Diệu, I want you to know I’m committed to your success and growth as a coach.

You’re the best, Dương Thị Diệu!

I look forward to hearing from you so we can continue to support you in the best way possible.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | ?? FRE*E Instagram Caption Strategy lesson ? | Dương Thị Diệu,

I’ve been in your inbox a fair bit and I wanna let you know that I really appreciate and respect our relationship.

If you’re like me, you guard your inbox fiercely and that is why… the fact that you read all my emails about BOSSGRAM Academy™ makes me feel super-special.

And I’d like to show my gratitude with a...GIFT 🎁🎉

An absolutely F-R-E-E Lesson STRAIGHT from The BOSSGRAM Academy.

This is a complete 25-minute, step-by-step tutorial that gives you everything you need to create captions that not only get double-tapped and saved but also get clients to head straight to your DMs.

IMPORTANT: This tutorial is pulled straight from BOSSGRAM Academy 3.0 which is why IF you haven't already created an account on our Kajabi portal, you’ll need to do that FIRST to view the lesson.

NO card details needed. Totally f-r-e-e-.

Punch in your details and get access.

A teeny-tiny step to take when you know in 25 minutes, you’ll discover how to:

🔥 Transform short, snappy posts into persuasion power plays. 💯 Leverage the humble P.S into a compelling call-to-action. 💰 Deploy the THREE key strategies to create long posts that aren’t a snoozefest but a sales magnet. And so much MORE 😱

Dương Thị Diệu, you’ve already done the hard work of punching in those details to snap up this free lesson.

Now do the easy bit and watch it so you can stop letting your posts die a slow and painful death, feeling ignored and unnoticed.

JUST like your fellow bosses who’ve already put the lesson to good use!

Create your BOSSGRAM Academy account to watch your training.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | The thing keeping you stuck | Hey Dương Thị Diệu,

Do you want to know the REAL reason why you’re not making money like all the coaches, consultants, and service providers you see on the ‘gram?

Or the real reason as to why you MIGHT be getting likes, comments, and follows with your content...

But still not landing ANY clients?

TRUST!

I get it.

In fact, I used to be in the exact same situation.

I was at 8,000 IG followers...

Had hundreds of likes on my posts...

Comments such as "Love this!" on my captions...

But still had no one ACTUALLY interested in what I had to SELL.

Despite all these vanity metrics, NOBODY was DMing me asking about my services and very little people actually knew I was a coach.

For the longest time I was trying to rattle my brain as to WHY this was happening to me.

How could it be that I had all this engagement on Instagram... but STILL NO CLIENTS?

The answer is simple.

It’s SO simple that I didn’t even realize it until a lot LATER in my business when I FINALLY cracked the code.

Once I figured out WHY I was not making any sales and FIXED THE PROBLEM...

I ended up selling 15 spots to my 1:1 coaching program, and within less than 3 months, I generated $30,000 in revenue.

WTF.

How the heck did I go from $0 to $30,000 in a little less than 3 months?

This is how.

When you click to watch my podcast episode, you'll find out...

• Why no one wants to be your client (EVEN THOUGH you post about your business every day on social media)

• The MAJOR misconception that BLOCKS SALES and WASTES your time like no other

• One EASY solution to get MORE leads and LESS crickets.

THIS. WILL. HELP. YOU.

A LOT of new entrepreneurs are NOT focusing on the right things when it comes to building their businesses online, which leads them to not only waste a lot of time and energy, but also lose out on massive sales opportunities.

So, if you’re someone that’s found themselves stagnant when it comes to getting clients, listen to this episode now.

After watching the livestream, I'd love for you to participate in the conversation that's been happening in my private Facebook group.

Just me. You. And 12,000 other people. 🤣

If you haven’t already... make sure you request to join HERE.

See you soon!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | [next steps] do this before we meet for my training | Claps, all around, Linh!

You’re IN and I couldn’t be happier.

Quick note before I celebrate you fully: If you found this in your Junk/Promotions folder, here’s how to whitelist our email so you don’t miss any reminders and important updates:

Linh, when you punched in your details, you told me… you were SERIOUS.

You’re serious about:

Knowing exactly what to offer so you are completely clear AND confident about your niche, audience, and offers.

Stopping the endless content creation that only brings in freebie-hunters but doesn’t put money in that neglected PayPal account.

Transforming the time you spend on the ‘Gram into a solid revenue generation system with #stopthescroll captions, slime-free sales strategies, and so many more fast-moving techniques that take you from zero to booked out real quick.

Yes, Linh. I respect that.

Because, here’s the thing…

I know your inbox is probably bleeding with invites to masterclasses and workshops…

… which is why THIS will not be yet another masterclass.

Instead, it’ll be a step-by-step, ALL-NEW TRAINING on how to build a (wildly!) successful coaching business from scratch using Instagram.

Yes, you read that right.

It’s gonna be EPIC.

Download your copy of The "Build a Successful Business using Instagram" Training Guide...

...and remember to bring it with you to the training because… you’ll be taking A LOT of notes.

Next, add the details for this LIVE training to your calendar or fancypants paper planner.

Here are those details

NAME: How to Build a WILDLY Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!)

DATE: Mon, 21 Jun, 2021

TIME: 08:00 PM WIB

LINK: https://req.easywebinar.com/join?0349f03185850886cc733ad5759a17d8

The truth is…

… I’m jumpin’-up-and-down excited to see YOU step up and be the confident action-taker you really are because success is made up of millions of moments.

Moments like you signing up for this comprehensive game-changing training.

THESE are the defining moments that give you the fuel you need to keep going until the same people who dismissed you start calling you an "overnight success" and asking you how you did it.⁣⁠

I can’t wait to see you there, Linh...

… as we finally unmask the myth that you need to have thousands of followers on IG (or any other network, for that matter!) to start getting PAID!

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™

@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. The skimmed-to-the-end version: I’m hugely excited you’re joining me for this masterclass because it’s not your average masterclass where it’s 90% fluff.

In fact, you’ll walk away with a step-by-step plan on how to go from complete confusion to confident clarity on showing up and selling your services using Instagram.

Here’s a peek at the training that’ll make it happen for YOU.

My free training and content aren’t your run-of-the-mill, fluff-filled time-wasters. They’re epic value bombs as your fellow coaches will attest.

| | the truth behind being a biz owner. Still want in? | Hi Linh,

TRUTH BOMB Being a coach (let alone a business owner) is NOT easy.⁣

⁣You WILL have difficult conversations with prospects.⁣

You WILL have clients who have struggles you realize you’re NOT equipped to handle.⁣

Or…

...You WILL continue to mumble your way (or change the topic!) when answering the “how’s your business doing?” question that is bound to come up at family dinners and evenings out with friends.

Here’s the thing…

I don’t know of any coach who’s NEVER had a difficult client or NEVER been put in an awkward, curl-up-in-a-fetal-position⁣ situation while building their dream business.

What you need to remember is THIS ⁣

The discomfort is all a part of your learning PROCESS.

A process that YOU are going to FAST-TRACK when you join me in 3 hours for the How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) training.

NAME: How to Build a WILDLY Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) DATE: Mon, 21 Jun, 2021 TIME: 08:00 PM WIB LINK: https://req.easywebinar.com/join?0349f03185850886cc733ad5759a17d8

Linh, here’s what I know…

In the biz game, it’s oh-so-easy easy to compare yourself to other people and use it as an excuse to stop taking action. ⁣

The fact that you signed up for this training means you’re ready to START taking intentional, sustainable action.

Here’s what you need to watch out for...

You will have something grab your attention like a toddler in a toy store and you’ll be tempted to skip our appointment…

… but showing up for this training is what will continue to set YOU apart from the people who keep leaning on excuses.

Are you ready to be the one who sets their sights firmly on their goal and then… goes on to GET IT DONE?

Are you ready, Linh?

Join me here in 3 hours.

Save your training Guide today!

Rooting for you, Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Got a second? Tap ‘reply’ and tell me what’s got YOU really excited about attending this training! I looove hearing from you.

Here’s what I’m excited about

The training slide deck is a beast and I can’t wait to share it with you. | | Linh <=> Vanessa in 1 hour | Linh,

You and I are going to hang out in the next hour, and I’ll spill the tea on what you need to do next to start seeing those “let’s work together” DMs blow up your Instagram.

Here’s the thing…

I made $13,149.17 in my first month as a coach.

A new coach with no connections, no ads, and no list.

Whaaat?!

How did I make this happen?

Social media.

Simple.

In exactly 1 hour from now, you’ll come behind-the-scenes with me and discover exactly how I did this in my first year of business:

Not because I want you to “copy” what I did (heck, no!)…

… but because when you signed up for my How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) training, I made you a promise.

I promised I’ll share value-based material on building a business using Instagram so you can:

Understand the THREE key elements of the framework that lead to your coaching business success.

Find clarity on what to offer and how to take your next steps so you go from simply being clear to getting PAID.

Know the secrets to content creation that brings clients to your virtual door!

Master client conversion with an effective yet easy-to-deploy funnel.

And now…

You and I will meet in one hour where I’ll deliver on that promise.

Linh, I’m showing up for you.

Will you show up for YOU too?

Here are your exclusive access details:

NAME: How to Build a WILDLY Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!)

DATE: Mon, 21 Jun, 2021

TIME: 08:00 PM WIB

LINK: https://req.easywebinar.com/join?0349f03185850886cc733ad5759a17d8

Remember, I’m always...

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™

@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Sneak a peek at how the training is shaping up. SO good!

Now, it may seem like you’ve got a lot of time before our masterclass but the truth is… the next hour can slip right past you.

Use this time to let your family (human and fur!) know you’ll be busy and tell your besties that you won’t be available.

Save your copy of The "Build a Successful Business using Instagram" Training Guide.. and print it out.

And share your excitement for this masterclass with me on Instagram. Tag me @vanessalau.co in your IG stories so I can cheer you on and share your commitment to coaching success. | | [training] starting NOW… | Linh, we’re minutes away from kicking off the How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) training.

Where are you, Linh?

Stop reading this email and...

Jump right into your seat for this LIVE training.

Remember, there are no replays so… scoot into the room right away!

See you on the other side,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™

@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Jumping in a few minutes early is always a good move because if there’s anything I know about tech it is that it can be temperamental and boot latecomers out. I’d hate for that to happen to you! Remember, I’m sharing the exact same framework I’ve used (and taught to hundreds of coaches!) to build a successful 7-figure business so you can give pushy, salesy, and frankly, copycat techniques the side-eye. Let’s do this, Boss! | | I missed seeing you today! | Hey Linh!

REAL QUICK: I noticed you missed the masterclass about How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram® (AND Get Paid... FAST!), but you can sign up to watch the next masterclass right here.

I COMPLETELY understand that you’re juggling a million things right now and this free masterclass was the easiest thing to ignore.

But, what if you DIDN’T have a million things to juggle?

What if you took 60 minutes to feel A LOT more clear on the steps you need to build an influential coaching business using the power of Instagram®?

Imagine learning the entire roadmap on how you could attract MORE clients to your business...

...just by making a few simple tweaks to your Instagram® and biz strategy?

Let’s face it, Instagram® isn't just "another thing" to focus on...

... it's THE thing to focus on.

Even the biggest names in the industry are using their Instagram® page to promote their offer, converting followers into clients.

Would these entrepreneurs waste their precious time and money on something that DIDN’T work?

Probably not.

The BOSSGRAM Method has allowed me to grow my business to 6-figures in less than a year…

...and in this masterclass I’m showing you HOW I did it.

Believe me, I'm not some "Social Media Guru" that doesn't walk my talk. Check out my street cred:

...Imagine getting hundreds of new leads month after month WITHOUT having to resort to sleazy sales tactics, such as OUTBOUND DM-ing?

...Imagine finally feeling GOOD about your social media strategy, and no longer burning out trying to create content?

Your Instagram® page can DO THIS for you!

Here’s a link to RE-register for the How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!).It’s FREE and I know you’re going to love it!

Here you go, Linh!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | RE-register for my FREE training (link inside) | Hey Linh!

Just a quick note…

I noticed you missed my last masterclass, so I wanted to give you one last chance to re-register for my How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) for FREE.

The entire method on how to successfully convert followers into clients…

AND 3 mini trainings PACKED inside so you can walk away with some REAL action steps.

Here are THREE reasons why you need to watch this masterclass:

#1: You’ll understand the FOUR core components of a successful coaching business that you need to pay attention to go from "thinking" about clients to signing them on FAST (even if you're brand-new to coaching!)

#2: You’ll master content creation so you can step off that hamster wheel and know exactly WHAT to focus on with your content and offers so ready-to-pay clients are drawn to you like bees 🐝 to flowers 💐!

#3: You’ll avoid client attraction mistakes that cripple your coaching business. You’ll learn how to find and work with perfect clients even if you’re brand-new to coaching.

Click here and sign up NOW!

Can't wait!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | Can I ask you a question? | Hey Linh!

I noticed you didn’t re-register for my How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) , so I wanted to share something different.

I’ve got loads of trainings and content all about how you can get your coaching business off the ground running AND dominate on Instagram® over on my FREE private Facebook group.

All you have to do is click here to head over and request access.

Enjoy, Linh!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | Linh, I need your help with this | Linh,

Read till the end to see how you can get a BRAND-NEW training from me for $0

Nothing excites us more than being able to bring the BEST training and resources to your virtual doorstep.

And here's the thing... you're the BEST person to tell us about what you need and want from us. #fact

This is why we're reaching out to you today to lean on you for your insights as we aim to improve, refine and up-level the training, content, and support we provide to you.

Share your feedback HERE

And when you finish this survey, you’ll unlock an exclusive-to-you BONUS training on how to maximize your engagement on Instagram Stories and scoop up more S-A-L-E-S! 🙌🏻

Linh, hearing from you will mean a TON to my team and me.

We promise to read every word, note every piece of feedback given, and do our best to exceed expectations.

Take the survey.

Completing the survey gives you access to my brand-new training!

Here’s a preview of what this training looks like:

Please spare a few minutes of your day to fill out our survey right here.

This, Linh , is also your chance to tell us what you’d like ME to create for you.

This survey is designed to give us deep insights so we can continue to show up and serve you in the best possible way.

Because you deserve nothing but the BEST!

You’re NOT a solo traveller on this entrepreneurial journey, Linh

You got us.

We’re listening.

We’re leaning in.

We’re looking to you for your insights.

Share them here.

Vanessa (and team!) | | are you making this mistake, coach? | Linh, SCREW WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS. #justkidding #kinda

Everyone is obsessed with market research… and I am too!

BUT

I’ve learned there is a THIN LINE between what your audience WANTS you to create vs. What you KNOW is best for your audience.

Here’s the thing…

Often times your ideal prospect doesn’t actually KNOW what they NEED.

They only know that they WANT, in THAT moment, with the CURRENT scope of knowledge they have.

Which is where most coaches trip up and make a mistake they later deeply regret.

I’ve been that coach.

Y’know… the one who believes in…GIVING ADVICE.

That’s a mistake.

Because…

Our clients hired us to COACH them. Not turn into their personal consultant.

The truth is…

Advice can be found anywhere. YouTube. Facebook groups. Google.

But transformations can’t.

And a TRANSFORMATION is what most clients are paying top dollars for - whether they realize this or not (that's probably for another post on another day...)

When you are quick to give advice, this handicaps your clients from thinking for themselves.

For me, it wasn’t until I was halfway into my 1:1 coaching program that the harsh reality hit me… I wasn’t coaching, but in fact, I was acting as a personal consultant.

And THIS ^^ is also why market research can trip you up.

If I ONLY followed my audience feedback to the T, 100% of my content would be: "How to use the right IG filter" "Best hashtags to use" "How to take a selfie" "What lens to use for your YouTube videos"

^ THIS content is cool, but I KNOW it keeps my audience STUCK and hurts their business goals.

Because BASED ON MY RESEARCH, I KNOW my audience wants an actual transformation.

They want clients. They want to make money. They want to go full-time on their businesses. They want to HAVE a business, NOT a hobby they’re embarrassed to talk about.

And guess what?

I know figuring out what hashtag to use is NOT going to get my audience there, AT ALL.

That’s why it’s my duty to create content that POINTS MY AUDIENCE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Sure, I might create content on what they WANT (have you seen my YouTube channel!? Lol).

But I make sure that my BEST content is what they don’t EVEN KNOW they NEED.

A great example is my own paid program, The BOSSGRAM Academy.

The #1 reason the testimonials on my program are off.the.charts, and the students walk away with game-changing results, is - they enroll to learn about Instagram. (It’s what they WANT and are ATTRACTED to).

BUT

They end up leaving my program learning things they NEVER KNEW they NEEDED to know in order to have a successful coaching business.

They learn conversion copywriting, sales funnels, content marketing, and how to build a scalable signature offer. They get to know how to really SELL. They do a complete 180 on mindset…

It’s no longer ONLY about "how to get more followers on IG."

My point for you, Boss, is… Your content shouldn’t JUST be a REACTIVE reflection of what everyone and their mom is asking of you.

What it SHOULD be is a PROACTIVE GUIDE that takes your audience from point A to point B, changing their mindsets and giving them the shifts they need to get CLOSER to their desired transformation.

Did this help, Boss?

Like me, did you turn into a consultant instead of being a coach?

Tag me in your Insta-stories and share with me!

With love,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k PS: Whenever you're ready, here are two ways I can help you...

1. Join my free Facebook group, TURN YOUR FOLLOWERS INTO CLIENTS, exclusively for coaches and consultants looking to stop hearing crickets and START getting clients using Instagram

REQUEST TO JOIN: TURN YOUR FOLLOWERS INTO CLIENTS FB GROUP

2. Get on the waitlist for my premium program, The BOSSGRAM Academy™.

You’ll get the full A-Z coaching you need to strengthen your offers, systemize your lead generation, and start converting paid clients.

SIGN UP FOR THE WAITLIST: www.bossgramacademy.com | | Are you crowd-sourcing your success? | What’s up, Linh?

So, in the middle of a massive Better Call Saul binge (BTW if you’re a fan of Breaking Bad… you’ll LOVE Better Call Saul lol), I had to take a break and share something that worries me.

About you.

Fair warning: THIS may be hard to read but I gotta dish out some tough love here.

You see… while watching Saul do his thing, I was checking in on my free Facebook group (which, by the way, you should totally join if you aren’t there already) and I saw a post in another group come up…

The post read… "Question for coaches who are making consistent 6-figures… how did you learn this? What did you do?"

Now you might be thinking that there’s nothing wrong with the question.

...Except there’s everything wrong with it.

Because…

I get a similar laundry list of questions, every day…

"How did you do this?⁣⁣" ⁣⁣ "How did you learn this?"⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ "What was the step by step for this?"⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣ And the not-so-fancy answer? 👇🏻 ⁣⁣ 🔥 I figured it out!⁣⁣🔥

⁣⁣⁣⁣I gave myself permission to EXPERIMENT in my journey to find methods that work FOR ME.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

Because here’s the thing...

NO ONE is right.

And⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ NO ONE is wrong.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ Something I learned from my friend, Sam Ovens is 👇🏻👇🏻⁣⁣⁣

👉 The social media gal is always going to tell you that social media is the way to go.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ 👉 The money-making manifesting coach is always going to tell you that removing your limiting beliefs is how you're going to be a magnet for money.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ 👉 The Facebook ads guy is always going to tell you that running ads is how you'll 10x your revenue.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ ALL of these are WAYS to get the SAME result.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ But at the end of the day, you must ask yourself which way YOU want to approach it.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ I didn’t just ask everyone and their mom how to run my business.

Instead, I was inspired by the likes of Marie Forleo, Sunny Lenarduzzi, Erin May Henry and Amy Porterfield. ⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ A SPECIFIC list of women who leveraged generous content creation and used social media platforms to build their businesses. ⁣⁣⁣ I followed them NOT because I felt it was the ONLY way I could be successful⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣ But because I ALSO wanted to leverage social media and create massive amounts of content (because that’s what I love to do!) ⁣⁣⁣ That’s why I want you to remember this:

Just because THOSE are the are ways I built my business… doesn't mean any other option is wrong, either.

This means… if you HATE creating content… you may wanna learn from someone who’s a master at FB ads instead or someone who’s a genius at making money via in-person events… yenno what I mean?

Which brings me to another point…

⁣⁣⁣⁣I EXPERIMENTED with different strategies⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣.

Which you, my friend, have full permission to do that.

Take my Instagram or YouTube strategies and experiment with them. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ I also LEARNED to be OK with making mistakes and learning from trial and error.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ The problem is...most people are SO afraid to make mistakes!⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ Which is why…

👉 They’d rather crowd-source "success" by blindly following the instructions of ANYONE who has a "successful" business, AND

👉 They’d rather spend hours in Facebook groups flinging questions willy-nilly instead of ⁣self-reflecting and asking themselves:⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ "What do I WANT to do?"

⁣⁣Now… Here’s the tough love, I promised ya’: ⁣⁣ Constantly seeking advice WITHOUT actually showing signs of you taking action...⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Is a massive sign of laziness, NOT proactiveness⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Because it means you’d rather throw your problems at someone else to solve⁣⁣⁣ than demonstrate you’re solving them on your own, FIRST.⁣⁣

Do you think CEOs crowd-source strategies from other CEOs?

NO!

If you want to stop being a coach-in-waiting and start stepping up to actually be the CEO of your business, you need to be able to problem-solve and not turn every person who’s more successful than you into a Q&A dumping ground.⁣..

...or copy-pasting what EVERYONE else is doing instead of finding a method that works FOR YOU.

Now… how will YOU start doing this? Hit ‘reply’ and share it with me!

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k

P.S. Getting advice and learning strategies from mentors and coaches is great. But you need to start figuring things out, making mistakes and learning to create your own solutions too.

Success is there for you. Money is there for you. Whatever result you want is there for you.

You just need to decide what path feels best for you to reach those results because there are 101 ways to get there.

Talk to me about how you’ll start with this today. | | [BGA 3.0] ??Your Instagram Caption Strategy lesson ? | SMART move, Linh!

Totally applauding you. 👏🏻👏🏻

While other coaches and content creators may continue to throw limp spaghetti at the wall trying to figure out WHAT to post…

… you’ve made the smart move of scooping up a full-blown lesson on writing Instagram captions. Straight from The BOSSGRAM Academy ™ vault!!

If you’ve already created your account on our Kajabi portal, jump straight ahead to...

Watch your lesson and put my strategies to work!

Word of warning: This isn’t a fluffy 5-minute preview.

This is a complete 25-minute, step-by-step tutorial that gives you everything you need to create captions that not only get double-tapped and saved but also get clients to head straight to your DMs.

IMPORTANT: This tutorial is from my signature program The BOSSGRAM Academy 3.0 which is why when you tap that link, you’ll need to create an account on our Kajabi course portal to view the lesson.

A teeny-tiny step to take when you know in 25 minutes, you’ll discover how to:

🔥 Transform short, snappy posts into persuasion power plays. 💯 Leverage the humble P.S into a compelling call-to-action. 💰 Deploy the THREE key strategies to create long posts that aren’t a snoozefest but a sales magnet. And so much MORE 😱

Linh, you’ve already done the hard work of punching in those details to snap up this free lesson.

Now do the easy bit and watch it so you can stop letting your posts die a slow and painful death, feeling ignored and unnoticed.

JUST like your fellow bosses who’ve already put the lesson to good use!

Create your BOSSGRAM Academy account to watch your training.

And don’t forget to tag me in your Instagram stories (@vanessalau.co) when you’re watching this lesson so I can celebrate you and your commitment to growing your business.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Over the next few days, I’ll share more resources with you including an invite to my all-new masterclass, so keep your 👀 's peeled!

The strategies I’m sharing with you in this video lesson WORK to up your engagement and client conversion rates. Give them a spin and see for yourself. | | Impostor :( | Hey Linh,

Have you ever wondered, "Why would anyone hire me as a coach when I’m not an expert?"

Or worse… maybe you’ve struggled with putting yourself out there because you feel like an impostor, a fraud?

I hear you.

Heck, I don’t feel like an expert, even now, especially when I compare myself to my peers. ;)

This is why I want you to watch this video in which I break down how to be an expert this year and no, you don’t need 10,000 hours of practice, you don’t need another book, you definitely don’t need another certification.

Because the truth is…

The expert today was a beginner once.

The only thing in your way is… not knowing how to move the needle from feeling like a beginner forever to becoming the expert you are today.

Let’s change that ASAP.

Watch the video and tell me which strategy are you going to apply first.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | Are you happy with your IG followers? | Linh, if you’ve been struggling with getting your Instagram followers to engage with you…

Every week I get DMs from folks crying about the fact that even though they have 20K followers, there’s still ZERO conversation happening within their community.

The reason?

Lack of quality followers.

The cure?

This video where I give you a step-by-step approach to create an Instagram account that attracts an engaged following.

Time for you to stop settling for a less-than-stellar IG presence.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Here’s the deal…

If you’re serious about building a presence that leads to a profitable business, you need to make "Vanity metrics don’t mean shit" your mantra.

The truth is you want quality over quantity.

Let me show you how to get started right here>> https://youtu.be/ArbQRflFrpg

P.P.S:

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | Does this sound familiar? | Linh,

Tell me if you’ve ever felt this way…

You watch a YouTube video on growing your IG followers organically.

All excited you take notes, jump in and take action…

… and then, you wait to watch your IG numbers go up.

You wait.

And….You wait.

But then, you feel like it’s not working because nothing’s happening 😐.

Yenno how that feels?

Yeah.

Me too.

But here’s the thing…

I can't count the number of times I've received DMs⁣⁣⁠ from my Insta-community and messages from students and clients⁣⁣ asking whether they should change their entire strategy⁣⁣⁠...

I ask them, ⁣⁣⁠"What makes you feel you need to change it?"⁣⁣⁠⠀

They say:⁣⁣⁠⠀

"Well, it's not working."

I look at their strategy and see they've followed everything step by step...

They're doing alll the things successful people have preached:

Whether it's putting up videos...

Engaging with people...

Posting intentional content...

So I ask them,

"How long has it been?"⁣⁣⁠⠀

Annnnddd….

They respond with,

"IT'S ALREADY BEEN A WHOLE MONTH!"

which is when… I pick up my jaw from the floor

👏HO👏NEY👏⁣⁣⁠⠀

That is not a strategy issue⁣⁣⁠.

That is a YOU issue⁣⁣.

You don't need another strategy...

You need patience. ⁣⁣⁠ The truth is…

People are always upset about their progress⁣.

And spend the majority of their time comparing themselves to "other" successful people⁣⁣⁠.

Wondering why it's happening for THEM, but not you.

Newsflash:⁣⁣⁠⠀

The successful people you admire earned the RIGHT to be successful.

Because they were PATIENT.

They cultivated their businesses for MONTHS, YEARS, DECADES.

Instead of changing their "strategy" every month,

They STICK with it. They let it GROW.

They don't get angry at their baby when it takes the baby more than a month to learn how to walk.

They don't get shiny object syndrome and jump on the next trend they see⁣⁣⁠.

They don't blame the strategies that have been proven to work for countless other people.

And instead, take a good hard look at THEMSELVES.

After working with a number of people and observing the peeps around me⁣⁣...

I'm here to tell you that the #1 reason why folks fail is lack of patience.⁣⁣⁠⠀

Now the million-dollar question is…

Are YOU willing to be patient and put in the work you need to make things happen?

Are YOU willing to stick with the strategies that work and see the results come in months or even, years later?

Are you, Linh?

Screenshot YOUR fave part of this email and share it in your IG story and tag me @vanessalau.co with a "Yes, I’m ready to be patient!" so I know you’re in it for the long haul.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | [OPEN ME] Your 10K Roadmap is HERE! | Congratulations, Dương!

Taking the first step (or 100th step!) towards bettering your business is something to celebrate.

Whether you're still dabbling in your business idea, unsure of what steps to take...

OR whether you've already started chipping away at your business but still not seeing the results you were hoping for...

I know for a fact that this 10k/month roadmap I've created will be a huge support to you on your journey, no matter the stage.

👉 CLICK HERE: DOWNLOAD THE 10K/MONTH ROADMAP NOW

Word of warning: This isn’t a fluffy, 3 page PDF you often see on the internet.

This is a complete roadmap, with each page filled to the brim with actionable tips and strategies … Here’s a peak 👇👇

You’ll notice that this guide covers 10 different steps, from finding your business model and social media content creation all the way to launching your program and upselling your existing clients.

The best part about all this? It only cost you a few seconds to put in your email address as opposed to THOUSANDS of dollars most new business owners lose by not knowing the proper steps to scale to your first $10,000.

Plus, to prove just how much I want you to succeed and cherish with your dream business, I’m going to be giving you some BONUS tips in the next few emails to help you drive your progress even further (so keep an eye out for me!)

They’re going to be a mix of tips and tricks on program building, content for Instagram, and nailing your sales processes from my BOSSGRAM Academy program (all of which I’ll send you throughout the course of the few weeks so you can get even more detailed strategies for each step that are shared in the guide.)

And very shortly, you’ll be making real progress in your business, just like Kenneth did after implementing the steps I teach in our proprietary Followers to Clients System:

Also don’t forget to tag me in your Instagram stories (@vanessalau.co) when you’re going through the free 10K/month guide so I can celebrate you and your commitment to growing your business.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Want to learn more about our Followers to Clients System®?

We've served over 4,000 clients with our proprietary Followers to Clients System™ where we teach any new coach or consultant how to turn their followers into paid clients.

As a seasoned online business with over multiple 6 figures in sales generated for our clients, we know a thing or two when it comes to social media lead generation and growing small online businesses—and we're excited to share that knowledge with you!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER: www.followerstoclients.com | | [next steps] do this before we meet for my training | Claps, all around, Linh!

You’re IN and I couldn’t be happier.

Quick note before I celebrate you fully: If you found this in your Junk/Promotions folder, here’s how to whitelist our email so you don’t miss any reminders and important updates:

Linh, when you punched in your details, you told me… you were SERIOUS.

You’re serious about:

Knowing exactly what to offer so you are completely clear AND confident about your niche, audience, and offers.

Stopping the endless content creation that only brings in freebie-hunters but doesn’t put money in that neglected PayPal account.

Transforming the time you spend on the ‘Gram into a solid revenue generation system with #stopthescroll captions, slime-free sales strategies, and so many more fast-moving techniques that take you from zero to booked out real quick.

Yes, Linh. I respect that.

Because, here’s the thing…

I know your inbox is probably bleeding with invites to masterclasses and workshops…

… which is why THIS will not be yet another masterclass.

Instead, it’ll be a step-by-step, ALL-NEW TRAINING on how to build a (wildly!) successful coaching business from scratch using Instagram.

Yes, you read that right.

It’s gonna be EPIC.

Download your copy of The "Build a Successful Business using Instagram" Training Guide...

...and remember to bring it with you to the training because… you’ll be taking A LOT of notes.

Next, add the details for this LIVE training to your calendar or fancypants paper planner.

Here are those details

NAME: How to Build a WILDLY Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!)

DATE: Fri, 6 Aug, 2021

TIME: 09:00 AM WIB

LINK: https://req.easywebinar.com/join?5c0d3504bcaef31cc2e8aee76b1dc55c

The truth is…

… I’m jumpin’-up-and-down excited to see YOU step up and be the confident action-taker you really are because success is made up of millions of moments.

Moments like you signing up for this comprehensive game-changing training.

THESE are the defining moments that give you the fuel you need to keep going until the same people who dismissed you start calling you an "overnight success" and asking you how you did it.⁣⁠

I can’t wait to see you there, Linh...

… as we finally unmask the myth that you need to have thousands of followers on IG (or any other network, for that matter!) to start getting PAID!

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™

@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. The skimmed-to-the-end version: I’m hugely excited you’re joining me for this masterclass because it’s not your average masterclass where it’s 90% fluff.

In fact, you’ll walk away with a step-by-step plan on how to go from complete confusion to confident clarity on showing up and selling your services using Instagram.

Here’s a peek at the training that’ll make it happen for YOU.

My free training and content aren’t your run-of-the-mill, fluff-filled time-wasters. They’re epic value bombs as your fellow coaches will attest.

| | the truth behind being a biz owner. Still want in? | Hi Linh,

TRUTH BOMB Being a coach (let alone a business owner) is NOT easy.⁣

⁣You WILL have difficult conversations with prospects.⁣

You WILL have clients who have struggles you realize you’re NOT equipped to handle.⁣

Or…

...You WILL continue to mumble your way (or change the topic!) when answering the “how’s your business doing?” question that is bound to come up at family dinners and evenings out with friends.

Here’s the thing…

I don’t know of any coach who’s NEVER had a difficult client or NEVER been put in an awkward, curl-up-in-a-fetal-position⁣ situation while building their dream business.

What you need to remember is THIS ⁣

The discomfort is all a part of your learning PROCESS.

A process that YOU are going to FAST-TRACK when you join me in 3 hours for the How to Build a Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) training.

NAME: How to Build a WILDLY Successful Coaching Business from Scratch using Instagram ® (AND Get Paid... FAST!) DATE: Fri, 6 Aug, 2021 TIME: 09:00 AM WIB LINK: https://req.easywebinar.com/join?5c0d3504bcaef31cc2e8aee76b1dc55c

Linh, here’s what I know…

In the biz game, it’s oh-so-easy easy to compare yourself to other people and use it as an excuse to stop taking action. ⁣

The fact that you signed up for this training means you’re ready to START taking intentional, sustainable action.

Here’s what you need to watch out for...

You will have something grab your attention like a toddler in a toy store and you’ll be tempted to skip our appointment…

… but showing up for this training is what will continue to set YOU apart from the people who keep leaning on excuses.

Are you ready to be the one who sets their sights firmly on their goal and then… goes on to GET IT DONE?

Are you ready, Linh?

Join me here in 3 hours.

Save your training Guide today!

Rooting for you, Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Got a second? Tap ‘reply’ and tell me what’s got YOU really excited about attending this training! I looove hearing from you.

Here’s what I’m excited about

The training slide deck is a beast and I can’t wait to share it with you.

| | My latest IG habits | I’m a creature of habit, Linh.

Seriously.

In fact… If I go to a restaurant and order something that I end up liking, it automatically becomes my go-to every time I go to that restaurant.

I RARELY ever change my order. It’s something my boyfriend teases me about non-stop cause he’s the complete opposite and loves to try everything on the menu. 😂

Long story short: Habits have played a HUGE role in my life and success and, one of the habits I want to talk to you about is…

… planning and executing your strategy on Instagram.

Because no matter how great your intentions are to grow your presence and build your community, it all comes down to taking focused action.

ALL 👏 THE 👏 TIME.

Which is why I’m pulling the curtain back and sharing the 4 key habits that form the cornerstone of my Instagram strategy right now.

You can see exactly what organic growth hacks are working AND the strategies that I will be implementing (including one that may surprise you a little. Hint: it’s strategy #3 ;) on a consistent basis all through the year.

Ready to flex those IG habit muscles?

Watch the video here and share what YOUR strategy will look like in the comments.

Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Regardless of what your goal from Instagram is, these organic growth hacks will fuel your progress because when you get in the habit of putting quality over quantity, success on social media becomes a given. Let’s do this together.

P.P.S:

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | I stopped creating new content and here’s what happened… | In my last email, I shared my IG habits that form the cornerstone of my current strategy on Instagram.

Today I want to share more content habits that help me be everywhere on social without crashing and burning. ⁣⁣ But first…

… time for a flashback. ⁣ Back in the day when I didn’t have the smart content habits that I’m about to share with you, here’s what I used to do: ⁣⁣

Create new content for IG⁣⁣ Create new content for FB⁣⁣ Create new content for YT⁣⁣ Create new content for Newsletters⁣⁣ Create new content for my paid groups⁣⁣ Think about where else to create new content in⁣ (Pinterest? Linkedin? TikTok? Medium? XYZ?!)⁣ ⁣⁣ Now, this ^^ strategy works but ONLY for maybe 6-12 months...⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ And then you:⁣⁣ ⁣⁣

1. Run out of ideas⁣⁣
2. Get desperate for new ideas⁣⁣
3. Hate what you do because you're no longer working ON your business... but IN your business⁣ (ALL THE TIME)⁣
4. Burn out⁣⁣. ⁣⁣ Fast forward to what I do NOW which WORKS on a consistent basis AND keeps burnout at bay: ⁣⁣ Step 1: Create 1-2 pieces of rich content.⁣⁣ Step 2: Modify it.⁣⁣ Step 3: Multiply it.⁣⁣ 🔥 ⁣⁣ BUT... here’s what you need to know…

When you start out, it's NORMAL (and even needed!) to spend the majority of your time creating content to build authority, build demand, and test what works vs. what doesn't...⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ But at some point, it no longer makes sense to create new content all the time, on every platform.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Why?⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Because your audience grows and new people come in every day⁣⁣. ⁣⁣ Because you now have a whole library of old content that your new audience doesn't know about⁣⁣! ⁣⁣ Because your old audience has been with you for a while and has pretty much forgotten about the golden nuggets you shared once before!!! ⁣ (Remember: You are NOT the only person your audience members are following. Don't think that they burn EVERY SINGLE THING you've shared into the recesses of their brains... TRUST ME! ⁣ I get the SAME people saying "WOW! I needed this!" to content that I have shared more than once, simply because they needed to hear the message more than once to finally "get it"!) ⁣ And lastly:⁣ ⁣ Because at some point you will need to SCALE, and when you SCALE, you cannot spend hours of your day furiously creating content like an overworked li’l hamster tethered to your laptop. ⁣⁣ INSTEAD...⁣ ⁣ You need to BE SMART and learn how to MULTIPLY content that you know ALREADY WORKS in your business.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ My focus now is no longer creating new content everywhere. ⁣⁣🙌🏻🙌🏻 ⁣⁣ My focus is now asking myself⁣:⁣ 👇🏻 ⁣⁣ "What content pieces WORKED?"⁣⁣ ⁣ "How can I stretch that content FURTHER to NEW audiences?"⁣⁣ ⁣ "How can I take my old content and modify it slightly to give it a little upgrade?"⁣⁣ ⁣ "Are there some past topics I can EXPAND, or could I give a NEW modified perspective on some?"⁣ ⁣ "Where else can I put this content to maximize my impact and drive more traffic to where I WANT it to go?"⁣ ⁣⁣ IF you think I spend the majority of my time creating content... you're wrong.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Yep.

In this video right here, I share take-action-now ideas on how you can get started on stretching your existing content a little bit further.

You can start to tap into little-known but wildly effective sources of traffic, without creating fresh content each time around. ⁣⁣ Now you may be at that stage of business where you do need to create fresh content and build your library and that’s a-okay!! ⁣⁣ But I hope this video will give you clear-cut ideas on how to get into the habit of being more efficient in your content plan, right from the start. ⁣⁣ Rooting for you,

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™@vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. Do you struggle with creating fresh content all the time? I hear you and I gotchu. This 6:39 short video will give you my favorite ninja hacks AND tools to help you stretch every piece of content further and stay top of mind, minus the burnout and overwhelm.

P.P.S:

Want to know the roadmap to making your first $10,000 in your online coaching or consulting business?

This guide features 10 specific steps across 15 pages of actionable strategies — all designed to offer you a comprehensive and unparalleled look into how to go from idea to launching your business to 10K months — all for free.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: www.followerstoclients.com/10k | | Last call to join me for this no-cost masterclass | Linh, I think you may have missed my earlier email so sliding this right under your nose…

… I’m hosting a 90-minute, zero-dinero masterclass on how to turn your followers into clients even if you don’t feel like an expert (hello, impostor syndrome!) and have less than 10K IG followers.

It’s pretty much an invitation to swipe my framework from the BOSSGRAM Academy™ and apply it to your coaching business.

Interested?

Shimmy over to this page and snag a seat.

I’ll see you in a bit!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co | | Did you hear? The Followers to Clients™ Series is HER | Hey Linh!

I am so excited to announce that from November 22nd – November 29th, I’m hosting The Followers to Clients™ Series!

4 days.

4 trainings.

1 goal – to help you find your business blind spots and give you the strategies to fix them so you can feel more confident about your next steps than ever before.

Here’s what you can expect:

I’m going to be hosting 4 live trainings which my team and I have carefully designed to cover everything you need to find your business blind spots and give you the strategies to fix them so you can feel more confident about your next steps than ever before.

In each training, we’ll dig into 3 mistakes, and provide 3 solutions, in the areas of business that most new coaches struggle in, namely:

Your mindset Your niche Your content Your sales

...all so that you can start to swerve away from the gaps that are keeping you stuck and preventing you from getting your coaching business up and running, growing on social media and turning followers into clients.

Click here to register for The Followers to Clients™ Series

...and Linh?

If you register, you’ll immediately be added to our list of VIPs – which means you’ll get exclusive access to The Followers to Clients™ workbook which is packed with fill-in-the-blank exercises and prompts to help you consolidate what you learn in the trainings and start plotting out your next steps.

This workbook is ONLY available if you register in advance at this link.

PLUS only by registering will you get our handy reminder emails as well as our special ‘recap and replay’ emails after each training in case you couldn't make it live, had to duck out early, or simply want to re-watch and take extra notes.

Isn’t it great being a VIP? 😉

I can’t WAIT to see you at The Followers to Clients™ Series, Linh.

Get your name on the list now.

Team Vanessa Lau

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. Hey Linh! I’m hosting a VERY SPECIAL training series (The Followers to Clients™ Series) from November 22nd to November 29th. 4 days, 4 live trainings, and 1 big goal – to help you find your business blind spots and give you the strategies to fix them so you can feel more confident about your next steps than ever before.

Come register now (IT’S FREE) to get your name on our VIP list, get your copy of our exclusive Followers to Clients™ workbook and get access to our special recap and replay videos. See you there!

To stop receiving further information about The Bossgram Academy Black Friday launch, please click here. | | Are you ready to go from ‘unsure’ to UNSTOPPABLE? | Hey Linh!

In case you missed it: from November 22nd – November 29th, I’m hosting The Followers to Clients™ Series.

4 days. 4 live trainings. And A LOT of mistake fixing, myth-busting and needle moving.

In The Followers to Clients™ Series, I’m going to help you discover the gaps that are keeping you stuck and preventing you from getting your coaching business up and running, growing on social media and turning followers into clients.

The trainings are completely FREE but I’m giving every single person in my audience the chance to register and become a VIP.

When you register for The Followers to Clients™ Series (via this link), you’ll get:

✅ A copy of our EXCLUSIVE Followers to Clients™ workbook – specially created for the training series, this workbook is packed with fill-in-the-blank exercises and prompts to help you consolidate what you learn in the trainings and start plotting out your next steps.

✅ Special ‘recap and replay’ emails that will give you access to the training replay in case you missed it live or want to watch it again (FYI: the replays will not be available anywhere else!)

✅ Handy reminder emails before every training (plus a sneak preview of what we’ll be focusing on in that day’s training)

All of these amazing extras are ONLY available if you register in advance – which you can do here.

I am BEYOND excited to kick off The Followers to Clients™ Series – and I hope you’ll be there!

Get your name on the list now.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. In case you missed it: Linh – I’m hosting a VERY SPECIAL training series (The Followers to Clients™ Series) from November 22nd to November 29th. 4 days, 4 live trainings and A LOT of mistake fixing, myth-busting and needle moving.

The series is COMPLETELY FREE but if you register in advance you’ll become a VIP – meaning you’ll get a copy of our exclusive Followers to Clients™ workbook and get access to our special recap and replay emails. Register now. | | Last chance to register for The Followers to Clients™ Series (and become a VIP!) | Linh, The Followers to Clients™ Series kicks off tomorrow and I cannot wait to start diving into some of the biggest mistakes that are currently keeping you stuck on your journey to build your thriving coaching business.

The clock is ticking, my slides are all prepped but there’s still a TINY window of opportunity for you to register.

Remember: The Followers to Clients™ Series is a FREE live training series that I’m hosting over 4 days (with the BIG goal of helping you find your business blind spots and give you the strategies to fix them so you can feel more confident about your next steps than ever before) – but you’ll only become a VIP if you register in advance.

When you register for The Followers to Clients™ Series (via this link), you’ll get:

✅ A copy of our EXCLUSIVE Followers to Clients™ workbook – specially created for the training series. This workbook is packed with fill-in-the-blank exercises and prompts to help you consolidate what you learn in the trainings and start plotting out your next steps.

✅ Special ‘recap and replay’ emails that will give you access to the training replay in case you missed it live or want to watch it again (FYI: the replays will not be available anywhere else).

✅ Handy reminder emails before every training (plus a sneak preview of what we’ll be focusing on in that day’s training).

PSA: All of these amazing extras are ONLY available if you register in advance – which you still have time to do here.

Don’t miss out on your chance to attend a value-packed series of free trainings that are designed to help you swerve away from the gaps that are keeping you stuck and preventing you from getting your coaching business up and running, growing on social media and turning followers into clients…

...and don’t miss out on your opportunity to become a VIP (because who doesn’t want to be a VIP?!😉)

I can’t wait to see you tomorrow at the first of our 4 trainings!

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. There’s still a little time left for you to register for The Followers to Clients™ Series and get your name on our list of VIPs – meaning you’ll get a copy of our exclusive Followers to Clients™ workbook and get access to our special recap and replay emails. Register now here. | | Special Offer: The BOSSGRAM Academy® is OPEN | Linh, in case you missed it, we just opened public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® – and we’ve got a VERY special limited-time bonus for you.

If you join before the 29th of November, you’ll get access to my entire Content Repurposing Strategy Training.

In this bonus training, you’ll get the behind-the-scenes on the entire strategy breakdown on how I’m able to increase post frequency and stay consistent on Instagram without having to come up with new ideas all the time.

This training also comes with 6 bonus step-by-step tutorials so there is zero second-guessing on how you can turn 1 content piece into 6 unique content pieces for Instagram.

The result?

✅ Up the number of times you post on IG without burning out ✅ Increase in reach and new followers ✅ Never spend hours per week finding new content ideas again

But don’t forget: This training bundle is only available if you join The BOSSGRAM Academy® before the 29th of November.

The BOSSGRAM Academy® is my 12-month access program that outlines the A–Z of starting and launching a thriving online coaching business using Instagram.

An amazing group of ambitious aspiring coaches and online consultants have already grabbed their spot in The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

Which means they’re about to learn my proven, signature 3-phase process to get visible on Instagram and turn followers into clients in 90 days or less...

...and they’re about to finally say goodbye to:

❌ Spending all their time on the content creation hamster wheel with no consistent clients to show for it

❌ Going "back to the drawing board" to re-strategize their marketing strategy (but really just always winging it and hoping for the best)

❌ WISHING they had a roadmap that is designed to get them to a place where they have time and freedom to work when they want, from where they want, with who they want, for the kind of money they want.

… All thanks to the 6 in-depth modules that walk you through our tried-and-tested Followers to Clients System™

… The amazing plug-and-play templates and scripts.

… AND the 12-month access to The BOSSGRAM Academy® Facebook community that gives you support, accountability and extra content from me and my team.

Not to mention the BGA "Bonus Bag" that’s filled to the brim with 12 additional resources, such as:

A library of hashtags that cover every coaching niche IG carousel Canva templates A sales page copy template Expert masterclasses on subjects like: 🌟Creating your lead magnet funnel, 🌟running Facebook ads, 🌟exploding your reach with TikTok, and 🌟setting yourself up for financial success...

...and that’s just naming a few (click HERE to see the full bonus bag!).

Phew! It’s a lot.

While opening public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® is something I’m (truthfully) EXTREMELY excited and happy about…

...here’s the real reason I created it.

When I first started my business…

I had just quit my corporate job and took up a part-time job as a coffee barista.

While it seemed like I just took a huge blow…

I knew I was meant for more.

I knew I didn’t want to always sacrifice having the flexibility to take time off whenever I wanted or needed to (whether to go on vacation with my girlfriends or simply spend time with my loved ones) in exchange for constantly feeling overworked and getting a measly 2% pay bump every so often.

I knew I didn’t want to live a life where I could only "window shop" but never actually buy anything because I couldn't afford it. I didn’t want to have the constant financial pressure that comes when you’re reliant on somebody else for your paycheck.

And most importantly, I knew that I wanted to help other people. I wanted to make a big impact on people’s lives.

At the time, I didn't exactly know HOW...but I was determined to figure it out. This is when I knew I needed to carve my own path.

So I bet on myself.

I showed up week after week even when I had 0 subscribers on YouTube and way less than 10,000 followers on Instagram.

And through a lot of trial and error, it started to work.

I created my own roadmap. I tested out every step. I refined it. And then I started sharing it with others.

The roadmap I created – the one that took me from sweeping up cigarette butts at 1am at the coffee shop to finally signing paid clients of my own – is The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

Fast forward 3 years, and I’ve taken over 5,000 students through this roadmap.

I’ve grown my audience to 200,000 people on Instagram and 500,000 people on YouTube.

I get to work from home and play with my dog between calls.

I get to be the first person in my friend group to reply "I'm in!" whenever a trip is being planned.

THIS is why I created The BOSSGRAM Academy®. To give you the steps, tools and resources you need in order to unlock the same type of freedom and success on your terms.

When you’re ready, here’s your chance to go from no leads to paying clients in 90 days or less.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. Despite what that little inner critic inside your head tries to make you think, you DO have what it takes to have a life filled with financial autonomy, a flexible schedule and impact.

You can get to the place where you have a steady income and consistent clients in a business you love. And that’s what I’m teaching you in The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

Come grab your spot now (the special bonus expires next Monday!) and get ready to change your life.

To stop receiving further information about The Bossgram Academy Black Friday launch, please click here. | | The online business secret NOBODY wants you to know | Linh, here’s a secret no-one but I will tell you:

When it comes to starting and growing your coaching business?

You get to do things your way.

You get to say "no thanks!" to spending HOURS aimlessly creating content with no real strategy or plan behind it (and with no real results to show for it).

You get to level up from the free content that only gives you one piece of the whole "building your business" puzzle (sending you into a whirlwind of self-doubt while you try to fill in the gaps yourself).

You get to move away from spinning your wheels and throwing spaghetti at the wall when it comes to all aspects of your business…

...and lean into having a step-by-step system that walks you through everything you need to start AND grow your coaching business.

And the best part?

You get to make this easy on yourself, Linh.

Yep – growing your audience, getting recognized for your expertise and getting consistent clients for your 1:1 offer doesn’t have to be hard.

And having your own business – one that allows you to do what you want, when you want, and have the kind of financial security you want to have – doesn’t have to mean struggling to DIY, flying by the seat of your pants, or getting overwhelmed with #AllTheThings.

Not when you can access things like…

– – – BGA Module 1: Your Business Foundations – where you’ll gain complete clarity on who you want to work with and what you want to offer.

– – – BGA Module 2: Clarify and Validate Your Offer – where you’ll create your signature scaleable offer, sign your first few clients, and start collecting social proof.

– – – BGA Module 3: Your Content Strategy – where you’ll start attracting your dream clients and build demand for your offer using our "6 figure" content strategies.

– – – BGA Module 4: Instagram Traffic Explosion – where you’ll execute your content strategy on Instagram with my step-by-step tutorials and frameworks.

– – – BGA Module 5: Launching Your Program – where you'll launch your program to the public with our launch plans, webinar templates, email sequences, and social media promotions.

– – – BGA Module 6: Sales Mastery – where you’ll automate your sales process and handle discovery calls like a pro using our step-by-step process, scripts, and templates.

And not when you can also work through our Followers to Clients System™ where you’ll learn how to:

✅ Clarify exactly what you want to be known for and who you want to help. This first phase also includes beta testing so you can validate if this offer is actually what your ideal client wants.

✅ Attract leads on social media and start getting more visibility online so you can increase your audience base.

✅ Convert those leads into clients by learning everything to do with launching, marketing your business and closing on sales calls.

...all so that you can start getting your first paying clients in your business in 90 days or less.

The real-life value of everything you get in The BOSSGRAM Academy®? Over $10,000.

Your investment?

It starts at just $297 a month.

So, if you’re ready to stop wasting money on $17 courses that promise you the world (but never actually deliver) and wasting your life wishing you were already doing the thing you want to be doing (i.e. running your own business, being your own boss, and impacting the lives of countless people around the world)...

...come be part of The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

And let’s start and launch your thriving online coaching business once and for all.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. Linh, if you know me by now you’ll know that I’m not the kind of person to spring things on you by surprise or pull the rug out from under you when you least expect it.

That’s why I want to give you a genuine heads up that this is going to be one of your last chances to join The BOSSGRAM Academy® at its current price.

Yep, come 2022 we’re going to be doubling the investment needed to join the program. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to finally start making a move on your dream – come see for yourself how The BOSSGRAM Academy® is worth every single penny.

P.P.S. Still unsure if The BOSSGRAM Academy® is really for you? Take a look at what some of our previous students have said about their experience in BGA ⬇️ | | Are you asking these same questions about BGA? | PSA for you, Linh:

I only want you to join The BOSSGRAM Academy® if you know, without a doubt, that it’s the missing link between where you are RIGHT now and where you want to be in terms of starting and growing your online coaching business.

Yep – I don’t want you to even join unless you KNOW it is the step-by-step roadmap you need to start monetizing what you're already innately good at and begin impacting the lives of other people in the process.

Lots of the amazing people who’ve already gone through The BOSSGRAM Academy® asked their fair share of questions before they hit “join” – and I’m so glad they did.

Because if you’re asking questions? It means you’re doing all that you can to figure out the best strategy for you – and you know I am all about that.

Here are the most common questions I’ve been seeing over the last few days.

If you’re still on the fence about applying to join The BOSSGRAM Academy®, there’s a good chance that at least one or two of them have been running through your mind.

1. 🌟 “Is The BOSSGRAM Academy® the right fit for me IF I’m brand-new to business and don’t have a niche or many followers?”

In a word? YES! In fact, BGA is specifically designed for coaches and consultants who are starting out or who have NEVER signed paid clients before.

You’ll find everything you need to get clarity on your niche and social media strategy right in the FIRST TWO modules.

And by the end of the first two modules, our students are usually already hitting the ground running with clients, even if they started BGA with no niche and less than 1,000 followers.

2. 🌟 “Is 1:1 coaching really the best way to start my business...shouldn’t I create a course first?“

We get this question ALL of the time! So many people think that launching a course is the best first offer they should create in their business because the idea of “passive income” is sexier than working with 1:1 clients.

But here’s the thing:

1:1 coaching offers work way better with smaller audiences. Trust me, I started my business working 1:1 with clients – and if I hadn’t? I wouldn’t be where I am today.

When you create a signature 1:1 offer you can charge more, you can validate your method with real, paying clients and you can get yourself firmly set up in the online business world – and have consistent income from those 1:1 clients to rely on.

Once you’ve validated your method? THAT’S when you can create a course that teaches that same method to the masses.

3. 🌟 “Vanessa gives a LOT in her free videos. How will this be any different?!”

You’re right, I do believe in sharing a LOT in my posts, videos, and podcast episodes. But all of this is only a tiny slice of the strategies I share inside of The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

The BOSSGRAM Academy® is where I reveal my more advanced content, organized in a clear roadmap so you have a step-by-step path to succeeding on Instagram with no missing pieces or having to figure any of it out yourself.

4. 🌟 “So… is The BOSSGRAM Academy® an Instagram course or a business coaching course?”

Both.

The BOSSGRAM Academy® is the premiere online program for new and aspiring coaches who want to know exactly how to set up the foundations of their coaching business, launch powerful offers AND use Instagram for smarter lead generation and signing paid clients using our Followers to Clients System™.

Yes, you get the most updated, integrity-focused Instagram techniques and strategies. But you use them AFTER you’ve got clarity on your business and your offers.

Creating content doesn’t make you a BOSS. Getting clients does.

The BOSSGRAM Academy® shows you how to do both effectively.

5. 🌟“Can I join BGA at any time?”

Although The BOSSGRAM Academy® is available to join at any time, THIS is the only time you can join and get access to our exclusive limited-time-only Content Repurposing Strategy Training.

Plus, this is one of your last chances to join BGA before we double the price.

For this Black Friday’s not-available-anywhere-else training you’ll get the behind the scenes on how I repurpose my content and the entire strategy breakdown on how my team and I can increase post frequency and stay consistent on Instagram without having to come up with new ideas all the time:

So in case you missed it:

The current investment for BGA is $997 (a payment plan is available) but come 2022, we’re going to be doubling this price.

So, yes – although you can join BGA at any time, this is your only chance to join, get access to our exclusive limited time bonus AND do so before the price goes up for good.

6. 🌟 “Why is The Bossgram Academy ™ 12 months access only?”

Simple. We’ve designed the program for students to get results within 60-90 days. This means a 12-month container provides students with the additional amount of time needed to go through the program in-depth at their own pace.

The truth is…we don't want BGA to be another program that collects dust on your virtual bookshelf. Instead, we want all our students to stay accountable and see life-changing results in LESS than 12 months of deciding to start their online coaching businesses.

That said, we know that unforeseen life circumstances can arise, and we also understand that everyone has different learning styles.

Our team is here to support you during your BGA journey, so we encourage students to reach out to our team to explore the options together (we also offer course extensions at a special discounted rate for students who love BGA and want to extend their time within the program).

So that’s it, Linh.

At this point, you should have everything you need to make the best choice for yourself (and if you still have unresolved questions, remember you can hit “reply” to this email and my team will get back to you ASAP!).

The clock is ticking...so if that road leads you towards joining The BOSSGRAM Academy® then I can’t WAIT to see your name pop up on my list of new students.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. If you DO decide to grab your dreams of starting and growing your online coaching business by the horns and sign up to join The BOSSGRAM Academy®, make sure to do it before public enrollment closes (and the amazing Content Repurposing Strategy Training bonus expires!) at midnight on November 29th, 2021! I’d hate for you to miss out on taking the action that future you will thank you for.

P.P.S. Still unsure if The BOSSGRAM Academy® is really for you? Take a look at what some of our previous students have said about their experience in BGA ⬇️ | | THIS is who BGA is actually for | Linh, you might be surprised to know that The BOSSGRAM Academy® isn’t for everyone.That’s right!It’s really only for people who want to build their own online business and generate consistent 4–5 figure months with a signature 1:1 offer. The ones who have an idea of what niche they want to be in but need help in articulating what value they want to provide. The ones who perhaps haven’t yet crafted their 1:1 offer and need guidance on how to create one and sign their first few paid clients. The ones who enjoy using social media but don't have the structure and frameworks to create content that's more sales-focused. The ones who are READY to take their idea from zero to launch, are willing to take baby steps to validate their offer through beta testing, and can get past their fear by launching their final offer publicly and start making money. And more than that? It’s for the people who know they’re made for more.The people who want financial security, a better work-life balance, and to be in full control of their own schedule. The people who want to make an impact on others.People like Harrah who, in the 12 months she was in BGA, left her 9–5 and started making consistent $5k months in her business WHILE ALSO being able to work at her own pace and take a vacation for once! In The BOSSGRAM Academy®, we don’t just teach you the A–Zs of starting and launching your thriving online coaching business using Instagram......we also teach you the proven step-by-step process to take you from no leads to paying clients in just 90 days. Meaning that you being your own boss, running your own schedule and being in full control of your life (your time, earning potential, and whether you work on Fridays or not) can actually be a reality for you.So Linh, is making that daydream a reality something you’re ready for? Public enrollment closes in 4 days...so if the answer to the above question is YES then come and see for yourself exactly what’s included as part of The BOSSGRAM Academy®.Vanessa  Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients. P.S. When I first started my online business, I had 0 followers or subscribers, and the only thing that kept me going was my determination to win the bet I had placed on myself. Now, 3 years in, I’ve built a 7-figure business that all started with a 1:1 coaching offer. All of this is possible for you, too Linh. Come see how.P.P.S. Knowing that BGA has helped change THOUSANDS of people’s lives gives me life. And it’s not just Harrah whose life has changed...take a look at some of our other students who have changed their lives after joining BGA | | BLACK FRIDAY: Let me be real for a sec.. | Linh, sometimes the hardest part in our daily lives comes when we pause for a moment, take a step back and ask ourselves: “Does my life look like what I want it to look like?”

I remember thinking I had “made it” when I landed a fancy corporate job at L’Oréal after graduating from college. It was everything I had worked for – I had the cool title, the nice office and the corporate expense account.

From the outside, I was winning.

But on the inside? I was completely unfulfilled:

Instead of being the dream job at my dream company, it drained me. And I quickly realized that all of this wasn’t what I actually wanted for my life.

So I took a leap of faith, and quit.

It was scary. There I was throwing everything I had worked for away, taking a huge risk and betting on myself, believing the idea that I was meant for more and that I could make something of myself on my own.

Trust me when I say that I get how you’re feeling right now.

I understand ALL of the levels of scary that come with following your dreams.

But here’s the thing, Linh: When it comes to making your dream of starting your own online coaching business come true – it doesn’t have to be hard.

And more than that? It shouldn’t have to be hard.

Being your own boss and getting to work from wherever you want with 1:1 clients shouldn’t feel like an impossible daydream. Being able to make consistent 4 or 5 figure months in your business isn’t something that’s only possible for the lucky few. That's why I want to make things as easy and effortless as possible for you.

The BOSSGRAM Academy® gives you the proven step-by-step system that walks you through everything you need to start AND grow your coaching business so you can get to the place where you’re making the kind of revenue you currently dream of.

Not to mention... 🎁 If you join before the 29th of November, you’ll get access to my entire Content Repurposing Strategy Training for FREE:

In this bonus training, you’ll get the behind- the- scenes on the entire strategy breakdown on how I’m able to increase post frequency, increase my Instagram reach by 10x AND and stay consistent without having to come up with new ideas all the time.

This training also comes with 6 bonus step-by-step tutorials so there is zero second guessing on how you can turn 1 content piece into 6 unique content pieces for Instagram.

The result?

✅ Up the number of times you post on IG without burning out ✅ Increase in reach and new followers ✅ Never spend hours per week finding new content ideas again

So don’t forget: This training bundle is only available if you join The BOSSGRAM Academy® before the 29th of November.

Linh, I want to show you what's possible.

Check out Laura, who started her business after being furloughed from her job and signed her first paying client before she’d even finished module 2:

THIS is the magic when you join a sales-tested program like BGA.

So here's your official Black Friday reminder:

Public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® is closing in just 72 hours (and remember this round is one of your LAST chances to get in at the current investment level – in 2022, the price is doubling.)

Come join before then so you can finally start following the roadmap that’s going to help you consistently attract leads on Instagram, convert them into clients and change the lives of many through your 1:1 offer.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. The clock is ticking! So if you are ready to join me and the amazing people like you inside The BOSSGRAM Academy® make sure to do it before the amazing bonus Content Repurposing Strategy Training expires in 72 hours. I’d hate for you to miss out!

P.P.S. Laura’s story is pretty amazing, right?! Even more amazing? She isn’t the only one! Peep some of our other students who have hit their biggest goals after putting what they’ve learnt in BGA into practice ⬇️ | | Re: Another gift (and promise to you!) | Linh, you’re busy. I’m busy.

We’re all busy living our lives, wondering if the Black Friday purchases we made were actually necessary (did anyone else buy a snuggie!?)

So, I’ll keep this short.

In The BOSSGRAM Academy® there is 1 big promise you can hold us to:

If you join The BOSSGRAM Academy®, I promise you’re going to gain clarity around your offer and audience, finally begin attracting the right clients on Instagram, and start converting them on a consistent basis.

And, Linh, I believe in this promise so much that we have our 60-day “Do the Work” Guarantee.

Meaning you have 60 days to go through the content that you get INSTANT access to, show up, trust the process and do the work to see real, needle-moving results – and if you aren’t satisfied?

You can email us your completed work as per our Refund Policy and we’ll refund your money.

Because I am so committed to seeing you win inside our program, I want to support you even more.

🎁 This is why I am releasing ANOTHER bonus for anyone who joins BGA before this Monday, November 29th @ 11:59PM PST:

In addition to the FREE Content Repurposing Bonus Bundle, when you join The BOSSGRAM Academy before the timer hits 0:00 in less than 48 hours, you will also receive:

... 🌟The SAME Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tracker I use in my 7 figure company to make sure YOU are on track with hitting your sales and social media goals PLUS,

… 🌟A LIVE group coaching call with me to help you use this tracker to its fullest potential and map out your business goals for 2022!

^ When we do the call together, you will feel more prepared than ever entering 2022 as a new business owner, AND you’ll have a fully fleshed out plan to start and launch your new online coaching business… without all the second guessing.

With my resources and my expertise in your corner, you will have far more resources than I did when I started, or any other new coach for that matter.

The KPI Tracker and the LIVE Group Coaching call with me is a one-time only offer that I will never do again for free, so make sure you enroll before November 29th 11:59PM PST to take advantage of these additional bonuses!

(Please note that the KPI Tracker will be released on January 5th, 2022, and the LIVE group coaching call will take place on January 6th, 2022 from 10am -12pm PST via Zoom.)

So Linh, if you are trying not to despair as you watch other coaches welcome in new clients, hit their income goals and grow their businesses while you’re sitting here with no real strategy or guidance to help achieve the results you dream of…

...then come and join The BOSSGRAM Academy®

And if you’re not satisfied with your progress within 60 days? We can still be friends.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. DING DING! This is your official 48-hour warning bell: Public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® is closing VERY soon. Don’t miss out on joining the program that WILL change your life.

P.P.S. Now is the best time ever to join BGA.

✅ Secure The BOSSGRAM Academy’s price before we double it,

✅ Get instant access to the entire library of 50+ resources to help start and launch your new online coaching business using social media and business strategy without making rookie mistakes,

✅ Get not one, but TWO limited time bonuses (that will officially no longer be offered for free after the timer hits zero):

--- 🌟 Content Repurposing Bonus: Over 6 lessons on how I’ve been able to increase my reach by 10x and post more on Instagram without burning out.

--- 🌟 KPI Tracker AND a private group coaching call with me to help map out your entire 2022 so that you have crystal clarity on how to crush your goals next year with complete certainty and mentorship from a 7 figure business owner.

Click here to enroll now - and I’ll see you on the inside! | | What can I do? [your 24 hour warning ] | Linh, if you’re reading this email, it’s because you’ve still not joined The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

And hey – I get it.

Investments take some mulling over.

But with time fast running out... I wanted to ask: how can I help?

What can I do to help you make up your mind once and for all about whether:

1. You’ll be part of The BOSSGRAM Academy® and get the strategies, resources, tools and step-by-step roadmap you need to get to the place where your online business is THRIVING and you’re making steady income from a healthy, consistent roster of 1:1 clients every month…

OR

2. You’ll stay exactly where you are.

Exactly where you have been for the last 6 months (or maybe even longer).

Struggling to figure out your next steps and wasting time trying to do it yourself with no help or guidance from someone who has been where you are now and made it to the other side...

… Stuck on the content creation hamster wheel and spending hours posting and engaging on Instagram with no paying clients to show for it.

… Willing to risk another year of putting "start my business" on your New Year resolutions list, another year of wishing you had started sooner, continuing to blame the algorithm for your lack of progress.

… Staying in a situation where you feel like you aren't truly maximizing your potential because you’re stuck in a job you don’t want to be doing, living on someone else’s timetable and having no financial security.

So, what can I do?

👉 I can remind you that public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® is closing in 24 hours – and that the price will be increasing in 2022 – so now is the time to take action.

👉 I can remind you of the 6 modules that cover, in-depth, each phase of our proven Followers to Clients System™ and the amazing BGA Bonus Bag each and every student gets access to.

👉 I can remind you that if you aren’t satisfied after 60 days of showing up and doing the work, you can email us your completed work as per our Refund Policy and we’ll refund your money.

👉 I can remind you that ONLY if you join The BOSSGRAM Academy® before the 29th of November, you’ll also get access to my EXCLUSIVE Content Repurposing Strategy Training (not available anywhere else!).

👉 I can remind you I’ve added an ADDITIONAL bonus where if you join us before the 29th of November (aka tomorrow!), I’ll throw in my company’s sales and social media tracker PLUS a LIVE group coaching call with me to plan out your 2022.

And I can remind you of one of the biggest benefits of The BOSSGRAM Academy® which is you getting access to my proven roadmap that will lead to you signing your first few paid coaching clients.

So, what do you say Linh – are you ready to make your decision?

“Vanessa, I really wish I was...but I really can’t afford it” – Listen, I understand. And I can help.

“I think so...but I’m worried it isn’t actually possible for someone like me” – I completely get that. This might make you see that it is.

“Pretty much...but I’d love to be able to see behind the curtain before I click buy” – You got it! Pull back the curtain here.

When you are ready to join (but please keep an eye on the clock because public enrollment closes in 24 hours and counting), the current members of The BOSSGRAM Academy® and I will be waiting for you inside our exclusive Facebook community…

...ready to welcome you in.

Come join us here.

Vanessa

Founder of The BOSSGRAM Academy™ - the #1 trusted resource for turning followers into paying clients.

P.S. If you want into The BOSSGRAM Academy® – and you want to secure your spot for the bonus Content Repurposing Strategy Training PLUS the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Tracker and the LIVE Group Coaching call with me in January to kick off the New Year – you have just 24 hours and counting to do it.

Come join us now – my team and I can’t wait to see you on the inside! | | Linh, can we talk? | Linh, I know that it takes a lot of courage to bet on yourself (trust me, I’ve been there).

And I know that, since you’ve still not joined The BOSSGRAM Academy®, it’s probably because you’re on the edge of knowing that it’s definitely for you.

That it’s the system, roadmap and community you need to gain clarity around your offer and audience, attract the right clients on Instagram and convert them using our proven sales mechanisms.

I get it.

Which is why I want to speak with you.

If, after this, you know you want to join The BOSSGRAM Academy®...

Then do it before the amazing bonus Content Repurposing Training Strategy PLUS the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Tracker and LIVE New Year Group Coaching Call with me expires at midnight tonight

(And remember: this is your last chance to join BGA at the current price – in 2022, it’s going up.).

Yes, you read that right.

Today will officially be the last day where you can:

✅ Secure The BOSSGRAM Academy’s price before we double it,

✅ Get instant access to the entire library of 50+ resources to help start and launch your new online coaching business using social media and business strategy without making rookie mistakes,

✅ Get not one, but TWO limited time bonuses (that will officially no longer be offered for free after today):

--- 🌟 Content Repurposing Bonus: Over 6 lessons on how I’ve been able to increase my reach by 10x on Instagram without burning out

--- 🌟 KPI Tracker AND a private group coaching call with me in January to help map out your 2022 so that you are crystal clear on how to crush your goals next year with certainty. (Note: the KPI Tracker will be released January 5th, 2022, and the LIVE group coaching call will take place January 6th, 2022 from 10am -12pm PST via Zoom.)

Bottom line: This is the best time to join us inside The BOSSGRAM Academy.

Time and time again we have new students who say they wish they joined us sooner, like Priyanka, who made more progress in 1 Module inside BGA than she did in the last 6 months:

Or William who was mind blown by the support inside BGA to help him start his online coaching business using social media:

What should be highlighted is that when these students joined, they didn’t even have the same additional bonuses you will receive if you join before the timer hits 0:00.

I am serious when I say that this is the best deal that you will get before we increase our prices.

So Linh, take advantage of all the opportunities in front of you before the doors close and the offer expires tonight at 11:59PM PST.

I hope to see you on the inside!

Rooting for you,

Vanessa | | What do you need? [1 hour left ] | Linh, public enrollment to The BOSSGRAM Academy® closes in 1 hour.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Before the clock runs out on your last chance to join The BOSSGRAM Academy® and snag not one, but TWO limited time only bonuses (while securing the price before we double it next year), let’s do one final recap of what you get in the program:

– – – The 6 in-depth modules that walk you through our tried-and-tested Followers to Clients System™.

– – – The amazing plug-and-play templates and scripts.

– – – The 12-month access to The BOSSGRAM Academy® Facebook community.

– – – The BGA "Bonus Bag" that’s filled to the brim with resources and expert masterclasses.

– – – 🎁 LIMITED TIME ONLY BONUS #1: Access to my EXCLUSIVE Content Repurposing Strategy Training (not available anywhere else!)

– – – 🎁 LIMITED TIME ONLY BONUS #2: A template of my 7 figure company’s sales and social media tracker PLUS a LIVE group coaching call with me in January to plan out your 2022 business goals:

(Please note that the KPI Tracker will be released on January 5th, 2022, and the LIVE group coaching call will take place on January 6th, 2022 from 10 am -12 pm PST via Zoom.)

👇 So, with an hour only left: What do you need?

Do you need to see any more reviews? Click here to watch what our previous students have to say.

Are you looking for the full list of FAQs before you commit? Go here and get all the details.

Have you got any last-minute questions about The BOSSGRAM Academy® that you can’t see an answer to anywhere else?

We’re here for you. My team and I have got our coffee cups filled and we’re ready to help you out.

Simply hit "reply" and ask away, and our team will get back to you as soon as we can!

Otherwise? I hope to see you on the inside of The BOSSGRAM Academy®.

Linh, you deserve to have the thriving, impactful online coaching business you dream of having.

And I’ll be honored to help you get it.

Vanessa | | 2021 Recap | Hi Linh,

Most times we get tired of seeing other people's annual recaps because it only shows the highlights, which can often make us feel worse.

This was me when I was reading the 2021 highlights of some of my peers in the online space who wrote about how much they grew their businesses and how they achieved X milestones.

For once, I was on the other side of the social media highlight reel: I did not hit my goals for 2021.

In fact, my revenue plateaued mid way through 2021, and eventually it started to decline. I even had some months where I was in the negative.

While I didn't grow as I hoped to in 2021, this doesn't mean I'm going to shy away from sharing my failures.

While wins are often shared publicly as people wrap up their years, it also feels appropriate to share the losses just as publicly, which is why I recapped my entire 2021 in this blog post here.

I'm going to keep this email short and sweet, because everything I need to say is in the link I shared above.

In the post, I share:

My revenue and expenses of every single month in 2021 (I compare it to 2020 so you can see exactly where my business started declining and going into the negatives for some months.)

Key events that happened each month, including some painful learnings and personal breakthroughs

A summary of my top 5 lessons learned in 2021

A summary of what I'll be looking forward to in 2022

I’ve never written such a long piece like this before, and frankly I’m not sure if anyone will actually read the whole thing.

So if you have the time to actually read the blog post I wrote, please do me a favour and let me know. A simple IG story share (tag me @vanessalau.co) or private message will do.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

With gratitude,

Vanessa

PS: I’m going to be writing similar pieces like this on a weekly basis to those subscribed to my email list.

I had a lot of fun writing my 2021 recap, and my only regret is that I didn’t capture these moments when my struggles and breakthroughs were actually happening in the moment.

So, here’s what I’m planning for my Newsletter moving forward: I will release an email every Monday morning where I candidly share what I’m working on, what’s happening, and advice from my learnings. This newsletter series will officially be called Confessions of a Content Creator to CEO.

If after reading my blog post you realize you don't want to get exclusive emails from me that share similar reflections, then at the bottom of this email you can opt-out (it's in the fine text below)

Regardless of what you decide, I want to thank you for being a part of this journey, and I look forward to continuing to share my honest thoughts on entrepreneurship.

Love, Vanessa. | | I hated my business and my content. | "I feel bored with my business doing the same repetitive things over and over again, and more often than not, my business is starting to feel like a job.

I wish that with all the money I made, I would be able to travel more and experience more things with my loved ones, but I have yet to do that because I have to run the business and create content that I don’t even like.

I lack a strong sense of why, and my true desires don’t line up with my actions, so this makes me feel incongruent and makes me feel like a fraud.

I feel disconnected from my business because I don’t feel challenged nor do I feel like I’m making the impact I want to make."

^ This is what I wrote in my workbook when I went to a Tony Robbins event last month in December.

The question I had to answer was:

"What’s an area of life you’re not happy/pleased with, and why does this area of your life give you pain?"

If you read this blog post, you would know that I had a challenging year mentally. I also expand on my experience in my latest Youtube video here that I posted yesterday:

Here I was, 3 years into my business, with my entire vision board ticked off - yet I was miserable.

Let me expand on why I hated the things that I hated:

#1: I hated the content that I was posting on my platforms.

At some point last year, I hated everything that I posted. I felt in order to stay relevant on Youtube, I had to always post videos about Instagram.

The Youtube algorithm had pegged me as the Instagram girl, and so, the Instagram content had to continue - anything else was just a flop.

But here’s the thing: I never asked to be the Instagram girl.

Back in 2019, I decided to do one video about Instagram, and to my luck, it went viral.

Today it still remains one of the top viewed video about Instagram. I credit a lot of my success to that video, because it put me on the map

(And yes - I change the title and thumbnail every year so I keep getting views #contenthack 😉 ):

I also credit Vanessa of 2019, who saw an opportunity and seized it:

She niched down, continued to post more Instagram videos, gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and even launched a program about Instagram to monetize.

And guess what?

I am not the only "successful" creator that has done this - and it’s a formula that undoubtedly works.

Think Sunny Lenarduzzi and Cathrin Manning, who had videos about Youtube take off, and suddenly pivoted their entire channels to talk about that topic in order to fuel growth.

Think Jade Darmawangsa who used to post about social media, and when she stopped, her views started declining - something she’s mentioned many times on her channel.

Think Nick Nimmin who has literally been talking about Youtube for the last SEVEN years.

While this is a great short term strategy to accelerate your growth and financial position, it’s also a strategy that crushes your creativity and happiness in the long term as a content creator.

So what’s the fine line?

That’s what I asked myself near the end of 2021 when I was at my witt’s end.

"When can I stop being the Instagram girl!?"

Here’s what one of my mentors, Veronica Romney, said:

"Any time. If you don’t want to be known as the Instagram girl, then stop doing things that make you the Instagram girl."

"What do you WANT to be known for?"

This leads me to the second point:

#2: My paid program was not a reflection of my true mission.

The BOSSGRAM Academy was created in 2019 - 3 years ago - and it was my first ever online program, teaching new coaches how to launch their coaching business and sign paid clients using Instagram.

Again, kudos to Vanessa from 2019 because she was smart AF.

She kept developing the program year over year, niched it down, cleaned it up, and built an entire operation around it.

Without the smart thinking of Vanessa from 2019, we would not be here today with a multi million dollar company and over 6,000 customers.

But here’s what I now realize, 3 years later:

One of my biggest epiphanies was the honest realization that I do not want to help coaches exclusively.

"Heck - I don’t even call myself a coach! I call myself a creator!", I thought.

At the heart of it, my company started because I was a content creator who simply wanted to serve, and leverage social media (not just Instagram) to help more people on a mass level.

But like most content creators, I was a starving artist and I struggled to monetize.

When 1:1 coaching fell onto my lap, I realized this was an incredible (and easy!) way to continue to help others but also get paid for it.

It was finally income I felt I could control, unlike brand sponsorships or affiliate links.

Once I became confident and developed social proof through 1:1 client work, I then packaged my knowledge into a course so I could 1) Free up my time, and 2) Help more people without a cap.

I productized my genius, created a company from it, and got it to a place where we’ve now helped thousands of people at scale.

This is where I had a lightbulb moment that the way I positioned my program and WHO I'm trying to serve needed to change.

The BOSSGRAM Academy - is JUST 50% of my mission:

We help content creators (NOT just coaches) enter the 1:1 coaching/consulting business model so they can earn more, validate their offers, and serve people outside of just free content.

The remaining 50% is about these same content creators (who now have a validated offer thanks to BGA) productize their genius into a product they can scale.

The only problem was that my company was not operationally strong enough to have two programs, and if you read my blog post, you would know that headed into 2022... I’m cleaning HOUSE on my org so I can launch the next big thing and further my mission.

As you can see from a recent Instagram Livestream I did where I went OFF, you can clearly tell that now that I have a crystal clear mission, I’m PUMPED to be creating again!

👀 So what’s the key takeaway for you, friend?

As business owners AND content creators - we have our own unique set of struggles.

When we’re not busy behind the scenes being a damn BOSS, we’re showing up publicly and catering to algorithms, trolls, people — all the things.

We work hard to stay relevant (buying the latest gear, learning the new features, writing content, getting audience feedback, dressing up to show up even though we don't feel like it, etc)

This makes running a business AND maintaining our mental health even harder than most people can even imagine.

That’s why it’s important for you to acknowledge this whenever you feel down.

You’re juggling A LOT - so be gracious on yourself, and DON'T let someone else who doesn’t understand your unique business model tell you that you’re not doing "enough", because FRIEND! You are doing A LOT!

Niching down works in the short term, but remember that the plant you water will only keep growing 🌱 .

If you don’t want to be known for something in the long term, then start taking action TODAY to create things that are more in alignment with your vision.

Because remember: It doesn’t matter if your post goes viral, because you also have to ask yourself:

"If this piece of content went viral, would I be willing to pivot my entire business to capitalize on the virality?"

That said, it’s also not a bad thing if you decide to double down on what is working.

Looking back, I have ZERO regrets on the path I’ve taken.

Thanks to my decisions, I’m now in your inbox.

Thanks to my decisions, I’m putting food on other people’s table as an employer.

Thanks to my decisions, I’ve helped thousands of clients start their own businesses and earn income they can control.

What’s most important is knowing WHEN to evolve and not being AFRAID to.

Which leads me to my next point:

It’s okay to evolve and it’s okay to outgrow things.

Outgrowing platforms, content, clients, pricing structures, team members, environments... everything... is OKAY and SHOULD be encouraged!

If my journey has taught you anything, it’s that you have to let go of what’s working to actually grow and get to the next level.

I elaborate more on this in yesterday’s Youtube video, and I highly recommend you watch if you haven’t already :) Inside I talk about how my business plateau led into a decline - and how my financial plateau is also a reflection of my creative plateau.

SO Linh, as you reflect on your own journey, whether you are just starting or have been in the game for quite some time, I challenge you to ask yourself the same things I asked myself:

What do I want to be known for? Is what I'm doing today leading up to that vision I have? If no, why not? If yes, what can I change, add, or remove in order to accelerate this vision even more?

As you think about this, I want to say that I'm sooo excited to continue to write about my experiences and lessons on how I'm navigating growing a business while also being a mission-driven content creator.

My goal with these newsletters is to inspire you to take action on your biggest dreams AND give you the tips to help make that journey easier.

If you got to the bottom of this email, take a pic, post it on Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co so I know! ❤️️ I'd love to see it.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊 | | How I got out of my creative rut. | "It's hard to show up as the person you want to be when you are surrounded by an environment that makes you feel like a person you aren't." - Brianna Wiest

I put this quote at the very top of this week's newsletter because it eloquently describes exactly how I felt most of 2021.

Lately I've gotten some private DMs from a handful of my longer time supporters mentioning that my content has been feeling different lately (in a refreshing way).

Whether it's how my videos are being edited, the energy I'm bringing to the table, and just the overall "shift" in the overall vibe of how I'm delivering my content.

BTW - if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out my latest Youtube video where you'll see a clear difference in editing style:

In today's email, I want to talk about creative ruts and how I broke through.

Since I'm a fan of bullet points, let me breakdown my top 3 takeaways one by one:

#1: Delaying decisions is the heaviest weight you can create for yourself.

I want to keep talking about 2021 because it was truly the year where I learned the most.

At some point in the year, I became unhappy. With my content, my business, everything.

In hindsight, I KNEW there were a lot of things that I was unhappy with, but because I didn't want to come off as difficult or picky, I wouldn't say anything.

I think this is the challenge when you start growing a team or you start contracting out work.

Unlike being a solopreneur where everything is 100% created by you...

Once you have other people executing on your behalf, ESPECIALLY if you are a people-pleaser, it becomes incredible hard to tell someone "I don't like what you're doing."

VS. if YOU are the editor, graphic designer, social media manager, copywriter, etc... if you don't like something, you just change it. No big deal. No feelings hurt.

BUT when you have other humans creating things for you, it seems to be a lot harder to speak up AND many times you want to make sure you're not being a "micromanager".

"I'm not a regular manager! I'm a cool manager!" or "I'm not a regular client! I'm a cool client!"

^ If you are a people-pleaser, you will relate to this 😂

In hindsight, I already knew within Q2/early Q3 of 2021 that I needed to let people go. Not just on the creative side, but on the operations side as well.

But even though I had an intuition - I ignored it.

I ignored it until it became unignorable:

Revenue plateau, declining social media results, burnt out CEO...

^ Basically, everything snowballed, and I woke up one day realizing how much I hated and resented everything around me. And yes, it was all my fault.

SO finally, in Q4 of 2021, on the FINAL month of December, I pulled up my big girl panties and ended contracts with my video editors and ad agencies.

Said goodbye to both my social media manager and operations manager.

Bit the bullet and hired experienced C-level staff.

As I'm writing this, I still cannot believe it took me half a year to act on my intuition.

Call it spiritual, call it whatever... but I honestly believe that delaying these heavy decisions was what created a huge energy block that eventually translated into a creative block.

What's even more interesting is that the MOMENT I finally did what I KNEW I needed to do (but was too scared to do)...

Was the moment things got easier and felt more aligned.

And - get this:

After making the ONE big decision of letting ONE key member go (something I delayed for 6 months because it was the #1 hardest decision to make out of all the decisions), the rest of the scary decisions fell into place:

Team members that I knew weren't aligned resigned on their own.

Agencies that I let go, actually told me later they were relieved because they were planning to let ME go in 2022.

One of my most experienced contractors ended up stepping up in a major way and let me know she was offering Chief of Marketing Services AND connected me to a Chief of Staff AND a Chief Financial Officer.

^ Basically, ALL the positions I felt too overwhelmed/"not ready" to hire for... I ended up getting connected to in the easiest and most seamless way possible!

In short, what I'm trying to say is that me delaying decisions almost all of 2021 energetically drained me without me actually realizing it.

And guess what? When you are energetically "not there" - this eventually affects the way you show up in your content and your business.

Once you remove those energy blocks, whether it's people, environments, strategies, or something else... the path then becomes A LOT clearer and things become A LOT easier.

#2: Protect your zone of genius at all costs.

In the book Clockwork, the Queen Bee Role concept is introduced.

When you think of the Queen Bee in an actual beehive, her sole job is to reproduce, and all the worker bees aim to protect the Queen Bee. Without her, everything falls apart. 🐝

Not only this, if she cannot properly do her job, she will either die, or the entire hive will move onto another Queen Bee.

In your organization, the Queen Bee Role is your highest value, most expensive, hardest to hire, and hardest to train asset on the team.

9/11 is an example where the entire industry failed to protect the Queen Bee, aka the Pilot. Without the pilot, nothing would work and no one would be able to get to their destination safely.

After hiring some C-Level staff on my team who TAUGHT me this concept, I learned that I am the Queen Bee, and the role that I do that no one else can do on my team is to show up and perform as a content creator.

The problem in 2021 is that:

1. I didn't realize I was the Queen Bee, so I would always volunteer to "help" team members out with small tasks like admin, tech trouble shooting, graphic design, landing page set up, spreadsheets, etc.

2. My team didn't know I was the Queen Bee, so everything that they felt they were at capacity for, they would ask me to do - because hey, I'm the business owner, so someone's gotta do it.

Both of these issues is what led to me being out of my zone of genius and this is where things fell apart, because when I am not in my zone of genius - the business suffers as a result.*

*Note, my unique business model requires CONTENT (free and paid) to be the Queen Bee Role. Our content and personal brand is what sets us apart from our competitors. In your business, the Queen Bee Role can be different!

Now if you're reading this and you're a solopreneur - it's understandable that you would be doing everything and you may not have the luxury yet to have a team to protect your role.

At the same time, don't let the small admin stuff get in the way of your zone of genius: whether your zone of genius is coaching, content, or something else.

Remember: It's easy to get carried away with all the "paperwork" of starting a business - but just remember what makes you different - and don't lose sight of that.

#3: Don't project your limiting beliefs onto your audience.

As I reflect, the big turning point of where I felt most disconnected and awkward in my content was when I started to really level up my personal life.

I always thought that I'd want to share big milestones like buying a car, a house, or a Birkin bag once I achieved them...

But the truth is, when I finally achieved those things, I felt awkward as fuuuuck.

"Oh my god I'm unrelatable now."

"People are going to think I'm a sell out."

"I can't talk about my 7 figure problems, my audience isn't "there" yet."

While all of these COULD be true... it honestly made me feel so trapped when I watered my content down to please other people.

But at the time, I was sooo stuck in my own head, so I stuck with what I knew and what I thought people wanted:

How to grow on Instagram! How to get likes! How to get started with _________________!

While these topics are still things I can teach and share, what I realized is by playing it "safe", I was also playing small.

Worst of all, when I censored my content, I also wasn't growing WITH my audience AND I wasn't letting my audience grow with ME.

Because let's be real: I am so much more than showing you the 1-2-3's of Instagram!

👀 So let's recap, shall we?

1. Delaying decisions is the heaviest weight you can create for yourself

The hardest decisions yield the highest pay offs.

I challenge you to honestly ask yourself what is an uncomfortable decision you've been putting off, and I urge you to confront it sooner than later.

2. Protect your zone of genius at all costs.

Ask yourself why did you start a business in the first place?

What activities light you up? YOU are the most valuable asset in your business.

Respect it and protect it.

When you operate in your zone of genius, everything else flourishes.

3. Don't project your limiting beliefs onto your audience.

Mine was thinking that successful people are unrelatable, and so I kept myself small on purpose.

This led to resentment and ultimately feeling more disconnected than ever before.

Your limiting beliefs on the other hand, could be something entirely different.

Do you assume your audience can't afford your services?

Do you assume that your audience won't like the pivot you've been itching to do?

Catch yourself and correct yourself before ya wreck yourself!

Linh, it has been an absolute pleasure to write you every week, but if I'm being honest - I write these more for myself than anyone else.

There's something extremely therapeutic to write from the heart, reflect back on the crazy journey, and be able to serve through the lessons I've learned.

My goal always is to make the journey of being a business owner and content creator a lot easier for you than it was for me - and to help you step into the creator and CEO you REALLY want to become.

If you got to the bottom of this email, screenshot and post your favourite section of the email in your Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co so I know! ❤️️ I'd love to see it

(Psst.. it's a lot easier for me to see IG story tags than DMs!)

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊

PS: Not sure if you saw on my IG stories or latest Youtube video, but I recently launched a Sales Page template with coaches, consultants, and course creators in mind!

The CEO of BrandUp, Anna (also a biz bestie), and I came up with a brilliant idea:

"What if we collaborated on a sales page template for online creators to get their page up QUICK… without having to spend the time or money on something custom?"

We combined BrandUp's expertise and eye for aesthetic with my knowledge of the digital education space, and created THE ultimate sales page that is built for conversions.

Check it out:

The Vanessa Sales page Template

You can use code "VANESSA" for 10% off at checkout :)

Psst.. when I launch my next program, I'll be using this exact template too!

👇 Here's a peek of what the template looks like! 👇

Psst... If you are not quite there yet when it comes to monetizing, then click here and attend my free training if you haven't already. This is where I share the steps on monetizing as a content creator with 1:1 coaching or consulting offers. 😊 - Vanessa | | I was successful because I was stupid. | "Hearing both your perspectives made me realize that I'm often looking for the "right" solution, and now I realize there really isn't one.

A lot of my business initially was built on just fulfilling what people wanted from me.

(ie: You want more Instagram tips? OKAY! I'll be the Instagram girl! You want this program? OKAY! I'll make one for you!)

Now that I'm entering my 4th year, it's really settling in for me that this business is no longer a short term project. It's something that takes up majority of MY life.

Listening to both of you made me realize that you are both successful because you designed a business that aligns most with you, your values, and your desired business/lifestyle design.

I also noticed both of you have a lot of certainty around those decisions because those decisions were made based on you trusting yourself and your intuition. They were 100% made by you and no one else.

Whereas for me, I often don't trust myself, so I don't trust my decisions, and I try to find the "perfect" blueprint by asking what everyone else is doing."

What I put up top on this week's newsletter is word-for-word what I texted to my friends Jereshia Hawk and Glo Atanmo when I was stuck on making a critical decision in my business.

Without getting into too much detail (because I'll reveal the changes when the time comes in March), the question I asked J and Glo was around how I should re-structure my program.

To my surprise, both of my friends shared totally polar opposite approaches to how they ran their businesses - yet both were incredibly successful, happy, AND confident in their philosophies and methods.

So when two leaders in the same space I'm in gave me two extremely opposite ends of the spectrum on how they structure their programs, it was a breath of fresh air.

That's why in typical bullet point fashion, I'm going to breakdown my learnings from this conversation:

#1: I was successful because I was stupid.

When I think back on my peak success, I think about the 1st and 2nd year of my business (particularly the 1st).

It was a time where I didn't overthink every move I made, and a time where I had no idea what automations, funnels, and "boundaries" even were.

In my first year, I did a lot of unconventional things:

Shared detailed and advanced strategies on Youtube like an open book

Hosted free "coffee chat" calls every Thursday with whoever wanted to pick my brain (I would do free coaching for 8 hours straight on Thursdays!)

Created a Facebook group where I did free trainings every week

Sent voice notes to every person who messaged me or mentioned me

Today, a lot of these things are no no's:

"You shouldn't overdeliver - that should be paid."

"You need to have better boundaries - you are training your audience to never pay you."

"If you don't remove X, then it'll be impossible for you to scale."

The list goes on...

While a lot of this is TRUE (and we'll talk about that in Takeaway #2), the MAIN thing I realized is I had explosive growth in 2019 ($0 to $500,000) because I was different.

Unlike all the other marketers and business owners out there, I had a radically different approach to how I made my audience feel.

Simply put: I was extremely successful because I was extremely stupid.

And I don't mean stupid in a bad way - I mean stupid in a "I don't know what the heck I'm doing" way.

There is an incredible strength in being naive in the online business space - and I truly believe that I was at the peak of my creativity BEFORE I started joining high-level group coaching programs that told me what I "should" be doing to be successful.

#2: There are different seasons in business. Honour them!

At the same time, it would be incredibly unfair to say that joining coaching programs and masterminds were a mistake.

While my season of naive innocence and over-giving led me to $0 to $500,000 in my first year...

Learning automations, setting boundaries, and executing the blueprint to scale my business helped me go from from $500,000 to $2,500,000 in my second year.

This was the year where I executed evergreen funnels, upsells, webinars, sales sequences, outsourcing, boundaries.... all the things.

And looking back, I don't regret a single thing:

Because at that stage of my business, I needed to learn those things.

It was a season in my business where if I didn't have structure, I likely would have been hospitalized for the constant manual output I was doing:

Multiple coaching calls a week, uploading 2 YT videos per week while posting daily on Instagram, responding to 100s of customer support and DM tickets myself - the list goes on.

But here's what I think now:

1. Learning sound business strategies and following a mentor's blueprint is necessary for you to build structure, discipline, and a framework to get initial results... so you have a good baseboard to actually LEARN.

2. Once you develop more experience as a business owner PLUS have a stronger infrastructure to support YOU as the CEO (ie: Team, Systems, Personal Mindset + Maturity, etc), it's then time to modify the strategies to what works and what feels good for you.

^ #2 is the season of business that I'm at right now:

I'm digging deep into my values and unlearning/undoing a lot of business practices I currently have that don't 100% align with my values (not as Vanessa the Business Owner... but as Vanessa The Human Being.)

I'm asking myself what types of decisions are the ones that will allow me sleep well at night knowing I did my very best, and whether I can defend those decisions 100% because it was a decision made by me vs. what someone told me to do.

Finding more creative ways to get the results I want for myself and my clients, even if it takes more work, so that I can feel in integrity with what I'm building.

#3: There is no good or bad. Just different.

While I always knew that there were a million and one ways to build a business, last week's conversation where I sought the advice from two successful entrepreneurs made me TRULY realize that there is indeed no right or wrong.

There is only something that is right for you.

For me, it wasn't even about learning how Jereshia ran her business.

It also wasn't even about learning how Glo ran hers.

It was me witnessing HOW they explained their VERY different business decisions that gave me the biggest learning lesson.

They both spoke with so much conviction and certainty, and even AFTER hearing each other's very different business set ups, they still stood their ground on their approach while also respecting the other persons.

It was beautiful to see as a recovering people pleaser, because I often will feel bad or insecure about my decisions after hearing someone else's (especially if they have more experience than me.)

It was this moment last week where I learned that there really are many ways to run a business - and at the end of the day, the only thing you really have is you and your peace.

If you can't be happy with yourself, and the decisions you make in business is causing you lack of peace...

Then what's the point of all of this?

👀 So, what's the recap?

1. Being new and naive can be your biggest differentiator. Use stupid to your advantage.

Often times we feel inadequate because we don't have X years of experience or we aren't at the level we want to be.

If I'm honest, I miss the times where I didn't know anything about anyone and executed what felt good in the moment.

This led to a lot of innovation (that I didn't even know was happening), and it allowed me to stand out even more because I was different from all the "other" creators, entrepreneurs, coaches, etc. out there.

Not knowing things can be a huge advantage - so never be afraid to make mistakes.

Just take action - even if you are unsure; because what's most important is that progress is being made.

And if that uncertain action happens to BE a mistake, then understand my next point:

2. There are different seasons in your business. Honour them and be okay with that.

Some seasons will be about intense hustle and taking targeted action, while other seasons will be about rest and preserving peace.

Some seasons will be able buckling down and learning from a mentor step by step, while other seasons will be about going with the flow and trusting your intuition.

Remember that business is not always linear, and neither are we as humans.

We evolve, we change, and most importantly, we mature.

But just because we grow, it doesn't necessarily mean the things we've done in previous seasons are bad.

Things need to happen for a reason to help you get to the place you are today AND to help you get to the place you want to go.

Never feel embarrassed or ashamed about the things that led you here.

Instead, let your business change with you, AND let yourself change to what your business requires throughout the different seasons.

3. There is no right or wrong. Just different.

You can learn from me, Gary Vee, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, Brendan Burchard, or <insert ABC mentor here> and you will realize that everyone's approach to success is different.

When you limit yourself from the people you learn from, you are also limiting your possibilities for success.

Not to mention, when you encounter someone who has a different approach to business than you - it never means one method is better than the other.

It just means that the methods are different, and it's up to YOU to decide which ones you "jive" most with.

Oh and by the way?

If NOTHING jives with you - then there's nothing in any "rulebook" that says you can't experiment and try something new, even if no one else has done it.

(Spoiler alert: My conclusion after listening to both Jereshia's AND Glo's very different approaches made me create my OWN approach.)

Of course, breaking what you believe to be "business rules" can take a lot of guts - but at the end of the day, even if it doesn't work out the way you thought it would, you gotta ask yourself:

"But did you die?"

Linh, whether you've been subscribed since the first email, or you recently joined our fam and this email is your first one - I want to thank you for sharing 10 minutes of your day with me to read this email I wrote to you.

Your time is precious, and I appreciate that.

Also: If you got to the bottom of this email, screenshot and post your favourite section of the email in your Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co ! ❤️️

Seeing your stories about the newsletter is literally THE highlight of my Mondays, and I hope my lessons resonated with you in some way shape or form.

My mission with these emails is to make your journey easier than it was for me, and to guide you into becoming the Content Creator and CEO you dream to become.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊

PS: Hey Content Creator! If you are in the season of starting a Youtube channel this year, I wanted to give a PSA that this week's video I dropped includes my updated beginner friendly tips on how to get started.

This includes my updated filming gear, tips on where to get Thumbnails edited for cheap, and an unconventional way of finding your "niche", hope you check it out!

Psst... you would like to learn how to monetize your content, then click here and attend my free training if you haven't already. This is where I share the steps on monetizing as a content creator with 1:1 coaching or consulting offers. 😊 - Vanessa | | Why most people are unhappy with their business. | What's up Linh!?

As I write this week's newsletter, I just woke up and am snuggled up in my hotel room bed in Los Cabos 🏖

Truth be told, I struggled to figure out what to write for this week's newsletter.

So much so that at around 12AM last night I said "Screw it! I'm going to take a nap and set an alarm for 2AM and write something after I rest a little."

Well, my friend...

2AM my alarm rang. Then I snoozed it to 3AM. Snoozed it to 5AM. Snoozed it to 7AM...

And now it's 9AM.

Has this ever happened to you? 😂

Pictured below: Me writing this email after snoozing 6x last night:

That said, this experience was the inspiration I needed to figure out the topic of this week's email.

LEGGO!

#1: You set your own deadlines. You are the boss.

Let's make it clear: I'm a total night owl and I'm NOT a morning person.

However, the on-and-off snooze situation I described above is something that I've gone through many times and seem to never learn my lesson.

Think about it:

For the 6 times that I snoozed, I could've just set a realistic wake up time and slept the full 7 hours instead of having constant interrupted sleep.

The reason why I kept setting my alarms for 3AM, 4AM, 5AM is because I set a rule that this specific newsletter needs to go out at 6AM every Monday.

"If it doesn't go out at 6AM, our subscribers will think I'm unreliable and unsubscribe!"

"If it doesn't go out at 6AM, my team is going to think I can't stick to our deadlines and they'll stop trusting me or think less of me!"

Que more people pleasing thoughts

But here's the thing that I remembered at some point last night when I said "Fuck it! I'm writing it whenever I wake up and I'm turning OFF this alarm.":

I set my own deadlines. I'm the boss.

How often have you felt pressure to meet a certain deadline, and as a result you ran yourself to the ground to meet the deadline you imposed on yourself AND have the authority to control?

Here's what I realized:

It's great to keep yourself accountable, but remember that majority of people on the internet are not keeping tabs on you. Their lives do not revolve around you.

Sure, there may be a few people who wondered why I hadn't sent a newsletter out at 6AM yet, but I am almost certain that the majority of my subs weren't waking up in the AM with the Content Creator to CEO Newsletter as their first waking thought.

The same thing applies to you.

You may THINK the world will fall apart if you miss a post, if you cancel an event, if you say "No" to an invitation, if you <insert scary thing here>... but the truth is:

The world will keep spinning, so you might as well take care of yourself first. 🌍

#2: Your values and rules control everything in your life.

Alright now it's time to go beyond just meeting deadlines, because this is inspiring me to bring up something I learned at Tony Robbin's Date with Destiny (DWD) event that I want to share with you.

In a nutshell, something I learned at DWD is that your values control everything in your life, and WITHIN these values, we create a subset of rules that determine how we operate in our day-to-day.

For example:

Before going to the DWD event, my #1 value was Praise (and no, I didn't even know that this was my #1 value until a series of exercises at the event that made me realize this myself.)

After uncovering all our values, the next question Tony asks is for each value, write down what has to happen in order to feel X value. These are basically the "rules" you've subconsciously set up for yourself.

Here's an example of some of mine:

Praise:

In order to feel Praise, I must have: People admiring me, telling me I’m doing a good job, recognizing my work, seeing me as inspiration, saying that I’ve exceeded expectations

Achievement:

In order to feel achievement, I must be: Winning awards, getting featured in brand names, knowing important people, having a strong resume, strong titles, being seen as successful

Capable:

In order to feel Capable, I must have: People trusting that I can get shit done just by knowing it’s in my nature, perfect execution on all things that I deliver, no one doubting my abilities, being able to tackle hard things

Imagine being someone with these set of values and rules. Do you think they're happy? How do you think a person with these rules would operate in their life?

If I objectively look at this... it honestly sounds like a stressful life.

"In order for me to feel Capable, I must have perfect execution in all things I deliver, and people always have to trust I can get stuff done, because I can."

^ No wonder I always put myself through the on-and-off Snooze torture last night. It's because I have this rule I subconsciously set up that I ALWAYS have to deliver - no matter what!

At the DWD event, after we uncovered our current list of values and rules, we then had to "undo" them and re-frame them.

So after a few hours of reflection and coaching, my new values and rules that I WANT to embody in my life looked more like this:

Courage:

In order for me to feel Courage, I must be:

Being honest and sharing the things that are on my mind, moving towards growth and having the courage to take on challenges to achieve my personal best. Being willing to do something different in order to achieve a different state, experience, or outcome.

Joy:

In order for me to feel Joy, I must be:

Choosing laughter, positivity, and finding even more joy that exists in my life

Love:

In order for me to feel Love, I must be:

Moving towards warmth, deepening and strengthening my relationships, lifting others up and seeking to understand all perspectives

Imagine being someone with THESE set of values and rules:

1. Quite a different life
2. A lot easier to achieve

Also notice that the new values that I want to embody have nothing to do with anyone else other than myself. I don't need permission from anyone to feel Courage, Joy, and Love.

Of course, I'm human and I can slip back into my old values and rules of operating... and putting pressure on myself to get this newsletter out to you in time by 6AM is an example of my old value of being Capable creeping up again.

HOWEVER, I'm glad that this happened because it was the reminder I needed, and I hope this reminder helps you too :)

#3: A tired content creator is an uncreative content creator.

Last but not least the last 10 hours of sleep torture has taught me that a tired content creator is an uncreative content creator.

My creative juices right now writing this email even though I missed the deadline is completely different from the energy I had last night, struggling to even write a single sentence.

Of course, being a content creator AND a business owner is hard.

Not all the time can you be energetic, happy, and creative - which is why I created this newsletter in the first place because I feel you.

Here are a few tips I have for you when it comes to energy preservation:

Batch and schedule content in advance (technically I should have done this, but hey - we all slip up!).

Be realistic with your output (or at least the output you communicate to your audience)

For example, you can tell your audience that they can expect 1 video a week (which is your minimum) EVEN THOUGH you technically can produce 2 videos a week. Anything extra is a nice bonus, not a disappointment when it's not achieved :) - Under promise and overdeliver.

Have a great relationship with your community (and your team if you have one!)

When you have a tight relationship with your audience and your team, you will build a community that cares about YOU as a human being - not just a content producing machine.

Every time I take a break, of course there will be some people who are disappointed that they aren't getting content. However, I'm extremely lucky that the people who are the strongest advocates, genuinely prefer that I take a break or miss a deadline instead of completely burning out.

Ask yourself if there's a way you can build radical transparency and authenticity with your audience.

How can you be honest with them on where you're at, instead of suffering in silence and putting on a perfect persona? Remember: Authenticity rules in a sea of perfectly curated social media posts.

SLEEP!

Y'all... I don't know if it's because I'm approaching 30 soon in a few years but man... I can't work like I used to without sleeping the full 8 hours.

A good night's rest can do wonder for your body and mind, so learn from me:

If you have the choice to work late at night vs. wake up refreshed to start the work again... ALWAYS choose the latter EVEN if it means missing a deadline.

Your quality of work will significantly improve and you'll get the work done faster than if you pushed yourself to the ground to finish something.

👀 So, what's the recap?

1. You set your own deadlines. You choose your own experience.

Burning yourself to the ground just to meet a deadline you self imposed AND have the ability to control is a silly game to be playing.

Remember: You didn't decide to be an entrepreneur to lose complete control of your sanity.

We often feel pressure to grow fast, to succeed by a certain amount of time, or to look a certain way to certain people - but just remember that if these expectations are causing your mental health to deteriorate - you're still playing a short game, not a long one.

Remember: You're building something great, and greatness takes time.

Reconsider the harsh deadlines and expectations you've been imposing on yourself, and ask yourself:

"What would this look like if it were easy?"

"How do I want to feel every day in my business, and is what I'm feeling now a reflection of that?"

2. Your values and rules control everything in your life.

Ask yourself what your true values are, and be honest with yourself.

If you need help finding values, my recommendation is to search "List of life values" on Google and start highlighting the words that stand out to you.

Of those words, you'll want to short list to your top 5 - 7.

Then start ranking each value from top to bottom to see which ones you prioritize most.

Once you have your list of your top 5-7 values, you then want to ask yourself "What needs to happen in order for me to feel X value?"

^ Whatever you answer are the rules you've been operating life in, whether you realize it or not.

Remember: If you want to change your life, change your values and change the rules you've set up.

Truth be told, most of us have set ourselves up to be unhappy, burnt out, anxious, and stressed BECAUSE of the subconscious rules we've set for ourselves, which as a result, make it so difficult for us to actually be happy.

Curious to see how you'll shift after learning about this concept!

3. A tired content creator is an uncreative content creator.

Your best work happens when you are your best self.

Take me for example: All my recent videos since 2022 started have been met with a lot of positive feedback.

"You're energy is so different now!"

"Vanessa is BACK!"

"I love this new content and style!"

My secret sauce to this resurgence?

1. A shift in values.

See point #2 above. Joy is my #1 value now - so overall how I've been operating my life and biz has been pretty great because I choose it to be :)

What values can you shift in order for you to finally feel good about yourself, your life, and your business?

2. Putting myself first.

Making uncomfortable decisions because I know it will serve my company and myself the most in the long term.

SLEEPING.

Staying in my zone of genius.

Delegating AND letting go things that 1) Take a lot of effort yet 2) Don't yield high returns.

For you, I want you to answer honestly:

What's an area of your life you've been neglecting that you want to take better care of?

What's an uncomfortable decision you're putting off?

What is something you're spending A LOT of time on, but hasn't produced any type of impact in the last 6 months?

^ Psst... before you answer this question, I want you to check out this post I wrote on Instagram first!

Linh, we made it and thanks for your patience for today's email!

As you can see, I'm having too much fun in Los Cabos 😂

Here's a pic of me at the Marina yesterday:

As always: If you got to the bottom of this email, screenshot and post your favourite section of the email in your Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co ! ❤️️

Seeing your stories about the newsletter is literally THE highlight of my Mondays - I always look forward to checking out my story mentions to see which parts of the email resonated with you. I'll be checking even though I'm in Cabo right now!

My mission with these emails is to make your journey easier than it was for me, and to guide you into becoming the Content Creator and CEO you dream to become.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊

PS: If you're someone who's interested in learning how to level up your earning potential - this week's Youtube video is worth checking out.

Yes, I know the thumbnail is cringey AF, but I explain WHY within the first minute of the video.

Regardless if you are in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond - I know that this video will give you a lot of great insights on the 4 ways to build wealth in 2022, my experience with investing, and my thoughts when it comes to increasing your net worth.

Give it a chance, and click here to watch the video :) | | 3 content tips that are working right now. | Hey Linh!

So I recently posted this week's Youtube video which was a VLOG.

Doing VLOGs have always been outside of my comfort zone for many reasons:

I find them time consuming, hard, and stressful to make.

BUT - I did the dang thing anyway, and finally uploaded my first VLOG of the year.

Here's what it looks like:

Since this VLOG took up my whole week last month, it inevitably taught me a lot of lessons around content creation.

Not to mention, having the TIME finally to finally be able to VLOG also made me super grateful for my TEAM and reflect on how far I've come when it comes to running a company.

This is exactly why I recently polled the Content Creator to CEO fam on my Instagram (@vanessalau.co) to ask what topic you'd like me to cover in this week's newsletter, because I was torn between those two topics!

There were 2 options:

1. Information about my team and hiring journey, OR
2. Content Tips

Here were the results:

It's safe to say that Content tips won by a landslide - but if you voted for team breakdown, not to worry! We will cover all things TEAM in next week's newsletter :)

That said, if you voted for CONTENT TIPS - you're in luck! Because in this week's newsletter I'm going to share the top 3 things that have been helping ME a lot recently with my content game.

Keep reading!👇

#1: Focus on Documenting, not Creating.

Let me go into detail on my top reasons why I hate vlogging on my Youtube channel, despite it being one of the most highly requested videos from my most loyal and supportive community members:

I feel stress thinking of how to add value inside the VLOG

(What's the story? What should I show? What would be interesting?) - it causes me to overthink, to the point where I feel I can't hit "record" until I know what the plan is.

I feel like it's time consuming because I have to think about filming content every hour, every day, with the vlog in mind vs. a regular video where I film for a few hours and it's done.

I get worried that I've filmed all this footage and the end result not being great, which would mean I wasted all my time.

Bottom line: Vlogs stress me out because they are harder for me to control the end result.

BUT... there was one thing that one of my favourite Youtubers, Maisyleigh said on her Instagram story that helped me A LOT:

She used to feel a lot of stress when it came to creating content, but what helps her is when she stops trying to create a calculated piece of content... and instead just whips out her phone to document what she's doing.

Seeing this perspective helped me implement these two shifts:

Whipping out my iPhone to film random things in my life instead of feeling I need to have my fancy Youtube camera and a specific pre-determined plan in order to create content.

(For example: My recent VLOG is a mix between footage captured from my Sony ZV-1, my iPhone, and my MacBook screen recording.)

Letting go of trying to control the end result, and trust that I can figure out how to "piece" the content in post-production.

^ All of these things made vlogging A LOT less stressful for me, and I actually really enjoyed the process the moment I saw it as "documenting" instead of "creating".

"But Vanessa! This is irrelevant to me, I'm not a Youtuber and I don't VLOG... how does this advice help me?"

^ Good question, please read lesson #2 below on how this applies to Instagram:

#2: Turn your IG stories into reels!

Something I do A LOT on Instagram stories is using the Hyperlapse app to film behind the scenes of me working or filming.

I do this because I think it's interesting, adds dynamic to my IG stories, and based on follower feedback, you guys love seeing behind the scenes content.

Hyperlapses are super easy to make:

I turn on the Hyperlapse app, put my iPhone on a tripod, hit record, and go about my task.

After 2 minutes, I stop recording, save the hyperlapse, and post it on my IG story.

Here's an example of what a Hyperlapse looks like (this is one I filmed while I was filming a Youtube video #inception):

Here's the problem I encountered, though: Posting these on IG stories is great, but IG stories disappear after 24 hours.

After creeping my friend Glo's Instagram feed (She's a beast at Content btw. Her instagram is @glographics), I noticed a number of her Instagram reels are quote posts on top of videos.

This is when I got the inspiration to combine my quote posts with my Hyperlapses, and turned them into IG reels, like this post here:

Here's how I did it:

Step #1: Upload the Hyperlapse to Canva Step #2: Write my quote/thought on my Twitter account Step #3: Take screenshot of my quote Step #4: Paste my quote on my Hyperlapse in Canva Step #5: Download and post to IG

(I usually airdrop it to mobile and post via mobile since you can't schedule Reels at the moment on desktop.)

The result?

Increased engagement because the content shows my face Utilization of IG Reels, which is still a feature IG is pushing more Repurposing my Hyperlapses (stories and IG reels!)

Try it yourself and see how you like it! So far, it's been working really well for me.

PS: I don't have a "plan" when I film my hyperlapses. I do them to simply document what I'm doing, and I figure out what to do with the piece of content later!

#3: Running out of content related to your niche? Share your life instead.

Another thing I realized was stressful for me when it came to vlogging was thinking that my life wasn't interesting enough.

The same thing applies to Instagram.

I always felt like I couldn't post personal photos UNLESS I write a long caption trying to tie that image into something related to my niche (business and social media).

UNTIL.... I posted this photo on my feed last month:

Fun fact:

Ever since making my Instagram account more business related, I no longer really care how I look like in group photos with friends because I know I'll never post it since it's not "related" to my niche.

BUT TO MY SURPRISE... I actually look super cute in a group photo for once! And I felt I looked way too nice not to post 😂

But when it came to the caption, I was stuck - there is NO WAY I could write anything that would match this pic. Do I write a long caption about female friendships? About work life balance?

After mulling over for HALF AN HOUR, I realized how silly it was and posted the pic anyway, realizing that in 2022, I don't want to censor what I choose to post on MY page.

After I posted? Boom. 6,300 likes with hundreds of comments loving to see this "side" of me.

The same thing goes for my recent Youtube videos I've been uploading on my channel since 2022 started.

Infusing more of my personality. Cutting into the videos and showing glimpses of my personal life and "side thoughts". Showing more aspects of my life.

Here's what I realized:

Your content can always be duplicated.

Your ideas can always ben replicated.

But you being YOU is what's going to differentiate you the most. No one can take what makes you YOU, away from you.

Not to mention, you are a multi-faceted human being, and so are your followers.

I don't eat live and breathe business every day of my life.

I love: Designer handbags and jewellery. My pets. Watching trash reality TV. My boyfriend. Celebrating things with my girlfriends.

The list goes on...

This is why I've decided that whenever I feel like I've run out of things to post, instead of posting nothing at all, I'm just going to post my life instead - because I want my followers to know that I am more than just my niche.

👀 Got to the bottom? Here's the recap:

1. Document > Create

A small shift in perspective and intention can change the way you feel about content creation.

When you constantly feel like you need to have an agenda and a pre-determined plan, theme, or end result for your content, it can lead to increased stress when things don't go according to plan.

This is very specific to video content as mentioned above, but it can also apply to text based content.

For example, one things that's helped me is every time a thought comes to mind, I write it on the Notepad in my phone. I don't necessarily know if it'll turn into a content piece, but I document my thoughts and ideas regardless.

Of course, having processes and pre-planned content is still essential from a batching perspective - but when content creation starts to feel hard, I want you to challenge yourself by asking: What would this look like if it were easy?

Remember: Document first. Then figure it out in post-production later.

2. Turn videos of your life into reels. Add text if needed.

This is more of a strategy - but it's a strategy that has been working for me.

If you already love creating Hyperlapses, or even short video clips on your IG stories, consider increasing the shelf life of that content piece by turning it into an IG reels.

By the way, it also doesn't HAVE to be a Hyperlapse. It can be any type of video.

A good example is this IG reel I posted last week where I asked my boyfriend to take a quick walk on the beach with me.

I recorded our walk, and later snipped it to a 10 second clip, put music on it, and added text:

3. Don't be afraid to show more aspects of YOU!

I'll be one of the first people to tell you that niching down is important.

But niching down doesn't have to come at the expense of showing who you really are to your followers and supporters.

Your biggest strength is not your strategies, your tips, or your niche.

Your biggest superpower is you.

It doesn't matter if you have 50 followers, 5000 followers, or 500k followers: Remember you are a personal brand.

Your niche is ONE aspect of your personal brand, but there are many other things that attract someone to you over someone else:

They way you explain something Common hobbies and upbringings DIFFERENT hobbies and upbringings that make someone want to be more like you Your energy and vibe Your values and principals to how you approach LIFE Your style, your life hacks, your personal stories

The list goes on.

And if there's a voice creeping in saying "But I'm not interesting enough..." or "I'm scared...", I want to share a quote from Brianna Wiest's book "The Mountain is You" that helped me get more confident in posting things I REALLY want to post:

"Needing solitude too often usually means there is a discrepancy between who you pretend to be and who you actually are. When you show up to your life more authentically, it becomes easier to have people around you as it requires less effort."

^ This helped me a lot because creating content often drained me, which required me to need A LOT of alone time to recharge.

Reading this quote helped me understand that the reason I felt drained all the time was due to the discrepancy of what I was showing online vs. who I actually am in real life.

Does this apply to you?

ALLLRIGHT!

If you got to the bottom of this email Linh, screenshot and post your favourite section of the email in your Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co ! ❤️️

Seeing your stories about the newsletter not only makes me feel loved, seen, and supported, but it also helps me identify what's working with the newsletter, and see how I can improve these emails overtime!

As always: My mission with these emails is to make your journey easier than it was for me, and to guide you into becoming the Content Creator and CEO you dream to become.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊 | | Revealed: My entire team and hiring journey! | Regardless if you're a solopreneur, someone who's hiring their first VA, or a full stack entrepreneur with a team... this email is for you.

Linh, in today's email, I'm sharing it all when it comes to hiring and building a team.

Specifically 3 "chapters" are included in this email:

Top 3 Mistakes I've Made When It Comes to Hiring

Each Phase of My Growth and Who I Hired

What Positions I Have Now AND Where I Hired

For those wondering why I'm sharing, it's because

1. These are the top asked questions outside of the topic of social media,

2. My company is hiring 4 positions (deadline is today EOD - click here to learn more), and

3. We recently did a Town Hall with our BGA students that went on for EIGHT hours straight.

I wouldn't have been able to pull this off a year ago because I didn't have the right support system in place to keep ME in my zone of genius and peak performance.

Here's a little snippet of the amazing town hall we hosted with our clients where we shared a big announcement about our program ON TOP OF doing 6 hours worth of Q&A. It was SO MUCH FUN:

📌 Chapter 1: Hiring and Team Mistakes

👉 Mistake #1: Don't copy someone else's hiring plan or team structure.

Unless you have the exact same goals, business model, product suite, budget, AND strengths/weaknesses - DO NOT copy someone else's team structure.

For example, just because someone's first hire was a Facebook group VA, doesn't mean that yours should be.

Or just because someone hired a $50/hr Online Business Manager and their business exploded doesn't mean hiring the same position will make your business grow.

Keep reading this email and I'll walk you through each stage of my biz, who I hired, and the decision that led to it.

👉 Mistake #2: Don't hire someone to continue an inefficiency.

A mistake I made when I first started was hiring a moderator for my free Facebook group that was getting out of hand.

I paid this person hundreds of dollars per month to answer questions to people who weren't even paying me, delete spam from the group, and manage thousands of people who weren't even prospects.

This is what I should have done instead:

Create actual rules for the Free Facebook Group

Create stronger application to the Facebook Group (don't just accept anyone - accept people who actually meet the criteria)

Restructure the group completely (add dedicated prompts, FAQs, etc to reduce spam)

Long story short:

Before you hire someone, ask yourself if you have a process issue first, or if the tasks are even necessary or needed in the first place.

Often times we spend extra money to continue inefficiencies, when the money could be spent else where that would give you better ROI.

Still don't get it? Another example was when I spent tons of money on a graphic designer to create posts for my Instagram... only to find out a simple quote post and basic graphics got the same amount of engagement.

👉 Mistake #3: Don't bite your tongue.

You get what you settle for. Simple as that.

Always tell your new hire (or any team member) all the things that are on your mind.

What you appreciate, what you don't like, and how you like things done.

(PS: Radical Candor is a good book for this.)

Too many times I've bit my tongue in fear that I'd appear "mean" or "micromanaging".

While you should definitely let people do what they were hired to do, you should also never settle and set low standards as a result - especially in the beginning of the relationship.

Every time I've bit my tongue, it always resulted in resentment, and eventually those relationships did not work out in the long term.

Either I would eventually let the person go, or they would leave the company when I finally decided to speak up.

Remember: Even if you keep quiet, you are still training someone to see what your standards are.

Speak up if a task performed is not meeting your expectations to avoid miscommunication and resentment on both ends.

📌 Chapter 2: My Hiring Evolution

👉 Phase 1: Solopreneur with 1 VA + Video Editor (Year: 2019)

My first hire was a General VA because when I started to work with clients for my coaching business, I noticed I was making silly mistakes I usually didn't make.

For example: Typos in emails, sending wrong files to clients, forgetting or missing posts, etc.

At the time, I already was making some money in my business (signed my first 2-3 paying clients).

I was also running my Youtube channel, coaching clients, and building an audience on Instagram and Facebook.

When you start making silly mistakes in business, that's when it's a sign that you're at capacity.

How I found my VA? From my own community (she was a follower of mine!)

This person helped me with: Designing powerpoints, moderating Facebook groups (free and paid), putting together lead magnets, writing emails, and more. Think of it as an assistant, almost!

My second hire was a Video Editor because I was doing weekly Youtube videos and video editing was NOT something I liked doing, plus it was time consuming which took me away from running the actual business.

How I found my video editor? From my own community (she was a follower of mine!)

Remember: This was unique to me, and it came from me realizing that 1 task was taking up way too much time, but was necessary to be completed.

👉 Phase 2: Struggling Entrepreneur with Multiple Contractors (Year: 2020)

After I had my first 6-figure course launch (I packaged my 1:1 program into a course because I was booked out), I realize I finally had the money to expand my team.

At first, I thought I needed a Social Media Manager, and I remember there was a girl who reached out to me a few months back offering to help with social media. At the time, I wasn't ready so I said no.

I kept her in mind, and reached out via FB messenger to see if she was interested. She hopped on a call with me and did the interview.

At the end of the interview, she disclosed that she was actually now training to be an OBM (Online Business Manager) and explained to me what an OBM does: Manage your business and projects, help you hire, and set up systems for your biz.

This is where I realized I needed an OBM more than a Social Media Manager, so I hired her part-time. This position helped me go from texting team members via Whatsapp, to getting systems like Slack, Asana, etc.

The OBM also helped me hire 1x Customer Support VA and 1x Social Media Manager (all part time contractors, found via Virtual Assistant Facebook Groups)

Eventually as my business grew, I realized that all of these contractors worked with other clients, and couldn't spare me more hours (and they also kept increasing their prices which became out of my control) ... so this is when I realized I needed full time staff instead.

^ There's actually more to the story, but that's for another day...

👉 Phase 3: Identity Crisis Entrepreneur with Employees (Year: 2021)

I thought I needed ALL full time employees to be successful once I hit the 7 figure mark, so I hired a bunch of employees.

In 2021, my team looked like this (all full time, salaried staff with benefits):

🌟 Business Operations Manager: Someone who managed the projects and managed the team.

Found via my own network because we went to school together.

🌟 2x Customer Support: Manage emails and DMs between prospects and paid clients

1 found via Virtual Assistant Facebook Group, and 1 found via my community.

🌟 2x Community "Managers": Manage our student Facebook group, help students and encourage them.

1 is the original general VA I hired (my very first hire back in 2019!) and 1 found via my community

🌟 Social Media Manager: Work with me to create social media posts, help increase our engagement, schedule things

Found via my community (she was also a BGA student!)

🌟 Executive Assistant (didn't work out and never re-hired for this position): Help me with admin tasks and personal tasks.

Found via traditional job posting online in a job board.

2 Major Learning Lessons here:

❌ If your business continues to grow, you WILL outgrow some positions

At the time some positions were exactly what I needed, but as my business grew, I realized the business needed some staff with more experience, or the business didn't need that position anymore.

❌ Some positions don't need to be salaried full time positions

For example, I definitely didn't need two full time salaried staff to run a Facebook group, or full time salaried staff to do Customer Support.

Some positions should be contractor positions, while others (ie: Manager or Leader roles) should/could be salaried employees.

👉 Phase 4: CEO with a Company of Leaders and Rockstar Doers (Year: 2022)

Keep reading because Chapter 3 breaks it all down!

📌 Chapter 3: My Team, Today.

👉 Here's who I have on my team today:

🌟 Leadership Team (Reports to me, the CEO):

Rose, Chief of Marketing: In charge of all the strategies related to driving top-line revenue for the company. Manages the entire Marketing Department with the focus of getting more leads, and converting leads.

Found via Referral.

Kylee, Client Success Manager: In charge of client retention and increasing the lifetime value of a client. Manages the entire Client Success Department with the focus on retaining customers.

Found via VA Facebook Group (Kylee was promoted to Manager and started with us in Customer Support!)

🌟 Marketing Team (Led by Rose):

Kyla, Marketing Assistant:

Assists Rose (Emails, Landing Pages, Admin, and more)

Found via posting the job posting in our own community. She moved from our CS department to Marketing (she used to do community support for us!)

Tara, Tech Assistant:

Assists both Marketing and Client Success with all things tech related to the funnel and product delivery.

Found via Virtual Assistant Facebook Group.

Kei, Video Editor:

Works with me directly to edit the Youtube videos and bring them to life.

Found via Referral.

🔥 WE'RE HIRING: We are hiring 2 positions to join this department!

Content Writer Social Media Manager

🌟 Client Success Team (Led by Kylee)

Joyce, Community Lead: Manages all things related to our product, BGA. Supports our clients inside our paid facebook group and keeps the program updated.

Found via our own community. Joyce was my first hire in 2019 when she was my general VA!

Diana, Customer Support: Liaises with customers and prospects via our DMs and Emails.

Found via posting the job posting in our own community.

🔥 WE'RE HIRING: We are hiring 2 more people to join this department!

Customer Support (x2)

🌟 External Consultants:

Veronica, Fractional Chief of Staff: With us for 3-6 months to up skill our leadership team. Found via referral.

George, Customer Journey Expert: With us for the year to help us rebuild our entire customer journey from top to bottom, a big project we are doing for 2022. Found via a group coaching program.

Emily, Finance Manager: Works with my bookkeepers + accountant and works with me as CEO to forecast the numbers and budget. Found via referral.

Cass, HR Consultant: Helps me when sticky situations arise with hiring, termination, and managing employees in general. Found via my friend network.

Nina, Lawyer: Works with Client Success team closely as an advisor for sticky refund situations, escalations, or polishing up our T&Cs. Found via BGA - she was a student of mine back in 2019.

... and that's hiring and team in a nutshell, explained in 10 minutes or less in this email!

Regardless of where you're at (Team of zero or full stack company), I hope this week's email provided some insight to you.

Can you do me a favour, Linh?

BTW: If you want more emails like this where I share details about my biz, can you share your favourite section of this newsletter and share it on your Instagram stories (tag me @vanessalau.co so I know!)?

Seeing your stories about the newsletter allows me to see what's resonating, and see how I can improve these emails overtime! 💛

As always: My mission with these emails is to make your journey easier than it was for me, and to guide you into becoming the Content Creator and CEO you dream to become. I hope I achieved this mission today.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊 | | I was uninvited to be featured in Forbes. | "I have known about you for few years now. I started following and supporting you from when you had a just few thousand followers on YT and IG.

I actually applied to work with you when you were offering 1 on 1 coaching services and even invited you on to a podcast I was producing because I wanted to do whatever I could to support your growth.

However, I never received a response from you.

We want to promote the brands and people who are helping lift others up in this article, and I personally didn’t get that experience from you.

For this reason, I’m deciding not to move forward with interviewing you for the Forbes article.

Sorry for the inconvenience of receiving the invitation and then receiving this email."

It's May 12, 2021 and I just got invited to be featured in a Forbes article.

I'm over the moon.

"Is this really happening!?"

"Am I finally going to be in a Forbes article like all the other entrepreneurs I look up to!?"

"Is this how it happens!?"

I'm jumping up and down, mind blown that I was invited to this opportunity by my friend Selena Soo (who at the time, I had only spoken to via email - so I was genuinely surprised that I was thought of in the first place!)

Then on the morning of May 14th, I get the email that you would have just read at the header of this week's Content Creator to CEO newsletter.

When Selena connected me to the opportunity, she had connected me to Celinne (who would be interviewing for the article), and Hanson (who was in charge of the SEO for the article).

The email where I was uninvited to be featured in Forbes was written by Hanson.

My heart dropped.

I was embarrassed, ashamed, and speechless.

I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

It wasn't only the fact that I was uninvited to the Forbes opportunity (opportunities come and go)...

But it was the fact that someone had such a negative experience with my brand that they did not feel I was a good fit to be a part of an article that was all about entrepreneurs who lift others up.

In this week's Content Creator to CEO newsletter, I want to share the lessons I learned about my experience of being uninvited to be featured in Forbes, and the story of what happened next.

Keep reading...

👉 1. Don't let building an audience get in the way of building a community.

When I received Hanson's email, the first thing I did was search him on Instagram and check our message history.

Yup - he's right.

Back in 2019, I had responded to him here and there, but eventually dropped off.

Following this, I looked him up in my database of previous 1:1 coaching applications.

Yup - he applied but I never got back to him.

At the time in 2019, this was when my business really blew up.

I went from being able to serve everyone because my following was small, to suddenly not being able to even keep up with the influx of messages and applications.

Even though I knew that this was an unfortunate situation where I had genuinely missed his messages, I couldn't help but feel ashamed.

I was ashamed because deep down, it was true.

At some point in my journey, as my audience grew, I started seeing everyone as a number.

I remember when I got my first few applications to my 1:1 coaching - I was over the moon!

I would creep every applicant, DM them, and give them the whole VIP treatment - even before they became a client.

But once the applications grew from 10, to 50, to 100... each application just looked like a number to me.

The same goes for followers and subscribers.

I thought that,

"Hey, I have 20k followers now. I don't need to respond to DMs anymore."

"I have 50 applications now. I don't need to send a rejection email. They'll get the message that there's no space for them."

"I have way too many clients. I don't need to do coaching calls anymore!"

Of course, as your platform grows, it WILL almost be impossible to get to every single DM, text, or email.

I had this problem at 20K followers, and I still have this problem at 200K followers.

There is a fine line between giving massive amounts of value to your community, and enforcing your boundaries as a creator, CEO, and human being that also as your own needs.

However, getting uninvited to be featured in Forbes taught me the lesson that the people who interact with you online aren't just numbers you see on the screen.

They're people.

Speaking of people, here's some of our lovely clients from our BGA mentorship call last week!

👉 2. Ask yourself: Do your actions actually line up with your values?

One of the most embarrassing things about receiving that email was that just two weeks before the incident, we had launched our new website with our company values plastered in the "About" section.

Specifically, it read:

"We deeply care about our customers, team mates, audience members, and our world community. We always do our very best to make sure our people feel seen, respected, and heard - even at scale. We aim to leave lasting impressions and experiences with the impact we make."

Talk about ironic.

How often do we as business owners prioritize "revenue generating activities" over interactions with our communities?

How often do we decide who is worth our time based on the amount of followers they have?

How often do we roll our eyes because "Ugh... people keep DMing me without paying me!"

The reason why Hanson's email stung was because it gave me the painful realization that no matter how fancy my website was, I wasn't living the values displayed on the page.

And if I wasn't living my values, then my team wasn't either.

At the time, responding to DMs, comments, and emails that weren't either,

A) Prospects, or B) Clients

... were not a company priority.

A reason was team capacity, but if I'm being honest, it was just something we simply didn't prioritize because we didn't actually see it as important.

Of course, a lot has changed since receiving Hanson's email, because shortly after realizing how misaligned my values and my actions were - no matter my intentions, I:

Held a team-wide meeting sharing Hanson's email and my learning lessons, while also using it as an example to explain to my team WHY it's important for all of us to make people feel seen, heard, and appreciated at every level - NOT just the paid level.

Created a year long plan to restructure our paid programs to be more aligned with our true values, hire more people to help with emails and DMs, and increase the time & resources dedicated towards building community (which by the way, many of these things you'll see this year in 2022!)

Personally dedicate 30 minutes a day myself to respond back to my own DMs and checking my inboxes. Yup - to this day, I still send voice notes to the few people I catch in my inbox!

Of course, I am still not perfect, and there is still a lot of work to do especially for an understaffed and high growth company.

However, as much as it was embarrassing to be uninvited from a Forbes opportunity...

I am so grateful that Hanson had the courage to uninvite me in the first place because his email was the kick in the pants I needed to start walking the talk when it comes to my values and intentions.

Because at the heart of it, we must remember one thing:

When you have a goal: It's not about your intention. It's about whether you did it or not.

👉 3. Be OK to admit when you're wrong and learn from it.

It took me many hours of deep reflection to figure out how I wanted to respond back to Hanson.

At the time, it wasn't about losing the Forbes opportunity that mattered most.

What was most important was apologizing for the negative impression I had on Hanson, and articulating what I would be taking away from it - because as embarrassed as I was, I truly was grateful for the interaction.

To this day, I am so glad I received this type of email in my 3rd year in business, rather than my 10th year in business.

So here's what I responded back with:

"Hi Hanson,

After going back to our DMs and your 1:1 application to see what happened, this decision makes sense.

Please know on my end I don’t feel any awkwardness at all and I am grateful that you are upfront on why you have decided not to interview. This way I can learn from this experience and see what I could do better for the future, so I thank you for that.

First and foremost, I know I disappointed you and I am sorry.

Especially as someone who tried to consistently support me in 2019 when I started my business, I totally understand this decision and how it might be out of integrity for you and the article. I wouldn’t want to interview me, either!

I also want to make sure you know what I’ll be walking away with from this interaction:

You supported my business during a period where I had little to no systems in place to manage large influxes of inquiries, applications, and messages.

Looking back (and in the future), I should have prioritized those things more to make sure the people who support me feel seen and heard.

It’s ironic because a recent company value I shared is to make sure as many people in our community feel seen, heard, and respected, yet this interaction alone proves to me that there is still so much more work left for me to do.

I want you to know that my intention was never to make you feel ignored and unappreciated, and I’m grateful for this full circle moment that will teach me an incredible lesson for life.

I wish you all the best with the interview and your future projects, Hanson.

Hopefully in the near future and if you’re open to it, you can give me another shot to make things right.

In the meantime, you’ve helped me see what areas in my business I need to work on, and how I may want to change the way I approach my own time management to prioritize building stronger relationships with others, no matter the size of the platform.

At the end of the day, I wouldn’t be in business if it weren’t for people like you who support it, and those 1:1 interactions and acknowledgement mean the world.

Thanks again for the opportunity and sending you all my best,

Vanessa"

To my surprise, this is what he responded back with (see screenshot):

So in the end, to my utter surprise, I did in fact end up getting featured in Forbes.

Here's the article if you were curious (even more shockingly, I was stunned to see that I was the first entrepreneur featured.)

Fast forward to today, Hanson and I remain good friends. Celinne and I remain good friends. And Selena and I remain good friends.

So what are the key takeaways I'd like you to take away from this story?

Let me break it down:

🌱 1. Don't let building an audience get in the way of building a community.

When you start hitting your milestones, it's easy to start forgetting why you started and the people who supported you along the way.

You'll get caught up in getting more followers, making more money, and achieving more things.

Soon enough, getting likes, comments, and followers will start becoming a number - like a video game.

While you think this mindset might only apply to people like me with bigger audiences, the same pattern tends to also happen to those who are just starting out, too:

"Ugh! I only got 30 likes on this post. I'm never posting again."

Okay... what about the 30 people who showed up to support you?

"Ugh! I only got 10 comments. I'm not even going to bother responding."

Okay... what about the 10 people who took time out of their day to root you on?

"Ugh! These people keep DMing me asking me for free shit. I'm so over this. DELETE!"

Okay... but what if pointing this person to the right direction could actually cause them becoming a paying customer when they are ready?

Hansons email left an impact on me - but I hope that it leaves an impact on you too.

Remember: Building community is different from building an audience.

🌱 2. Treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO.

While this is NOT to say that Hanson is a "Janitor", I couldn't help but think about this saying when I reflect back on the Forbes interaction.

If I'm being honest with myself, I am pretty sure back in 2019, if I knew Hanson was a part of the Forbes team, I would have responded differently.

I likely would not have ignored him, and I likely would have kept in touch.

How many of you would have done the same thing?

While it's easy to follow this philosophy in real life (because we're decent human beings)...

I realize that this philosophy is much harder to follow when it comes to social media when all you can see is the other person's username and profile picture.

Just as much as Hanson's email was a wakeup call for me - I really hope that it's a wakeup call for you, too.

🌱 3. Ask if your actions line up with your values - even as your business grows.

We see so many businesses post their values on their bio or website, including ourselves.

But how often are we actually living those values?

And if you have a team: Are you leading by example?

Because remember: Your team will also be an extension of your company values.

Not to mention, this becomes even trickier as your business grows.

As business owners, we prioritize our time focusing on making more revenue than we did last month, instead of sitting down to revaluate our processes and updating them to be aligned with our values.

For example, just a few weeks ago I made a major announcement to my paid clients about switching our program, The BOSSGRAM Academy, from Limited Time Access, to a Lifetime Access model because I realized that our old structure didn't truly align with my values.

(By the way: Stay subscribed to this newsletter because I'll be sharing about this switch more in depth in an upcoming email!)

🌱 4. Be OK with admitting when you've hurt someone, and genuinely learn from it.

Lastly, my biggest takeaway of being uninvited to Forbes, and then being invited back again was the power of apologizing - and actually meaning it.

To this day, I constantly think back on the lessons I learned from Hanson's email because I meant what I said when it comes to changing my business for the better.

Of course, it will take time, I am not perfect, and I will make mistakes.

Even though my story still had a happy ending, I know many of us will not be able to get the same opportunity.

^ And no, I'm not talking about the Forbes opportunity.

I'm talking about how many of you reading this may not be as fortunate as me to have someone explain how your actions made them feel.

This is the exact reason why I decided to share this story in todays newsletter.

Because as fearless content creators who are diligently growing our platforms...

I want this story to remind you to never lose sight of the people who support you in the first place.

Linh, wow - that was a real one.

I didn't think I would be sharing a story like this, but that's the beauty of the Content Creator to CEO Newsletter, because you never know how personal I might get!

By the way:

If you enjoyed this email and would like me to share more candid stories like these, please do me a favour and share your favourite section of this newsletter and share it on your Instagram stories (tag me @vanessalau.co so I know!) 💛

As always: My mission is to help you become the content creator you dream to become, while also helping you becoming the CEO you're born to be.

I hope I achieved this mission today by sharing this Forbes story.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊

👉 PS: I know many of you have questions when it comes to Press and Publicity, especially after reading my story about Forbes.

So, I have a resource for you! ⬇️

My friend, Selena Soo, who connected me with Forbes opportunity in the first place, is an amazing publicity strategist (and the most connected person I know).

She recently released an amazing new free gift—her 2022 Publicity Calendar.

This guide includes:

⭐ 40+ pages of persona brand story ideas you can pitch to the media (and exactly when to pitch them, too)

⭐ Strategies for tackling sensitive and timely issues to make your biggest impact

⭐ Selena’s top 3 insider secrets for scoring major media coverage (and building an audience of raving fans along the way)

I use this publicity calendar myself, and I love it because you can also use it to map out your social media + newsletter content calendar for the entire year.

Just click right here to download Selena's 2022 Publicity Calendar and I hope it helps!

👉👉 PPS: New video now up! My Instagram Strategy for 2022!

YUP - it's my first Instagram video of 2022! Watch this short and snappy video where I share my top 5 NEW strategies that have been WORKING for my Instagram account.

Click here to watch!

| | My learnings from being on 11 platforms | In this week's Content Creator to CEO newsletter, I'm going to elaborate on this request submitted by one of our loyal readers, Molly!

The reason why I'm using the word 'elaborate' is because reading this request sparked a lot of ideas beyond just how to manage making content. Because the reality is so much more than that!

Linh, I definitely feel in the 4 short years of being a content creator AND CEO who cares about the bottom line... I have certainly been around the block.

Here are all the platforms I've been on:

Instagram Youtube Videos Youtube Ads Facebook Ads Instagram Ads Facebook Groups Podcast TikTok Newsletter Pinterest LinkedIn Blogging

It's actually crazy now that I've listed out the # of platforms I have tried.

I honestly don't know if I should be ashamed or if I should be proud 😳...

That said, in today's email, I'm going to:

1. Share my content platform journey and some past workflows I've done, and

2. Reflect on my top 4 learnings as I've navigated 10 different content vehicles in the last 4 years

Let's go 🚀

🌍 History of Vanessa's Content Journey + Workflows

The list I shared up top seems scary, but I assure you that I didn't do ALL those platforms at once!

Here's my history, with context on the support I had for content specifically:

✨ 2019: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook Group

Support: Video Editor (PT Contractor)

Workflow and Post Frequency:

I create and schedule all content (IG and YT).

Video editor edits Youtube videos. Back then I posted 2x/wk for Youtube.

✨ 2020: Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, Blogging, Linkedin, Newsletter, Podcast

Support: Social Media Manager (PT Contractor), Video Editor (PT Contractor)

Workflow and Post Frequency:

I create all content for Youtube (1x/wk), Podcast (1x/wk), and Instagram (3x/wk).

I brief the video editor and they edit the YT video.

SMM optimizes and schedules my YT videos on a weekly basis.

SMM transcribes Podcast and Youtube videos into Blog Posts and shares it on Pinterest on a weekly basis.

SMM shares the weekly blogs in our weekly Newsletter, and repurposes the content on Linkedin on a weekly basis.

SMM also takes my IG captions and turns them into graphics on IG to repurpose content. This is batched on a monthly basis.

✨ 2021: Instagram, Youtube, FB/IG/YT Ads, Podcast, Tiktok

Support: Social Media Manager (FT Employee), Video Editor (PT Contractor), Ads Team

Workflow and Post Frequency:

I create all content for Youtube (1x/wk), Podcast (1x/wk), and Ads.

I write Instagram captions only. I batch this monthly.

SMM schedules and optimizes videos on YT and Podcast on a weekly basis.

SMM Creates graphics and write captions for IG based on my previous captions and schedules them on a monthly basis.

I film Tiktoks weekly. These double up as IG reels.

SMM edits and posts the Tiktoks (5x/wk)

SMM also helps find trending sounds and content ideas.

Ads team runs the ads.

✨ 2022: Instagram, Youtube, FB/IG Ads, Newsletter (so far)

Workflow:

I am the SMM (Yes - we are hiring a new SMM soon and they are being interviewed right now!)

Youtube is 1x/wk. Newsletter is 1x/wk. IG is 5x posts/wk (Usually 3x IG reels, 2x carousels or single posts)

I am currently chasing my tail with content so I've got no organization tips for you here other than calendar blocking 😅 Right now, I create content weekly.

For instance, I typically reserve Thursday and Friday for content creation - but because we're in a busy season right now, I've been creating content on weekends

(For instance, I'm writing this email right now on a Sunday.)

What's REALLY saving my ass right now is posting my IG reels which are just repurposed from my Youtube videos. Like this one.

So with that little history lesson, you probably have some questions.

Hopefully I can answer some questions by sharing my top takeaways from the last 4 years:

👉 Lesson #1. Hiring experienced contractors can be expensive, but worth it for certain functions.

In 2020 I was on more social media platforms despite having less people on my team because I worked with contractors who had a lot of experience.

At the time though, I thought they were expensive so I switched to hiring full time employees who had less experience, but I could train up.

What I didn't realize is that developing people takes time, so I ended up being busier than ever before because my business got more complex.

There's no black or white when it comes to employees vs. contractors and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for you.

I hope to share more learnings with you when it comes to team this year as this is still something I'm trying to figure out!

👉 Lesson #2. I don't need anyone to create new content for me. I just need someone to explode the content I've already done.

Through working with so many SMMs, I learned that no one can create my content better than I can (more about this in lesson #4.)

I used to think I should offload as much content creation activities to a Social Media Manager, but now I realize I've been approaching it wrong.

So here's what I'd want my next SMM to do this year instead:

Work with video editor to chop as many Youtube Video tips into 15 - 30 second IG Reels/Tiktoks and post them on their respective platforms (1 post per day).

Work with a content writer to repurpose my Youtube videos as blog posts and share them on Pinterest and Linkedin (maybe.) - Also optimize for SEO.

Repurpose some of the things I have written in these CEO newsletters (we're sitting on a content landmine here!) - Think: IG quote posts, mini blog posts, tweets, carousels, etc.

Make sure everything is scheduled and organized.

Interpret data and see what content pieces I should keep creating, what to axe, what platforms are working better than others and why.

👉 Lesson #3. If it's too good to be true... You might be right.

There's a reason why the strategy outlined above is focused on repurposing rich media. Keep reading.

In 2021 I did A LOT of Tiktoks and IG reels: Singing, dancing, acting.

Very entertainment focused. Very trend based.

I posted reels 2x a day 5x a week and I even grew 10,000 followers in 10 days.

I did a whole Youtube video about it because it was a strategy that was working for me at the time.

But here's the catch:

The moment life got busy and I stopped creating all that content, I ended up losing a lot of the followers I gained which stunted my growth.

Not to mention, revenue didn't really change despite gaining those 10k followers in 10 days. If anything, my revenue continued to plateau.

Learning lesson: Capitalizing on trends can work well for the short term, but might NOT attract higher converting followers in the long term.

This is why my strategy for 2022 is is more about focusing most of my effort on creating 1-2 solid pieces of content instead of trying to do a bunch of small things.

👉 Lesson #4. What constitutes as a "CEO" activity is subjective.

I used to think that I needed to hire a Social Media Manager to "offload" content until I realized that my content is the secret sauce to this company.

Without my content, we would lose our competitive edge.

However, I was led to believe that there were some activities that weren't "CEO" activities:

"Why are you writing captions at this stage in your business?"

"How come you're in Canva? Your SMM should be doing that, not you."

"Why are you coming up with content ideas? Isn't someone on your team doing that?"

As a result, in 2021, I tried to outsource as many "content" things as possible, and guess what?

I ended up hating my job.

I hated my job because I literally cut off the things that actually made me happy, and instead I did "CEO" activities that made me feel like I was drowning in paperwork.

So learning lesson? You decide what a CEO activity looks like. Protect your zone of genius - even if that means writing your own damn captions!

^ Just remember what's most important is outsourcing the things you A) Aren't good at, or B) Don't like doing.

Linh, when I saw Molly's suggestion I honestly had 20 content ideas buzzing, but I don't want this email to be too long than it already is!

That's why if you enjoyed this email and would like me to expand on more content tips or lessons learned, please do me a favour and share your favourite section of this newsletter and share it on your Instagram stories (tag me @vanessalau.co so I know!).

^ If you have follow up questions, put them in your story so I can screenshot it and remind myself to write another newsletter to answer them! ❤️️

As always: My mission is to help you become the content creator you dream to become, while also helping you becoming the CEO you're born to be.

I hope I achieved this mission today by sharing this Forbes story.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊 | | If not now, then when? | Linh,

When I quit my corporate job, I wanted to be a YouTuber.

I didn’t want to be a coach. I didn’t want to be a course creator. I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur.

I just wanted to create content full time and help other people.

When I was deciding if I should quit my job back in 2016, I couldn’t find ANY resources online that I related to. This is why I wanted to become a YouTuber.

Not having any relatable resources made the journey of quitting my corporate job that much more difficult and lonely.

So after 2 years of mulling it over and finally quitting in 2018 on my own terms…

I knew that my mission was to use social media and share my story so that no one would ever have to feel as alone as I did when I was questioning my path.

But here’s the catch once I DID become a YouTuber:

Being a YouTuber did not pay the bills.

Even if I could make adsense money, it would be pennies.

Affiliate marketing was difficult, because I didn’t have enough traffic.

E-commerce would be a challenge, because I couldn’t come up with thousands of dollars to create my own products.

Brand sponsorships were tough, because I had such a small following

At the time, all the full-time content creators I followed, either on YouTube or on Instagram, were all making money through all the above methods…

And that freaked me out because I knew that those methods wouldn’t make the income that I desired to keep my content running.

Until one day, I received a random DM:

"Hey! I saw your content about quitting the 9-5. I want to quit the 9-5 too. Can you coach me? Do you have a website with your rates?"

I had no idea what a coach was, but instead of turning down this person who desperately needed my help… I took her on as my first ever free client.

Eventually, word started to spread that I was a coach, and soon I had 3 free clients.

Then I got confident and started charging, little by little… and soon enough, I was earning $10,000 consistently per month.

It was WILD.

I couldn’t believe that:

People were finding me from my free content on Instagram and YouTube.

People wanted to go beyond my free content and PAY me for more advice in the form of coaching and consulting.

I was not only able to help people with my free content, but I was also getting PAID high ticket for helping people privately!

It was life changing, and to this day, I still can’t believe I stumbled on this business model by chance.

That’s why I created The BOSSGRAM Academy because I want to help even more struggling content creators finally get paid for their genius - not by chance, but on purpose.

That’s why, Linh, I’m following up with you.

I know you’ve signed up for my free Followers to Clients training in the past, so I know you that you either:

Watched the free training, implemented my teachings, started your coaching program, and are now making a solid income.

If this is you, then I salute you and congratulate you on this journey!

OR;

You watched my free training, you tried to implement, but you still haven’t monetized your content or got your coaching program off the ground.

If this is you, I don’t want you to feel bad, but keep reading because I have a special offer to help you out.

👉 Here’s my offer:

The BOSSGRAM Academy is now LIFETIME access to the entire core curriculum. It is no longer 12 months access only.

You get a year’s worth of monthly group mentorship calls with me where we’ll hang out and talk about all things content and signing clients, AND…

You get access to ALL of it right now for $997 only, BEFORE we permanently increase the price to $1,997 on March 14.

YUP - you aren’t reading it wrong.

We’ve made some major changes to BGA, and you’re hearing about it FIRST before we increase our prices on March 14.

I’m also giving you the opportunity to enroll at the previous price of $997, so you save $1,000.

Oh? And the whole lifetime access thing?

I honestly realized that keeping my program 12 months access only no longer aligned with my mission and my values of helping my clients get the best results possible, on their terms.

If you want to read more about why I made this decision and some key lessons I’ve had in the last 6 months, click here to read all about it in my latest blog post. - LINK TO BLOG

^ This is a juicy one, so I highly recommend reading it. 🍵

So to recap the big (but private) news to you only 😉:

#1: When we open the doors publicly to the new and improved BGA on March 14, the price for BGA is increasing from $997 to $1,997.

#2: We’re also including LIFETIME ACCESS to the core curriculum and Bonus Bag PLUS a year’s worth of monthly live group coaching calls with me.

With everything inside, plus lifetime access to the core curriculum and Bonus Bag, The BOSSGRAM Academy is worth way more than $1997 - so whether you’ll get an ROI is not even a question:

If you’ve always been on the fence of joining BGA and want to save $1,000, now is your chance.

Click here to join now at $997 before prices increase on March 14

Excited to serve you inside BGA!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S.. Skimmer’s edition - The BOSSGRAM Academy is now lifetime access and the price is going up to $1997.

As you have previously registered and watched our free Followers to Clients training, we are giving you one last chance to purchase The BOSSGRAM Academy with lifetime access for only $997 before March 14. | | Why I’m a hypocrite and a fraud. | One time I went into the rabbit hole of a nasty comment section and this is what I read:

"Vanessa Lau is a fraud because she got her success on YouTube but she teaches Instagram."

Let’s unpack this.

#1: Yes, if you read my origin story from the email I sent a couple of days ago (Subject line: "If not now, then when?"), I talked about how I’ve always wanted to be a YouTuber - nothing else.

#2: Yes, I am a beast at YouTube, and it’s a platform that works incredibly well for me.

BUT.

Did you know out of the 12 coaching clients I worked with 1:1, ALL of them wanted to be on YouTube…

… Yet only ONE of them actually followed through?

Even after working with over 5,000 clients in the last 3 years, the same theme continues.

1. YouTube is hard: You have to write, speak, edit, optimize, promote, all the things.

2. YouTube is expensive: Equipment, video editing, time, resources.

3. YouTube is time consuming: Look at point #1. If you side-hustle, this is even more problematic.

As a result, people’s likelihood to give up on YouTube is VERY high.

And here’s the thing:

When beginner entrepreneurs give up on the platform, they also tend to give up on their business.

I seriously do NOT want that for you.

The truth is, my desire to help our clients get results fast is stronger than my desire to teach YouTube (even though I’m very qualified to do it).

This is exactly why in The BOSSGRAM Academy, the main platform is Instagram so that our clients can secure results faster with a lower chance of failure.

Because out of ALL the clients I’ve ever worked with, 90% of them continue with Instagram and get great results.

Here’s why:

Reason #1: Instagram is relatively easy compared to other demanding platforms.

Reason #2: EVERYONE and their mom has an Instagram profile.

Reason #3: It has the most features than any other social platform: Video, Text, Images, LIVE, DM, Calling, you name it.

So here’s the truth:

It’s not that I don’t want to teach YouTube …

It's that I’ve structured my programs to specifically teach lessons that make it easy for any beginner entrepreneur to succeed - no matter their age, experience level, or budget.

(And by the way, if you DID want to learn YouTube, when you enroll in The BOSSGRAM Academy, you get the opportunity to purchase my YouTube Course!)

So Linh,

Since it might have been a while since you thought about The BOSSGRAM Academy, let’s do a quick recap on what BGA is (so you can still get in at $997 WITH lifetime access!).

BGA is my online training program that teaches my 3-phase proprietary method for helping creators not only use Instagram as a growth tool…

But it also shares all the business lessons when it comes to finding a niche, creating a paid 1:1 coaching offer, and signing clients.

It includes more than 70 video lessons and tutorials with step-by-step instructions on how to implement each step:

🔥Phase 1 - Clarify. Learn how to clarify your offer, identify your target audience, and validate everything in the first 30 days.

🔥Phase 2 - Attract. Learn how to attract your ideal prospects with your free content on Instagram. These aren’t just basic strategies. This is a full library of all the strategies I use for my own 200K+ follower account.

🔥Phase 3 - Convert. Launch your program and build systems that help you convert followers into paying clients. Think: Webinars, sales calls, and more.

Included in the curriculum is every helpful tool and asset you’ll need to complete the core curriculum, including:

Sales scripts Copy templates Fillable worksheets Checklists Email swipe files Content graphics Share funnels Contracts Proposals

Not to mention, BGA also includes some NEW features.

🌟 Monthly Live Mentorship Calls with me for a YEAR! Once a month we're going to get together for a LIVE Zoom call where I'm going to answer all your questions.

🌟 PLUS LIFETIME ACCESS to the core curriculum and everything in the Bonus Bag! (And there’s a LOT in the Bonus Bag.)

BGA was created specifically to help you get off the content creation hamster wheel and land coaching clients FAST, like Harrah:

Linh, let me help you make your life easier, so you can get results faster.

Click here to join BGA now.

Hope to see you on the inside!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. - In addition to lifetime access to the curriculum and Bonus Bag and a year’s worth of live coaching calls with me, you’ll also get in on our newly-expanded guarantee.

Instead of a 60-day "Do the Work" guarantee, we’re adding another 30 days to make this a 90-Day "Do the Work" Guarantee!

That’s right. Dive into BGA for 90 days. And if you do all the work and still don’t get results, I’ll give you every penny of your investment back. | | Entrepreneurship is a lie. | Hey Linh,

Let’s be real: Everyone is lying to us about entrepreneurship.

"Make money in your sleep!"

"It ONLY takes 3 steps!"

"This program is ALL you’ll ever need!"

Here’s what people aren’t telling you:

Starting a business from scratch is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

It is NOT easy to navigate it yourself - and once you fix one problem, another one comes up.

For example:

Programs will teach you marketing and sales, but teach you NOTHING about contracts, mindset, finances, and more…

So you have to figure that out on your own with no guidance.

Programs will tell you what content you need to create, but don’t cover how to actually design them…

So you spend hours on Canva figuring it out and losing even more time.

Programs will show you how to use ONE social media platform, but don’t show you how you can leverage other platforms to maximize your content efforts…

So you’re left buying other programs to fill the missing gaps.

When I created The BOSSGRAM Academy, I put everything that I could think of that would help students go further and faster.

At the same time, I knew building a business was more than just marketing, sales, and Instagram.

So that’s why I created the BGA Bonus Bag where I either:

Added additional "off-topic" lessons to fill in any gaps, OR

Hired experts to share their industry knowledge so you don't have to figure it out on your own.

Here’s what’s included in the BGA Bonus Bag - that you get for FREE when you join BGA:

🎁 SOCIAL MEDIA BUNDLE

💻 Instagram Carousel Canva Templates

20+ Done-for-you Instagram post templates in Canva.

💻 Hashtag Bossbank

100+ Done-for-you Hashtags categorized across various Content and Coaching niches.

💻 Get Clients with TikTok with Jackson Zaccaria

Full lessons taught by Jackson who got 500k TikTok followers in less than 12 months!

💻 Get Clients with Linkedin with Salina Yeung

Full lessons taught by Salina who’s generated over 2.5M views on Linkedin in less than 12 months and was a previous Account Director at LinkedIn!

💻 Get Clients with Facebook Groups with Harrah Amago

Full lessons taught by Harrah, who grew her Facebook group to 10,000 members in less than a year!

🎁 BUSINESS BUNDLE

💻 Legal Training with Nina Marinaro

Learn about the legal protections you need as a new business with Nina The Lawyer.

💻 Financial Success with Brittani Jackson

Learn how to keep track of your finances in your biz with Brittani, the Certified Public Accountant for Creators and Coaches.

💻 Lead Magnet Funnel Strategy with Vanessa Lau

Learn how to grow your email list and get booked calls with your freebies by yours truly!

💻 Visual Branding and Sales Page Training with Anna Nassery

Learn how to master the art of branding and sales pages with Anna, the founder of BrandUp Web Design agency.

🎁 COACHING BUNDLE

💻 Mindset and NLP Training with Ella Tsang

Learn frameworks that help yourself and your clients break past mental barriers with Ella, NLP Master Trainer.

💻 Coaching with Confidence with Kelsey Murphey

Learn how to actually coach your clients and get them results with Kelsey, Professional Life Coach for Marie Forleo.

💻 Create Your Client Portal with Saiyak Rakeeb

Learn how to design a FREE and easy-to-use client portal using Notion with Saiyak, Digital Minimalist and Coach.

EVERYTHING you need—every training, resource, asset, and template is all in one place when you join The BOSSGRAM Academy.

Not to mention, in addition to the BGA Core Curriculum AND the BGA Bonus bag, you also get:

A year’s worth of group mentorship calls with me via Zoom, AND

Lifetime Access to the Core Curriculum AND Bonus Bag!

Here’s what I know as a FACT:

If you were to buy similar programs individually, I know you would spend over $10,000, but you can get everything inside BGA for $997 today before the price goes up to $1,997 on March 14.

Take advantage of this window of time to make sure you get in now at the lowest price BGA will ever be.

And don’t forget, you are protected by our 90 Day "Do the Work" Guarantee. Dive into BGA for 90 days. If you do all the work and still don’t get results, I’ll give you every penny of your investment back.

Click here to join now.

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. - Massive value also = massive results! Check out what happened for Tara after just three weeks inside BGA

| | Can any niche succeed? | "I’m not getting any clients in my relationship niche, so I think I’m going to be a business coach instead."^ This mindset is the exact reason why there are SO many business coaches out there, but so little results generated by said "business" coaches.If you want to be a business coach, a social media coach, a fitness coach…All the power to you.But if you are ONLY deciding to be that type of coach because you feel it’s what’s going to make you money… I’m here to prove you wrong.YES - when you’re in business, you teach people how to make money.YES - when you’re in social media, you teach people how to grow their following.YES - when you’re in fitness, you teach people how to lose weight.All 3 types of niches have tangible outcomes (dollars, followers, and pounds).But what if you’re a Mindset Coach? Spiritual Coach? Career Coach? Relationship Coach?Here are examples of my own clients in different niches that have gotten results:Ken Reid, a gay dating coach turned emotional health expert, who has had $5k months and multiple 4 figure clients since joining BGA. Perle, a French language coach who had a $20,000 launch in BGA.Lynn, a violin coach who made $25,000 on her first offer EVER in BGA.In fact, check out our reviews page here for even more niches! You see, it’s not your niche that dictates whether you get results.It’s your positioning and how you articulate your offer that matters.For example, let’s say you’re a mindset coach.You can say that what you teach is fluffy, hard to explain, and non-tangible.OR, you can say:"When you strengthen your confidence around the relationship you have with yourself, this will allow you to command more for your life: Better health, wealth, and relationships.With a stronger mindset around X, you’ll show up to work differently, which will result in better performance and higher pay.With a stronger mindset around X, you’ll approach your relationships differently, which will result in getting connected to opportunities you never had before to advance your career."THAT is the power of Mindset coaching."Boom, baby. Remember: Even if your niche doesn’t have explicit "tangible" results, it can still be linked to indirect, tangible benefits when you market it masterfully.These are things that I help you with inside The BOSSGRAM Academy.But beyond helping you finally monetize your content and sign paid clients, I also help you break through a lot of the mental blocks that prevent you from seeing your own worth.For example, I’ve helped:Janette, a relationship & mindset coach, who’s completely shifted her mindset with money, business, and even with public speaking and copywriting since BGA. Simona, a spiritual life coach who when she first joined BGA had no idea about coaching, found her calling of what she’s truly meant to do and had major mindset shifts increasing her confidence. Ana, a mindset and business coach, who at first wasn’t sure what type of coach she wanted to be, started putting the lessons into practice, overcame mindset blocks, and became more confident in offering her services to help people. Linh, I’m sharing all these examples with you because I know that you might think that there’s no chance someone would pay you for the niche you really want to do.OR maybe you don’t even KNOW what niche to pursue and you’re scared of picking the "wrong one".I want to assure you that The BOSSGRAM Academy covers all this, and my team and I will be there to support you.So here’s another reminder: The price for BGA is going up on March 14. But because you’ve been following along for a while, I wanted to make sure you had one last chance to join at the original price of $997 —WITH lifetime access to the curriculum and bonuses and 12 months of live mentorship calls with me via Zoom. So if you’ve been on the fence, and you know deep down that BGA is where you need to be,… then you need to join now for just $997 OR four payments of $297. That’s right. Get started immediately before prices rise to $1,997 on March 14. Click here to join BGA now.See you inside? | | I can’t believe I wasted $20,000 on this. | Linh,

Starting a business is already a victory within itself.

The emotional, financial, mental, and labor-intensive stress is more than what most people can be courageous enough to handle.

So imagine when you get excited and purchase a program, only to realize you still did not get any results despite putting in the work.

It sucks.

I remember when I invested $$$ in getting extra support. I showed up and did all the work.

Yet, nothing.

Because I still remember how it made me feel when something didn’t work after I put in all my hours, I’ve revised my refund policy for The BOSSGRAM Academy:

When you join BGA, we explain that it should take about 90 days to start signing clients if you follow the program and do the work.

➡️ That’s why I’m offering a newly expanded 90-day "Do The Work" guarantee when you join The BOSSGRAM Academy® before March 14.

Linh, I know your work ethic is not even a question.

You know what you want, and you’re willing to put in the work.

I know this because we’re very similar, and that’s why you follow me!

There’s something between us that just clicks.

That’s why if you go through my program and don’t see any momentum, then that’s on me 100%.

I believe so strongly in BGA and the results it gets my clients that I’ll give you your money back if you do all the work and don’t see results in the first 90 days.

That’s right. Watch all the trainings.

Do all the worksheets.

Implement everything.

And if you still don't see ANY type of momentum, I will refund the entire amount you paid.

Best part? If you are ready and willing to do the work, there is absolutely no risk involved for you.

In fact, I know it’ll be a walk in the park because you’re talented, hungry, and you KNOW your success is inevitable.

I’m investing in you. Now will you invest in yourself?

Click here to join BGA now while you still can for just $997.

The price is going up to $1,997 TONIGHT @ 11:59pm.

So get on in here, friend!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

PS - Do you have questions about the program? Hit reply to this email and my team will get back to you with an answer.

P.P.S - Want to see what can happen when you follow the BGA method to a T?

P.P.P.S. - Ellen didn’t follow BGA the first time around. When she went back and implemented everything, here’s what happened …

| | Read this before you launch a course… | In this week's Creator to CEO newsletter, I want to dive into a topic that's been heavily requested: Course Creation!

This topic broke the record when it came to Instagram polls, with a whopping 539 of you who wanted to learn more about the topic - one of the higher engagement rates on my polls:

This is why I released this week's Youtube video which featured more or less the A-Z when it comes to the behind the scenes of how our company launches online courses. You can click here to watch it in full.

But upon reviewing the comment section of this new video, a few comments caught my attention in particular:

This makes complete sense, so today’s newsletter will be for those of you who want to create an online course for the very first time.

That being said, let’s dive - shall we?

Below I'll share the top 3 things anyone will need to have before creating a course.

Remember: The online course business can be tough, especially for beginners, and without these key components, many beginners end up getting broke and burned.

👉 Component #1: A Proven Process

A mistake most beginner course creators make is they think they can slap together a course and sell it - without realizing that in order for a course to be successful, it needs to be able to get results for the majority of people who take your program.

An online course needs to be able to stand on its own as much as possible, as the purpose of having a course is to avoid doing custom work.

Of course, your course can have a group coaching / group call component to it, but even so, your teachings and coachings should apply to the majority of the people who purchased your program.

For me, when I started, I got my proven process from working with 1:1 clients first.

Working with 1:1 clients allowed me to collect feedback easily and do custom work if needed until I found my "groove".

After working with a handful of clients for the same package, I was able to identify what worked and what didn’t.

After my process was validated with a few clients, I then transitioned into a group program where I delivered the course, but kept doing weekly (and eventually monthly) calls to make sure clients were OK.

After a while, you can decide to remove calls completely, or keep calls simply because you want to support your clients further - however, this does not take away from the importance of your course absolutely needing a proven roadmap first.

Remember: If you don’t have a validated framework to take your clients through in a course, you will inevitably increase the number of refunds, and decrease the number of results your clients can get.

👉 Component #2: Clear Target Avatar

This leads me to my next point, which is being extremely clear on who your course is for and not for.

If you are someone who is just starting out and you have no idea who the target avatar is, then it will be really hard to execute your program.

Of course, overtime you can niche down - but from the get go, you should be somewhat clear on who the intended audience is for your course and what the problem you are trying to solve for the people who enrolled in your program.

Remember: It should be one clear problem that everyone is going through.

For example, when I first launched my course, it was a general Instagram course.

What I realized is because I didn’t niche down enough, it caused problems such as:

Broad Curriculum = More Questions:

If your target avatar is broad, then your curriculum will be broad.

This means your curriculum will not be perfect for anyone, and will likely have a lot of gaps for specific people.

This means this will increase the number of one-off questions that your students will be asking you.

And when they ask the questions… it will cause the next problem which is:

Questions not being relevant to everyone:

An E-Commerce business who wants to use Instagram will have a very different set of questions and objectives from a Model who wants to use Instagram.

While this is OK in some courses, it can be harder to scale because you may need to continue answering one-off questions that are irrelevant to most people in the group.

And because these are one-off, it doesn't make sense to include them in your curriculum as lessons, because it wouldn't be relevant for everyone else. Do you see the problem now?

Reduction of perceived quality of the group:

The best courses and online programs are those that have a strong community.

When you have a community of like minded people working towards a common objective and asking relevant questions that everyone can benefit from, it increases the value and success rate of the program as a whole.

For example: Would you rather be in a group of Dentists, Gardeners, Restaurant Owners, and Content Creators trying to grow their businesses in general?, OR

Would you rather be in a curated group of Content Creators who want to grow their businesses through launching online courses?

Remember: The more specific it is, the better your program will be, the more successful your students will be, and the higher prices you can also charge.

👉 Component #3: Traffic

Let’s say you’re starting out and you don’t have Component #1 or Component #2 locked down.

If this is the case, then there will absolutely be a ceiling on how much you can charge because your program promise is not refined and because you don’t have a proven roadmap, you likely also don’t have a lot of testimonials and social proof to begin with.

This means you’ll be charging lower prices.

With these lower prices, if you want to earn $10,000 and your program is $200, you will need about 50 people to buy your course.

If you want to make $10k per month, then you will need 50 people per month to buy your course.

This can be easy for some, but difficult for most who don’t get enough traffic to meet those demands OR don’t have enough money to pay for ads.

Now, at this point of the email you might think that I’m raining on everyone’s course creation parade.

The truth is, I’m sharing these components because too many people jump into course creation blindly, and think that online courses are the one-way ticket to passive income.

Here’s what I learned: If you want to make passive income, you need to learn how to make active income first.

Passive income is generally created as a result of A LOT of work up front - something that you pour everything into SO THAT it can eventually run on it’s own.

For me, while my own program The BOSSGRAM Academy earns me "passive" income, I will tell you that it took A LOT of work to get there.

Here's more or less the entire process I took to validate my course:

I worked with 3 free clients first to test my strategies.

Note: At this time, I had no desire to create a course.

This was just me wanting to work with clients and testing things out, but eventually as I worked with my clients, it became clear creating a course would help free up my time.

Once I got confident, I started charging and worked with 12 more clients at the high ticket level.

I saw that the process I was taking all 12 clients was working, so I then asked these clients for testimonials AND I packaged everything I was teaching them into a course.

I created a sales page for my course, outlining the idea that I had for it, the modules I would walk people through, as well as the program promise.

Keep in mind, I had not created the course yet.

I simply wanted to see if people would even want to buy a course like this.

On the sales page, I specifically said "When you enroll, you will start the course on X date".

This gave me about a month in between to prepare any type of course creation.

Remember: You do not want to waste months of your life creating a course that doesn’t even sell. You can click here to listen to an old podcast episode talking about the strategy I used.

I used the testimonials I got from my 1:1 work to vouch for my course, my teachings, and my process by putting them on the sales page.

This helped increase course sales because prospects knew I had prior experience.

Once I enrolled people into my course, I prepared the first Module so they had access to it when the program started.

I drip fed the remaining 5 modules every week while also hopping on Q&A calls with my students to get their feedback (The course at the time had a total of 6 modules)

I used their feedback to tweak the next module. This ensured that pretty much everything in the course was relevant to them, which increased the # of testimonials I would get.

In other words, I was basically co-creating the program with my first round of students!

When my first round of students finished the program, I took ALL the feedback and updated the program, refined the program promise, and even niched down. I then enrolled the next cohort in my updated program.

The rest is history! Every year I continued to collect feedback and update the program.

My program first started as an Instagram only program, but has evolved A LOT since then thanks to feedback.

Today, the program is called The BOSSGRAM Academy. It has been running for almost 4 years and has helped over 6,000 creators and coaches sign clients themselves

We have also generated over 3 million dollars of results for our clients collectively, which I am so proud of.

So Voila! Those 10 steps I outlined are basically the steps I took to create my course.

It all started with 1:1 client work, and it evolved into a scalable machine.

On the other hand, if you are someone who’s reading this and you have all the components I am mentioning, then what are you waiting for!?

Either click here to watch my latest Youtube video to get the behind-the-scenes of our course launch preparation...

OR click here to sign up for the waitlist for my next program which will be launching in a few months about course creation, if you would like support from me personally.

(Please note: A mandatory prerequisite to this program is that you must have a validated offer or have worked with clients before - if not, then I encourage you to check out the LIVE trainings I am hosting to help you with getting your first few paid clients!)

ORRRR if you want more videos on course creation, simply DM me and let me know! ❤️️

Anyways Linh,

It's always a pleasure to be able to write to you every Monday morning as a part of the Content Creator to CEO newsletter series.

You can be giving your attention to anyone else, including your business, but today - you chose to spare 15 minutes of your day with me.

I do not take that for granted, and I appreciate you for staying subscribed.

I have a lot more to say when it comes to program creation, and I hope this email covers some gaps in the meantime.

As always - don't forget to share your favourite or the most helpful part of this week's letter on your stories and tag me @vanessalau.co so I know.

I always look forward to my story mentions every Monday - and I thank anyone who takes the time to share!

Until next time, I'm rooting for you!

Vanessa

Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor

PS: I'm always taking requests for CEO newsletter topics - so feel free to slide me a DM and send over a request - I'll consider it wholeheartedly. | | 13 ideas that will change your life. | Hey Linh,

In this week's newsletter, I want to share with you the top 13 ideas that changed the way I saw my career, finances, business, health, and more.

Ready? Let’s go - rapid fire time!

👉 Idea #1: Criticism comes with anything you create for the public.

Brianna Wiest’s book The Mountain is You helped me realized that criticism will always happen especially if you decide to put yourself out there.

I also realized that if I want to have millions of people in my community, play on a bigger stage, and take myself to new heights, I must expect and be prepared for people to disagree with me, misunderstand me, and judge me.

This comes with the territory, and playing a bigger game only amplifies that.

👉 Idea #2: Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.

Naval Ravikant helped me see that we all have easy choices and hard choices to make.

If you decide to take the easy route now, it often means you’ll have a harder life later.

If you decide to take the harder route now, it often means you’ll have an easier life later.

The choice is yours.

👉 Idea #3: The person who shows up deserves to be there.

When I was first thinking about putting myself out there and creating content, I was scared about what other people would think.

I then realized that most people who criticize others usually are the same people who haven’t mustered the courage to step outside of their comfort zones themselves.

This made me realize that even if I had no results to show for, the fact that I showed up meant something.

👉 Idea #4: Winners and losers have the same goals. But what differentiates them is action.

In James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, he says that every Olympian wants to win a gold medal and every candidate wants to get the job.

If successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.

It’s the action they take that make the difference.

👉 Idea #5: There is no mission without margin.

This idea was shared by Tony Robbins and helped me see areas in my business I could improve in order to make more profit - specifically, raising my prices.

This was something I was always scared of doing, but I realize that the bigger mission you have, the more important it is to make enough margin to continue that mission.

Whether that’s investing in your team, providing better client experiences, or expanding your business so you can have the operational excellence to help more people.

A great mission costs money. You need margin to make it happen.

👉 Idea #6: Delayed decisions is the heaviest weight you can create for yourself.

Alex Hormozi shared this idea and it helped me finally pull the plug on restructuring my business.

Namely, letting people go.

I was sitting on uncomfortable decisions for way too long, and as a result it created more problems and negativity in my life.

Once I finally committed to a decision, life became a lot lighter and I was able to finally gain clarity on my next steps.

👉 Idea #7: Your business is not personal. Your business is a separate entity.

When I finally decided it was time to let people go (thanks to Idea #8), I found it hard to actually execute.

My HR consultant helped me understand that my business is a separate entity that has it’s own needs, and even if I personally don’t want to make a decision because I don’t want to hurt someones feelings…

At the end of the day, the business has its own requirements of what it needs to grow.

It has nothing to do with your personal feelings.

Specifically, when having an uncomfortable conversation, it is better to say:

"This is what the business needs." vs. "This is what I need."

This helps you separate the business from yourself.

👉 Idea #8: If you don’t have the business you want, it’s because you haven’t become the person to run it.

Alex Charfen, an old mentor of mine, made me realize that there’s a certain level of growth that I simply wasn’t ready for yet.

I always aspired to have a 10 million dollar business, and felt entitled that it should happen sooner.

The truth is, being a business owner capable of running an 8-figure company has a very different psyche than a business owner running a 5, 6, or 7 figure business.

Be patient - because you likely don’t want a bigger business anyways if you cannot handle the problems you’re going through now.

Your time will come when you have proven yourself to be ready.

👉 Idea #9: Just because something is new, doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of doing it. Don’t confuse inexperience with weakness.

Something I constantly tell myself is that I am capable of doing hard things.

I remember when I often felt a lot of imposter syndrome simply because I was new to creating content and doing business. If I didn’t do something right, I would think that I wasn’t cut out for it at all.

Years later after mastering things I once thought were hard, I now realize that the biggest setback most new entrepreneurs can make is thinking their inexperience is weakness - when in fact learning new things just takes time.

👉 Idea #10: When you hit the next level of business, you are now doing a job you are unqualified for.

I learn this over and over again every time I reach a new milestone in business.

When you think you’re done learning, your business will continue to test you.

From this, I learned there is no end destination, and the day you decide to be an entrepreneur is the day you’ve committed yourself to life-long personal development.

Feeling stupid is normal, and if anything, you should feel stupid every so often because it means you’re growing instead of staying comfortable and complacent.

👉 Idea #11: Happiness is a choice, not a circumstance.

Thanks to Idea #10, your business will always make you feel like you never have enough.

Every day you should consciously be choosing Joy, because I can assure you that there is no object, goal, or person that will make you feel happy unless you decide to be.

👉 Idea #12: Many people create great content. Few create great content consistently.

What makes you stand out isn’t a viral post.

It’s the consistent value you deliver to your audience.

Remember: Creating content is not something you check off and it's done.

It's a skill that requires practice and patience.

👉 Idea #13: Focus on your strengths instead of your weaknesses.

Even if you get good at the things you’re bad at, at most you’ll go from a D to a C.

However, if you are able to focus on accelerating the things you ARE good at, then you’ll go from an A to an A+++.

I’s a far better use of your time to zone in on the things you’re already gifted at so you can become the best in the world at that one thing instead of focusing on your weaknesses, and at best going from below average to average.

Focus on being outstanding - and find a career that allows you to be that.

Anyways Linh, this week’s newsletter followed a different format, but I hope you enjoyed reading the top 13 ideas that have changed my life.

Of course, I am sure I can come up with EVEN more - but these were the few that rapid-fire came to mind.

If you would like more ideas that have changed my life, I highly recommend you watch this week’s video where I share other key things that have enhanced my thinking, and therefore have enhanced my income, career, and relationships:

If you liked this week’s letter, do me a favour and screenshot your favourite idea and post it on IG story. You can tag me @vanessalau.co so I can easily see it!

As always, I am rooting for you. Thank you for allowing me to sneak into your inbox to help you become the Creator and CEO you’re born to be. ❤️️

Until next time,

Vanessa Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor | | I creeped my competitor and I felt terrible. | Yesterday I did a 3-hour Q&A live for fun on Instagram and one question I got was about how to get over fear when you're first starting out.

This eventually led us to talk about how so many newer entrepreneurs have a tendency to compare their first draft with someone else's final product, which leads them to feeling discouraged and therefore giving up.

The truth is, many newer creators or entrepreneurs will put well-known entrepreneurs on their list of "competitors" when the reality is that they are not yet their competition.

If you are just starting out, how could you possibly compete with someone else who's had 5, 10+ years of experience?

If you are just starting out, how could you possibly compare your solopreneur business with someone else's well-oiled machine?

If you are just starting out, how could you possibly pit yourself up against someone who's had years to develop their skillsets, fine tune their positioning, and establish their authority?

You simply can't, and you simply shouldn't.

Why?

Because while these people can show you what's possible, they are not your competitors.

So this leads to the next question:

Who IS your "competitor"? Who "should" you compare yourself with?

While we all think the answer should be "No one", the reality is having other entrepreneurs that we can occasionally compare to ultimately allows us to innovate and step up our game as a whole - even if seeing them crush it low-key makes us fearful inside.

So here's what my logical answer was:

"The people you should be paying attention to are the ones who have been in business for a similar timeframe than you, serving a similar audience, and offering similar products or services."

THAT SAID 😬 ...

Ironically, a few hours after I finished the livestream, I suddenly found myself in my own rabbit hole on Instagram...

Now I have a question for you:

Have you ever purposely not followed your "competitors" because whenever you see their content, it just makes you feel worse?

... YET you still creep them from time to time?

If the answer is yes - then I want you to know that yesterday I found myself stuck binge-creeping a "competitor" that I hadn't paid attention to in a long time.

And because it's been a long time since I last creeped, I found myself in full self-sabotage mode, spending a solid hour:

... Watching all her highlights ... Watching all her reels ... Clicking all the links in her link in bio ... Reading her sales pages

... and probably a bunch of other things.

Does this sound familiar?

If so, then you'll also be familiar with the shitty feeling and the imposter syndrome that comes along with it.

That's why, Linh, I want to dedicate this email to share the exact mindset shifts and affirmations I go through to recover from experiences like these...

Because I have a feeling that comparing yourself to others on social media is something that is a common experience for all, regardless if it's comparing yourself to the Giants of the Industry OR your peers who are in the same playing field as you.

Let's go ❤️️

👉 Reminder #1: Someone else winning doesn't mean you're losing.

When we start feeling anxiety when we see our peers crush it on social media, it is usually because we feel that their wins will become our losses.

It doesn't have to be that way, and it's also not entirely true.

Whether or not someone else is achieving their milestones (making money, getting fit, buying a house, getting lots of views, etc), it truly has nothing to do with you.

It doesn't make you worse off, and it doesn't make you better off.

It's simply... neutral.

Something that helps me is reminding myself of what my real measure of success is, and realizing that my measure of success is not determined by what other people are doing or not doing.

My measure of success is determined by the people I've helped in my own business.

My measure of success is also whether I've tried my very best at the capacity and the experience level I have.

My measure of success is NOT determined by the number of people that my "competitors" have helped, and is also NOT determined by what everyone else is doing.

So remember: Change how you measure your success, and it will change the way you see what you're capable of in business.

👉 Reminder #2: Everyone has their own secret sauce. Including you.

Someone else could serve a similar audience, create similar content, have a similar business model, and have similar programs...

Yet it will still not be the exact same as yours because there are plenty of intangibles that will set both of you apart:

Your personalities will be different. The way you explain things will be different. Your teaching philosophies will be different. Your delivery styles will be different.

... and so many other aspects will be different.

As a result, even though you may be targeting similar audiences, you will never attract and convert the SAME people - because everyone out there will have a preference on who they want to learn from.

Not to mention, the internet population is HUGE, with new users coming up every day...

So even though it's easy to fall into a scarcity mindset, remember that there is room for everyone at the table.

👉 Reminder #3: Don't forget about the lives you've changed and the accomplishments you've achieved.

While it is easy to suddenly fall into a place of lack whenever you creep your peers, a helpful exercise that I like to do whenever I feel inadequate is to review all my positive comments and make a list of the things I've achieved in my life.

Pro Tip: Always keep folders where you store screenshots of all the praises you get, whether it's in passing on social media, compliments from your friends or family (such as birthday cards), or official testimonials with your clients!

Not only does this help from a business standpoint, but it helps from a mindset standpoint because it is so easy for us to focus on the negatives or the things we are missing rather than focusing on the things we've already achieved.

Occasionally review and re-read any positive praises you've received in the past, AND remember to list out your previous accomplishments on a piece of paper to remind yourself what a badass you truly are. 🔥

👉 Reminder #4: Your state dictates your thoughts, your thoughts dictate your actions, and your actions dictate your reality.

It's human nature to fall into the comparison trap and it's also human nature to indulge in creeping a stranger for hours even though you know it'll only make you feel worse.

Here's what I recommend:

Process the emotions you feel as you should, but only allow yourself to feel as bad as you need to feel for a limited amount of time.

For me, when I caught myself feeling crappy about myself, I gave myself permission to feel those emotions fully for 30 minutes only.

It was 30 minutes of negative self talk, spiralling, and feeling all the feels.

After those 30 minutes were up though, I consciously decided to shift my state.

I turned on some music, danced around, read some kick-ass testimonials I've received in the past, and shamelessly admired myself in the mirror.

The reason why I purposely did this is because I know the importance of protecting my state.

If I have negative thoughts for too long, I know that those thoughts will ultimately alter my mood (aka my feelings), and my mood will affect the actions I take for the rest of the day.

For example:

I'd probably take a nap to sleep away the sadness, continue to procrastinate on my work, and ultimately play a smaller game.

And if I'm not careful and I let the negativity fester for too long, then these counterproductive actions will eventually affect the results I get in business and in life.

So remember: Protecting your state is everything.

Don't rob yourself from even more happiness.

Feel the feels, but eventually boss up and remember that you control your reality.

Do you want a shitty reality, or a great one? You decide.

👉 Reminder #5: Where is your imposter syndrome coming from? What can you objectively improve in your business?

Once you are in a more objective state, it is important to eventually reflect on where your imposter syndrome may have came from.

While we often think we "shouldn't" feel imposter syndrome, sometimes our imposter syndrome may be telling us something we don't want to confront or didn't even realize.

For example:

... Maybe looking at your "competitors" stuff made you realize you have a gap in your skillsets, and deep down you already knew you needed to improve in a specific area but didn't want to admit it.

... Or seeing someone else's' consistency is confirming the fact that you aren't consistent with your output, and it's something you deep down know you've been slacking on.

... Or perhaps seeing an industry peer's killer marketing is allowing you to see how you could shake up the way you show up for your audience, and the way you promote your services.

Regardless of what you've observed, it's important to also take a step back objectively and reflect on why this particular person intimidated you or made you feel bad in the first place.

Often times, there likely IS something you can take away that you could use to further improve your business.

You just need to discern the difference between making it a pity party about yourself vs. using it as an opportunity to get better.

And you won't be able to discern that until you follow Reminder #4 of putting yourself in either a positive or neutral state about the situation.

Remember: It's not personal.

It's helpful information that illuminates your blind spots and ultimately shapes you to becoming an even better creator and entrepreneur IF you allow it.

Anyways Linh, I hope you enjoyed this week's newsletter where I shared my own struggle with comparison, while also sharing some action steps that helped me overcome it quickly.

I know it's not easy to stay in your own lane, and I'm also grateful that despite this, you are still willing to open and read my emails as a fellow creator and industry peer.

I always remind myself that you could be doing ANYTHING right now, but you choose to be here with me every Monday morning to read my notes to you.

I acknowledge it. I value it. And I appreciate it.

If there's anything that resonated with you this week, feel free to let me know by sharing it to your IG stories and tagging me @vanessalau.co.

Let's slay the imposter syndrome demons together, and step up our biz game for 2022!

As always, I am rooting for you,

Vanessa ❤️️ Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor | | Register now and get the free gift! | It’s truth time, Linh. I don’t believe in sugar-coating things.

YOU aren’t the reason you’re not where you want to be right now. It’s NOT your fault.

If success was just about working HARDER, you’d already have an amazing, marketable niche and offer with 100% clarity on exactly who you serve and how you serve them.

If success was just about producing MORE free content, you’d already have a thriving audience full of prospects ready to buy from you.

And if success was just about having the ability and knowledge to help someone, you’d already be generating income, even with a small following, like Raquela.

Still feeling unsure? Here's the deal: You have nothing to lose.

Look, I know there’s a LOT of bad advice out there on YouTube, IG … any social media platform, actually.

You’re sick of struggling, and you’re not sure who to trust.

You’re on the verge of giving it all up because it wasn’t at all what you thought it would be.

This is NOT just another one of those trainings full of fluff - but I don’t blame you for being skeptical.

To make sure you have absolute certainty you’ll walk away with actionable strategies and more value than you came for, I'm throwing in a free gift 🎁!

I’m sending the Creator to Paid Clients Roadmap to everyone who attends and stays on for the entire free training. These are the exact steps I followed to go from a content creator to generating my first 10K.

The Creator to Paid Clients Roadmap is a downloadable PDF guide featuring 10 specific action strategies to go from an idea to launch to 10K months. Here’s a few highlights on what it’ll help you do:

Select your business model

Nail your market positioning

Beta test your offer

Create content that builds demand

Dominate on social media

Finalize and launch your program

And so much more!

So at the very minimum, you’ll walk away with a step-by-step action plan to achieve 10K months.

Linh, You have ALL the potential inside you to create a program you love that gives you the freedom and flexibility you can’t get in a nine-to-five.

The only thing you’re lacking is the FORMULA, and that’s where my live training comes in.

Here’s the thing though … the training starts in just 24 hours, and you haven’t signed up yet.

Don’t worry. It’s not too late for you to sign up and claim your copy of the Creator to Paid Clients Roadmap and learn the three groundbreaking secrets of the Followers to Clients System®.

Click here to register for the LIVE training now.

I’m rooting for you!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

P.S. - Are my free trainings worth it anyway? Yes! | | 3 principals to making a million dollars. | Hey Linh,

Lately I have been thinking A LOT about what it truly takes to scale a business, as I have been going through a lot of growing pains myself lately behind the scenes (I'll share my learnings here in a separate newsletter down the line!)

As I reflect on the different areas that a business requires to focus on to get to the next level, it inspired me to write this email to you to outline the Top 3 things I did that helped me reach my first million.

Regardless if you are starting from zero OR you've already hit a million, I think this week's newsletter will still serve you.

Ready? Let's dive in!

👉 Lesson #1: If you can't do the small things, you won't be able to do the big things.

... If you struggle to get 1 person results, you won't be able to get a group of people results.

... If you can't stay consistent on Instagram, you definitely won't be able to stay consistent on Youtube.

... If you struggle to sell your 1:1 offer to 10 people, you won't be able to sell a course to 100 people.

... If you can't manage your first part-time Virtual Assistant, you won't be able to manage a full-time team.

... If you can't handle the problems at your current level, you won't be able to handle the problems at the next level.

So many new entrepreneurs think that a new business model, a new social media platform, hiring a team, or making more money will solve their lack of results.

What they don't realize is that the foundations matter.

What I learned overtime (and still continuously learn) is that playing a bigger game won't solve your problems if your foundations are not there.

If anything, playing a bigger game only amplifies your problems even more.

Remember: If you can't do the small things, you won't survive the big things.

👉 Lesson #2: One product, one avatar, one channel.

A Youtube channel that I have been watching a lot lately is Leila Hormozi's.

I watched one of her videos here explaining the roadmap to making $50M, and one thing that she mentioned validated what I have been preaching for so long.

If your goal is to go from $0 - $1M, your focus should be to master:

One Product One Avatar One Channel (OR one funnel or one social media platform.)

With the goal of: Being able to consistently sell something people actually want.

See chart here:

THIS is exactly how I scaled my business quickly from zero to multiple millions in 2 short years.

I sold a 1:1 coaching program to validate my strategies, my niche, and my ideal client first.

From there, I packaged my teachings into The BOSSGRAM Academy.

There is a reason why up until this point I only have one program.

Early on I knew the important principal of mastering something and developing product market fit.

As a result, BGA has not only made almost 7 million dollars in revenue to date...

But it has also served over 6,000 clients with nearly 3 million of tracked revenue wins for our students.

The same philosophy that Leila shares is what we teach inside BGA.

It's exactly why we encourage our clients to start with 1:1 to determine product market fit before they decide to scale up to group programs or courses.

(^ Remember my advice from Lesson #1?

The foundations matter. If you can't get results for 1 person, you won't be able to get results for 100.)

By the way, if you are someone who is starting out with no validated offer yet and you want me to help you sign paid clients using social media...

Click here to enroll in The BOSSGRAM Academy.

We close our doors this Thursday on April 7, so check out the program soon and see if it's the right fit for you!

👉 Lesson #3: The less time in business you've been in, the more narrow your focus needs to be.

This is a direct lesson I pulled from 9-Figure Entreoreneur, Robert Herjavec, when I was watching Shark Tank.

It was the advice he was giving to a new startup that was trying to appeal to everyone and sell multiple different products at one time.

This advice rings true, but it can be difficult to apply in real life especially if you are also a social media content creator.

This is why in the LIVE trainings I've been doing this past week, I share an hourglass model of what the true "niching" journey looks like for people who are in our industry (aka content creators who aspire to sign clients).

My Hourglass Niching Framework looks like this:

I explain that in the beginning, it's OK to be broad so long as you know your target audience.

As you experiment with content and offers within the target audience, with some time and experience, you'll eventually know which niche to narrow down to.

Once a niche is narrowed down, this is when most creators and new business owners start making money.

Because regardless of what people tell you, you must have a clear niche in order to create a specific product or service.

Eventually you'll start to develop a stronger personal brand, in which case you have the freedom to "Niche Up".

At that point you've hit what I like to call "public figure" status, where you could literally talk about anything and people will still want to buy from you.

Now if you want to learn more about this Hourglass Framework and more lessons about establishing market fit, I'm going LIVE one more time today at 5pm PST.

Click here to register for the last LIVE training I'm doing.

Even if you've already attended the last ones we've done - feel free to join us once more for a refresher of the material LIVE! 😉

Anyways Linh, I hope this email was helpful to you as I walked down memory lane dissecting on the 3 principals I followed that helped me make my first million as a first-time entrepreneur.

If there's anything that you can take away from this email, is that leveling up in business isn't about doing a lot of BIG things.

In fact, it's usually about doing a lot of small things extremely well.

That said, if there's anything that resonated with you this week, feel free to let me know by sharing your favourite section of this email to your IG stories and tagging me @vanessalau.co.

I appreciate you opening yet another one of my Content Creator to CEO newsletters, and I can't wait to write to you again!

As always, I am rooting for you,

Vanessa ❤️️ Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor

PS: I am going live with my free training one LAST time TODAY at 5PM PST.

Click here to register if you'd like to catch the last one where I'll be covering:

1. My 4-part process of finding a profitable niche (including how to FIND and articulate your secret sauce!),

2. The 4 types of content to create to attract the right followers, including what features on Instagram to best leverage, AND

3. The key components to creating scalable 1:1 client programs that can eventually be turned into a course or group program.

I hope to see you tonight at 5PM PST! Click here to sign up for a spot! | | 3 Steps to Get Paid in 90 Days or LESS! You in? | Hey, Linh!

I know you’re hard at work pursuing the career of your dreams, so I don’t want to hold you for too long…

BUT I do have something for you that I think will have a noticeable impact on the future of your business.

I want to see you CRUSHING IT on social media with so much confidence and exuberance that you have clients knocking down your door (or in this case, sliding into your DMs) to work with you!

That’s why I’m inviting you to an exclusive YouTube live training on Thursday, April 7th 2022 @ 10:00 a.m. PT on "How To Go Beyond Free Content & Start Landing PAYING CLIENTS (EVEN IF You Don't Have A Huge Following Or Years Of Experience)."

To set a reminder so you don’t miss out:

🗓️ Click here to add a calendar reminder!

Apple • Google • Office 365 • Outlook Web • Outlook • Yahoo

🎬 Click here to set a YouTube reminder!

In this training, you’ll learn the exact 3-step formula I used to go from $0-500K within the first year of my business:

✅ Step #1: CLARIFY your niche and get laser-focused on who you serve so you can create an irresistible offer that your followers adore.

✅ Step #2: ATTRACT engaged followers who will pay you for both your services AND your worth. Dominate on social media with a fire, ideal client-attracting Instagram content strategy.

✅ Step #3: CONVERT your followers into paid clients with my proven formulas and strategies so you can create a paid 1:1 client offer EVEN if you're just starting out!

I’ve been teaching this same training to thousands of aspiring content creators over the past week, and the energy has been over the moon!

The response has been so positive and encouraging that I couldn’t imagine anyone missing out on this FIRE training, so this is your last chance to see this training LIVE. 🔥

And the best part is you don’t even have to sign up!

Just click the link below so you can get notified when I go live on YouTube this Thursday April 7 (aka TOMORROW!) at 10am PT.

🗓️ Click here to add a calendar reminder!

Apple • Google • Office 365 • Outlook Web • Outlook • Yahoo

🎬 Click here to set a YouTube reminder!

Here’s a quick walkthrough if you need help setting up reminders for the live training

1. Click on the link to go to the live training.

2. Click on the cute little bell beside Set Reminder.

3. And you should be set! Yay! The bell should be completely filled in!

My team and I can’t wait to see you soon, Linh.

Until then, I’ll continue rooting for you!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

PS. We are hosting a live training on YouTube this Thursday at 10am PT and you're invited. Click here to set a reminder on YouTube. | | [1 HR LEFT] Get in, Linh! We’re learning to monetize | Hey, Linh!

I hope you’re excited because my LIVE training taking place on YouTube kicks off in 1 hour! Woohoo! 🎉

This is your last chance to join me in learning my proven-to-work Followers to Clients System™ so you can start monetizing your content creation!

This training has been tweaked and perfected to give you more value than you get from some PAID trainings and courses.

In fact… This free training dives deep into some of the same strategies I teach my own paid clients.

Yup! Every piece of content I release has a specific purpose, which is to make sure you’re booked and busy in as little time as possible.

Booked, busy, and PAID. No fluff is allowed at this party. 😎

Don’t believe me? Check out what past attendees had to say about this training:

So Linh, if you haven’t already done so, click here to turn on your notifications on YouTube so you’re ready to join as soon as I go live TODAY at 10:00 a.m. PT!

Here’s the direct link if you want to keep it open in another tab while you wait for the training:

👉 Join me live HERE!

This training is going to be really informative and insightful for you, so I hope to see you there!

My exclusive Followers to Clients System® is designed to allow you to reach 4-5 figure months in the next 90 days, even if you’re a complete newbie!

Did I mention? This training is the LAST one I’m hosting LIVE for FREE!

Let’s make a massive impact, Linh.

I’ll see you LIVE in one hour! | | The LIVE training begins NOW. Come join us! | Everyone’s waiting for the training to begin, Linh! Are you ready??

In this free training, I’ll be showing you How To Go Beyond Free Content & Start Landing PAYING CLIENTS (EVEN IF You Don’t Have A Huge Following Or Years Of Experience).

👉 Click here to join us LIVE on YouTube!

You’ll learn the EXACT strategies I used to go from $0-500K in the first year of my business, so you don’t want to miss this one.

No registration needed. Just click on the link, show up, and soak up all the knowledge 🙌 .

I’m about to hop on and start the training, so I’ll see you there!

Vanessa Lau | Creator of The BOSSGRAM Academy® @vanessalau.co | www.vanessalau.co

Sent to: [email protected] | | Failed launch? Read this. | Most times when entrepreneurs wrap up their launches, they focus a lot on recapping their success.

While sharing successes are amazing, the main reason why I created the Content Creator to CEO Newsletter is to also share failures. But more than that - specifically how to overcome failure.

This past week, we enrolled 175 incredible new students in our program The BOSSGRAM Academy.

Every time we enroll new students to our program, it is always a celebration and a moment where I am at my fullest capacity when it comes to gratitude.

At the same time, public marketing campaigns such as live launches can also be one of the most stressful times for any entrepreneur, especially when launches don't go as planned.

That’s why in today’s email I wanted to provide 3 lessons I learned during launch period, specifically when I saw things not going as planned.

By the way, If you are curious to learn more about the behind the scenes of launches, stay subscribed as next week I aim to share a full recap of our launch and my learning lessons from Q1.

For now, let me breakdown high level the top 3 lessons that helped me during my launch period, especially when I was seeing lack of results.

Duun dunn dunn!!

🌱 Lesson #1: Your product is not your entire business.

The first week of our launch was not going the way our team expected to.

Our webinars were valuable, but conversion rates were lower than we anticipated, and enrollments overall in the first week were slow, with some days having zero enrollments.

What was most scary is that for this launch specifically, I had invested the most money I had ever invested before:

Hiring copywriters, graphic designers, project managers, consultants, ad spend, fancy webinar software, and more.

So naturally when the results of the first week were not going as planned, I started to panic.

So much so that I actually hopped on a SOS call with my friend, George Bryant, crying my eyes out saying things like:

"I ruined my business!" "I'm going to go bankrupt!" "It's over for me!"

Has this ever happened to you?

Often times when a specific launch or product doesn't go well, we immediately tie it to our entire business not doing well.

This is when George calmed me down and said:

"BGA is not your business. You could poll your audience today, ask what they want from you, email your list, offer it, and I guarantee you'll make sales."

Here's what I learned in that interaction:

A failed launch doesn't take away from the brand you've built.

If you've built a relationship with your audience, you could continue to launch new things and people will still buy.

You could literally poll your audience today and ask what you could create that people would be willing to pay you for, and offer exactly that.

Sometimes we get tunnel vision and think that the ONLY source of revenue comes from the one product we've decided to sell, without realizing that it's possible to always offer other things (even if temporary) to earn the income we need to make.

Remember: There is always a way to make additional revenue. You just need to ask what people want.

Selling your offers contribute to making revenue in your business, but a single offer does not define your business.

We often think that if we don't hit our goals for the products or services we sell, it automatically means that our business is over and that we have zero control of the outcome.

The truth is, you DO have control of the outcome.

You can modify your offer, launch a new offer, or even re-launch the same offer at a different time when your audience is more warmed up.

For example, just because an Ice Cream store owner launches a new flavour of ice cream and it doesn't sell the way he expected, doesn't mean that his entire business is automatically going to go bust.

He can decide to sell the same flavour with better marketing initiatives, swap it for another flavour, or improving the taste by mixing additional ingredients.

Bottom line: You have more control than you think.

🌱 Lesson #2: Aim for 1% improvements.

Have you ever felt like you wanted to rip out your entire business and redo the whole damn thing?

I have.

Specifically, during the launch when we found the first 2 webinars we did were not converting as anticipated, I wanted to delete everything and rebuild it from scratch.

But again - thanks to my friend George for knocking some sense into me, he reminded me that most times it's a 1% improvement that can yield the biggest results.

And he was right.

Instead of re-doing the whole webinar, I instead made the following changes, that helped us go from 10% conversion to 30% conversion (3x improvement!):

Removed some content:

I was teaching too much on the trainings, which led to overwhelm. This was data we collected based on the chat box in the training where attendees mentioned that I was going too fast.

So I removed some teaching components and simplified things further so I could slow down. This meant deleting a few slides, not adding more.

Emphasize the Payment Plan:

During the portion of the training where we introduce the investment level BGA, we mostly led with our pay in full (PIF) option to emphasize how the PIF plan was the best value.

We observed that some people would say that the offer was "too expensive", so for our remaining webinars, we decided to heavily emphasize our 10 month payment plan option, while also providing more testimonial examples of our clients making their money back on the program.

These two changes took me less than 30 minutes to make, and gave us 3x better results.

Learning lesson? It's tempting to want to rip everything apart and start over again, especially when you're in panic mode.

But often times, all you really need to do is sit down, look at the data, and A/B test like a mad scientist to see what changes actually yield to better results.

🌱 Lesson #3: Visualize the impact you make.

When running an online business, it's easy to forget the impact you make because you can't visually see the people that you touch.

Followers and clients often feel like just numbers, and when we "only" have 3 clients or 50 followers, it can feel insignificant because we are conditioned to think that having hundreds of clients or thousands of followers is when we've truly "made it".

If you have 25 followers, you've filled up an entire classroom.

100? A theatre.

1000? A large conference.

10000? A concert.

What helped me during my launch was putting each of our newest enrollees onto sticky notes, like so:

Each time I put a student's name on my wall, I sent a blessing their way and visualized what success would look like for them in the BGA program.

I also spent many moments starting at my large wall of stickies, feeling grateful that each of these people had consciously decided that I would be the right mentor for them.

It was a humbling experience to say the least.

So the next time you feel discouraged about how many views, followers, or clients you get - remember that the work you do matters.

Find ways to visualize your impact.

And most importantly, don't let large social media numbers rob you of your gratitude.

Linh, I hope you enjoyed this week's email where I outlined the 3 lessons that helped me overcome one of the hardest moments during my launch.

My goal is to normalize "failure" at any level, and to also remind you that being a Creator and CEO is not always sunshine and rainbows - but the journey is well worth it if you are able to take a step back and enjoy the ride.

Again, I am still processing a lot that has happened in the last 3 months, while still recovering from post-launch burnout - however I am extremely excited to share a full recap of Q1 in next week's email ❤️️

I hope that this email provided a nice teaser of the lessons to come!

That said, if you enjoyed this email, please screenshot your favourite "a-ha!" moment and share it on your stories. Just don't forget to tag me @vanessalau.co on Instagram ☺️.

And if you just so happen to be a new student of mine, I am so grateful and excited to have you inside BGA!

With gratitude,

Vanessa Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor | | Q1 did not go as planned. Here's my recap. | Last year at the end of 2021, I wrote this 2021 recap that outlined my learning lessons for each month last year.

One of my biggest regrets I shared was not documenting my journey more often, which is why I created this Creator to CEO newsletter series where I share my learning lessons around running an online business and being the creator on social media.

Well Linh, Q1 wrapped up a while ago, and it was one of the most challenging quarters I’ve faced to date.

Instead of writing a lengthy newsletter, I've written a full blog post here that outlines my major mistakes and lessons between January - April 2022.

Here's an idea of what my blog post is about:

My Q1 didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped it be, I had one of the toughest launches I’ve executed to date, I over hired and later had to downsize my team, and my overall profits year-to-date dropped from 50% down to 13% in just a few short months.

I made a few bad calls, dropped off of social media for a month to reflect on my mistakes and lessons.

I'm back now creating content, and now feel ready to actually share parts of the experience. You can read the full experience here.

(It's a lengthier read, but I promise that it's worth it.)

Linh, if you end up reading the blog post in full, please let me know by sharing your favourite section(s) and tagging me @vanessalau.co on Instagram stories!

The blog post took me a few days to write and a whole month to reflect.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

That said, I look forward to continuing to share my lessons weekly with you in your inbox!

With gratitude,

Vanessa

PS: It feels good to be back! Thank you for your patience as I rested and recovered | | 8 lessons that will change your life. | If you've been following me over on Instagram, you would have caught a glimpse of my very first large-scale speaking gig where I spoke at Grow with Video Live.

It was a milestone moment for me because I shared the same stage as Gary Vee, Patrick Bet David, Sean Cannell, The Hormozi's, and so many other entrepreneurs we all know and love.

But aside from being a speaker, I decided to attend majority of the event where I took countless notes on what differentiates those who are good vs. those who are great, whether it's business, content creation, or life in general.

Keep reading for my favourite personal lessons from the event that I think will be valuable to kick off your week, no matter what stage of business you're at.

🚀 Let's go.

(#PicsOrDidntHappen am I right?)

🌱 Lesson #1: People have the success they have not because they are smarter, but because they are willing to do the work you're unwilling to do.

My biggest ah-ha moment was seeing how much output other entrepreneurs do to get the results they have.

Gary Vee spoke on stage for 60 minutes. His biggest conference VeeCon had just wrapped up a few days prior.

In between VeeCon and Grow with Video LIVE, he had already spoken at 3 additional events.

Real Estate Mogul Ryan Pineda spoke on stage, and right after went back to work with creating content and taking meetings.

The next day he spoke on stage again, met up with me do a podcast interview at his office, and after I left, he immediately went back to filming content for his course and social media platforms.

Sean Cannell was non stop creating content. If he's not on stage, he's capturing moments for his social media.

Even before the event started, mid-conversation, he invited me to film this dancing reel with him because he wanted to maximize the day.

Alex and Leila Hormozi spoke on stage, but before that, they had just wrapped up some interviews. Afterwards, they had more meetings to go to.

Not to mention, ALL of these creators post over 3-6x a day on a single platform.

I'm sharing these examples with you not because I want you to agree with this type of work ethic.

However, I'm sharing this with you to objectively showcase that even these types of big-scale entrepreneurs are on a whole other level when it comes to output.

🌱 Lesson #2: People who have a lot of wealth are people who have mastered their time.

After reading the first lesson, you might be thinking:

"I can't do more output. I'm already capped out!"

One thing I learned from Alex and Leila Hormozi's session was when they talked about how your ability to turn things down must level up if you want to gain more success.

Here's a a decision filter they use that I found quite helpful:

1. Get clear on the main outcome you want. This is your big vision.

2. When you are trying to decide whether or not to take an opportunity, ask yourself, "Can I NOT do this, and still get to my end goal?"

If the answer is Yes, then drop the opportunity.

🌱 Lesson #3: There's a difference between Entrepreneurs who do business for themselves vs. Doing business because they love it.

When asked about what the secret sauce is to Gary's success, Gary said the reason why he's successful is because he doesn't want the things that come from being an Entrepreneur.

He wants to be great Entrepreneur. Period.

This is why most people will fail to replicate Gary's success, because he's not in it for the money. He's in it because he loves the game of entrepreneurship.

For instance:

Gary talked about how most entrepreneurs start businesses because they want to take from their businesses.

Meaning, they'll grab the profits and fund their lifestyle.

Gary on the other hand, he builds his businesses and he puts all the profits back into building more businesses.

Here's what he said that spoke to me:

"The reason why you’re not winning is because you aren’t willing to spend 20-40k a month to hire your own D-ROCK. Instead, you want that money to buy a Lamborghini."

(And by the way, if you don't know who D-Rock is; it's the guy that follows Gary around and films ALL of his content.)

Again - there is no right or wrong answer.

I'm just sharing that these people are on a whole other playing field.

It's apples vs. oranges.

🌱 Lesson #4: Don't let your comfort zone become your kill zone.

Anthony O'Neal shared a story about how he had to boil a frog in science class back when he was in High School.

Instead of turning up the heat to the maximum right away, he was instructed to turn up the temperature by a few notches every hour.

After a few hours, the frog eventually went to sleep and died in its sleep.

It didn't try to escape. It didn't thrash around. It remained calm up until it's death.

It was almost as if the frog didn't even know it was dying.

Here's the thing:

Many people will think that it's the boiling water that killed the frog.

But it's not the water that killed the frog.

It was the frog's comfort that killed himself.

Remember: Your comfort zone will eventually become your kill zone.

Be careful of this.

🌱 Lesson #5: If you want to win, decide you're a nobody.

The person with the most humility in the room wins.

Gary Vee spoke a lot about how he's willing to humble himself.

For example:

He still writes his own captions.

He's willing to take collaborations that regular people would turn down.

When TikTok became popular, he was willing to humble himself and start from scratch on a new platform, even though he invested years growing his Instagram. Was he frustrated? Of course. But he's willing to start from scratch again.

He also said:

"The market doesn't give a shit about your feelings. Have the humility to be willing to start from zero on a new platform."

I really loved this advice because I, too, feel resistant when new platforms emerge, because I am so comfortable with the platforms I've already spent time building.

But Gary is right.

If you want to get ahead, you must decide that you're a nobody, and be willing to start from scratch no matter how big you get.

🌱 Lesson #6: Your life will change the moment you stop treating "Who do I want to be?" as a joke.

Patrick Bet David shared the moment his life changed.

It was the moment he consciously decided to not talk about his dreams and aspirations like it's a joke.

How many of us dream about who we want to become, but with a sense of humour because we know it's crazy?

Stop doing that.

Once you take your vision seriously, other people will too.

Stop making your dreams a joke. Because it's not.

Have 100% conviction on who you want to become, and have absolute certainty that you will become that person.

🌱 Lesson #7: Scared money don't make money.

One of my favourite moments of the event was when Sean Cannell shared his revenue journey with Think Media.

One year they did 1.1M.

The next year they did 900K. They made less revenue and they made no profit.

Despite the slower revenue, Sean consciously decided to invest everything back into the business.

At the time, it was the scariest thing he's ever been through. But he knew that it was necessary if he wanted to grow his business.

Specifically, he understood that scared money, doesn't make money.

He invested with conviction he would one day see a return.

The following year?

5 million.

The year after that?

7 million.

All thanks to the investments they made that year when they made zero profit.

Bottom line:

Commit to taking calculated risks because every next level of business comes after next level risk.

🌱 Lesson #8: Invest as much of your money after living expenses on building up your skills.

Leila Hormozi is one of my favourite entrepreneurs right now. Her Youtube videos are next level helpful and value-packed.

I was equally as shocked when I found out that she's only 29, and she's already learned how to scale businesses up to 100M+.

When asked about how she grew so fast despite having zero experience in business, she explained that she had spent every dime she had left after living expenses on learning.

How many of us cheap out on learning, but don't cheap out on a new handbag? New watch? New clothes? I have!

Leila also says that it's not just ONE program or person that helps you become successful. It's MANY.

How many of us think that it's enough to just invest in one coach? One program?

Upskilling is a continuous journey. Invest in yourself as much as possible. It will pay you back dividends.

And remember:

It's not a single moment that makes you successful.

It's a compound of a lot of small moments.

Every piece of information you absorb and implement counts, even the mistakes.

Linh, I hope you enjoyed this week's email where I summarized some of my favourite lessons from the event.

This is easily thousands of dollars of advice that I got, and I'm honoured that I got to share some of these nuggets with you today.

There are definitely so many more lessons that I want to share, so stay tuned on my socials and keep your eyes peeled for my future newsletters - because I'll be sprinkling a lot of other lessons along the way!

That said, if you enjoyed this email, please screenshot your favourite "a-ha!" moment and share it on your stories.

Just don't forget to tag me @vanessalau.co on Instagram so I can repost and see them ☺️.

My goal with these emails is to give you the true behind the scenes of what it's like being a Creator and CEO.

I hope you enjoy reading these emails as much as I enjoy writing them.

With gratitude and until next time,

Vanessa Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor | | The 4 deepest fears that broke my business. | Last month, I shared my Q1 Recap (linked here) which resonated with many of you in the Content Creator to CEO family.

One particular lesson that resonated with a lot of you from the blog post was this one:

"If you don’t address your childhood wounds, they will bleed into your business."

I am someone who never truly identified or understood the concept of "childhood trauma" because I never thought I had any trauma.

Who, me? My childhood wasn't bad! Why would I have any reason to have trauma?

It wasn't until I started encountering challenges growing my business where my childhood wounds became clear to me.

I was making money, I had the team, I was following all the strategies...

But why did some things still feel hard?

Why was I always hitting the same roadblocks?

I always thought it was perhaps the wrong strategy I followed.

The wrong person I hired.

The wrong <insert here>.

I tried everything under the sun but the same patterns kept happening.

It wasn't until I dug deeper where I realized that a lot of the problems I had came from patterns I've unconsciously adopted from childhood:

People pleasing. Fear of abandonment. Fear of losing things overnight. Never feeling good enough.

In this weeks newsletter, I want to share clear examples of how these patterns have affected my business.

My hope is by reading this newsletter, it'll inspire you to look within and recognize how there is so much more to running a successful business than just strategy.

Let's dive in.

(It's time to get vulnerable y'all...)

1. People Pleasing:

I have an extremely hard time with saying No.

I will overcommit constantly and burn myself out as a result.

I will put other people's needs above my own.

I will make decisions that don't benefit myself or the business simply because I want people to like me.

This may stem from being the oldest child, being conditioned to feel bad for taking up space, and always prioritizing being "nice" to others, even if it means not being nice to myself.

Here are a few examples of how People Pleasing has created negative consequences in my business:

👉 Changing things about my content or programs because of ONE piece of critical feedback instead of looking at the big picture.

❌ Consequence: Putting a lot of effort in creating things that don't end up producing results.

For example, Offering extra calls and then the person not even showing up or creating bonus offers that don't even sell.

This also resulted in creating short term solutions and losing sight of the long term vision. Then being left with a fragmented and disconnected business (both inside and out).

👉 Not giving feedback to team members because "it’s such a small thing" and I didn’t want to come off as annoying or micromanage-y.

❌ Consequence: Mistakes being made on the BIG things as a result of letting the small things slide.

Not having paper trail to fire someone with cause and blindsiding others leading to frustration and confusion.

👉 Overcommitting to other people because I didn’t want to offend them by saying "No". Or ghosting people instead of saying "No", or "Not right now".

❌ Consequence: Not being able to fulfill on commitments and cancelling last minute which makes things worse.

Accepting partnerships, deals, or opportunities that are one sided and don't benefit me at all or line up with my business priorities, which ultimately eats up my time and creates resentment.

Burning out, doing ALL the things except MY things, and then wondering why my business isn't moving forward.

Linh, have you encountered similar situations?

If so, I want you to remember this:

In the moment, it's relieving and feels good to not deal with uncomfortable conversations in order to make other people feel happy, comfortable, and safe.

But typically a few days, weeks, months, or even years later, something far worse will happen as a result of you not addressing something uncomfortable or unaligned the moment you felt it.

The more you prioritize others, the less you prioritize yourself.

Nothing is more valuable than your Peace.

Protect it at all costs, even if it means disappointing others, because disappointing yourself is far worse.

2. Fear of Abandonment

My parents divorced when I was around 17.

It was not a mutual decision and I won't go into too much detail, but what I can say is I witnessed a lot of pain that it caused my mom.

I always knew that this was a pivotal point in my life, because my way of healing from the divorce was to be as successful as I could be - so no one could leave me.

Or even if they did leave me, I would be so financially safe, protected, and "so successful" that people leaving me wouldn't even affect me.

At the same time, it really wasn't until I started running a business where I realized I had a deep fear of being rejected and left.

Here are some things that happened that stacked onto each other, which eventually made it obvious I had a pattern I needed to break:

👉 Giving incredibly generous bonuses with no benchmarks for KPIs, and even if deadlines and results were missed because I didn’t want people to leave.

❌ Consequence: Created a very sticky precedent and a sense of entitlement around bonuses.

When I finally decided to stop giving out bonuses and solely base bonuses around actual results, it caused resentment among a few people because I had trained them to expect bonuses no matter the result.

👉 Creating ‘Frankenstein’ positions because I didn’t want to let go of roles that were actually no longer needed.

❌ Consequence: Low ROI on positions that didn't really make sense for the company, which also created a bloat on the team.

Also resulted in people being in roles that didn't align with their strengths, then back peddling and letting go of the role anyways... Except now with bridges burned because everyones time was wasted.

👉 Constantly needing validation, praise, and affirmations in order to feel confident with my work and my decisions. Doing work I think people want to see so they won't leave me.

❌ Consequence: Making my self-worth based on what other people have to say.

Constantly needing people to tell me I'm doing a good job or else I'll think I'm NOT doing a good job.

Needing people to confirm that my ideas are good before I can feel confident with moving forward.

All of this resulting in:

Delayed action, unnecessary stress, and losing my own opinions and self-identity on things.

Also putting way too much attention on negative comments or criticism, which caused me to exert way too much time and emotional energy on the wrong things.

If any of this resonates, here's something I read that helped me bring more awareness to the consequences of having a deep fear of abandonment:

"Individuals who struggle with fear of abandonment are afraid to be authentic in relationships because they think their differences will threaten the stability of the connection.

They are willing to lose themselves in exchange for approval and attention.

Instead of genuineness, they aim for a watered-down, palatable version of themselves to achieve "sameness."

Don’t compromise your originality.

Be brave enough to clearly define your identity and your values.

Commit to valuing yourself enough so you don’t sell out any longer."

3. Fear of Losing it All

My fear of losing it all came to realization when I noticed how much more anxious I got when I started making multiple millions.

I always thought that having more money meant more happiness and freedom...

But for me, having more money surprisingly brought more fear.

When I dug deeper on this, I realized it might have stemmed from a few things:

My dad making a mistake and gambling all the money away overnight, causing us to immediately downsize from 100 to 0 when I was a kid.

My boyfriend losing all his streams of income overnight because of regulation in his business industry, crypto market crashing, and his neighbour snitching on his Airbnb.

Family warning me to always be careful with money, not trusting me with money, and scolding me when I spent money.

15 years later, here's how these incidents have affected me in business:

👉 Hoarding cash.

❌ Consequence: Underinvesting in my business and people which resulted in the company being understaffed and people needing to work twice as hard.

Poor resource allocation which resulted in not growing as fast as we could have.

I basically wasn't feeding my business with the nutrients it needed even though I had all the resources to do it.

👉 Overdramatizing bad revenue months or bad results. Always thinking that a few bad months would be the end of me.

❌ Consequence: A LOT of unnecessary anxiety which would not only affect my happiness, but cloud my judgement.

This would able poor business decisions that were made based on short term scarcity vs. thinking in long term abundance.

For example: Making poorly thought out pivots that would affect the team, no longer investing in the help that would actually help us, and seeing everything as a cost vs. an investment.

👉 Playing small because playing big would mean having more to lose.

❌ Consequence: Not launching new offers even though there has been raving demand for YEARS which ultimately caps our income and impact.

Not wanting to hire too many people because it would mean having more responsibility and again, more things to possibly lose.

Being afraid to do more than what I am already doing.

If you see yourself in any of this, here is one shift that helped me trust that I will always be okay, EVEN if I did lose it all:

Trust that even if you lose everything in this business, know that you will always have the intellect and skill to rebuild again. ⁣⁣⁠ ⁣⁣⁠ Remember this:

You may lose the business and you may lose the money, but you will never lose the skills you learned to make a living for yourself.⁣⁣⁠

Every day you are working on your business, rain or shine, you are building yourself.

If you lose your business or change direction, you will never truly lose it all because of all the skills and lessons you’ve gained.

Live to your fullest potential and continue to invest in yourself to get there.

Because no matter what you will always be okay because of the person you've built yourself to become.

4. Fear of Not Being Good Enough

After having a deep conversation with my friend Celinne Da Costa (@celinnedacosta - check out her amazing work!), I learned that a pattern I have is that I severely undervalue myself.

Despite everyone around me telling me how awesome I am, how much I've changed their lives, how XYZ...

A piece of me will still not really believe it.

Through our conversation, I learned that it stems from my family undervaluing my achievements as a child AND as an adult (this is common in a lot of Asian families).

They often would say:

"Ok but you still don't have X."

"So what's the next step?"

"But that still won't be enough if you want to do Y."

Here are how these reactions I got as a kid affect me now in business:

👉 Always being in "GO GO GO" mode.

❌ Consequence: Never taking a real break. Never truly celebrating. And never being present or grateful because I'm constantly chasing the next thing only to feel empty when I "get there".

Not to mention, in the pursuit of chasing things (specifically in career and business), neglecting important relationships like Friends and Family...

And despite knowing a lot of people and a lot of people knowing me, not having a lot of deep relationships.

👉 Constant pressure to overdeliver.

❌ Consequence: Spending days preparing for coaching calls and content. Lots of inefficiencies and self-imposed pressure.

Constant need to improve things that don't actually need improving.

Perfectionism.

Overwhelming clients with information they don't need.

Overcomplicating processes when things can just be simple.

👉 Not giving enough praise to others because 1) I never got a lot of it when I was a kid, and 2) I am critical on myself (and therefore critical of others).

❌ Consequence: Not giving enough positive feedback to my team specifically (ie: No news is good news).

Projecting high standards onto other people (that are technically more personal preferences than anything).

Micromanagement (ie: Doing things for other people because I don't think what they created is good enough.)

Result?

People copy and pasting instead of innovating.

Highly valued staff not knowing they are highly valued.

If you constantly feel like you're not good enough, I want you to recognize two things that have helped me:

1. Everything you experience in life is a choice.

You can choose to see what's missing or you can choose to see what you already have.

2. Nothing will ever be good enough until you believe YOU are good enough.

Your items, your money, your partner, your team, your family, and your friends, will never make you feel whole until you feel whole.

Linh, I want you to know that my goal with this week's newsletter is not to parade all my wounds and personal traumas.

My goal with this week's email is to show you that even though they may look different from person to person, these problems exist for a lot of us, whether we share them or not (most won't).

While I am still working rewriting my story and identifying the triggers to help me break my habits and patterns, I want you to know that the best thing that's happened to me was at least having self-awareness.

I truly hope that by sharing the things I've gotten to be aware of, that you will also take a deeper look into the patterns in your business and question why they are happening.

Because I assure you it's not just about strategy.

If anything resonated with you in this week's edition of the newsletter, let me know by screenshoting and sharing your favourite part on your IG stories.

Just don't forget to tag me @vanessalau.co on Instagram so I can repost and see them ☺️.

My goal with these emails is to give you the true behind the scenes of what it's like being a Creator and CEO.

I hope you enjoy reading these emails as much as I enjoy writing them.

With gratitude and until next time,

Vanessa Your Content Creator to CEO Mentor

PS: Speaking of sharing the true behind the scenes, have you seen my first video back to Youtube since my content break?

If not, click here to watch it.

It reveals the true behind the scenes of being a creator that most don't talk about.

I hope you enjoy! | | Slow growth this year? Read this. | This week I released this 40 minute VLOG here outlining a Week in my Life as a Creator and Entrepreneur.

It covers the typical meetings I have in the week, behind the scenes of how I organize and film content, coaching calls, and even glimpses of my personal life.

A huge portion of the VLOG was also dedicated to showcasing my 4 day trip to Montana where I was mentored by Customer Journey Expert, George Bryant, to expand my mind on how I could improve my business.

This included how to get more customers, how to streamline our team, and how to fix some of our scaling issues.

Here is the VLOG for your convenience! ❤️️

In addition to the VLOG, I've also written a blog post this new blog post that outlines the Top 10 Lessons I've learned when it comes to:

1. Building a mission driven business,

2. Managing a team and working with clients, and

3. Getting more customers.

These are lessons I've summarized from my trip to Montana where I worked closely with George and my Director of Ops to uncover the bottlenecks of our business.

You can click here to read it in depth.

These are lessons I wish I knew sooner, and since learning some of these lessons, it has completely changed my entire philosophy when it comes to running a business, getting customers, and operating in life.

For context, my friend George has had experience scaling multiple 6, 7, 8 and 9 figure companies, and has even seen the backend of companies doing over 100M.

Want to access the mind of a seasoned CEO? Read the blog post here.

It's a lengthier read, but well worth the time investment - regardless of the stage you're at in business.

Linh, if you end up reading the blog post in full, please let me know by sharing your favourite section(s) and tagging me @vanessalau.co on Instagram stories!

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

That said, I look forward to continuing to share my lessons weekly with you in your inbox.

My mission with writing these emails and thought pieces is to help your journey navigating being a Creator and CEO to be a lot smoother than it has been for me.

I appreciate you, I love you, and I can't wait to write you again next week. :)

With gratitude,

Vanessa | | 8 lessons on how I manage stress and anxiety | Linh, I've been speaking to a number of business owners and creators lately.

The consensus has been that this year has been tough for a lot of people.

Things have significantly slowed down.

Talks of a recession is on the rise.

And Instagram going through an identity crisis with all the feature updates and algo changes is only overwhelming newer creators, rather than empowering them.

(Pst... You can watch this video here on my thoughts of the latest IG updates and my strategy recommendations!)

That's why in this week's email, I'm going to talk about my own recent experiences of stress and anxiety, as well as 7 mindset shifts and affirmations that have helped me tremendously.

I hope it helps you too. ❤️️

Let's go. 🚀

🌱 #1. “Ships dont sink because of the water around them. Ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening on the outside, get on the inside.”

This incredible Reel audio helped me a lot this past week when business was feeling tough.

I had just found out profits were an all time low for the month.

I had discovered that some past staff members had been over reporting and fabricating hours for months.

I had someone quit on my team.

And for the past months I’ve been rebuilding the business quietly after finally having the courage to let some positions go.

It’s safe to say that throughout the past months, but the past week especially, I’ve felt a range of emotions: Sadness, frustration, rage, disappointment, hopefulness, celebration, and confusion.

But despite all these emotions and despite all the things that were happening on the outside, I’ve had to constantly remind myself to detach and recognize that I can’t let everything that’s happening on the outside, affect me on the inside - and to take it day by day.

Mindset is everything and the more you can work on creating stillness on the inside, the more you can ensure the chaos on the outside doesn’t suck you in.

🌱 #2. The result of growth feels great, but the process of growth is painful.

Whenever I feel discomfort, which is most of the time, I remind myself that this feeling is what I should be feeling when I’m growing.

Here’s a reminder for you if you’re someone who’s going through discomfort right now in life or business:

If this is the first time you’re building a business, creating content, actually going for your dreams… Remember you’ve never been this version of you.

It’s reasonable for anyone to feel pain, discomfort, disappointment, and any range of emotion when you’re doing something you’ve never done before.

Forgive yourself and be proud of how courageous you’ve been.

Remember: The person who shows up deserves to be there, and when you avoid failure, you’re also avoiding success.

🌱 #3. If I got through X, then I can get through Y.

One of my favourite ways to work through difficult times is reminding myself of the worst moments of my life and the fact that I don’t even think about them today.

My parents divorce.

When I had an eating disorder and wanted to drop out of school.

The time my Business Manager resigned and I literally thought my business would crumble without her.

And likely so many moments, where at the time, I felt like were the worst moments of my life.

Sometimes you just have to remember that time is always on your side, and that “this too shall pass”.

A year from now, so many problems you are going through right now won’t be problems anymore.

Likely, they would be problems that you have conquered and became stronger as a result of it; because there is truly no growth without problems.

🌱 #4. "Your business is broken and if things go well, it always will be."

A past business mentor of mine, Alex Charfen, would say this all the time. And it’s true.

Even recently when I was confiding in my friend and new mentor, George Bryant, I told him how afraid I was to launch my new program. I was so afraid for the unknown that would come with having a whole new offer.

To which he said:

”Your business will break if you sell out your program. And your business will break if your program sells zero. No matter which end of the spectrum, your business will still be broken.”

He’s right.

Even if you 3x your business, you would now have the headache of keeping up with that growth.

Even if you -3x your business, you would have the burden of fixing the losses.

No matter what, so long as you continue running your business, problems will always come up - because that’s the game of being an Entrepreneur.

The moment you recognize this, is the moment you start finding peace.

An incredible business it not built in a year. Have perspective. A quote I really love is from Charlie Munger, to which he says:

”If you’re in this for the long pull, which is the way to do it, you better be able to handle a 50% decline without fussing too much about it.”

I’ve had months where I’ve cleared 100k in profit.

I’ve had months where I only made $100.

I’ve also had months where I’ve lost 100k.

Back then, I used to be SO reactive to my month to month income statement.

If I had a “bad month”, I would make it mean that I had a bad business. That it was only a matter of time before I go bankrupt.

But that simply isn’t true.

I remember I was once in a room with 7 and 8 figure entrepreneurs.

I told them that I had just made 6 figures in losses, with my profits going from 50% down to 13%.

No one batted an eye. No one felt sorry for me. No one was shocked.

This is when I realized I was in the right room.

Because it wasn’t until I met with higher level entrepreneurs who’ve been in the game for 10+ years where I realized that having low profit or no profit months was simply a part of the game.

A rookie entrepreneur is someone who only focuses month to month, and believes that business success is determined by the year.

A seasoned entrepreneur is someone who understands a great business is built in 10 years.

Have perspective and have patience.

🌱 #6. Happiness is a choice, not a circumstance.

This is a quote that I have on the first page of my journal, because it’s a constant reminder that everything is my choice.

It’s a decision to see what you want to see, to feel what you want to feel, and to hear what you want to hear.

Yes- shitty, terrible, awful days happen.

You can absolutely feel all those emotions.

But one thing I like to remind myself is not only that happiness is a choice, but I also see it as a skill.

It takes skill to decide to find the positive, despite having a terrible day.

It takes skill to decide to forgive someone who did you dirty.

It takes skill to take the high road.

It takes skill to go for a walk, exercise, and do whatever it takes to calm yourself down during a tumultuous period.

For me, it’s a skill I’m practicing every day; but I can assure you the moment I saw happiness as a skill and a choice, was the moment everything changed for me.

Because despite this year being one of the worst income years I’ve had, I’ve also been the calmest I’ve ever been despite it all.

And that is something worth being proud of.

🌱 #7. Stay in your own lane.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t watch my “competitor”’s stuff.

This is to protect my creative integrity, but also my mental health.

BUT, from time to time, it doesn’t mean I don’t get curious and start creeping around.

And unfortunately, 8/10 I leave feeling stressed and not good enough.

Can you relate?

Because if you do, I want to tell you a story that my friend George told me, that empowered me tremendously when it comes to paying attention to competition:

At one of the Olympics, a competitor lost the race to Michael Phelps by 0.01 seconds.

They were head-to-head at the finish line, with the competitor being slightly ahead.

But right near the finish, the competitor took a quick glance over at Michael Phelps.

This one glance costed him 0.01 seconds and as a result, he lost the Gold Medal.

0.01 sections. Think about that.

In that split second, one glance costed him the medal.

So remember:

You’ll never get to where you’re going if you’re lost on someone else’s path.

🌱 #7. If I lose it all, I'll still have my family who loves me. And that's all that matters.

One thing my partner and I always say is that even if our businesses go bust, we’ll still have each other.

I’ll still have my family, and he’ll have his.

I guarantee that there is someone out there who loves you unconditionally, even without your business.

There are people out there who will take care of you. Who will offer their couch to you. Who will keep you safe and warm.

Never take those people for granted in the pursuit of growing your business, and remember that no matter what happens, you will always be able to find safety. And finally…

🌱 #8. “But did you die?”

This is hands down the one thing I say in my head THE MOST.

As long as I didn’t die, I think I am doing just fine. because being alive is already such a gift.

No matter how many team members or clients leave you.

No matter how many posts flop.

No matter how little money is rolling in right now.

No matter how many investments you’ve made that haven’t paid off.

… You didn’t die.

Linh, I hope you enjoyed this week's email where I share some of the mindset shifts that have helped me.

As always: If you got to the bottom of this email, screenshot and post your favourite section of the email in your Instagram stories, and tag me @vanessalau.co ! ❤️️

Seeing your stories about the newsletter is literally THE highlight of my Mondays - I always look forward to checking out my story mentions to see which parts of the email resonated with you.

My mission with these emails is to make your journey easier than it was for me, and to guide you into becoming the Content Creator and CEO you dream to become.

Until next week,

Vanessa - your content creator to CEO mentor 😊

PS: If all the new algorithm and Instagram updates have been causing you some stress, definitely watch this week's Youtube video where I share the top ones and how to strategically leverage them for more growth and engagement.

You can watch it here:

PPS: If you would like to learn how to monetize your content, then click here and attend my free training if you haven't already. This is where I share the steps on monetizing as a content creator with 1:1 coaching or consulting offers. 😊 - Vanessa

PPPS: Are you an eager beaver and can't wait until next Monday for the CEO newsletter? Click here to get a sneak peek of some upcoming emails for you to binge read! 📚🪱 | | Getting a seat at the table. | "How did you get invited to that table?"

"How do I get invited to that table?"

This is a question that flooded my DMs when people saw me having dinner with the Hormozis, Sam Ovens, Chris Do, Neil Patel, and so many other leaders we all know and recognize (pics or didn’t happen):

Specifically, how did someone like me get a seat at that table?

Someone who only started their business 4 years ago (compared to everyone else who’s been at the game for 10+ years), and who’s not even close to making 8 or 9 figures per year (again, like everyone else at the table).

In this week’s letter, I want to dissect the 5 things I wish more people knew when it comes to getting recognized by your industry peers, getting invited to "inner circle" rooms, and also being a "newcomer" to whatever industry you are in.

Let’s dive in.

Do great work, and talk about it as publicly as you can.

It would amaze you that I have never done outreach before to get the opportunities that I’ve had so far.

My first ever speaking engagement was for Neil Patel. My second one was on the same stage as Gary Vee.

Prior to that, I also did podcast episodes with Think Media, Sunny Lenarduzzi, and other incredible entrepreneurs you may know of and admire (as do I!).

I got these opportunities because:

1. I got results.
2. I shared my results publicly.
3. I showed others how to get similar results.

The truth that most people don’t like hearing is that merit is what will earn you a seat at the table.

At the same time, there's tons of people who have results...

So what separates those who get visible, and those who don't?

How come some "newcomers" get recognized faster than others?

Let's dissect this down below with some tactical advice for those who either

1. Don't have results yet, or
2. Have results, but can't seem to get recognized.

⚡️ Lesson #1: Focus on Documentation.

"How-To" content can be replicated, but your unique perspective to your journey cannot be.

Even if you feel you "aren’t there yet", share the lessons you’ve learned from your mistakes.

Force yourself to experiment with different things within your field, and report back to your audience (yes - even if it’s small for now) on what worked and what didn’t work.

Remember: If you want to be a thought leader, you can’t copy what everyone else is teaching, saying, or doing.

You must bring new ideas and new ways of doing things to the table.

📖 Story Time (Re: Bringing New Ideas)

When I was invited to speak about "How to Get Customers on Youtube and Instagram" at Neil Patel and Eric Siu’s mastermind for the first time, I had the most anxiety I ever felt in my entire life.

I didn’t have an 8 or 9 figure business or a big team….

Plus, how could I possibly share something that Neil Patel himself wouldn’t know already?

I felt like a small fry, and I honestly wasn’t sure why I was invited in the first place.

I was so nervous that my Apple watch kept warning me that I may be having a heart attack leading up to my presentation:

But to my surprise, I ended up being the #1 rated speaker for that event based on attendee feedback.

Here’s why:

My presentation was tactical.

It wasn’t theory, high-level framework based, or inspirational.

I shared the exact step by step on how I grew my Youtube and Instagram channels, the specific tools I used, the strategies that worked for me, and the workflow that I follow.

It turns out, my biggest insecurity ended up being my biggest advantage:

I shared detailed tactics that high-level CEOs didn’t have time to do themselves.

Suddenly, I had multiple high powered CEOs asking me to get connected with their teams.

I even had Neil Patel requesting to book a meeting with me so I could walk his team through the step by step of creating Youtube thumbnails!

These CEOs I was initially so intimidated by saw me as an incredible asset because I shared details they typically don’t think of.

So what can you learn from this story?

Being small has it’s advantage.

When you’re a solopreneur who’s in the weeds, who MUST stay on top of the latest trends and changes…

You’re able to provide immense value to industry titans who no longer experience the same day to day execution.

Let’s put it this way:

People think that the best way to do market research is to interview the CEO.

In reality, the best person you should interview is the Customer Service Rep who is interacting with customers daily.

Remember: Being in the front lines has value.

Share your findings generously, and use "small" to your advantage.

⚡️ Lesson #2: Focus will get you far. Go deep instead of wide.

It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be a small fish lost in a big ocean if you want to accelerate your reputation in an industry.

I got my start by niching down to teaching Instagram specifically AND I put all my effort on growing only 2 platforms, YouTube and Instagram.

Because I focused my efforts, I got big results overtime.

Not only this, the experience alone helped me deepen my understanding of the two platforms, which ultimately accelerated me to "expert status" in a few short years.

Both the results and the experience combined got me noticed, and allowed me to be invited on major social media specific podcasts, like Social Media Examiner and Think Media.

Not to mention, I also spent the last 3 years focusing on scaling ONE signature product, which allowed me to go from 0 to 7 million in sales in a shorter period of time than most.

As a result, I develop a stronger business acumen of scaling 1 product to the millions, instead of launching multiple products but scaling none.

I’m certain that If I had tried to master Linkedin, Instagram, Youtube, Podcast, and TikTok...

PLUS launched multiple different products or businesses, I wouldn’t have been able to build a reputation with anything.

Remember: If you want accelerated results, go deep until you’ve earned the credibility to go wide.

⚡️ Lesson #3: Pick a platform that gets you the most visibility.

I’m becoming more and more bullish for YouTube as a platform, simply because of all the doors it has opened for me.

Even though most of the content I create on YouTube caters to a beginner audience, industry leaders have still heard of me or found me through my channel.

Whether someone on their team watches my videos and shares it with them.

Whether I showed up on their algorithm.

Or whether they’ve heard my name pop up in conversation because "someone knows someone" who watches my videos.

For example, whenever I go to events, even though I feel there’s no way the other person would know who I am, most times they will say:

"Oh! I know of you. I’ve seen some of your videos."

Earlier, I talked about the importance of not just getting results, but talking about them.

But what I didn’t mention is WHERE you talk about your results matters.

For example, sharing your results and helping people in an Instagram story that expires after 24 hours is useless, because:

Only your existing followers will see it, and

It expires.

Whereas for me, I’ve been publicly sharing my results and teaching it to others for the last 4 years, capturing it all on video - specifically YouTube.

The content doesn’t expire, and people can find my videos months and even years later.

📖 Story Time (Re: Picking the right platform)

To illustrate the above point further, let me share the story of how I got connected with my now friend, Eric Siu, who has played a key role in connecting to me incredible entrepreneurs:

It’s 2020 and I decided to look up my own name in the Podcast search bar.

To my surprise, I saw that I was in the show notes of Neil Patel and Eric Siu’s Marketing School podcast (here’s the episode).

I listened to the podcast and was surprised to hear Eric Siu shouting me out.

He said something along the lines of:

"Someone you should check out is Vanessa Lau, her instagram is very well integrated, where all her content links back to the program she sells, and she makes sales from Instagram. She talks about it on Youtube."

From there I sent a voice note to Eric to thank him:

To my surprise, prior to this he had actually DM'ed me before letting me know that he was sending my videos to his team!

A year later once travel opened up, he then invited me to speak at his event:

Eric found me because of YouTube.

Eric is not my typical target audience, but he sends my videos to his team and he uses my videos as inspiration for how his team should edit his.

Eric is not the only high powered entrepreneur who does this.

In fact, I once met an ex-team member who worked on Gary Vee’s Content team, and before I could even introduce myself, he already knew who I was because he’s referenced my videos for work 🤯

So what does this tell you?

The subject matter you teach and the results you get is not the only reason why you'll get visible.

Where you share it and how people can find you is also the key to supercharging your success and visibility.

I'll be the first to tell you that there are people out there who are smarter than me, more talented than me, and have better results than I do…

But because I share my results on YouTube, people find me, not them.

This is exactly why my new program, Creator Supercharged, largely focuses on YouTube.

I’ve witnessed the power of it, not just with getting customers, but also getting noticed by publications, industry peers, and large brands.

That’s why if you’re someone who already sells a program and wants to learn how to get more clients while increasing mass visibility, check out www.creatorsupercharged.com to sign up for the waitlist.

I’ll be opening up applications this November!

⚡️ Lesson #4: Overdelivering is better than Delivering.

I give my all and beyond in what I do.

Even if its a 10 minute presentation, a casual podcast, or preparing for a client call.

Sometimes, it’s come with some negatives (ie: boundaries), but most times, overdelivering has never failed me in getting the results that I want.

Especially if you are a newcomer to any space, you often have to work twice as hard to not just get noticed, but to leave a strong enough impression to be invited back again.

As a result of giving a shit, overly preparing, and making sure I overdeliver to their audiences, I have often been:

... Re-invited for more episodes,

... Offered one-off 1:1 mentorship by the Founder,

... Invited to speak at "bigger" things like their events,

... Invited to lunch or dinner with their network,

... Received positive feedback from attendees or other listeners, who then want to invite me to THEIR events or podcasts.

All this is to say:

Being invited is only half the battle.

The other half is being so good that people want to invite you back again.

When in doubt, over preparing is always better than under preparing.

⚡️ Lesson #5: Be a student. Share your results.

Now let’s say you want to get visible as fast as possible and in the most efficient way.

Here’s what you can do:

Be a paid student in their program, be helpful to others, and get results.

Most importantly, share the result.

When you make yourself visible in someone else’s program, it increases the chances of you being invited to speak at their events or be featured on their podcasts as a case study.

It also increases the chances of them being willing to be on your podcasts or guest speak at your events, pending their schedule, and especially if rapport has been built.

Heck — it may also land you a job!

For example, on my team, I have 2 staff members who were clients of mine.

Now let’s say the person you admire doesn’t have a program you can access, then buy a ticket to their event and make yourself visible.

(Pro Tip: Pay for the VIP ticket - it’s worth it.)

On the other hand, if you’re in a situation where you can’t afford to join programs or pay for events, if you’ve gotten results simply by implementing their free content, let them know.

And it’s not just a "Omg! Thanks so much, your videos have been so helpful!"

I’m talking about emailing or DMing with details on the A to B journey on how you got that result and what you specifically implemented.

Quantify the impact. Share numbers.

I guarantee their ears will perk up and you will absolutely be on their radar.

Key Takeaway: Be an advocate for their work. But even better is to be an advocate who got results.

Linh, did you enjoy this week's newsletter?

If so, let me know by screenshotting your favourite section and tag me on Instagram stories (@vanessalau.co).

I love reposting the tips, lessons, and stories that resonated with you most!

My duty with these newsletters is to help you become the Creator and CEO you're born to be, and make your journey at lot less difficult than it needs to be.

If I've gotten you one step closer to achieving that, then I've done my job.

As always, I appreciate you and I'll write to you again next week!

Yours truly,

Vanessa | | Social media is changing | In the past few months I’ve had the privilege to speak and attend various high level events.

The biggest theme of the events I went to?

Content is the future.

Naval Ravikant said it best in one of my favourite books, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, when he talked about the 4 different types of leverage:

Capital: You learn how to multiply your money, like Warren Buffet.

Labor: You have a human workforce that can build whatever you tell them to, like Henry Ford.

Code: You create tech, like Mark Zuckernerg.

Media: You can create content, like Joe Rogan.

How most people got rich in the last few decades is mainly based on Capital and Labor.

But today, most of the newer billionaires get their wealth from Code and Media.

Now since most of us may not know code, to me, Media is the most no-brainer.

As mentioned in this article:

"40 years ago, 30 years ago, I would have to be lucky to get on TV, which is somebody else’s leverage.

They would have distorted the message.

They would have charged me for it.

They would have muddled the message, and I would have been lucky to get that form of leverage.

Today, thanks to the Internet, I can buy a cheap microphone, hook it up to a laptop or an iPad, and there you are all listening."

Bottom line is: If you have a WiFi connection, you can leverage Media.

So, how can you put yourself in a position to build wealth for yourself?

In this week’s newsletter, I want to share my social media predictions based on my own observations and the conversations I’ve been having with my peers.

By the end of reading this letter, you will have a competitive advantage that will future proof your business for the next 12 months to come.

⚡️ Prediction #1: More people will want to build personal brands.

I am noticing a huge trend of high powered business founders all of a sudden doubling down on increasing their personal brand presence online.

Why?

Because it is so much easier to sell whatever you want when you have a strong personal brand and a large audience.

A good example are the Hormozi's, who have silently built up 100M dollar businesses silently without showing their face online.

However, at the Grow with Video LIVE conference I went to, Alex Hormozi revealed that he decided to start creating content with his wife Leila because they could no longer deny the power of having a strong personal brand.

Since doing so, their deal flow has not only grown, but it has also grown effortlessly because they no longer need to chase prospects or spend thousands on outbound efforts.

Instead, their content simply attracts high volumes of prospects AND gives the the upper hand to be selective.

In addition to this, when I saw Alex speak at the Levelling Up event, he also disclosed how finding talent has been a lot easier since having a stronger online presence.

Here's another example:

Kylie Jenner.

How is it possible that someone like Kylie Jenner can become a billionaire and be on the cover of Forbes magazine?

Her social presence and status sells her products.

Same thing goes for the rest of the Jenners and Kardashians, who's entire family have become millionaires and billionaires thanks to being incredibly strategic with media.

Now let’s look at a more "within reach" example:

Charlie D’Amelio.

An every day girl posting videos on TikTok, who is now worth over 20M.

Or even me.

Thanks to creating content 4 years ago, I’ve now built my own net worth from less than $20,000 in the bank, to suddenly multi-millions…

All because I:

Created content consistently online,

Grew and nurtured an audience,

Sold relevant services and products to an audience

Repeated steps 1-3.

At the sane time, many people may not agree with this way of making money and creating impact.

In fact, I have met countless of people who refuse to create content and prefer to make money quietly behind the scenes.

While this is possible, you cannot deny that it is a lot easier to make money in business when you have a strong personal brand fuelling it.

So here’s what I believe:

The people who have strong online presences and personal brands will future-proof any business endeavours they pursue.

This is why my newest program, Creator Supercharged, heavily emphasizes growing a personal brand via content creation in order to sell your products and services.

Bottom line:

If you’re reading this email on your computer or mobile phone, you have all the tools at your disposal to create wealth for yourself simply by creating content and leverage the media you create.

Focus on this sooner rather than later to get ahead.

⚡️Prediction #2: Video and Community are the future.

A central theme among all the high-level events I’ve gone to this past year have all validated the demand for video and the importance of building community.

"Rather than the 2D interaction we presently have, social media and the internet will continue to evolve into a more immersive experience, through an integration of our physical and virtual worlds.

We carry our phones and laptops like they are extensions of our arms, but in the future, we may enter virtual spaces via glasses or contact lenses, an evolution of the heavy VR headsets that we currently see today." (Source: Martech Series)

Knowing the above, it is no wonder that platforms like Instagram are becoming even more bullish about video than ever before.

And no, it’s not JUST to compete with TikTok, it’s also because as a whole, demand for video has significantly increased as user behaviour changes.

I do not think this demand is going to slow down, and especially if the future is all about being immersed in virtual reality...

The creators who are already on video, will have the strongest competitive advantage.

In addition to video, the importance of community has also been heavily emphasized.

Specifically:

"Web3 will redefine how we socialize. It is designed to be community-driven, ad-free, and self-monetized."

So what does this mean?

It means that the power will start swaying more and more to the common people.

Even look at platforms like TikTok, where highly produced content made by companies and celebrities perform WORSE than content produced by every day creators.

Not to mention, it’s now the community that dictates whether a brand thrives or not.

Bottom line is:

Regardless of what your thoughts are about Web3, social media is going to change.

Heck - it’s already changed a lot since 2019.

So how can you prepare?

Get comfortable with video. Stop denying it, and start asking yourself how you can get started (even if it means practicing and taking your time.)

Stop building an audience, and start building a community.

I know for my company, in 2023, one of our most important projects is to create a dedicated space for you and other Creators and CEOs to chat and mingle, and to increase the opportunities for in-person meet ups.

This is because we understand that in the future..

It will no longer enough to post a video online and call it a day.

⚡️ Prediction #3: YouTube will be in high demand.

Demand for starting a YouTube channel is the highest I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been contacted my 8 figure course creators asking me for help to start their YouTube channels because Ads are no longer effective for them.

I’ve also had 7, 8, and 9 figure CEOs ask to book calls with me to talk to their teams about YouTube because they too realize how much they are missing out by NOT tapping into long-form video content.

The truth is, people are now realizing 3 things:

🤷‍♀️ 1) Ads don’t work the same way they used to.

Paid traffic is not dead, but it is EXPENSIVE and no longer as predictable as it used to be.

Ever since privacy updates, it’s been even harder to target the right people.

As such, many business owners can no longer justify and afford spending money on ads only to reach the wrong audience and not get strong returns.

Now this is not to say ads are DEAD.

It’s to say that I see more people regretting not growing their organic audience because now they are stuck in a vicious cycle of running ads unprofitably.

🤷‍♀️ 2) TikTok is an unpredictable platform and you can’t control sales flow.

Let me provide some context:

I watched someone with over 1M TikTok followers present how they got 1M followers, and my biggest conclusion was they themselves did not know how they got to 1M followers.

There was no tangible strategies, and no repeatable formula for true success.

I even spoke to one of my 7 figure CEO friends who has millions of TikTok followers, and even her biggest advice was:

"If you want to make money and secure your audience in the long term, you must get people OFF of TikTok as quickly as possible and onto your other platforms."

Whereas with my experience on YouTube, while not every video goes "viral"...

At least I have enough data and predictability with YouTube to be able to control my results and teach others how to do it.

Bonus? My viewers and subscribers are actually loyal 😂

🤷‍♀️ 3) Instagram is shooting itself in the foot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep giving tips about growing on Instagram until Instagram proves to me that it’s no longer effective.

However, I will say that Instagram’s identity issues is becoming a concern.

Should you worry about it now? No, but I'd tread carefully.

Truthfully, Instagram is still one of my favourite platforms to make money, specifically thanks to the ability to DM prospects and generate leads all in one platform.

However, more than ever before...

I highly urge creators to have a second platform they are growing in conjunction with Instagram if they have not started already.

Ideally, that platform should be YouTube - given Prediction #, Prediction #2, and Prediction #3 that I've outlined in this newsletter.

Bottom line: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Need help with YouTube?

I’ve been posting a lot more videos about how to start and grow a YouTube channel.

This is a great one that will give you 20 tips to get started:

⚡️ Prediction #4: SEO is changing.

My last prediction is one that I have been slowly observing, and that is how people find information is going to change:

"Senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Google’s Knowledge & Information organization, recently noted that younger users are often turning to apps like Instagram and TikTok instead of Google Search or Maps for discovery purposes.

For instance, Raghavan said nearly 40% of young people go to TikTok or Instagram when looking for a place to eat, as opposed to Google Maps or Search." (Source: Tech Crunch)

Even for me, I use TikTok SEO more than I use Google SEO.

This means apps like TikTok is no longer just a standard social media platform...

But it is now becoming a powerful search engine that can possibly compete with Google.

This has become such a threat to Google that Google has now rolled out new updates to promote original content from creators.

Meaning that instead of boring articles that show up in the first page, the future will be headed toward user generated content instead.

In other words, a video or blog post created by a real every day human will outrank a post written by an incentivized company or a robot.

Bottom line?

Being a content creator is going to be even more powerful than it is now.

Platforms are now favouring content creators like you and I over boring corporate content.

So if it isn't clear to you already:

TAKE. ADVANTAGE. OF. THIS.

KEEP. GOING.

Linh, the entire social media landscape is changing.

If you want to be at the forefront of these changes, staying subscribed to my content is already going to give you a competitive advantage.

At the same time, if you desire to accelerate and future proof your business even further...

I highly encourage you to sign up for the Creator Supercharged waitlist and apply to work with me this November when we officially launch the program.

Creator Supercharged will heavily focus on helping our clients become industry leaders and accelerate their personal brands with content marketing, especially video.

Spots will be limited.

That said, I appreciate you reading this week’s Creator to CEO Newsletter.

I spend my Sundays writing them to make sure they are ready on Monday morning for you.

One of my greatest rewards is seeing the screenshots of your favourite sections posted on your IG stories.

Just make sure to tag me @vanessalau.co so I can see it and reshare them to my own page :)

If something I wrote helped you become 1 step closer to being the Creator and CEO you desire to be, then I have done my job with this newsletter.

I cannot wait to write you again next week,

Vanessa | | STOP creating content like a coach.. | For the longest time, I saw myself as a "Coach" and not necessarily a Creator.

As such, all of my decisions around growing my business revolved around the coaching program I was selling.

For example, I always made sure I hired enough people to help grow the coaching program.

Things like Customer Support, Community Management, Admin, Operations, and Coaching.

But here’s the problem:

Despite adding more support to the business...

I was still severely burnt out because I was the only one white knuckling content creation and marketing.

In fact, it always felt like the weight and responsibility fell on my shoulders when it came to making money for the business and growing my platform.

You see, for the longest time I thought my business was a Coaching business, so I operated it as such.

But the truth is, I wasn’t a coach.

I was a Creator.

Specifically, I was a Creator who just so happened to sell a coaching program.

NOT a Coach or a Coaching Business who does social media.

There is a difference.

Once I understood the difference, I shifted my attention towards scaling my CONTENT, instead of just scaling my PROGRAM.

Since making these shifts, I’ve not only grown my platforms with LESS effort...

But I’ve also built up more income streams outside of the one program I sell, and I’ve strengthened my personal brand as a whole.

That said, in this weeks email, I’ll share the top 3 realizations that helped me scale up my content.

Let’s go! ⚡️⚡️⚡️

⚡️ Realization #1: Your product is not your identity.

For the longest time, I revolved my entire business around my coaching program.

All my hires, decisions, and projects revolved around my one signature offer.

This helped me scale my offer from 0 to 7 million, yes.

But it also kept me stuck.

It kept my content stuck.

It kept my offers stuck.

It kept my business stuck.

It kept my personal growth stuck.

The truth is, if you are someone who sells a program, whether it’s 1:1 coaching, group coaching, or a course…

You need to understand that your offer is not your entire business.

It is just ONE thing you SELL in your business.

Beyond that, you also have to realize that your business is ONE thing you have under your personal brand.

Want to play a big game?

Focus on growing your personal brand so you can have multiple businesses.

So you can write a book.

So you can sell, create, and acquire anything you want.

Sure, many people can create wealth silently without a big brand name…

But if you want to unlock more options in life and get those options easily, my recommendation is to invest in your personal brand:

Take up space and grow an audience.

Don’t just hire people to manage operations. Hire people to scale your brand.

Share your perspective instead of copying someone else’s "How To" content.

Develop a mission for your brand, not just a niche statement to sell a product.

Create a community, not just a client base.

Think about your roadmap. Don’t just sell programs. Think bigger than that.

Remember:

One of the biggest risks you can put yourself in is thinking that your entire business is your coaching program.

When you think like this, you are destined to put a ceiling on your potential.

⚡️ Realization #2: Creating only short form content is a losing battle.

I used to create unique pieces of content for Instagram every single week.

Back in 2019 and 2020, you could get away with only posting 2-3x a week.

As such, I would create content that was specifically designed for Instagram.

However, as we entered 2021, I started to notice a shift in the algorithm.

No longer was it enough to post 2-3x a week.

To see substantial growth, you needed to post more.

Not to mention, TikTok was becoming more popular, so Instagram introduced Reels.

I found myself being a dancing monkey every single day to cater to that algorithm…

And I hated it.

I don’t know about you..

But I prefer to grow my account based off of my thought leadership and unique content...

NOT lip syncing to a 5 second audio and praying people read my caption.

Not to mention, it was frustrating to know that all of my effort filming these videos wouldn’t even pay off in the long run simply because Instagram’s algorithm values Recency.

Meaning that Instagram never pushes content out that was posted months or years ago, unlike platforms like YouTube, where my videos continue to be found long after I’ve created and posted them.

As a YouTuber who was used to getting so much return on my effort...

I really didn’t feel I was getting a high return on my time if I continued to create unique content for Instagram every single day…

So I changed my strategy and decided I was no longer going to be a dancing monkey by force.

Which leads me to my next realization…

⚡️ Realization #3: Posting content and Creating content are two different things.

If you’re reading this email, you’re likely a combination of Creator, Coach, and CEO.

Well - it’s time to think like a CEO and ask yourself how you can create the most Time Leverage.

"How can I get the biggest result with the least amount of effort?" became the main question I needed to answer in order to escape being a Dancing Monkey.

👇 Here’s how I answered it:

#1. I film 1 long form video on Youtube per week ,and

#2. I write 1 long form email per week (like the one you’re reading right now)

These two activities give me the highest return of my time from a content standpoint:

Activity #1: YOUTUBE

My YouTube videos offer an evergreen benefit, where every video I upload gets me traffic and leads months and even years after I’ve posted it.

The more videos I create, the bigger I get.

Activity #2: EMAIL

Writing value-based emails to my list is the most potent form of nurturing and pays off greatly in the long term from a sales perspective, AND…

Unlike other social platforms,

1. Email is unlikely to die and

2. People are unlikely to change their emails as much as they change their social handles.

This is why nurturing the list is worth investing in as it is the only thing I can truly rely on to rebuild if any of my platforms go bust.

It became clear that these two activities were non negotiable, and I needed to protect these activities at all costs.

At the same time, it also became clear that I was unwilling to do more work than that.

So, I made 3 key hires:

1. Social Media Manager
2. Video Editor
3. Content Writer

Then I created this process:

Step 1: CURATE VIDEOS

My Social Media Manager watches all my Youtube videos and creates as many timestamps of 30 second to 1 minute sound bites from my long form videos.

For each long form video, she can pull out 5-10 short form videos.

Step 2: EDIT VIDEOS

My Video Editor follows my SMM’s instructions on what timestamps to edit, and creates as many short form videos as possible.

Step 3: CURATE TEXTS

My Content Writer reads all my CEO Newsletters and writes as many mini-threads as possible to turn into Tweets.

This is the same idea was Step 1, except its all written form.

Step 4: DISTRIBUTE 🔥

Social Media Manager schedules all of the short form videos on multiple platforms like YT Shorts, IG Reels, and TikTok for maximum distribution.

Also schedules all of the tweets on Twitter, and creates Instagram Carousels from the Twitter Screenshots. Schedules them on Instagram.

This all yields to two main results:

💰 Result #1: We can post content at a high volume without creating anything new.

For context, we post 2-3 times per DAY, every day, 7 days a week.

All content stems of 2 major content pieces I've created, so it requires little to no approval since nothing is truly created from scratch.

This means most of this process is hands off, other than providing feedback when necessary.

Remember: POSTING is NOT the same as CREATING.

💰 Result #2: I get my time back.

With the time I get back since I'm not creating 20 pieces of content per week, and only creating 2 per week...

I can now focus more on being the visionary of my business (working ON the business instead of IN the business)

AND

As a bonus, with the time I save, I can also film 2-3 "trend based" short form videos native to the Instagram platform per week with the goal of going "viral"...

But the best part, is that this is by CHOICE. Not by FORCE.

I CHOOSE to be a Dancing Monkey if I find a fun trend... but it's not because I think it's necessary.

I do it because I think it's FUN.

By the way, if you want me to elaborate on this more, make sure to watch this video below to learn about my strategy and how I would improve this strategy further:

So if you got to the bottom of this email, what’s the key takeaway?

Here are 3 I’d like you to remember:

1. If you create content like a Coach, you will only have a coaching business that keeps you small.

2. If you create content like a Creator, you will only have a personal brand that exhausts you.

3. If you create content thinking like a CEO, you will have an empire that can run without you.

So if you got to the bottom of this email, what’s the key takeaway?

Here are 3 I’d like you to remember:

1. If you create content like a Coach, you will only have a coaching business that keeps you small.

2. If you create content like a Creator, you will only have a personal brand that exhausts you.

3. If you create content thinking like a CEO, you will have an empire that can run without you.

Linh, it's time to approach our content, businesses, and brands differently.

If you desire to accelerate and future proof your business even further as a Creator...

I highly encourage you to sign up for the Creator Supercharged waitlist and apply to work with me this November when we officially launch the program.

Creator Supercharged will heavily focus on helping our clients become industry leaders and accelerate their personal brands with content marketing.

Spots will be limited.

That said, I appreciate you reading this week’s Creator to CEO Newsletter.

One of my greatest rewards is seeing the screenshots of your favourite sections posted on your IG stories.

Just make sure to tag me @vanessalau.co so I can see it and reshare them to my own page :)

If something I wrote helped you become 1 step closer to being the Creator and CEO you desire to be, then I have done my job with this newsletter.

I cannot wait to write you again next week,

Vanessa | | Content is CHANGING… | This past week, I got to hang out with Sam Ovens and other entrepreneurs in a mastermind setting.

I also spoke on a Q&A panel with 3 other YouTubers: Aaron Doughty (1.3M subs), Clark Kegley (1.2M subs), and Quazi Johir (200K subs).

Here's a pic of us in action!

When asked what topics everyone wanted to cover, nearly all 60 entrepreneurs in the room said YouTube, Content Machine, and Organic Traffic.

This was the #1 hottest topic, beating out how to train sales teams.

If individuals who are making over $100,000 per month (and a handful doing over 1M/month) are feeling the urgency to grow their organic reach, this should tell you something.

That's why in today's email, I am going to dive into my 4 reflection points around this topic and things that I thought about during the event.

Let's go! 🚀

⚡️ Reflection #1: Earned Media Will Be More Important Than Ever Before.

There are so many entrepreneurs are willing to spend 30k on ads, but not 30k on their content teams to scale their organic reach.

This is completely backwards, especially in todays landscape where ads simply are no longer as effective as they were 5 years ago.

Here’s the argument on why earned media is a better play than paid media:

Ads don’t build on top of each other, meaning that the more ads you run doesn’t necessarily mean you can run less ads overtime.

If anything, running ads at scale simply increases your risk of your account getting banned.

On the flip side…

When you focus on building your organic traffic, every month you create content, it builds on top of what you’ve built before.

Your account becomes stronger, your reach becomes stronger, and you can rely less and less overtime because it becomes a machine.

For example, I’ve been creating videos on YouTube for 4 years.

The more content I create, the more it feeds into each other and it all grows in reach collectively.

If I wanted to stop creating content for a whole year, I would still get traffic from my videos.

Whereas if I stopped running ads, my traffic would immediately stop.

Specifically, Sam advocated that the ultimate power combo for maximum organic traffic and THE smartest way to get more customers in 2022 and beyond was YouTube and Email.

Any business who has these two locked in and is willing to invest resources in scaling those two platforms will reap the highest returns in the next 24 months and beyond.

It was in this moment I wanted to give myself a huge pat on the back, because these are the exact two things I have been mastering and doubling down on the past year.

In fact, so many business owners came to me during the event asking me if I was ever going to launch a program to teach them how I’ve grown my YouTube channel and created my content machine:

600,000 on YouTube, 250,000 on Instagram, 200,000 on Email,

… and over $7,000,000 in sales selling a $997 - $2,000 program.

Not even because of a high ticket offer.

The demand was clear.

People NEED me to teach them how to grow a personal brand that ATTRACTS and doesn’t chase.

This is exactly why I’m releasing an exclusive mastermind to help 6-figure info businesses become 7-figure industry leading brands through building and scaling their content machines.

You can click here to sign up for the waitlist when more information becomes available.

In the meantime, if you'd like my best tips on how to get comfortable with talking to camera, watch this video with tips you've likely never heard of before:

⚡️ Reflection #2: Beware of Audience Capture.

I used to have a lot of resistance when it comes to switching up the type of content I create.

If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve shifted some of my content to talk more about scaling content in general vs. "How to Get More Likes on Instagram".

I even got one comment on a video I posted a few weeks ago where someone said:

"I’m unsubscribing. All you talk about is Youtube now."

The truth is:

I’m not talking about YouTube because I think it’s a "fun" topic to explore.

I’m talking more about YouTube because the landscape is shifting, and I want to help as many people shift with it.

Here’s what I need you to know:

When it comes to entrepreneurship, you cannot get too comfortable.

Things always change, and you need to adapt or die.

The algorithms, market trends, and customers don’t care how you feel.

Things will move on without you, whether you like it or not.

That said:

Something that was brought up at the event was a concept called "Audience Capture".

This is when you build an audience through sharing a particular topic or philosophy, and your audience expects you to keep doing that thing.

As a result, you end up feeling trapped.

It was refreshing to hear Sam open up about that.

For context, Sam built a successful info business, making $36M per year.

He had courses, group programs, masterminds, the whole ascension model.

In the last couple of years, he’s dissolved most of it so he can focus on building his SaaS company, Skool.

Now, he only runs the mastermind, despite tons of people wanting more from him.

He mentioned,

"The people who get lost and stuck in Audience Capture end up not liking what they are doing.

The best artists just keep moving and don’t think too much about that."

⚡️ Reflection #3: Don’t Find Customers, Create them.

The powerful thing about content marketing is it’s not meant to just attract the right customers.

My belief is that it should be designed to create customers.

This is how I’ve done it for the last 4 years.

Respectfully:

You need to stop complaining about attracting the wrong audience and that people aren’t buying your offer.

This makes me believe that you simply haven’t created good enough content that shifts beliefs, shares new perspectives, and turns a non-ideal customer into a dream client.

It’s funny because many entrepreneurs I spoke with at the event had all grown their businesses because of paid media.

When I saw some of the YouTube videos they had created, a large number of the content was client testimonials, information about their product, or super niche topics designed to only appeal to someone who’s basically ready to buy.

Remember: Organic Content is NOT the same as Ads.

Ads = 1 video: Buy my product NOW.

Organic = Multiple Videos: Let me help you identify what problem you have, share how to solve it, why you should keep listening to me, and THEN why you should buy my product whenever YOU are ready.

Example:

Video #1: Helping someone who’s completely unaware they even have a problem become aware of an untapped opportunity.

Video #2: Teaching someone how to solve that problem, or execute that opportunity.

Video #3: Explaining why someone should keep following YOU of all people. Share your unique experience.

Video #4: At this point the person already trusts you, but they don’t trust your product. Convince them.

^ THIS is how you create customers without paying to find them.

When I explained this in more detail to some entrepreneurs, their perspectives completely shifted.

⚡️ Reflection #4: Your business will always be broken because of 1 of these 4 things: Traffic, Funnel, Product, Team

If you aren’t seeing results in your business, it’s likely due to these 4 categories:

Traffic: Are you getting enough of it in a profitable way?

Funnel: What is the process for someone to become a lead and convert to a customer?

Product: What are the offers, how is it fulfilled, and is it getting results for clients?

Team: What are the roles needed behind getting results for the company and managing all the things?

Almost all the problems you have right now likely fall into at least one of these categories.

It's also important to know that you will always have at least one of these things broken, because if you improve one vertical, the other one breaks.

Some people may have more than 1 vertical broken, in which case you’ll need to learn how to prioritize.

And some people will have ALL verticals broken, and it’s what Sam likes to say:

"You’ve created a mess. And now you have to clean it up."

Truthfully, it was SO refreshing to hear him normalize entrepreneurs creating messes.

When he said it, the whole room laughed because we could all relate.

Remember:

Messes are normal, and it takes time to assess, identify, plan, execute, and recover.

Don’t beat yourself up because we all go through it…

And if something isn’t broken in your business, It’s likely because you’ve plateaued and stopped growing.

Linh, I hope this email gave you at least one perspective shift you didn't have before.

I appreciate you reading this week’s Creator to CEO Newsletter.

One of my greatest rewards is seeing the screenshots of your favourite sections posted on your IG stories.

Just make sure to tag me @vanessalau.co so I can see it and reshare them to my own page :)

If something I wrote helped you become 1 step closer to being the Creator and CEO you desire to be, then I have done my job with this newsletter.

I cannot wait to write you again next week,

Vanessa | | Stop thinking like a Creator. | Most Creators suck at thinking like a CEO.

They may white knuckle their passions, like Video Editing or Graphic Design, because they love the process (or doesn’t trust others to do it), which puts a ceiling on their time.

They may work to serve others instead of serve themselves, which can leave them feeling emotionally depleted, trying to cater to everyone in order to make the majority happy.

Ultimately, when you think like a Creator, you’ll easily get burnt out and put an income cap on yourself.

That’s why in today’s newsletter, I want to discuss the 5 mindset shifts I made as I transitioned from not just being a Creator… but also being a CEO.

Aka what I like to call, a Creator CEO.

Let’s go. 🙌

⚡️ Shift #1: Don’t get attached to your content.

As an Artist, it’s easy to get attached and tie your self-worth to a piece of content that tanked.

This will cloud your judgement, and will put a ceiling on your success as a Creator.

As a CEO, I see each content piece as a pawn to a bigger game I am playing.

I create free content to test market demand for future paid products.

I observe what didn’t perform and analyze why.

I observe what did perform, and optimize for the next piece.

Once you see content and business like a game, you’ll be able to think clearly and objectively.

This will lead to better results than if you constantly operated out of emotion.

⚡️ Shift #2: Focus on building repeatable, scalable processes.

I don’t try to create new content for every platform because that’s not time or cost efficient.

I focus instead on building an ecosystem of social platforms that operates like a machine.

Click here to watch my video training on how I built a Content Machine in the last 3 months that allowed me to reach over 10 million people.

This will give you more context than what I could ever write in an email:

⚡️ Shift #3: Know your Queen Bee role.

In my Content Machine video, I talk about the 5 key skills or positions required to keep a Content business or machine running.

These 5 positions are skills and positions I thought of based on my own journey as a Creator transitioning into a Creator CEO:

1. The Thought Leader: The face of the brand and where ideas are sourced from.

2. The Director: Manages the strategy, directs everyone else on what they need to do to get the result.

3. The Editor: Creates the content so it’s good to ship. This can be a video editor, graphic designer, writer, etc.

4. The Distributor: Stretches your content so it reaches as many people as possible.

5. The Business Operator: Operates anything outside of the content machine. When you are a solopreneur, you’ll naturally be in all 5 of these positions, and you’ll have all 5 of these skills.

Eventually, you’ll be able to outsource most of these positions, one by one as your revenue increases.

🐝 So where do the bees come in?

A Queen Bee role is a role that cannot be replaced.

Inside a beehive, without the Queen Bee, the entire ecosystem would die.

For many of us Creator CEOs, the Queen Bee role you likely have is being the Thought Leader.

Without the Thought Leader, there would be no content and no differentiation to your company.

The moment I understood my Queen Bee role, I let go of control, and started outsourcing to protect my role as Thought Leader at all cost.

Remember:

You don’t need to outsource all of these roles at once.

It can take years to outsource all of these positions.

Focus on delegating one by one whenever you can afford to.

PS: These are things I’ll be helping my clients with in our Supercharged Mastermind for 6 figure Creator CEOs who want to scale to 7.

You can click here to sign up for the waitlist when Mastermind details are released.

⚡️ Shift #4: Know your goals.

My goal is to grow my YouTube channel.

This means each video I create is designed for someone who’s finding me for the first time.

This means I don’t worry if it means I repeat past content, because the person I’m trying to reach is someone who’s new.

It also means I focus on creating top of funnel content, not bottom of funnel content.

On the other hand, on Instagram, my goal is to Nurture.

This means I spend more time on Instagram stories sharing behind the scenes and my personality.

It also means I may post more niche content on Instagram, such as in depth carousel posts.

My CTAs are to grow my lists and to get more customers.

Bottom line:

Know what your goals are so you know what to focus your time and attention on, and track the metrics that matter most.

⚡️ Shift #5: Stop fighting people on the internet.

I used to get quite triggered by people in the comment section, until I started thinking like a CEO.

As a rule of thumb:

👉 Don’t listen to people who criticize things they don’t have results for.

For instance, I don’t listen to people criticize my strategies on how to build an audience, when they themselves don’t have a following.

Similar to how you wouldn’t listen to someone who’s still living pay check to pay check criticizing an 8-figure Finance YouTuber who has 7 streams of income on how to make money.

👉 Don’t feel like you need to bend over backwards for people who complain about your free content.

While listening to feedback is important...

As a Creator, it’s also important to put into perspective that the people who are the loudest and most demanding, are also the people who haven’t paid you, and may never pay you.

Remember that even though you choose to help people for free every single day, there are boundaries to your generosity.

Remember:

Just because you create content for free, doesn’t mean your time and attention automatically become free.

👉 Don’t fight people who are committed to misunderstanding you.

There’s a small percentage of people out there who just don’t like you, no matter what you say or do.

For example, I noticed in a few of my videos there was one person who was consistently negative.

I clicked on their account and it showed me all the comments they’ve ever left on my videos.

ALL comments were negative, and they had been leaving those types of comments consistently for the past year - nothing was ever positive.

Once I saw that, it became clear to me that there was no point entertaining that person.

As a Creator, there will be tons of people like that who you’ll come across.

Identify them quickly, don’t entertain them, and move on.

Remember:

It takes a sad person to still follow people they dislike and spend energy to bring them down.

Wish them well, but also avoid these people at all costs.

👉 Know your target audience, and ignore the rest.

If you do a good job with identifying your niche and creating content that speaks to your ideal audience, your content WILL exclude certain audiences.

For example, if your content is for a more advanced person in business, you WILL have beginners who will be confused or demand you do something different.

If your content is for single moms, you WILL have married moms with a strong opinion on your content.

You cannot please everyone in your content.

The worst thing you can do is water down your message and business to please everyone.

Know who you serve (or want to serve) and create content for them.

Take everything else outside of that with a grain of salt.

Linh, I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.

Do me a favor and screenshot what your favourite shift was, post it to IG stories and tag me @vanessalau.co so I can see it.

My favorite part is seeing your tags and reposting them to my stories. I can’t wait to see what resonates with you!

As always, if this email helped you become one step closer to the Creator CEO you’re born to be, then I’ve done my job.

Thanks for sharing your time with me today, and I’ll write to you again next week.

With gratitude!

Vanessa

PS The Supercharged Mastermind waitlist is now OPEN! Sign up here at www.creatorsupercharged.com to be the first to know when applications open. | | Lessons from Creators with 1M followers | For years I thought that since I sell a course, then I must be a part of the online coaching industry.

Because of that, I exclusively only followed other coaches, and joined a number of programs taught by coaches.

This was a misdiagnosis that kept me stuck and made me feel unaligned…

Sure it was cool to figure out how to coach and how to scale a coaching program…

But in each program I joined, I realized that no one ever shared the same passion as I did when it came to creating content and scaling a personal brand.

It wasn’t until this year where I retraced my origin and realized that the only reason I even have this business is because I started as a Creator first.

Since fully embracing the Creator side of me...

I made the intentional shift to start networking with other Creators (even outside the coaching space) so I could absorb all the best practices and apply it to my own space.

Here’s a pic of me over the weekend with Hafu Go (986k YT subs), Aylex Thunder (3.4M TikTok Subs), and Ricky aka Prince of Travel (80K YT subs):

In this week’s email, I want to break down my top lessons and observations from speaking to successful creators outside of my own niche.

Let’s go!

⚡️ Lesson #1: Look at other people’s videos and make yours better.

Aylex has 3.4M on Tiktok and 848K on YouTube.

He recently started a Badminton channel just 5 months ago and it’s already got 40,000 subscribers and 24.5M views.

I asked:

"What’s your secret sauce to growing your channel that fast?"

He replied:

"If you look at all the Badminton videos that are on YouTube… they kind of suck.

Bad quality, not a lot of value, not very engaging."

I simply made my videos better."

Bottom line:

Study the videos that exist within your niche, and ask yourself how you can make your videos better to steal market share quickly.

Remember:

Just because there’s a high volume of videos that already exist within a niche, doesn’t necessarily mean that those videos are good.

Create videos that are better than what the current supply is.

Then you’ll be able to steal demand.

PS: If you’re interested in more YouTip tips, I just released a video about 10 outdated tips you should stop following if you want to grow a YouTube channel. You can watch it here.

⚡️ Lesson #2: Winning on TikTok is all about niching and repeating.

I told my new friend Hafu that I went to a conference one time and heard someone talk about how they grew to 1M followers on TikTok.

My biggest conclusion from that talk was that the person themselves didn’t even know how they grew on TikTok, which made me feel that TikTok was a mixed bag and unpredictable.

So I asked Hafu, who has repeated viral videos on his account this question:

"Is there actually a blueprint to winning on TikTok?"

To which he replied: Yes.

Here’s the breakdown of what he said:

In the beginning you won’t know what sticks so you’ll be experimenting a lot.

Once something takes off, you will want to niche down and keep creating similar videos.

When TikTok has identified what works on your account, it will keep pushing those videos to a wider audience.

This sounds simple, but let me paint the picture on how serious some TikTokers take this:

Hafu has a friend who has a huge TikTok account. I believe it's in the multiple millions.

Whenever a video does extremely well, his friend will study that video frame by frame:

What sound did he use? How many seconds was that video? What was shown in each frame?

He will try to recreate a similar video following those specs, and almost every single time if he recreates a similar video to the one that went viral, that video will also take off too.

Even if you study Hafu’s TikTok , you can see that he consistently doubles down on similar concepts and each video that follows that concept has lots of views (example would be his 1-inch punch videos).

This blueprint also explains why when TikTokers repost their most viral content months later, it still performs well and sometimes performs even better than the original viral video.

Now, you may HATE this strategy, because many of us don’t want to be "pigeon holed".

At the same time, if this is something that those with millions of views are doing, then it’s something worth considering the next time you think about your TikTok content strategy.

⚡️ Lesson #3: Grass is always greener on the other side.

One thing I appreciated speaking to this group of Creators was the entertainment value they had in their videos.

Hafu and Aylex often create skits.

Ricky from The Prince of Travel will often incorporate cool broll from his travels, and embed some storytelling in his videos.

Something I’ve been desiring to do with my own videos was incorporate more story telling and create an entertaining yet educational experience...

...Instead of just sitting on my ass and spewing out tips for the entire 15-30 minutes.

So I started talking about this desire to the group, until Aylex stopped me and said:

"Honestly, I wish I could just sit on my ass and talk instead of spending hours scripting and filming!"

This is when I dug deeper in some of their workflows.

For Hafu, scripting a single video can take 8 hours.

His videos have a huge story telling component.

Each frame is intentional, and needs to be written in advance so they know exactly what they need to film for his skits.

Filming alone will take half the day or more with his videographer, where they go to a dedicated location.

None of this is bad.

In fact, it’s inspiring.

At the same time, I learned that if I wanted to upgrade my content to the same way they’ve done it, I likely would need to remove a lot from my plate from the business side in order to make space for it.

Remember:

Every Creator has something they wish they had.

Instead of constantly comparing and thinking everyone must have it easier or better than you, be appreciative of what you’ve created so far.

If you’ve found a workflow or business model that works for you and gives you flow and peace, you’ve already won.

⚡️ Lesson #4 Growing at a rapid pace requires being obsessed with your craft.

I recently watched an interview Graham Stephen did with Mr. Beast, you can watch it here - it’s quite good:

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Creators who managed to get close to or surpass 1,000,000 subscribers is they are absolutely obsessed with perfecting their craft.

In fact, I heard at Vid Summit, Mr. Beast does 100 thumbnail options and A/B tests all of them.

He also will make his editors scrap an entire video and redo it if it’s not up to his standard.

Do I think it’s extreme? Yes.

At the same time, it’s paid off considering he has over 100M subscribers.

Even speaking with Hafu, who will be hitting 1 million subscribers likely in a couple days, he is totally obsessed with studying content.

He knows almost every big YouTuber because he doesn’t just watch their videos...

He studies them.

If you’re reading this, regardless if content is your thing or not…

If you want record breaking results, you have to be obsessed with what you do.

This is why it’s important that you find something you genuinely like and find fun.

For me, I really like learning about content. I like being on video. I also like business.

Being a YouTuber and Entrepreneur, although it has it’s challenges sometimes...

Overall, it’s not hard for me to do.

And when it DOES become hard...

I can bounce back easily because I won’t give up easily.

This is because I genuinely like what I do and I enjoy the problems I solve.

It’s not a chore for me to learn about content creation.

It’s not a chore for me to read books about leadership.

It’s not a chore for me to write a long ass newsletter like this.

For a long time, I really did not like what I did because I thought I only belonged within the confines of the "coaching industry".

The problem was, I wasn’t obsessive about learning the latest coaching techniques...

Nor was I excited about learning how to launch my own coaching certification...

Or how to scale a group coaching program by training a bunch of other coaches.

But the moment I switched gears and saw myself as a Creator…

Everything clicked. I moved faster. I was happier. I got better results.

Bottom line:

Getting industry leading results requires being obsessed with your craft.

And being obsessed with your craft becomes effortless when you genuinely like what you do.

Linh,

Let me know what your favourite part of this week’s newsletter is by screenshotting it and sharing on your stories. Tag me @vanessalau.co so I can repost!

One of the coolest things about meeting other Creators was also stepping into my power.

A handful of creators have reached out to me wanting to monetize their content by selling info products: Courses, group coaching, masterminds, etc.

While another handful of info based business have reached out to me wanting help with building their content machines.

That’s why I’m super excited to open applications to my Creator Supercharged mastermind next month.

It's exclusively for Creators selling Courses, Consulting, or Coaching who want to:

✅ Build a Content Machine ✅ Get More Customers, and ✅ Grow an Authentic Industry Leading Brand.

Applications open next month and we’ll only be taking on a limited amount of clients who want to work with me on a more intimate and higher level.

Click here to sign up for the waitlist to be notified when the Supercharged Mastermind opens!

As always, I appreciate you getting to the bottom of this email, and I cannot wait to write you again next week.

If anything I wrote has given you a shift in perspective, then I’ve done my job.

With gratitude,

Vanessa

| | 3 things I no longer believe in. | Linh,

I would be surprised if we kept the same belief system as we did years ago...

That's why in this week's email, I want to share 3 things I used to believe in, that I no longer do.

By sharing these stories and lessons, I hope it helps change the way you think, and gives you permission to

Let’s go!

⚡️ #1: Having 1 Signature Offer For The Entirety Of Your Business.

I believed in this until it left me feeling stuck.

I spent 4 years scaling BGA, and it was the right move to get me to my first million.

But somewhere along Year 2 or 3, I should have introduced some new offers.

Here’s why:

1. Many of your existing customers are looking for the "next step" after completing your program.

If you don’t focus on increasing lifetime value (LTV), it becomes hard to scale your business profitably, and you risk losing great customers to your competitors, like I did.

Over the course of a couple years, I probably missed out on millions of dollars worth of sales simply because I didn’t create other opportunities for customers to keep being customers.

Remember:

Sticking with a signature offer can help you scale to the millions…

But it can also keep you stuck and leave you constantly searching for new clients.

2. Grow an email list of Customers who have at least paid $1.

For the longest time, I felt that since I could "only" have 1 paid offer…

That everything outside of that paid offer must be free.

This led me to constantly creating free lead magnets that were packed with value (even though they really should have been paid).

While free, value packed, lead magnets grew my list…

It also attracted a lot of freebie hunters, who were already conditioned to get a lot of free stuff from me anyways since I also provide a ton of free value on YouTube.

The truth is, you can still have 1 signature main offer, but have smaller low cost offers that:

1. Cover parts of your expenses

(Remember: Even if an additional $200 per month doesn’t sound impressive, at least its covering the cost of your software.)

2. Help you build an email list of paid customers

3. Allow more people to get introduced to your ecosystem

4. Reduce resentment because you are now charging for your resources

5. Allow you to test demand before creating a bigger offer

Today, I now have $17 - $147 DIY, non-refundable, products like our Notion Content Planning Dashboard, YouTube Scripting Vault, and others.

Since releasing these small products in July, they’ve have generated an additional $30K per month consistently, which helps cover major costs like payroll and contracting fees.

Best part?

It’s growing an email list of people who are customers, not just people who haven’t paid a single dime.

⚡️ #2: Executing Feedback from Angry People.

I used to be really sensitive to criticism, especially if it came from customers.

Last year, I had a handful of customers demanding to have more face time with me.

At the time, BGA was a $997 DIY program that did not include calls with me.

For years it was a harmonious, well-oiled machine, with tons of positive feedback.

Until one summer where it went a complete 180.

"We made her a millionaire. Vanessa should at least have calls with us weekly."

This came from a Facebook group post that included a number of comments that made me feel misunderstood, with some being pretty hurtful.

It was overwhelming to say the least.

So I doubled the price of the program, and introduced monthly calls.

To my surprise..

The loudest people who were the angriest and most hurtful, never showed up to any of the calls.

(Keep in mind, I didn’t raise the price for existing clients, so those clients got the calls free of charge.)

So here’s what I learned:

👉 Make decisions based on your best clients, not your worst.

Somewhere along the journey of growing an audience and client base, I started to listen to the 10% of people who were never happy with me, instead of listening to the 90% of people who loved my work and wanted more.

This caused me (and my team) to make a lot of our business decisions based on fear.

"ABC person left a nasty comment about X post, so we should stop posting that content."

"We can’t do XYZ, or else ________ will be mad."

"So-and-so requested this, so we should do it because they are really upset."

While listening to feedback is important, it’s critical to filter that feedback and make sure you’re making decisions because they feel good to you, not because you feel bullied into it by others.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret introducing monthly calls.

It turned out to be exactly what I needed to feel connected to my clients again.

At the same time, what I do regret is rushing into the decision and making it out of fear.

👉 You can’t make everyone happy, so do what is best for your business.

Criticism comes with anything you create for the public.

If you choose to make everyone happy because you don’t want to abandon others or make people upset, you end up abandoning yourself.

You are the only constant in your business.

Not your clients. Not your team members. Not your audience. Not your coach.

You are the only one stuck with the decisions you make, so make sure you’re happy with the things you decide, and put your foot down for things that don’t feel aligned.

👉You cannot please someone who is committed to misunderstanding you.

As a people pleaser who has bent over backwards many times over…

I will be the first to tell you that no amount of people pleasing can convince someone to like you if they’ve already made up their mind.

The small handful of customers who wrote nasty comments, who slandered BGA on their social media, who criticized not just my business but me personally…

No amount of free coaching calls would’ve changed their minds.

Remember that people have their own shit going on outside of social media.

As leaders and coaches, it’s easy for people to project their anger, expectations, and internal conflicts onto us.

Give them grace, but remember that it’s not your shit to own.

Remember:

Don’t make decisions based on other people’s projections.

⚡️ #3: Using Income as the Main Marketing Message

I came across a post the other day of a Coach talking about how they made $XX,XXX in cash last month.

I clicked on her profile and ALL of their posts were about how much money they’ve made and how she can help others make it too.

No hate to the person, but it reminded me of how I used to sell, especially as someone who was starting out and finally making money.

Back then, I thought that marketing how much money I made in every post was the best way to convince people that I was legit and that they should buy from me.

… Until I learned that it keeps you on this unhealthy hamster wheel of feeling like your entire worth as a business owner is determined by the sales you make in business

… and therefore attracting clients who think the same.

Here’s what I want you to know:

1. Be known for your content, not your sales.

If your entire marketing relies on you to share your income in order to get sales, then it’s unsustainable and becomes a house of cards.

You should get sales because you bring value to the table with your thought leadership - not because you had a 100k cash month.

Don’t just tell us how much money you made.

Tell us the lessons you learned that led you there.

Also:

Notice how the most successful entrepreneurs aren’t posting their cash months every week as a way to market their programs?

People buy from them because their content is valuable and the results they've helped others achieve.

2. Business is up and down. Seasoned entrepreneurs know this.

The reason why the online business space is toxic is because we only hear about the people who 2x their revenue month over month…

Which then creates unrealistic expectations of what should happen in business.

This then creates an unhealthy cycle where people feel like having "bad month" or a "bad quarter" means they are a failure.

Remember:

Bad months, bad quarters, bad years fucking happen.

If you're going through a season where you're making less than last season...

You’re not a bad business owner. You’re a normal one.

Linh,

Let me know what your favourite part of this week’s newsletter is by screenshotting it and sharing on your stories. Tag me @vanessalau.co so I can repost!

Being a Creator, CEO, and Coach is a unique spot to be in.

I hope by sharing these 3 belief shifts help you on your journey to building a business and creating content that feels most authentic to you.

If you want to work with me more intimately and get more of these lessons, keep your eyes peeled because in a couple weeks we're opening up applications to our Creator Supercharged mastermind.

It's exclusively for Creators selling Courses, Consulting, or Coaching who want to:

✅ Build a Content Machine ✅ Get More Customers, and ✅ Grow an Authentic Industry Leading Brand.

Applications open next month and we’ll only be taking on a limited amount of clients who want to work with me on a higher level.

Click here to sign up for the waitlist to be notified when the Supercharged Mastermind opens in just a couple weeks!

As always, I appreciate you getting to the bottom of this email, and I cannot wait to write you again next week.

If anything I wrote has given you a shift in perspective, then I’ve done my job.

With gratitude,

Vanessa | | Linh — The biggest opportunity for 2023 | Hey Linh,

You wouldn't believe it -- if you sell courses, consulting or coaching...

I have something incredible to share with you.

It's one of the biggest opportunities for 2023 and I want you to be the first to know.

I talk all about it in this 10 minute video below.

Click here to watch this 10 minute video.

You won’t want to miss this.

Vanessa

| | My biggest failures of 2022. | Hey Linh,

Want to know what really happened in my business in 2022?

I talk all about it in this 55 minute video below.

I made a ton of mistakes and had a few major setbacks in 2022.

This video will cover:

... Whether or not I hit my goals for 2022 ... How I made LESS income than I did last year ... Beliefs that hurt my success in business and costed over $100,000+ in losses ... My top failures of the year and the top 5 lessons I learned ... What's ahead for 2023

And so much more.

Remember: "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others."

If you want to access the 5 major lessons that any wise business owner should listen to (regardless of stage), then click here to watch this video.

You won’t want to miss watching this.

Vanessa | | The Top 5 Content Trends of 2023… | Hey Linh,

The social media landscape for 2023 is changing...

And all the top Creator Entrepreneurs are one step ahead taking advantage of it for this year and beyond.

I talk all about it in this 22 minute video below.

Specifically, in this video I share the top 5 trends, predictions, and conversations that I’m discussing right now with other 6 and 7 figure entrepreneurs to skyrocket our growth in 2023 and beyond:

... The "Anti-Hormozi" Editing Style ... The "Anti-Niche" Trend ... "Fake" Podcast Content Style ... The "Many to Many" Content Model Shift

And so much more.

Want to know what all these things are about? Click here to watch. | | I'm going on a sabbatical | As some of you may have already noticed based on my lack of presence lately on social media…

I have made the decision to go on an indefinite sabbatical (a.k.a taking a long extended break from work).

In addition to making this decision, I have also made several difficult and surprising decisions in the last 3 weeks:

I discontinued my Creator Supercharged mastermind and off-boarded all my high ticket clients.

I scaled down my multi 7-figure business. I downsized my team from 9 members to just 1, and canceled all the masterminds, contracts, and subscriptions I’m a part of.

I’m retiring my signature program, The BOSSGRAM Academy – for good.

I stepped down from all my speaking engagements, including the ones that I've had on my vision board since I started this business.

I sold my $160,000 Porsche 911 and swapped it for a Jeep Wrangler. Here’s our goodbye pic:

You might be thinking… what the fuck!? This B is crazy!

I want to explain, but first I want to share a story about my good ol’ corporate days:

When I first quit my corporate job back in 2018, nobody in my circle was shocked by the decision, but everyone was shocked by the timing.

“It feels so random! You JUST got your promotion and now you’re quitting!?”

“You’re such an all-star. I really thought you would have climbed your way up to the top! You were so close.”

If I’m being honest, choosing to go on this sabbatical feels quite similar.

It feels like I’m quitting right when things are finally happening.

“I’m finally getting the big dog speaking engagements!”

“Holy shit! I’m finally making $500k months!”

"I'm so close to 1M YouTube subscribers!"

“I’m finally growing and scaling! I'm finally a somebody!"

And yet, at the height of accomplishing these things, I found myself losing total control of my life and mental well being.

I found myself squeezing my life and relationships around the demands of my business…

Instead of building a business around the life that I ultimately want to live.

At the same time, a part of me also feels like I'm quitting too soon.

But here's what I learned from reading the book, "Quit" by Annie Duke, where she says:

"Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early.

If you quit on time, it's not going to seem like anything particularly dire is happening at that particular moment.

That's because quitting is being able to glimpse at the range of ways the future might play out and see that the likelihood that things will turn out poorly is too high to make it worth your while to continue."

In my case, I've come to realize I've been building a bigger and bigger hamster wheel where deep down, I

1. Know won't have an end, and

2. Know I won't enjoy running.

In other words, I've created this machine that I don't even like, and I'm realizing it's a machine I no longer want to run.

This isn't to say that I'm leaving entrepreneurship.

This is to say I'm taking a break to redefine what entrepreneurship looks like for me.

I mean, isn’t that why I started making videos on YouTube in the first place?

Isn’t that why I left my corporate job?

To work less, earn more, and have control over where I want to spend my time?

And yet, here I am…

Falling into the same patterns as I did in my corporate job, constantly striving for more at the expense of myself, chasing things I think I want, getting them, and then left feeling dissatisfied, burnt out, and again, chasing yet another thing.

Don’t get me wrong, though.

I love what I get to do. I'm grateful for this career.

I love making videos. I love writing. I love creating.

I love it especially when the things I create help people.

But lately, I feel like:

1. I’m doing less of the things I love.. and when I do them, it's no longer sparking the same joy it did before.

2. I’m doing more of things I don’t love, and

3. I’m saying yes to things I don’t even want to do.

... all for the sake of keeping this machine running, pleasing people because I want to be liked, and never wanting to disappoint others because I feel so responsible for everything.

In the past, to solve this problem, I would keep making pivots in my business -- whether externally or internally.

However, these pivots often felt rushed and don't always feel 100% aligned due to the constraints I've built in the business: employees, clients, projects, pre-committed events, large expenses, etc.

Which is why I want to take a step back.

A big step back.

Back then, I’ve often taken small breaks here and there to recover.

At the same time, I’ve never wanted to take too much time off, because I would always have a large team on standby, big expenses that I needed to cover, and thousands of clients and subscribers that I felt I needed to take care of. (Yes, the responsible thing!)

But this time, I want to approach “taking a break” differently.

Which is why I’ve dissolved most of this machine so that I can take this break without feeling obligated to come back, and to only come back when I truly feel ready.

I feel like I owe it to myself and my body to take an indefinite sabbatical to just relax, learn what it means to truly be present and content with what I have, pursue my curiosities without constraints, and most importantly explore what it would look and feel like to simply just be.

When I return, I would love to share my findings with you (and tbh, I'm fighting every single bone in my body to write an essay)...

But until then, it’s something I look forward to discovering for myself, first.

So, before I wrap up this “goodbye for now” announcement email, I want to share 2 questions that helped me make this decision to go on this sabbatical.

First question:

“If you found out you had only 3 years to live, what would you do differently in your life?”

When I answered this question, it led me to want to make the exact decisions I’ve made in the last 3 weeks:

I would simplify.

I would take a break.

I would spend more time with my mom and dad.

I would say “No” to everything that didn’t feel like a “Heck yes”.

I would stop caring about what everyone else thinks.

Second question:

“If those are the decisions you would make if you found out you only have 3 years to live…. Why wouldn’t you do it now? Why would you wait until you only had 3 years to live?”

… And so here we are :)

No matter your situation, whether your desire is to take a step back and scale down like me, or whether it’s to finally step on the gas pedal and go all in on something…

My wish for you is to have the courage to do what your heart truly desires.

But more importantly, to also have that same courage to change course any time you change your mind on what you want.

So Linh, here’s to me taking the same leap of faith I took back in 2018 when I quit my corporate job.

And here’s to you for getting to the bottom of this email! 😂

I hope that you find a lesson in me sharing my decision, and I wish you a beautiful, healthy, and purposeful 2023.

Goodbye for now and with immense gratitude always,

Vanessa

PS: Please note that I won’t be actively managing any of my inboxes during this time. While I may not respond, please know your words of encouragement and support are whole heartedly received. 😭❤️️ Thank you for respecting this sudden decision and giving me the space I need to recalibrate. Love y'all.

Also - to all the team members who have played a huge role in this growth - thank you for everything we've accomplished, and for all the hard work that often goes unnoticed by the masses. You know who you are.

PPS:

While this is going to be my last email for a while, this week I’ll also be sending you reminder emails about The BOSSGRAM Aademy retirement sale.

From now until February 28th, you’ll be able to purchase BGA at a massive discount before it retires.

Click here before the offer expires and BGA retires for good. | | BGA is retiring… | A couple days ago, I sent an email announcing my decision to go on an indefinite sabbatical.

At the end of that email, I mentioned that I’ll also be retiring The BOSSGRAM Academy.

But before I do, I wanted to let you know that if you have been wanting to join BGA…

Now is the perfect (and last) time to do it.

The BOSSGRAM Academy is usually at $2,000 — but due to the retirement of the program, you can now get it for $697 only.

Click here to purchase before the offer expires on February 28 @ 11:59PM PST.

Since it might have been a while since you thought about The BOSSGRAM Academy, let’s do a quick recap on what BGA is:

BGA is my online training program that teaches my 3-phase proprietary method for helping creators not only use Instagram as a growth tool…

But it also shares all the business lessons when it comes to finding a niche, creating a paid 1:1 coaching offer, and signing clients.

It includes more than 70 video lessons and tutorials with step-by-step instructions on how to implement each step:

🔥 Phase 1 - Clarify. Learn how to clarify your offer, identify your target audience, and validate everything in the first 30 days.

🔥 Phase 2 - Attract. Learn how to attract your ideal prospects with your free content on Instagram.

🔥 Phase 3 - Convert. Launch your program and build systems that help you convert followers into paying clients. Think: Webinars, sales calls, and more.

Included in the curriculum is every helpful tool and asset you’ll need to complete the core curriculum, including:

Sales scripts Copy templates Fillable worksheets Checklists Email swipe files Content graphics Share funnels Contracts Proposals

In a nutshell, BGA was created specifically to help you get off the content creation hamster wheel and land coaching clients FAST, like Harrah:

The BOSSGRAM Academy has generated results for thousands of clients around the world and still continues to produce results.

However, before officially retiring The BOSSGRAM Academy, I am allowing a last chance opportunity for anyone to purchase the content of the course at a discounted rate.

This includes the core curriculum and all bonuses listed on this sales page.

Please note due to the retirement of BGA, this product will be self-paced, non-refundable, and does not come with call, community or email support. This is reflected in the discounted retirement price. Please ensure you read the FAQ section of the sales page thoroughly before purchasing.

Click here to join BGA now.

I can’t wait for you to take advantage of this opportunity, and I'm excited to see what results you’ll get with the program!

Vanessa | | Thanks for signing up! | Thanks for signing up for The Creator Journal by me —Vanessa!

After years of building my business and growing my socials, I shut everything down and went on a year-long sabbatical. I talk about why I left here.

Since returning, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the challenges I faced: the pressure to keep up, declining health, reassessing my values, and so much more.

But what surprised me even more are the new lessons I’ve been learning since returning from my sabbatical.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce this newsletter, The Creator Journal.

What's The Creator Journal about?

From time to time, I'll write about my journey in navigating creativity, entrepreneurship, authenticity, and more.

Topics include tackling real-life challenges like staying true to yourself, finding balance amidst the pressures of social media, building an authentic personal brand, and pushing through moments of doubt.

This new season of my life has brought me many insights, resources, and lessons.

Writing has always been a passion of mine, so I can’t wait to share my experience with you in hopes you also find clarity and motivation on your own unique path.

Until my next email,

Vanessa | | I can't believe I avoided this for months… | I went to an event with 50 creators in different niches.

Here's what I learned.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Sony’s Camera Camp event.

Pics or didn’t happen (can you spot me?):

At this event, there were a variety of creators. For example, there were creators in Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle, Family, Food, Travel, Tech, and more.

I talk more about how I felt like an utter fraud in this YouTube video, but newsletter subscribers get the extended tea, so let’s start with My Top Takeaways from attending this event.

1. What you avoid, you never overcome.

I’ve been avoiding a lot of stuff.

I’ve avoided going to networking events.

I’ve avoided speaking (can you believe I turned down speaking at ConvertKit’s conference or Think Media’s Grow with Video online? Me neither.).

I’ve even avoided posting on social media because sometimes, it feels too scary to face the possibility that some of my posts might not perform.

One night, I told my mentor about the many things I didn’t want to do, including hiring and managing a team.

He asked me:

“Do you think you’ll never work with anyone again? You’ll never need to hire?”

The truth is, I will need to hire help one day when I outgrow my capacity.

Just like how I will need to post something on the internet one day if I want to continue my passion for writing and making videos.

I still have goals. I still have a version of myself that I want to become.

This is when I learned that just because you remove something from your life doesn’t mean you’ve developed the skills to overcome it.

Just because I removed the team doesn’t mean I’ve learned to become a better leader.

Just because I don’t attend events doesn’t mean I’ve learned how to form connections.

Just because I took a sabbatical and removed social media for 12 months doesn’t mean I’ve learned to set boundaries with it.

Here’s a chart my therapist showed me:

While avoidance gives us temporary relief, it only causes us to fear the problem even more in the long term, weakening our ability to overcome it. Fear grows through avoidance.

This is when I decided that the Sony event would be perfect for increasing my tolerance. And as you’ll see in the next lesson, I’m so glad I decided to go.

2. Personality vs. Skillset

A month ago, I went to my friend’s birthday party and talked only to my three close friends. I didn’t mingle with anyone else.

I felt disappointed because I wondered how I could even move to a new city if I felt too shy to start a conversation with strangers.

It must be my personality. I’m an introvert, and unfortunately, my sabbatical made me even more so.

This snowballed into an even bigger fear:

I am SO NOT ready for the Sony event!!!

So, I sent a couple of voice notes telling my mentor about my social anxieties, and here’s how our chat went:

I learned that when I perceive a shortcoming as a personality trait, I believe I have no control over the situation.

As a result, this makes me anxious and powerless.

However, the moment I started to perceive my shortcomings as skills that I could develop, I started to believe that I had more control over my fate.

Inspired by our chat, I immediately bought two books on how to make conversation.

The first book was The Fine Art of Small Talk, and the second book was How to Talk to Anyone.

After reading the books, I felt equipped because I had a toolkit that included examples of open-ended questions, tips on revitalizing a conversation, and more.

As a result:

I spoke to my Lyft driver and got marriage advice. Turns out he worked for Tony Robbins!

A flight attendant showed photos from her wedding in the Rocky Mountains because I was curious about her engagement ring.

I connected 3 strangers who all found out they were on the same Alaskan cruise simply because I asked one lady where she was headed.

I’ve seen these things happen to others, yet I believed they could never happen to me.

But most importantly, I was prepared for the Sony event.

I ate at a different table daily, learned about various people, connected with as many people as possible, and continued conversations instead of letting them hang in awkward silence.

Bottom line?

Going to the Sony event gave me evidence that many of the things I avoid are things I can actually control, change, and improve at.

It’s not my personality, and I’m not powerless.

3. Just because you like watching it doesn’t mean you need to create it.

I figured the Sony event would be a great way to learn more about other niches, especially the ones I like watching: Vloggers, lifestyle, fashion, beauty.

To my surprise, I came out of the event realizing that even though I enjoy watching that type of content, I genuinely don’t think creating that type of content is for me.

I saw the vloggers vlogging, holding cameras everywhere they went, making their lives seem as entertaining as possible.

I saw the beauty creators retreating back to their rooms for hours during the event to film their makeup routines.

I saw the fashion creators spend the entire time in the corner of the yacht, taking as many photos as possible for their Instagram.

I even overheard a tech reviewer talking about how Samsung just released a new product and how bad they feel about missing out on announcing it to their audience in real-time.

It’s a a reminder that there’s many behind the scenes aspects we don’t consider when we watch other peoples ’s content.

Witnessing other people’s processes also made me realize that certain styles don’t align with my strengths, personal goals, or values—even though I enjoy watching the content!

For example, I learned that:

I prefer talking about my experience rather than showing it. I don’t like vlogging and feeling pressure to have a camera in my face while I live my life.

I prefer the depth of long-form content rather than the “efficiency” of short-form content. I don’t like the idea of spending hours on a 30-second video.

I prefer my videos to be sit-down, talk-to-camera rather than have lots of different angles and scenes. My strength lies in teaching and sharing lessons about my experiences rather than finding the best angles and creative shots.

Remember:

Don’t feel pressure to change your style just because you see other creators succeeding using a style different from yours.

If anything, instead of seeing other creators’ zones of geniuses and thinking you lack some special ability, allow other creators’ strengths to highlight your style even more.

Pioneer your own lane. Double down on your style - and make a signature out of it rather than trying to be like someone else.

4. Which comments make you feel good and purposeful? Follow that.

iJustine is a YouTuber with 7M subscribers who’s been making videos for over a decade.

When asked how she keeps going, she said she uses her comment section, not her views, as her North Star.

I resonate deeply with that.

Sometimes, I want to get many views on a video because it makes me feel good.

So, I post content that I think might go viral or that most people would want from me.

Sometimes, this looks like: “How to get 10,000 new followers in the next 30 days” or “How to make money on YouTube with 0 experience”

It can even look like hyper-strategizing a video, ensuring I follow a “perfect” script and have a watch-bait 30-second hook.

But when I make videos like this, even if they get many views or watch time, they either attract comments that give me anxiety or they attract people who have now fallen in love with a version of me that’s not actually me.

Whereas when I make videos where I speak from the heart, where I feel I’m not performing, and where I almost expect won’t get many views…

The comment section lights me up because I feel accepted for who I am, not who I’m performing as.

The truth is you can chase fame, money, and going viral, but if you continue to create content that doesn’t represent you, then the tradeoff becomes building an audience you resent or want to avoid.

Similar to the 1,000 true fans theory, I would rather have a small number of people who share similar values than millions of people who only like me when I’m pretending to be someone else.

For this exact reason, I was willing to purge my email list of 200,000 subscribers and rebuild it from scratch with readers who share my values (by the way, thanks for being here! 😀 )

All in all, I’m realizing that when you create content that feels most authentic to you, the audience that likes that content are your true people.

While there is always room for genuine improvement and feedback…

Here’s what I want you to know:

The people who want to change your natural style…

The people who want you to change the topics you like talking about…

The people who want you to be the version of you they’ve created in their minds…

Those aren’t always your people. In fact, they were never your people.

And the more you try to please people who don’t accept you for who you are, the more likely you are to grow an audience that leaves you feeling lonely.

And where’s the fun and longevity in that?

So, here’s my challenge to you.

If you’ve been avoiding something:

1. What’s something you’ve been avoiding to keep yourself safe, but deep down you know would make you an even more powerful person?

2. The thing that you’ve been avoiding, what kind of skills would you need to develop to help you feel safer in doing that thing?

3. Is there a book, course, or resource that would help you develop that skill?

Remember: When doing something new or challenging for the first time, your nervous system won’t be ready for it.

It’s normal if you try and give up quarter or half way. It’s how your nervous system protects you from perceived danger.

The key is to increase your tolerance to doing that new thing inch by inch until it becomes easy. I talk about it here.

If you want more clarity with content:

1. What kind of content do you naturally enjoy creating the most?

2. What content have you made in the past that totally drained you?

3. Think about past content you’ve made that felt particularly meaningful to you. What about it made it meaningful and how might you replicate that feeling in future content?

4. Think about past comments you’ve received that felt particularly meaningful to you. What made it meaningful and what type of content would you create to attract these types of comments in the future?

If you liked this newsletter, then you’ll love this accompanying video:

In this video, I share some fun clips of the event, my anxieties about meeting new people, and my learning lessons about avoidance. YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

I have 800k subscribers and I still get social anxiety.

If there’s anything I want you to take away from my story, it's that you are powerful!

Anything that’s ever made you feel powerless, remember that YOU have the power to take control and conquer it.

Anything that’s ever made you doubt your strengths, remember that YOU are in your own category of one. You are unique, and that uniqueness is your power.

Anyone who’s made you feel like you need to be someone different, remember that there are MILLIONS of people who are searching RIGHT NOW for someone JUST LIKE YOU to follow and learn from.

Don’t change yourself for the ONE. BE yourself for the MILLIONS.

Until the next one, do something fearless today,

Vanessa | | I changed my life IMMEDIATELY after learning this ONE THING. | I changed my life IMMEDIATELY after learning this ONE THING.

How I found alignment and purpose after years of chasing the wrong things.

For many of us, when we’re young or starting something new, we’re all extrinsically motivated by something.

Whether that’s getting a fancy new job, finding a life partner, getting a certain amount of followers, buying a house, or wanting to become a millionaire.

But what happens when you achieve it?

You could either:

A) Set even more “stick and carrot” goals, which will leave you in a perpetual hamster wheel of “more”, or

B) Look inward to define the internal motivators that will allow you to feel fulfilled by doing the activity itself.

After a few months of returning from my year-long sabbatical, I was surprised to feel unmotivated again.

“How could this be possible!? I don’t have a team, I don’t have clients, and I have all the time in the world.”

In fact, I found that finding motivation was even harder than when I started my business five years ago.

I was no longer driven by rewards like money, vanity metrics, speaking gigs, or connecting with industry titans (in fact, I even walked away from $200k worth of brand deals.)

I was also no longer driven by fear, such as upsetting clients (since I have none), not making enough money, or getting punished by the algorithm (I gained subscribers even after not posting for a whole year).

Yet, I still had a deep desire to feel motivated.

You know, that feeling where you wake up excited to start the day, you have clarity on what you want to achieve, and you feel in line with your purpose?

In a quest to answer this question, I started to research more about motivation.

Here’s what I found: The 5 Factors of Intrinsic Motivation

If you feel disconnected, disengaged, and uninspired, you likely lack in one or all five of these areas:

1. Autonomy: Do you feel in control of actions and decisions?

2. Mastery: Do you feel enough healthy challenge towards personal improvement?

3. Purpose: Do your actions align with a larger meaning or goal?

4. Curiosity: Do you have an insatiable itch to learn more about your work?

5. Autotelicity: Do you love the activities you do while working? The Intrinsic Motivator Audit

Once I read this, I decided to answer each question, which led me to organize my thoughts like this:

This screenshot truly doesn’t do this justice. So I highly recommend you watch this week’s Youtube video, where I walk through the entire thing! YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

I changed my life IMMEDIATELY after learning this ONE THING... 15 Things That Changed Since Doing the Audit

My intuition is usually right, but sometimes, I don’t know how to verbalize the gut feeling I get when something feels misaligned.

By doing the exercise above, I could finally put words to my intuition, reflect on what I truly wanted in this season of my life, and seek solutions to change my situation.

As a result, here’s an example of 15 things that shifted for me once I did this exercise:

My worth isn’t tied to whether people watch my videos or read these emails.

If people do watch my videos and read my emails, it’s a bonus, not an expectation. I feel even more grateful now when someone watches, reads, or comments.

I no longer struggle as much as a solopreneur.

I no longer get out of bed late because I’m excited to start the day.

I’m growing in ways that aren’t tied to whether I make money, whether my channel performs, or whether I meet certain people.

I launched this newsletter - which I LOVE.

I started editing my own videos again.

I’m not performing as much on camera.

I feel a sense of safety online and feel less misunderstood.

I have found more calmness being on social media.

I’m back to being consistent with my morning and health routine.

I regained my drive and ambition.

I don’t have “content ideas.” I now share my thoughts, stories, and experiences.

I’m looking forward to starting a podcast and making new friends in the process.

I love myself more.

🎁 A gift for you: FREE Notion Template and Additional Reflection Prompts!

As you can see, this simple exercise helped me see my work differently.

If you’ve been losing motivation and fulfillment, whether in your business, content, or life in general, I hope this exercise will give you a sense of direction and clarity — in fact, I made this for you! 👇

I made a Notion template for you to do your own life audit based on the 5 factors of intrinsic motivation. I’ve also included additional reflection prompts to help guide you as you work through the exercise! MAKE A COPY HERE

Remember you need to have a free Notion account, and you’ll need to click on “Duplicate” to make your own copy:

If you do this exercise, I’d love to see it and read how it helped you.

I can’t count the mornings when I woke up not feeling motivated enough to get out of bed or the evenings when I felt deeply disappointed that I was not living up to my potential.

This exercise helped me express my feelings, clearly define which areas felt off, and develop solutions to bring me back on track.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, share your thoughts and tag me in your stories (@vanessalau.co), or respond to this email and let me know what you think!

If you liked this email, then you’ll love this accompanying video:

This video is a MUST-WATCH if you plan to do the audit I shared above! I give you some examples of areas in my life I’ve transformed by doing this same exercise. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

I changed my life IMMEDIATELY after learning this ONE THING...

Thank you for reading and watching this week’s video! As always, my goal for these emails is to share the lessons I’m learning and the resources that help me live a more aligned life.

I hope it helps guide you in the right direction, too.

Live life fearlessly,

Vanessa

PS: If you haven’t already, can you do me a favor and reply to this email? I’ve recently switched email providers, and your engagement will help my email deliverability (aka making sure my future emails actually make it to your inbox).

It can be as easy as replying with an emoji 🙂 Thank you so much! | | I can't believe I'm sharing this.. | I can't believe I'm sharing this...

The REAL story of WHY I'm afraid to be interviewed on podcasts.

In one of my previous newsletters, I wrote about how just because you remove something from your life doesn’t mean you’ve built the skill to overcome it.

Even though I took time off, it didn’t necessarily mean I had built the skills to be on social media again, or to speak on a podcast, or to _____________ again.

This is exactly why I started The Creator Journal: to document my lessons and share my journey as I rebuild my skills and approach social media and business differently than before.

In today’s email, I’ll be sharing the real story about why I’ve been afraid to appear on people’s podcasts and what I learned from doing my first podcast interview last week.

(Yes, I finally did the damn thing!!!!)

A story I’ve haven’t told anyone…

Last week, I did my first podcast interview since returning from my sabbatical.

It was with Jenna Kutcher for The Goal Digger podcast, and our episode airs next month in September!

Quickie video I took after our interview ended!

Her team contacted me two weeks ago to ask if I’d be available for an interview the following week.

As someone who religiously listened to The Goal Digger podcast during my 9-5 days, it was a no-brainer yes!

Immediately after I accepted, the nerves started to kick in so bad that I almost considered backing out.

The truth is, I have a lot of residual trauma due to a negative experience I had as a guest on someone else’s podcast.

It was in 2022, and a previous mentor of mine wanted me to be on his podcast.

Up until then, I was accustomed to podcast hosts sending me questions in advance, or at least giving me an idea of what they wanted our conversation to touch on.

For his new podcast, he wanted it to be organic, so he didn’t send me any information beforehand, which I respected.

He started the interview with a simple, “What’s up?”

I told him I had just wrapped up my first mastermind event.

He asked a few more questions, and I continued to share more about how the event went, my excitement about it, and some of my learning lessons.

Eventually, the vibe felt awkward. He started looking at his phone and looking around the room.

Soon after, he stopped the interview and said,

“Do you even notice that you’re just talking to yourself? Have you noticed I’ve just been staring at my phone this time?”

My heart dropped right to my stomach.

He then asked his podcast producer, who was in the room, about his thoughts on the interview.

The podcast producer said the interview had been boring so far, and I was talking too much.

I was absolutely mortified. I felt so stupid, as if I had failed a test.

They decided not to continue the interview, and the episode never aired.

It was the first time in my career I hadn’t prepared for something and was told explicitly that I was not good enough. I never did a podcast interview again.

For a long time, I blamed myself:

“This is proof that you’re a fraud. You should stick to making YouTube videos where you can control the narrative.”

“See? Your stories are not interesting. You were not good enough to be on so-and-so’s podcast.”

“Everyone has been lying to you. He’s the only person that was honest enough to tell you the truth. You’re not as good as you think you are.”

This incident was particularly traumatizing for me because everything I’d ever done in my life always required extra effort.

For example:

I studied 3x harder than my friends and paid extra for tutors to be good enough at school because I felt I was inherently not smart enough.

I would spend weeks preparing out-of-the-box presentations for job interviews to stand out because I felt that my answers alone would not be intelligent enough.

Even in my previous coaching programs, I only answered questions that were submitted in advance because I was always afraid that I wouldn’t know how to help someone on the spot.

The truth is, all my life, I never believed I was good enough as is.

And so when the podcast incident happened, it was evidence that my belief was true.

How could someone disappoint you?

To prepare for my podcast with Jenna, I opened up to a mentor of mine about my previous incident with being on a podcast.

I told him how deeply afraid I am of disappointing Jenna, the same way I disappointed my ex-mentor years ago.

I felt 100% responsible for delivering a good result and put immense pressure on myself to be perfect.

Then my mentor asked:

“Rather than thinking about how you could disappoint Jenna, have you ever asked how Jenna could disappoint you?”

To make things clear, I deeply respect Jenna Kutcher. I can now also attest that she’s as kind offline as online. She’s among the few people I felt safe enough to share my story.

But for the purpose of healing the traumatic experience of being rejected on a podcast, this reframe completely changed the way I saw the situation with my past mentor.

It made me realize that the success of a podcast is not 100% my responsibility.

In fact, I started to research more about what makes a good podcast.

Do you want to know what I learned?

I learned that a successful podcast is also up to the host.

Did the host research the guest well enough?

Do they listen? Do they ask great questions?

Do they make the guest feel comfortable enough to open up?

I even watched two podcast interviews Ariana Grande did.

One interview received a lot of negative feedback.

The other interview received a lot of positive feedback.

The difference wasn’t Ariana. The difference was the host.

One host brought out the best in Ariana with his banter and well-researched questions, while the other host didn’t seem to do much research and asked bad questions.

Ariana Grande was simply Ariana Grande!

She was already worthy, and her personality shined when she was around someone as talented as her.

This is when I started to see the podcast incident from 2022 in a whole different light.

It made me realize that it was equally my past mentor’s responsibility to set his guest up for success and, as a host, to be able to guide the conversation rather than humiliate his guest.

It then made me realize how unfair the situation was, how misunderstood I felt, and how much shame I had carried as a result.

What can you learn from this story?

I have spent so much of my life feeling exhausted, carrying the weight and responsibility of others, bending and breaking myself to perfection so I’d never be a disappointment.

Yet, I had never stopped to set a standard for how I wanted to be treated.

For instance:

Have you ever asked yourself how a client could disappoint you? Could they show up to a coaching call completely unprepared? Could they not follow through on what was agreed upon?

What are your standards for a good client?

Have you ever asked yourself how a conference host could disappoint you? Could they not introduce you to the other speakers? Could they not help you prepare for your presentation?

What are your standards for a good event?

Or have you ever asked yourself whether a mentor could disappoint you? Could they not hold space for you? Could they break your trust?

What are your standards for a good mentor?

For some, this may be a no-brainer.

But for others who have carried the weight of responsibility all their lives to the point of overwork and burnout because they fear disappointing others, this reframe can set you free.

As a result of this simple reframe, I did what was within my control to prepare for my interview with Jenna on The Goal Digger podcast:

I deeply reflected on my experience, wrote a list of lessons I’ve learned about myself, life, and business, said them out loud, and made sure I got enough sleep.

At the same time, I also stopped putting the world's weight on my shoulders to ensure perfection, and I trusted that Jenna would also have the skillset of an experienced podcast host to create an epic conversation (she did).

I stopped mulling over whether I’d be good enough, and trusted that I am.

I also trusted that Jenna would be equally good enough to hold the space because, at the end of the day, this was a shared responsibility, not my responsibility.

🗒 An exercise for you: Who are your Creative Monsters?

No matter our walks of life, audience size, or experience, I feel that we’ve all gone through an injury that made us question our worth and made us feel unsafe to express ourselves.

If this is you, I want to share an exercise I did from The Artists Way, a book I’ve been reading, that helped me heal the past wounds that kept me small.

It’s an exercise that asks you to think about three specific incidents in your life (from childhood to now) that made you doubt your self-worth:

1. List 3 people who made you doubt your creative self-worth. Be specific as possible. These creative monsers are the building blocks of your core negative beliefs (Yes, rotten Sister Ann Rita from the 5th grade does count, and the rotten thing she said to you does matter). This is your monster hall of fame. It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue that block your growth.

2. Select and write out one horror story from your creative monster hall of fame. You do not need to write long or much, but do jot down whatever details come back to you — the room you were in, the way people looked at you, the way you felt, what your parents said or didn’t say when you told them about it.

3. Write a letter to the editor in your defense. It is great fun to write this letter to the voice of your woulded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has big eyes, and I can too spell!”

The Artists Way

In case you’re curious, my 3 monsters were:

Creative Monster #1: Kristina from 5th grade who made fun of a bag that I brought to dance class. I thought the bag was stylish and was excited to debut it, but she told everyone it was ugly. I was humiliated, and it was my first incident as a child that made me feel insecure about my taste.

Creative Monster #2: Two extremely well-known gurus in the space who made me feel unseen when I met them in real life. They presented themselves as approachable online but were cold and unwelcoming to me in person. This incident made me feel like I needed to make more money to be worthy of people’s time.

Creative Monster #3: My ex-mentor, whom I admired, making me feel like I was not good enough for his podcast. This incident made me doubt my abilities and was evidence that showing up as you are is not good enough. Or even worse, showing up as you are gets you punished.

I chose to expand on the podcast incident with my past mentor. It wasn’t until I wrote about the experience, pen to paper, in my journal that I finally realized how significant this experience was.

I then wrote a “To whom it may concern” letter explaining my side of the story. I wrote about all the ways I felt misunderstood and the many ways I didn’t feel set up for success.

It was my first time actually processing the incident and the first time I created space for myself to feel heard.

This exercise helped unblock many of the doubts I’ve carried for months. It helped me understand what happened, examine it differently, and finally heal.

Try The Creative Monsters exercise for yourself, and let me know how it goes!

Better yet, read The Artist’s Way if you feel called to — it’s been an incredible resource for me since coming back from my sabbatical 🙂

Thank you for reading!

There’s no YouTube video this week, but here’s a photo of my favorite thing I did over the weekend:

My pets LOVE sleeping on our balcony during the summer, so Leon and I decided to set up a tent with air mattresses to sleep outside with them overnight. It was so fun 🤣

If you don’t know already, 12,000 of you are reading The Creator Journal right now, and I’ve never felt safer sharing my stories with a group of people.

I’m so grateful for every email you opened and every Creative Journal screenshot you’ve shared on your IG stories. It warms my heart to know you’ve enjoyed my emails enough to share with your IG peeps and to tag me (@vanessalau.co) to let me know!

If there’s anything I want you to walk away with from reading this week’s email:

You are powerful beyond measure.

Stop shrinking yourself to fit spaces that can’t even hold your power.

Instead, find spaces with people who are just as powerful as you.

Until the next one, live life fearlessly,

Vanessa :)

PS: I read as many email responses as I can! If you want to share your thoughts about this week’s newsletter, reply to this email. It’s my love language! x | | 13 Secrets to Content Creation (I wish I knew sooner) | 13 Secrets to Content Creation (I wish I knew sooner)

WHY did no one tell me this BEFORE I burned down my business?

If you had asked me two years ago what the secrets to content creation were, I would have given you a list of tactics.

The truth is that tactics can help you grow, but they won’t necessarily make you happy. And if you’re not happy, your longevity as a creator will inevitably have an expiry date.

For example, even though I had built a large platform, I still had burnout and had to hit a significant reset button.

The same goes for the many prominent creators who quit YouTube, TikTok, or a ________ platform despite their on-paper success.

This week, I’m sharing the 10 things I wish I knew about being a creator and having a creator business.

I only learned these lessons after burning down my 7-figure business, and I hope that sharing them will save others from burning out and being unhappy in their creation journey.

You can watch the full video here: YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

13 Secrets to Content Creation I Wish I Knew BEFORE Burning Down My 7-Figure Creator Business...

I’ve added 3 out of 10 lessons in this post below, but highly enough for any creator or aspiring creator to watch the full video - enjoy! 🙂

#1. Depth vs. Volume

Imagine building a loyal audience of 1,000 people and launching a $100/mo membership, where your community's most engaged and aligned members get your best content, proximity, and support.

1,000 x $100/mo = $100,000/mo = $1.2m/year.

I wish someone had told me this four years ago.

If I had known that I needed less than 1,000 people to build a million-dollar business, I would have focused on nurturing depth within my existing community rather than burning myself out trying to get everyone’s attention.

I didn’t need 10,000+ customers.

I didn’t need to post content I didn’t enjoy creating to attract the masses.

I didn’t need to have a big team.

I didn’t need to work myself to the ground.

What I needed to do was:

Attract and build a genuine relationship with <1,000 people who share the same values and don’t want the performative version of me.

Not have a content model that is disproportionately skewed towards top-of-funnel content I didn’t always enjoy creating (ie: How to Grow on IG FAST)

Have a business model that thrives on retention and customer lifetime value rather than never-ending new customer acquisition.

Continue to deepen the relationship with the top 1,000 people: build genuine friendships, organize hangouts, support them on their most significant problems, grow with each other, etc.

The problem is that some people don’t think 1,000 people are enough, and some don’t even think $100,000/month is enough.

I was one of the people.

It wasn’t until I had nearly sent myself to the hospital trying to get more, more, and more that I realized how aggressive and broken my business and content model was.

But today, when I remind myself that I don’t need to chase the masses to be happy or have enough, my personal creation life has become significantly more fun and peaceful.

The bottom line is:

Some of you may not even aspire to make $100,000 a month.

Some of you aim to make $20,000 a month, $10,000 a month, or enough to meet your needs and be happy.

This means many of you don’t even need 1,000 people to love your stuff.

So why are we running ourselves to the ground?

Why are we posting content we don’t like and attracting people who only like us when we’re being someone else?

Why!?

#2. Content captures who you are in this moment of time.

I felt too paralyzed to post anything when I returned from my sabbatical.

The truth is, I was scared that whatever I posted would define me, just like how my viral Instagram video from 2019 ended up being my entire niche.

I was also scared that my posts would not perform if I didn’t have the right title, thumbnail, or hook.

And if my posts didn’t perform, it would give people reason to believe that taking my sabbatical and exiting my business was a mistake, and I felt a lot of shame and pressure around that.

It wasn’t until I read this excerpt from Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act” that I finally understood how this mindset was hindering me:

When you believe the work before you is the single piece that will define you, it’s difficult to let it go.

The urge for perfection is overwhelming.

We become frozen, and sometimes we convince ourselves that discarding the entire work is the only way to move forward.

Releasing a work into the world becomes easier when we remember that each piece can never be a total reflection of us, only a reflection of who are in the moment.

Just like how a diary entry is not a reflection of our entire life.

Think about how many pages will be left empty because your process was dampened by doubt?

Hanging onto work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary.

Part of the process of letting go is releasing any thoughts of how you or your work will be received.

When making art, the audience comes last.

And one of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to to share it.

Rick Rubin

Since reading that excerpt, I have enjoyed publishing my work more. I don’t second guess as much as I did before.

Rather than worrying about being defined by my posts, I now recognize that the purpose of my posts is to share the person I am at this moment in time.

By sharing who I am at this moment, I’ll be able to find myself in the next moment.

For example:

In 2017, I was a beauty creator — because that was my genuine passion at the time.

But then, through posting, I learned I didn’t like the creation process of scrubbing my face so much and the overconsumption of buying makeup products. So I dropped it.

From 2018 to 2019, I created videos for young adults about my experiences quitting the 9-5 and other topics.

I had built a small community. Then, one day, someone from my community wanted to collaborate on a video.

We talked about Instagram because that was the one thing we had in common.

My video generated millions of views overnight, so I pivoted.

This pivot allowed me to grow my channel faster and further.

From 2019 to 2022, I continued to be an Instagram Guru and YouTube “expert” because I valued growth at all costs.

But then, after years of posting the same thing, I realized I was playing a character. I felt inauthentic, and I was burnt out from building an entire business based on this character.

So, I burnt it all down to re-evaluate my next chapter.

In 2024, I’m now documenting my experiences rebuilding my personal brand and showing up more authentically online.

I’m also documenting the building of my new brand, Superboba, with Leon.

The moral of this lesson is that you’re human.

Changing is a universal human experience; no niche or post can define you unless you let it.

The worst thing you can do is post nothing because you want to be perfect and fear being rejected or defined.

Once I understood this, I then posted the video below — where I candidly shared how I truly felt since my return: YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

Pivoting is hard and this is how I REALLY feel.

If I had never posted that video, I would have never received evidence that it’s safe not to know all the answers.

If I had not gotten evidence that it’s safe not to know everything, I would have never started this newsletter you’re subscribed to.

So now I ask you:

What if each imperfect post led you to the next part of your ever-evolving journey?

Not ever sharing keeps you stuck in a time capsule where you’ll never create enough evidence for yourself on your next move.

#3. The personal is universal.

I’m often asked how I balance being “vulnerable” while still being “valuable”.

Here’s what one of our Creator Journal readers wrote to me:

• From a lovely Creative Journal reader 🙂 You know who you are!

I used to fear that I would sound “victimish” or that people would label me as a “hot mess” if I shared the things I was going through.

Here’s something I read that allowed me to feel comfortable with vulnerability and to trust that the value is in the vulnerability:

The secret is this:

What is most private and personal in you is also what is most universal.

What is deepest in you is deepest in all people—and in the world itself. The deeper you look into yourself, the more you find what is most important to everyone.

The most private you, “the real you,” isn’t isolated and alone.

When you speak, write, think, perceive, and act from your deepest, truest self, you automatically speak to other people’s deepest desires and concerns as well.

In making art, music, or literature, the more you base your work on pandering to others to win their attention or extract their money, the more you miss the mark.

The effort to project your motivation outward and shape your work purely for appealing to others serves only to alienate them and make the work sterile.

Real creative connection with others comes not from chasing after it outwardly but from accessing what is most personal within you and expressing this in some truthful form.

You can read the full post here.

I used to think that posting about my income, number of followers, etc., would build a connection.

I posted those things because I thought it would make people like me more and because I wanted to be seen as an authority.

But in reality, that messaging probably alienated a lot of people.

I used to think that the gurus felt out of reach… and then I became one.

Ironic right!?

This doesn’t mean you can never share your “qualifications”…

But what if your qualifications weren’t solely about the money you make or the number of followers you’ve acquired?

What if your qualifications were your experiences? Your story? Your wisdom and lessons through struggle?

What if sharing those stories and moments brought people closer to you rather than making people feel like you’re out of reach because you’re so perfect?

Or what if not always having the “expert” hat on actually changed the vibe of your videos and made filming videos easier?

I spent a lot of time teaching people how to do things, forcing myself into tight video scripts, and maintaining a specific image of myself.

But now, I have learned that people can access ChatGPT for that! 🤣

Remember: You don’t have content ideas. You have thoughts, stories, lessons, and experiences. It’s time to share them.

If you liked this newsletter, you’ll love this accompanying video:

There are even more lessons that I wish I had known about sooner, which might have prevented my public burnout from 2023.

Listen like a podcast, or watch the video with some tea and snacks 😀😀 YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

13 Secrets to Content Creation I Wish I Knew BEFORE Burning Down My 7-Figure Creator Business...

Thank you for reading!

I’m so grateful for you as always, and I want to wholeheartedly thank those of you who were so excited and enthusiastic when I announced the other side quest I’ve been on the past year: getsuperboba

getsuperboba

Add a comment...

In case you missed it:

YES! I’m building a new brand from scratch with Leon, and we're documenting our journey on Instagram (@getsuperboba).

We’re not quite ready for launch, but that’s the exciting part:

We’re sharing our journey publically, and you get to witness (and even contribute!) all the little decisions we’re making behind the scenes before we finalize everything.

You can follow @getsuperboba if you want to follow along 🙂.

I read every response to this newsletter and try to reply to as many as possible.

If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts, please reply and let me know!

I hope that sharing the lessons I wish I knew sooner can help other creators avoid some of the mistakes I made in hindsight.

Until the next one, live life fearlessly,

Vanessa | | 3 Things I QUIT That Made Me Love Creating Again. | 3 Things I Quit That Made Me Love Creating Again.

If you asked me two years ago how I felt about content creation, these words would come to mind:

Exhausting

Transactional

Trapped

Trapped by expectations, my niche, and the pressure to produce constantly.

I had turned my passion into a never-ending cycle of content churn, which was taking a toll. I also felt like I was building a lot of transactional relationships, not necessarily genuine relationships.

Today, my relationship with content creation looks very different.

That is why, in today’s email, I want to share 3 things I consciously quit that have made content creation not only easier but, more importantly, made me love creating again.

Here goes! 👇

#1: I quit building a social media account.

Sticking to a niche and sharing information can easily grow a social media account. Many creators have done this.

The problem is that even big social media accounts don’t always retain their audience when they pivot or start other businesses.

This is why growing a social media account is a short-term play.

A better long-term play is caring more about building a personal brand.

I talk about this in more depth in this video.

I highly recommend you watch it as it delves into why sticking to a niche is outdated and examples of what I’ve been doing instead: YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

Having a Niche is OUTDATED advice. THIS is how you stay relevant in 2024 and beyond.

“But wait! You always preached sticking to your niche!”

This advice worked maybe even two years ago, but my stance has changed.

When I returned from my sabbatical, I learned two things: #1: Being a creator is a very personal experience. Thinking you’ll talk about the same thing for decades is unrealistic.

Being a creator is a very personal, emotional, and human profession.

As humans, we are bound to evolve.

So it’s reasonable to want to pivot at some point because entering new seasons is a part of the human experience.

I learned this when I shut down all my courses last year because I no longer wanted to be known as the “Instagram girl.”

This is why building a personal brand, which includes sharing your interests outside of your niche, is necessary for people to be invested in YOU rather than your information so that you’ll be able to have a much more sustainable and flexible career in the long term. #2: How-to’s and information-based content are becoming a commodity.

The introduction of ChatGPT and AI has made the content feel even more impersonal.

This means personal connection and genuine relationships are becoming rare and valuable.

People don’t want gurus anymore.

They want real humans they can relate to, who are honest about their journey and struggles.

To save you some reading time, watch this video, where I explain this in-depth and discuss how I’ve approached my content (this email barely scratches the surface, so please watch it!).

#2: I quit being consistent.

I learned that, in the grand scheme of things, missing a couple of posts is not going to ruin a career—but what WILL ruin a career is burnout or falling out of love with what you do.

Whenever I say this, a swarm of newer creators argue with me and say they must hustle because the algorithm will punish them.

That same short-term thinking is also the reason why the majority of beginners don't make it past two years because they end up burning out anyways, or they think this career sucks because they’ve made it miserable for themselves.

This is because they don’t have the experience yet to think about their career in a longer time frame, and instead, they’re only thinking week to week.

It’s an amateur-level mindset.

Instead, we need to shift into an investor-level mindset.

If you want to stay in the game and continue to have fresh ideas, you need to understand that taking care of your health and body is essential to that goal.

If you lack mental or physical energy, your content will suffer anyway, and it’s only a matter of time before you hit your break point and are forced to quit.

The idea is for you to take small breaks to avoid reaching your breakpoint, as I did in 2023 when I had to shut down everything and go off the grid for nearly a year.

It can be as simple as rewarding yourself with a long weekend every so often by taking Friday or Monday off occasionally.

It doesn’t need to be a full-on sabbatical, and it doesn’t need to be this crazy career-ending break that we often make up in your mind.

Create evidence that not only is it safe, but a good thing when you take breaks.

What if, by taking care of your mind and body, you are actually investing in your growth and mental capacity to generate better ideas?

And what if those ideas lead to more income and visibility than if you continued to produce content for “consistency”?

That’s the investor mindset.

#3: I quit commoditizing my content.

“It’s not about the volume of content. It’s about the uniqueness of content.”

Once I understood this, I stopped announcing my content schedule.

Whenever I promised people a “weekly email” or a “daily post,” I always suffered because creation felt like a chore.

I specifically remembered when I had my old newsletter, “Confessions of a Creator to CEO,” and how much I loved it when it was just a side project.

But the moment I started telling everyone to expect a weekly email, I started hating and resenting writing because it was no longer about sharing what’s authentic to my heart but more about pleasing others.

Imagine this:

You get weekly emails from Creator A, but some emails are not very meaningful, and it’s often apparent they put something out for the sake of putting something out.

You’ll probably not value each email as much, even if they’re consistent.

Heck - you might not even open some of the emails.

Now imagine this instead:

You’re getting inconsistent newsletters from Creator B, but each email is well thought out, high-quality, and genuinely helpful to you.

Without knowing when the next one is coming out, you’d likely be on the edge of your seat waiting for the next email and not unsubscribing to Creator B in case you miss it.

You might even turn notifications on for Creator B, creeping their Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter and checking their link in the bio, just in case you missed something.

This may be a hot take, but I’m starting to realize in 2024 and beyond, quality is becoming more important than quantity.

The reason is that the creator industry is much more saturated than it was a few years ago pre-COVID.

Today, so many people I know are creators or want to be creators.

Not to mention, algorithms have been updated to make content consumption feel like fast food.

Content is a dime a dozen, but quality content is rare.

Want an example?

When I attended the Sony influencer event, I spoke with Life of Riza, a YouTuber who has grown to 700k subscribers with less than 45 videos.

For reference, I have 850k subscribers, but it took me 417 videos.

What Rizza has done is impressive.

Her secret?

She’s not consistent.

I even asked her if this was intentional, thinking that maybe she’s inconsistent not by choice.

She told me it IS by choice, and her priority is choosing quality over quantity.

This is NOT to say you need to have cinematographer-level skills like Riza.

This is to say that there is merit in allowing others the time and space to value your content.

If you liked this email, you’ll love this video: YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

Having a Niche is OUTDATED advice. THIS is how you stay relevant in 2024 and beyond.

In this video, I elaborate on why sticking to a niche can be dangerous to the longevity of your creator career and share my own process of what I’ve been doing instead.

Thanks for reading!

I don’t think the world needs more creators.

I think the world needs more creators who are genuinely passionate, fulfilled, and connected to their work. It’s not about adding more noise; it’s about adding more value, authenticity, and heart.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about content creation, it’s that tactics and frameworks can only take you so far.

Ultimately, the key to lasting success is finding happiness in the process.

I hope that by sharing what’s helped me rediscover happiness in creating, you’ll feel inspired to carve your path to fulfillment and creativity - to get back to the root of what made you excited to start in the first place ❤️️

Until next time, keep creating from the heart and live life fearlessly,

Vanessa | | Frameworks keep you STUCK. | Frameworks keep you STUCK.

What I learned from the most frustrating call I've ever had with a coach 👇

A month ago, I posted an Instagram reel sharing my thoughts on how, even though being a Creator is more popular than ever, very few people are actually creative.

One comment stood out:

Someone called me out, saying that, as an ex-Instagram guru, I was part of the problem by telling people what to do:

It got me thinking—were they right?

Why Frameworks Don’t Always Work

I could give you a detailed curriculum for doubling your business in 90 days, complete with copywriting formulas, funnel setups, and content scripts.

Yet, many people will still fail.

Why?

Because most people don’t have the soft skills required to sustain that growth.

Skills like: Resilience, emotional intelligence, self-belief, dealing with uncertainty… the list goes on.

The same applies to content creation.

You might think you need to spend more time writing out your audience avatar or refining your content pillars for the 7th time this week.

But on my creative journey, I've learned that a lot of this is just busy work—advertised by coaches who believe sharing tactics, systems, and frameworks alone makes them valuable.

And we keep chasing these things because we think they make us valuable, too.

But it’s masking the real problem:

We’re insecure about our ideas.

We’re scared that something won’t perform.

We’re afraid of judgment.

That Instagram comment made me reflect:

“Have I contributed to the problem by promoting frameworks without addressing what people are really missing?”

The answer is yes.

And it took one of the most frustrating coaching calls I’ve ever had to realize this.

How I Prepared For My First IRL Interview

A couple of months ago, I was preparing for my first in-person podcast interview, and my mentor, Joe, helped me through the process.

… By the way, the interview with Spiraling Higher just got released today! You can click here to watch it: YouTube video by Spiraling Higher Podcast

84. Vanessa Lau: I Built A 7 Figure Business Then Burned It All Down...Here's Why

At first, I thought we would focus on the typical stuff—perfecting my talking points, refining my story, or developing solid soundbites.

But Joe had a completely different approach.

At times, he’d make us sit in silence, asking me to guess what he was thinking just by reading his body language.

We did this over and over again.

During our conversations, he also had me ask him as many questions as possible about his life, which threw me off because, hello!? I’m the guest? Not the host?

When we did roleplays, he sometimes wouldn’t let me finish my thoughts and would ask me questions unrelated to sabbaticals, business, or being a creator—things I’m prepared to discuss.

Instead, he’d ask me about religion, beauty procedures, family, and other topics I never really talk about, and at the time, I felt were completely unrelated and off-topic.

It was one of the most frustrating coaching sessions I’ve had to date.

I came in expecting formulas, scripts, or some podcast interview framework.

I even had a Google Doc full of specific life and business lessons I wanted him to review.

But Joe wasn’t interested in any of that.

And at the time, I didn’t understand why.

Why Soft Skills Matter More Than Tactics

I interviewed on Jenna Kutcher’s Goal Digger podcast a few months before.

While I love Jenna and the content was solid, looking back, I noticed something important: it wasn’t a conversation.

There were times I was stuck in "monologue mode," a habit I picked up as a YouTuber, where I'm used to delivering dense information in 20-30 minutes without any breaks.

But if you asked me on a deeper level, I monologue because I’m so focused on saying the "right" thing and doing a "good job" that I’m not truly present.

My mind is racing, thinking about my prepared answers instead of being engaged in the conversation.

Worst of all, I spiral even more when a host doesn’t send me questions in advance.

This was the case for the Spiraling Higher interview.

They didn’t give me any questions, and so I was desperate for a sense of control.

I hoped that Joe would give me a framework, tactic, or strategy to make me feel prepared and safe.

But Joe wasn’t interested in giving me that safety net.

What he was doing was far more valuable.

He was teaching me soft skills, such as presence, active listening, curiosity, and, perhaps most importantly, restraint.

How, even though I often feel the need to say everything at once (fearing that people won’t think I know enough), it’s okay to hold back and let the conversation flow naturally.

We don’t always need to lay out all our cards or showcase our expertise in one breath.

Sometimes, the real magic happens when you leave space for the conversation to unfold without forcing it into a predetermined agenda.

The Surprising Results

I didn’t fully appreciate the impact of Joe’s coaching until the day of the podcast (heh— sorry Joe!)

The morning of, I felt unprepared and annoyed.

I wondered if we had wasted time, thinking, "Why didn’t we work on my messaging more? Or make my story more interesting? Or flesh out the tangible lessons I learned?"

But to my surprise, I think this was one of the best interviews I’ve done to date.

The conversation flowed naturally—unscripted and spontaneous.

I found myself sharing stories I’d never told before, cracking jokes, and even asking Gina and Sam a few questions myself, which made the conversation richer, fun, and more engaging.

Gina and Sam ended the interview by saying it was one of their best conversations yet.

They mentioned how present and engaged I was, but what they didn’t realize is that this wasn’t an accident.

It came from hours of intentional practice—not from following a cookie-cutter framework or creating an agenda for my story, but from learning presence, restraint, curiosity, and, most importantly, building evidence for myself that my story—not my prepared answers—was enough.

What can we learn from this story?

While learning technical skills like funnel building, copywriting, and video editing can be helpful, they’re not enough on their own.

So, the next time you find yourself searching for another framework or shortcut, take a pause and ask yourself:

Is another technical course really what you need?

Will tweaking your content plan over and over again actually make a difference?

Or is there something deeper—an insecurity or fear—that’s holding you back?

I realized I didn’t need a storytelling framework, a mentor’s validation of my story, or hours poured into preparing perfect answers.

What I truly needed was to let go of control, be present, and master my energy to become comfortable with uncertainty.

For you, it might mean developing the skill of feeling genuinely connected in creating and sharing your message rather than constantly worrying about how others will receive it.

Or maybe it’s building the skill of courage to talk about something you’ve always avoided.

Whatever it is, remember this: success isn’t just about tactics, hard skills, or strategies.

In fact, I’d argue that those things often hold us back from expressing our most authentic selves.

If you’re looking for a new way to approach your creativity, I highly recommend The Creative Act by Rick Rubin or The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

These books offer a fresh perspective on what it really means to be a creator—and I hope they inspire you as much as they’ve inspired me. ❤️

If you liked this newsletter, then you’ll love this video: YouTube video by Spiraling Higher Podcast

84. Vanessa Lau: I Built A 7 Figure Business Then Burned It All Down...Here's Why

In this interview, you’ll hear several thoughts, lessons, and feelings I’ve never shared publicly before.

You’ll hear about how I really felt when other creators posted about me during my sabbatical, the insecurity that kept me from making new videos, my view on industry relationships, and sooooo much more.

It’s 2 hours of deep conversation, and I hope you take the time to watch or listen to it. ❤️

As always, I appreciate you so much for getting to the bottom of this email.

Feel free to reply to this email with any thoughts or comments—I usually dedicate Mondays to reading and responding to as many as I can! 🙂

Stay true to who you are, Vanessa

PS: Many of you DM me asking what email provider I use. It’s Beehiiv :)

Using my link here, you can get a FREE 30-day trial and 20% off for your first 3 months—enjoy! 🐝 💌 | | The Real Reason I Quit YouTube | The Real Reason I Quit YouTube

I followed every tactic and strategy yet still failed. Why?

After growing my YouTube channel to 800k+ subscribers and reaching millions of views, I did everything "right."

I followed every tactic and every framework and even taught these methods because I thought this was what value looked like.

But in 2023, I hit a wall.

Burnout forced me to walk away, and at the time, I wasn’t sure if I would even return.

The truth is, my relationship with YouTube (and business) took a toxic turn.

Initially, what was my passion and dream was something I hated and resented.

It was pretty ironic, and my story is not unique.

In the last couple of years, many creators have quit the platform altogether or even descaled their channels (Matt D’Avalia is a good example).

What this tells me is that we are NOT a strategy or tactic away from success and that success is not solely defined by how many views we get or the money we make.

And so, what is?

Well, here’s my story of what I personally found out 👇

My WTF Am I DOING!? Story

When there’s so much pressure to perform, sometimes what feels like the safest thing to do is to follow someone else’s formula to success — whether that’s more money, virality, or whatever else.

If it worked for them, it should work for me, right?

While following trends and mimicking someone else’s style can start off as harmless or even a safe crutch, over time, it results in creative burnout and feeling lost with your identity because you’ve been representing yourself as someone else.

As my business grew, my imposter syndrome also grew.

This got worse when I started joining business masterminds, when the gap between me and my peers became wider and wider.

Remember this photo I posted a couple of years ago?

Yeah, I felt like a total fraud sitting at this table.

The funny thing is it was right after THIS event that I decided to launch my high-ticket mastermind.

I launched it because:

Sam Ovens, who was sitting next to me, told me I should if I wanted to easily double my business

I was the smallest business in the room, and I was desperate never to feel this type of shame again.

Now I want to slap myself 😂

Looking back, I just wanted to keep up with the other multi-seven—and eight-figure entrepreneurs. I wanted to earn their friendship. I wanted their admiration.

I wanted to belong.

As a result, I started doing whatever it took to hit the big numbers because it seemed like having big numbers was the only way to get noticed.

This started my journey of copying others because I stopped trusting myself.

I changed my editing style to mimic Alex Hormozi.

I hired a content team like Codie Sanchez.

I started talking about team and operations like Leila Hormozi.

I launched a mastermind like Sam Ovens.

You copy enough people enough times, and the lies will catch up with you.

It wasn’t until one Saturday evening in January 2023, when I was neck-deep in the residual work of running a mastermind, managing a content team, a sales team, my YouTube channel, Instagram, and my online course, that I felt completely overwhelmed and trapped, like I couldn't keep going.

You see, even though I was getting the most views I’d ever gotten and finally broke through my income plateau, I was the most inauthentic and exhausted I’d ever felt.

That night, I learned that copying other people’s methods to success rarely works unless you share their values and their way of thinking.

You might be able to mimic their moves on paper, but when you don’t think through the “why” or question what type of person you’re copying, you’ll constantly be working overtime, trying to figure out how to keep up.

For example, the idea of posting more videos sounded great, but I didn’t realize the toll it would take, filming and scripting 2-3 times more content than I was used to.

Hiring a content team seemed like a great way to scale, but I didn’t realize how detached I’d feel passing my work off to copywriters and multiple video editors, and how removed I’d be from the final result.

Launching a mastermind seemed like an easy way to grow my business, but I didn’t enjoy the actual work of hiring a sales team, managing operations, and committing to countless calls and events.

What looked simple from the outside was draining from the inside because I wasn’t aligned with the process or the hidden demands.

Simply put, I’m not built like a Hormozi, a Sam, a Codie, or a _________.

I’m built like Vanessa Lau.

It took falling off the rails and losing myself to understand this finally.

Today, I continue to share my story, hoping others will realize this for themselves, too.

The truth is, you can follow someone else’s blueprint, but if it doesn’t align with who you are and how you want to operate, the journey will always feel crippling— even if the cage is golden.

Success isn’t just about hitting numbers—it’s about creating a life and business that feels true to you.

The problem is that most of us spend more time looking externally for answers instead of internally to discover who we really are and what we truly want.

When we take the time to understand ourselves, the tactics and strategies become clearer, and we can finally build in a way that feels aligned.

What Now?

My approach to success has evolved significantly since my sabbatical.

In fact, it’s inspired me to take on a personal project:

Redoing some of my most popular videos to better reflect my current values and outlook.

Every month, thousands of people discover my channel, many of whom watch my YouTube-related content.

That’s why I’ve decided to kick off a NEW and UPDATED 6-part YouTube series, where I’ll share how I bring my videos to life now that I’ve returned to being a solopreneur.

Here’s what’s ahead:

The first video of this series is now available, and you can watch it here: YouTube video by Vanessa Lau

The Real Advice Every YouTuber Needs To Hear in 2024

After reading this email, it should be clearer now why I’m starting my YouTube series with a video about mindset.

Yes, in the series I’ll be sharing some strategies, processes, and tutorials — but the truth is, these things can only take you so far.

If tactics were the only way to success, you wouldn’t see 98% of students who buy YouTube courses failing—even if they have the entire roadmap.

The true key to success is in the way you think about the creation process, and this video discusses my new mindset when I make videos. Without this new way of thinking, I don’t think I’d still be making videos today.

This YouTube video includes eight specific shifts that have changed my approach, inspired me, and helped me get unstuck, and I hope it helps you, too.

As always, stay true to yourself!

Vanessa | | I almost cancelled speaking at this event. | I almost cancelled speaking at this event.

Self-sabotage hit hard—here’s why I showed up anyway.

“Oh God, why did I say yes to this!?” I wondered as I drove through the rain on my way to speak at Alex Cattoni’s Posse Fest event.

Has this happened to you?

When you accept to do something months ago, and leading up to the days when you have to do it, you wonder why you even said yes in the first place?

Yep. This was me over the weekend.

Back in July, Alex had reached out asking me to speak at her event:

This was during a time when I was reluctant to say yes to anything, being careful of my previous patterns of over-committing.

But something about Alex’s Posse Fest got me interested:

It was in Vancouver, where I live.

The event was positioned to attract anti-bro marketers. Amazing.

Except one thing didn't sit right:

I didn't want to teach content creation.

I was still finding my own voice after a sabbatical. Teaching it felt inauthentic.

Back then, I’d be so honored to speak that I’d mold myself into whatever topic they’d want me to present on.

I was literally Beyonce in “Cater2U”.

Cater2U may have worked for Beyonce… but it certainly did not work for me.

Yet, it was precisely those patterns that got me in trouble.

So, this time, I wanted to try something different.

I asked Alex to hop on a call:

On that call, I pitched an idea that felt more genuine to me:

A fireside chat about losing yourself while chasing business growth.

I know too well what it feels like to attend a marketing event and leave feeling like you’re not doing enough.

This comparison can lead us to the dangerous path of implementing any strategy to grow more and faster without thinking about whether or not those strategies align with our lifestyle or values — all to be able to say, “I’m making 100k/month!” on IG and be our coach’s favorite success story.

To my relief, Alex loved it even more than the original idea.

I was now officially a speaker.

Perfect! … But why did I still feel like sh*t the day of my talk!?

Leading up to the event, my self-doubt was POPPIN’ OFF.

What if I choke!? Oh lawwwd why did I pitch a fireside!?

My anxiety was so bad that I fantasized about my car breaking down and saying I could no longer make it. 😂

But alas, I reached the hotel and found my way into the “Speaker Room”.

Three other speakers were already seated, eating lunch, when I approached their table with a smile and introduced myself.

One of them introduced themselves and returned to their food.

The other two didn’t even look my way, continuing their conversation as if I wasn’t there.

No matter how much I smiled and tried to include myself, the clearer it became—I felt excluded and invisible.

I was a fly on the wall, listening to their conversation, talking about industry peers, conversion rates, and other things that reminded me why I left the online coaching space.

Long story short, even though I know it wasn’t intentional, this awkward interaction sent me into a spiral.

It was so bad that Joe (my mentor) called me and coached me through the self-doubt before my talk.

“What are you worried about?” He asked.

“I’m worried that people won’t get it. I’m worried that I’m going to choke. I’m worried that my talk is going to suck because everyone else is actually teaching something. There are hundreds of people here. I’m scared about what the other speakers will think. I’m scared I won’t be good enough.”

Joe paused for a moment on the other end of the line.

“Vanessa, do you think three years ago you would have wished you heard someone speak about the things you’re going to share today?”

"Yes.”

“And do you think it makes sense to change your approach to teaching something because everyone else has keynotes? Do you think this industry needs more marketing keynotes?”

“No…”

“Then why are you trying to change yourself to fit into an outdated model?”

His words hit me hard.

The entire reason I pitched a fireside chat was to do what I felt was right.

So, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to focus on what the other speakers were doing.

I wasn’t going to compare my talk to theirs or worry about their opinions.

I was going to stay in my lane, speak my truth, and trust that the right people would get my message.

And that’s exactly what I did.

I showed up, spoke from the heart, and let go of the need for validation or comparison.

After my talk, both speakers and attendees alike told me how meaningful the fireside chat was to them and how it was exactly what they needed to hear.

It was a reminder that sometimes, the message people need most isn't the one that fits neatly into a strategy, keynote, or framework.

Looking back, here are the biggest lessons I learned from this experience: #1: Value can come in different forms.

When I felt I didn’t belong at the lunch table, I made it mean that my fireside chat would also not belong at the event.

At one point, I desperately wished I was doing a keynote instead because that’s what everyone else was doing, and it seemed like that’s what the audience liked.

It felt safer to follow the same path, thinking that’s where the value would be.

Funny how my brain works.

But by sticking to my original idea—keeping the chat conversational and focused on storytelling— I learned afterward that people resonated with it even more because it was different.

It gave them something they didn’t know they needed:

Relief. Feeling seen and understood. Perspective.

This mirrors what I'm seeing in content creation today.

While Instagram feeds are filled with expert advice and perfectly aesthetic 7s reels, some of TikTok's most impactful creators share their honest, minimally edited journey, bringing comfort, entertainment, and real connection to their audience.

When you only copy what others are doing, even if it works for them, you miss the chance to create something uniquely valuable.

If you feel pulled to create differently than your industry's "best practices" suggest – trust that instinct.

Your authentic voice might be exactly what your audience needs. #2: Your story matters more than your stats.

After my talk, I was approached by many people who have watched my content for a long time. Some have been a part of my journey ever since I made videos talking about why I quit my corporate job.

It got me thinking about how some of the most meaningful videos I’ve made were the ones where I had less than 5,000 subscribers and never went viral.

One thing that touched me the most was @jasrosebay, who gave me a heartfelt letter after the event and reminded me of a post I once wrote that helped her through some of the toughest times of her life:

Pssst.. if you can’t read it, you may need to zoom in lol

To me, it was a reminder that even though talking about Instagram and YouTube strategies played a role in growing my accounts, it was the stories and challenges I’ve shared that have changed people's lives.

My friend, Courtney, who attended Possefest, wrote to me:

Standing on that stage, sharing vulnerably about my journey felt infinitely more meaningful than teaching any social media strategy I could have taught.

Sometimes the hardest chapters of our story become the light that helps others find their way.

My hope is that you reading this email will understand that the value you have to offer is far beyond any metric or follower count.

Your struggles today might become tomorrow's inspiration for someone else. #3: Home is where the real win is.

I used to get really caught up whenever I attended events like these. I usually feel a strong need to impress, to stick around, and to make the most of the opportunity.

To be honest, I used to prioritize these types of opportunities over my personal life.

But this time it was different.

I found myself grateful for the simple joy of leaving the event early and sharing a key lime pie with Leon at 11PM, surrounded by our pets:

The other 4 pets not pictured, but trust me… they were there.

Speaking my truth from stage felt powerful, but coming home to myself felt even better.

I'm learning that success doesn't always look the way the industry says it should.

Sometimes, it's found in quiet moments—when we advocate for what feels right, honor our truth over following a template, or simply share a key lime pie with a loved one after a long day :)

Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What do you think about content or the industry nowadays? Am I the only one who fantasizes about canceling something last minute? Anything resonate with you? LOL

I read and try to respond to as many emails as I can on Mondays, and I’d love to catch up with you!

As always, I hope you enjoyed this story and don’t forget to stay true to yourself,

Vanessa :) | | 2024 Reflections: What Burnout Taught Me About Life, Work, and Myself |

Welcome to Vanessa’s Substack! Vanessa recently moved you from another platform to Vanessa’s Substack, hosted on Substack. New posts will be automatically delivered to you via email or via the Substack app. To set up your profile and find more to read, click here. If you do not want to receive emails from Vanessa’s Substack, you can unsubscribe here.

If you prefer to listen rather than read, I’ve recorded an audio version of this post, which you can listen to by clicking the ‘play’ button above

(And yes! I’ve moved my previously named ‘Creator Journal’ newsletter to Substack—hi! 👋)

Returning to work after a one-year sabbatical was nothing like what I expected.

I had envisioned an epic comeback: recharged, inspired, and ready to take on the world.

Instead, the reality was way messier than I expected, far more personal, and filled with so many unexpected challenges.

Over the past year, I observed a pattern online that triggered me:

People burnout. They pivot. They monetize the story. They teach others how to run a simple, “anti-scale” business.

And they do it all within what feels like months.

As I watched creators coaches seemingly bounce back and present their new offers with clarity and confidence, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Have they truly healed, or are they just rushing to launch an offer?

Am I projecting my frustration because I feel I’m moving so slowly compared to them?

Or could my judgments hold some truth?

Is my story more common than I think, and are people just not being honest about how hard it is to recover from burnout?

They appeared to have it all figured out.

Meanwhile, I still felt stuck.

Despite taking a year off, I still wrestled with the identity I thought I’d rebuilt.

Which is why I’m writing this.

Not for validation but to contribute a perspective.

I am sharing what this past year has really been like for me in the hopes that it might normalize the slower, non-linear pace of healing for others.

Because if you feel stuck, frustrated, or like you’re taking too long, I want you to know:

Your timeline is valid, too. The Reality of True Recovery

Just because you remove something from your life doesn’t mean you’ve built the skills to overcome them.

In other words, taking a break from work doesn’t mean you’ve learned to work better.

My sabbatical tricked me into thinking I was fully recovered, but in reality, I was just physically rested.

But physical recovery is only half the battle.

The real test came when I returned to work.

It’s one thing to step away from the stressors of your previous life.

It’s another to face them head-on with the new habits, boundaries, and ways of thinking you think you have.

Yes, my values shifted, and my body healed.

But when I was faced with similar temptations and situations as before, I realized the work wasn’t done.

Would I fall back into old patterns of overcommitting or saying “yes” out of fear?

Would I keep running away from challenges, avoiding decisions that felt too heavy?

Or would I find the courage to confront these temptations and choose differently?

For me, I experienced all three:

I fell back into familiar patterns, said yes when I should’ve said no, and doubted myself more times than I’ve shared publically.

I also ran from problems, convincing myself I needed more time, more clarity, or more healing.

Yet, in the moments where I chose differently, I caught glimpses of what growth could look like.

But this is the reality of true recovery: it’s not linear.

You will spiral, but with every spiral, know that you’ll be spiraling higher. The Pressure to Monetize

At the end of my “Why I Quit” video, I naively declared that I would help creators “feel good, do less, have fun, and earn enough.”

At the time, it sounded empowering, but in hindsight, it was premature.

I hadn’t even built that reality for myself yet.

Years of conditioning taught me that every piece of content needed a call to action and that call to action had to lead somewhere: to an offer, a funnel, or a framework.

Even though I came back intending to be a “free agent,” having that freedom was terrifying.

I needed something to cling to, even if it was the familiar frameworks I had worked so hard to leave behind.

The discomfort of not knowing who I was or how to monetize just felt unbearable, especially for someone who used to have all the answers and all the frameworks.

Opportunities also poured in when I came back.

Over $200,000 worth of sponsorship deals landed on my plate, ranging from $5,000 to over $20,000 per video.

With the temptation of all this money, I said yes to all of them…

Despite my intention not to overwork like I did before,

Yet, I convinced myself it was different this time:

But it’s a different niche!

But it’s a different revenue stream!

I can just make money making videos and don’t need to work with clients or sell courses!

But deep down, I knew the truth.

I had chosen to fall back into old patterns, and it wasn’t long before the weight of these commitments and labels felt suffocating.

And so, I made the difficult decision to cancel every sponsorship.

I understand that this was a privileged decision, but it was a privilege that I had, and I used it.

(See Video: “Last week, I canceled $200,000 worth of sponsorships. Here’s why.”)

I posted another video admitting the messy truth: my “I Quit” video was a lie, and I actually had no idea what I was doing.

(See video: “Pivoting is hard, and this is how I really feel.”)

At the time, these decisions felt like failures.

But looking back, they were necessary steps to break free from the cycle of fear and external validation.

But even after taking these bold steps, the struggle wasn’t over. The Struggle of Cognitive Dissonance

What people rarely talk about is the cognitive dissonance you feel when you return from a sabbatical.

Even as I made conscious choices to prioritize authenticity, I still found myself longing for the success I had before:

Wow, I made so much money.

I had a team.

My videos had so many views.

I spoke on stages and had so much drive.

At the same time, I also really admired post-sabbatical Vanessa:

I feel so much more authentic.

I’m so proud of myself for saying no!

I work on my own schedule, and I love it!

So happy there’s not as much pressure as before :)

In quiet moments, the guilt would also creep in:

“You’re not doing enough.”

“You used to be able to do this—why can’t you now?”

“Your videos are flopping. You should post more. Why can’t you be consistent?”

“Other creators are teaching simple businesses after burning out. Why don’t you?”

It was exhausting, like a mental tug-of-war between two versions of myself:

The ambitious, high-achieving pre-sabbatical Vanessa and the reflective, self-aware post-sabbatical Vanessa.

But here’s what I came to realize:

Cognitive dissonance isn’t a failure. It’s a natural part of the transformation.

When you’re evolving, your old self and your new self will clash.

You’re leaving behind what’s familiar and stepping into something unknown.

It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also necessary.

Over time, I stopped seeing my past and present selves as opposing forces.

Instead, I began to view them as chapters in the same story.

Each had its own lessons, strengths, and struggles, and both were vital in shaping who I am today.

Letting go of this internal battle wasn’t easy.

In fact, I think it was the hardest part this past year.

It required consistent journaling, examining family trauma, long conversations with trusted friends and mentors, and a lot of self-compassion.

Here’s something I want you to remember, something that helped me tremendously during this phase:

When you’re stepping into something new, your nervous system will try to protect you.

Don’t be surprised if you give up on a task halfway, or can’t physically bring yourself to do it.

The worst you can do is give up entirely.

Instead, allow your nervous system to build tolerance by taking it one day at a time.

Remind yourself to embrace this hard part of growth, and give yourself the grace to feel it all—the pride, the guilt, the nostalgia, the fear—and trust that it will lead to somewhere good. Thinking Like an Investor

Another thing people don’t often talk about is money, and I understand why.

Looking back, I wish I had kept quieter about my earnings because talking about it so openly made it feel like my entire identity was tied to the numbers I was hitting.

So, when you burn your business down and those numbers drop dramatically...

Oh man, do you feel it.

Without the substantial monthly income I was used to, I felt broke—despite my net worth.

I stopped hiring a cleaner, downgraded my software, started to DIY everything, and even considered stopping mentorship to save money.

I remember a mentor of mine, Joe, saying to me:

“I have a client who makes a fraction of what you do, invests twice as much in their growth, and never questions whether they have enough. Yet you, the multi-millionaire, still won’t hire a cleaner.”

This forced me to confront a harsh truth:

My scarcity mindset wasn’t about the actual numbers in my bank account.

It was about how I perceived money, success, and security.

Joe helped me recognize that I was thinking like an employee, conditioned to equate value with a monthly paycheck.

This short-term mindset was a key cause of my burnout. It constantly pushed me to chase immediate rewards rather than achieve long-term goals or fulfillment.

This mindset isn’t unique to me.

It’s the same one that explains why some founders still feel broke, even after exiting their businesses for millions of dollars.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

It doesn’t matter if you have $100,000, $1,000,000, or $10,000,000.

If you’re always measuring your worth by what’s coming in, you’ll never feel like you have enough.

To break this cycle, I made a conscious effort to think like an investor:

Shift to the Big Picture: I stopped focusing on immediate cash flow or immediate results and started asking myself, What seeds am I planting today that will yield exponential returns 5 years from now?

This bigger-picture thinking has helped me decide whether to say yes or no to opportunities.

It has also reduced the pressure to post on social media just to prove to people that I’m making progress.

Reevaluate the Value of Time: Even though I felt broke, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t starting over. I had built a successful and profitable business before, but I was treating myself like a struggling, penny-pinching solopreneur.

By clinging to a scarcity mindset, I was undervaluing myself and the years of skills, experiences, and resources I had built over the years.

I started to reinvest in things that added value, like hiring a cleaner again (lol), eventually rehiring my video editor (more on that later), and stopped asking how much something cost. Instead, I began asking myself how much time it would give back to me.

Think Outside the Paycheck: Income doesn’t have to come solely from the business.

Personal example: I rarely check my investments. It’s like it doesn’t exist. This habit has been great for long-term portfolio growth, but it’s been terrible for being financially aware of the bigger picture. For me, I only thought about monthly paycheck.

Over time, I learned that wealth isn’t just about what’s actively earned. It’s also about what’s passively growing in the background, and sometimes, you need to calculate everything to remind yourself that you are indeed safe.

Redefine “Enough”: I asked myself, What do I truly need to feel safe, inspired, and happy? The answer was less than I thought, and this clarity allowed me to let go of unnecessary pressures and distractions. It helped me set clearer boundaries, like saying no to opportunities that didn’t align with my values and freed me from the constant need to prove myself. I realized that “enough” isn’t a number. It’s a state of mind where your priorities and values guide your decisions, not fear or comparison.

Trust the Unexpected Returns: Initially, I thought investing in a mentor was too expensive, especially since much of our work wasn’t directly tied to business. There was no immediate ROI—no offer creation, no clear path to monetization.

Old Vanessa would have called it “a bunch of woo-woo shit.”

But then, this mentor introduced me to someone interested in purchasing shares from a startup I had invested in years ago. That single deal paid for the mentorship many times over.

It reminded me that abundance often shows up in unexpected ways, and even when the ROI isn’t immediately tangible, the ripples can be profound, similar to how internal growth eventually materializes into external success.

This journey wasn’t just about shifting my mindset.

It was about redefining my sense of security and abundance.

It’s a process I’m still working on, but one thing is clear:

When you think like an investor, you stop chasing immediate results and start building a lasting foundation. Building Emotional Intimacy

Emotional intimacy wasn’t something I realized I lacked until my mentor, Joe, pointed it out.

It became clear that this gap in my emotional capacity was not only personal but deeply intertwined with my work.

It’s why I avoided working 1:1 with clients or starting anything too intimate.

The thought of holding space for someone felt draining, and as my platform grew, as trolls grew, and as above-average-demanding clients grew, so did my avoidance.

This is why selling courses, speaking on stages, and broadcasting through YouTube or newsletters allowed me to maintain distance, stay in control, and not get hurt.

But this control came at a cost.

My fear of showing up as I was—imperfect, vulnerable, and someone who doesn’t actually have all the answers—led to overpreparing for every interaction, which only amplified my exhaustion and contributed to burnout.

I couldn’t do client calls without prepping a 30-page slide deck.

I couldn’t do podcast interviews without spending weeks preparing.

I couldn’t launch anything without feeling like I had to give everything to everyone.

Joe helped me confront the roots of these struggles: my family dynamics.

Our sessions often circled back to my mom, dad, and brother.

We unpacked the weight of my parent’s divorce, the unspoken pressures I felt to provide, and the expectations I carried without questioning where they even came from.

One particular moment stands out:

My mom once asked me to take my brother out for coffee because he was going through something.

My brother and I have always had a fun, lighthearted relationship.

Serious, emotional conversations were foreign to us. The idea of calling him—let alone going on a 1:1 coffee date—felt awkward, so I texted him instead.

That hesitation hit me hard:

If I couldn’t hold space for my own brother, how could I do so for others?

And if I couldn’t navigate vulnerability with loved ones, how could I create meaningful relationships in my work?

Joe reminded me that our parents are our first examples of how relationships work.

If those patterns remain unexamined, they silently influence everything—from how we connect with others to how we view ourselves.

My relationship with my dad became a testing ground for this work.

In a gesture unimaginable to my 17-year-old self, I very awkwardly asked my brother to collaborate with me and fill out a book called A Whole Book Of The Things I Love About My Dad:

We gave it to him for Father’s Day, and he told us it was the best gift he’d received in 30 years.

This simple $20 gift shifted the dynamics in my family, and for the first time, I allowed my dad to experience the best version of me.

Since then, I’ve noticed my dad becoming more open, and even my brother has started to show more vulnerability.

This was the beginning of learning how to hold space.

Not just for others, but also for myself.

By traditional metrics, this past year might not look like my most productive.

But for me, it holds one of the greatest achievements of my life:

Forgiving my Dad.

This work was harder than any project or launch, yet infinitely more fulfilling. Honoring the Artist

One of the unexpected challenges I faced was a deep fear of systems and scaling.

I associated having a team and structured systems with losing control, an irony that isn’t lost on me.

This fear stemmed from my experience with The Bossgram Academy.

What started as a beta program in 2019 unexpectedly became my entire business model for four years, even though I had long outgrown it.

The thought of repeating that cycle again left me terrified that any commitment would define me in ways I didn’t want.

At that point, I felt stripped of my creative integrity.

I needed to reconnect with myself as an artist, and this became even more clear after reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and working through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

These two books reminded me of the importance of honoring creativity for its own sake, free from external pressures or expectations.

I turned down all my brand deals to create a blank canvas for myself.

I even let go of my beloved video editor—a decision that wasn’t easy.

The truth was, I constantly felt guilty for over-promising and under-delivering, leaving her waiting for new videos I didn’t always have the energy or the clarity to produce.

The pressure to create just to ensure she had work to do was draining, and I knew it wasn’t fair to either of us.

So, after years of working together, I referred her to other creators.

For the first time in years, I felt free.

Free to post whatever I wanted, edit my videos, and create at my own pace. No one was waiting for me, and I loved it.

This period of creative exploration helped me heal my relationship with creating.

I rediscovered my love for writing, filming, editing, and sharing, and it filled a void that had been missing for years.

Slowly, my confidence grew and filming no longer felt as daunting.

In fact, I started looking forward to it again.

By November, I felt ready to make my first public commitment: a six-part YouTube series.

For someone who often talks about not wanting to fit into a niche, a structured series about YouTube might seem counterintuitive.

The reality is that my most popular videos have always been about YouTube and Instagram.

And when I looked back on those viral videos—which are often people’s first impression of me—I couldn’t help but cringe.

The tactics, the presentation… none of it reflected the person I am today or the values I hold now.

So, this series wasn’t about pleasing others, optimizing for performance, or selling a course.

It was a personal project to share my knowledge generously, give away everything that could’ve been in a paid course, and finally rid myself of the “ick” I felt about my past content.

Honoring the artist means creating for the sake of the craft, not for external validation.

Through this process, I learned that when you prioritize creative integrity, you rediscover not only your work but yourself. Rebuilding, with Systems.

As I worked through creating my six-part YouTube series, I noticed a significant shift.

Every video I posted helped me in two key ways:

It gave me a sense of accountability, and

It reminded me of the value I could bring when I showed up consistently.

This clarity served as a wake-up call.

I realized I had so much to share, yet I lacked the capacity to fully execute my vision.

What had once been my dream—to work solo, on my terms, without answering to anyone—started to feel like a limitation rather than freedom.

Nurturing my artist side reignited my passion and drive, but it came in bursts.

My moments of greatness would be followed by silence, as I had no systems in place to sustain that momentum.

The truth became clear:

Passion alone wasn’t enough.

Without structure and support, even the most inspired work would fall short of its potential.

This realization also extended beyond my personal brand to Superboba, the milk tea company I co-founded with my fiancé, Leon.

It felt like I was doing everything yet accomplishing nothing at the same time.

Neither my personal brand nor Superboba was reaching the potential I knew they were capable of.

And so, for the first time, my fear of hiring naturally disappeared.

I wasn’t hiring because of external pressure, like being in a mastermind where everyone told me I needed a team to be successful.

I was hiring from a place of passion.

I had a vision to execute, lessons to share, an awesome milk tea I love drinking every morning, and a drive to be consistent—and I finally admitted to myself that I couldn’t do it alone.

Slowly but surely, I started to trust again.

I rehired my video editor, brought on another editor for Superboba, and I’ve started to rebuild systems to support the things I care about most.

While it took nearly a year to do this, I realized I needed to experience each phase—including the freedom of no systems—to finally arrive at a place where I’m no longer driven by the push of external forces but by the natural pull of inspiration and purpose. Looking Ahead to 2025 |