How To Live The Life You Were Born To Live - With Terry Lancaster
Sep 03, 2021Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Terry Lancaster.
Terry Lancaster is a copywriter, marketing strategist, and storyteller. He's helped thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs create billions in revenue by putting the right words in the right order to tell the right story.
He writes blog posts, websites, radio & TV commercials, video scripts, Ted talks, #1 best-selling books, plus the occasional dirty limerick and bathroom stall graffiti: "For a good time call 615-804-0311"
Why you've got to check out Terry's episode:
- Discover how Terry has helped thousands of small business and entrepreneurs and specifically those who don't have a giant marketing team behind them.
- He discusses the frustration business owners face when they create new websites, launch it and then do not receive the traffic they expected.
- How this can lead to an increased spend on pay per click adverts, additional promotion and spend, even after you have already invested large sums of money on a new website re-design.
- The importance of feeding Google with relevant, searchable and valuable content, regularly.
- Why you need to check out Terry's website for free support and guidance to help your business get found online.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Tom Bailey: Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Terry Lancaster, who is a copywriter marketing, strategist, and storyteller. He also writes blog posts, websites, radio, and TV commercials, video scripts, Ted talks, and number one best selling books to Terry. Hello and a very warm welcome to today's session.
Terry Lancaster: Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me on buddy. I really appreciate it.
Tom Bailey: No, I really appreciate you being here and just out of interest, whereabouts are you in the world right now?
Terry Lancaster: I'm in a sunny, beautiful Nashville, Tennessee. And I take it by your accent that you are not?
Tom Bailey: I am not, exactly. I'm over here in the UK and it's currently raining as ever in the day. So incredible. Thank you so much again for coming along. And I just wanna share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Terry has helped thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs to create billions in revenue by putting the right words in the right order to tell the right story. The title for today's episode is How To Live The Life You Were Born To Live. And Terry's gonna show us how to do that in hopefully just under seven minutes. So, the first question today is who are your ideal clients?
Terry Lancaster: My doc has said that I've helped thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs, and that's who I really like to work with small businesses and entrepreneurs, people who have you know, I have had their feet in the fire who are in the game and specifically the ones who don't have a giant marketing team behind them by being an entrepreneur is lonely work. So, it's good to have someone you can talk to. Who's on your team. And so, I try to be a member of their team. I've worked with everything from insurance agents to real estate agents, car salespeople, you know any kind of marketing, marketing entrepreneur. And that's what I want to tell you.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely fantastic. And when you work with these clients, what would you say is the biggest challenge that they typically face?
Terry Lancaster: Well, the, of course we all know everyone has to be on the internet. The world is, is there's no divide between the digital world and the real world anymore. So, everyone's got a website, but more often than not, they someone tells them that they have to build a website. So, they pay someone to build them a website or they get their brother-in-law to build them a website. And then they stick it up on the internet. And crickets, nothing happens. It's like spending a bunch of money to print a fancy brochure and then throwing it in a, in a desk drawer and never handing it out to anyone. So, their biggest problem is they're not getting the traffic to the website to, to drive the conversations that they need to have for their business.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. And it may sound like an obvious question, but by not having this traffic driving to their website, what's the impact that might have on them or their business.
Terry Lancaster: Well, if you don't have the traffic to the website, you're not going to start the conversations. You're not going to start building the relationships that you need to have with your customers. And you're going to be forced to do things that are more expensive. You're going to have to buy the pay-per-click ads. You're going to have to spend more time out networking and shaking hands. And you're confused because you spend all this money building a website and you thought that was going to be the answer. That's going to, how I'm going to get it done, to get the business. But no one tells you that the website is just like a telephone. You got to give people the phone.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks so much. That's a great, great piece of advice. And on that topic, what is one great, valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody to really help them start solving this?
Terry Lancaster: The, the easy answer is, is feed the beast. The beast is Google two thirds, two thirds out of all, website visits come from a search engine from, from a search engine search. And that means Google and Google exists to connect eyeballs to customers. What they want is they want more content and they've got this unholy Alliance. If you will feed them what they want, you'll give them a little Scooby snacks. You can train Google to stand up and do. And send customers to your websites. You, so you have to create more content, more valuable content, more relevant content, more inviting content to drive yourself higher up in the search engines. So, Google can start sending you more.
Tom Bailey: Great. And, and I guess, like you said, at the beginning, these websites with no regular content, Google will start to slowly forget them quite well quite quickly, in fact, quite quickly.
Terry Lancaster: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Tom Bailey: Okay, great. So, this will completely speak to a lot of the people listening to this episode for sure. So, what is one valuable resource that you could share or where would you point people to so they can find.
Terry Lancaster: So, they can find out if you want to go to my website Terry lancaster.com one, I got a bunch of samples, I've got a ton of content and actually truth is if you want to know more about Terry Lancaster, here's what you do. Go to Google and Google Terry Lancaster. And that's going to send you to Terrylancaster.com and the free resources addition to poking around is right there on the front page. There's, there's a link that's going to go to my account. And if you have a small business at a website, that's not getting the traffic that you, that you think it should get, and you don't know where to start on content creation. Go, go there. You can schedule an appointment with me. Let's have a quick conversation and a quick conversation. I can give you five ideas to start creating better content to drive more traffic to your website.
Tom Bailey: Amazing. That’s going to be a great resource? And that's Terry lancaster.com or in fact, just Google Terry Lancaster, and that'll pop up on the first page of Google. One more question for you then, Terry, what would you say is one of your greatest mistakes or failures that you've made either in life or in business? And what did you learn from it?
Terry Lancaster: Tom? You're a handsome young man. You haven't, you haven't been on this earth nearly as long as I have. And one of the things I one of the big mistakes I've made, one of the big failures I've had is looking at mistakes and failures as mistakes and failures. I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years and I promise you I've made. My failures out number of my successes, at least a hundred to one. Yeah. And especially folks who haven't really been on in the entrepreneurial world. You think, boom, I'm going to have this success. And it's, you know, it's a straight line from here on out and it just doesn't work that way at abs. And it flows, it comes and goes. You've got business ideas that just tank and, and you've got this great business idea that. Beautifully for years and years and years. And then you wake up one morning and it doesn't work at all. So, you have to pivot and rearrange and all again. So, so failures, aren't failures. I shoot for failures. When I'm talking to customers, I aim from no, the more nos I get them. That means the more yeses I'm going to find. So, I don't look at any kind of mistake and failure as a problem. Mistakes and failures are the objective because the more of those you, the more of those you go through, the more honey you're gonna fail.
Tom Bailey: Absolutely. That's an amazing perspective for especially some new entrepreneurs that are just starting out and can prepare themselves for those ebbs and flows like you said. So, the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked? I'll also bring some great value to our audience.
Terry Lancaster: So, the question I get asked most often when I tell people you've got to create more content, you got to get more stuff on your website. You've got to get more information out there. They ask me. Well, what should I post? You know, cause most people aren't writers. They know how to sell whatever it is they're selling, but in order to, to write a blog post or CR or heaven forbid create video content like this, they're just scares the bejesus out of them. And so what should I post is the big question and the answer that I give them is this, the more often that you can take the focus off of it, The more that you can create content that puts the focus on other human beings, either on your customers, either on your employees, eat people out in your community charities, charitable organizations near your business. The more that you can create content that highlights them, that lifts them up. That puts the spotlight on them. The more that, that the more you shine the spotlight on the end of the more sunshine is going to fall off on use. So, look for ways to highlight your people, find your tribe and lift them up.
Tom Bailey: Great advice to end on. Thank you so much, Terry again for your time today and for adding such great value to our audience.
Terry Lancaster: Thanks, Tom. I appreciate you, man.
