Description: Interview with Laura West, creative business coach. In our interview, she shares some of her best ideas for opening up your creativity and creating new ideas for your courses and marketing campaigns.

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About Laura West

Laura is a Creative Business Coach, author, speaker, and Visual Facilitator.

Laura helps Creative Inspirational Leaders share their unique messages and gifts to create big change in the world. She has helped 1000s of entrepreneurs create successful businesses filled with passion, creativity, and real success.

Laura is known for turning marketing on its head and making business fun, creative, practical, and real through her information products, workshops, teleclasses, and coaching programs.

She is the author of several information products including The Business Goddess’s Guide to Creating Powerful Sales Pages and the popular Joyful Business Guide™, a creative marketing plan for right-brain business owners. Learn more at JoyfulBusiness.com.

Key Points & Takeaways

1. Embrace being naturally authentic — be willing to stand out with your unque sweet spot. To do this, ask: What are your unique experiences, strengths, talents, gifts and personality? And where do these crossover into the community you serve? Authenticity lies within you, and finding that sweet spot with your market — not just chasing demand or giving people what they say they want. Instead dig into: What are you passionate about AND what do they want?
2. Develop your creative practices. Laura’s creative practices help keep her in the flow of what she likes to do. For example, when she has a new program or course coming up, she’ll get out her markers, sticky notes and big pad of paper, and start doing a lot of mindmaps: initial ideas for the program, what excites her about the topic, here are cool creative marketing ideas that are coming up… what is shse hearing people say about this topic? Then she’ll incorporate these ideas into her marketing, emails, and the content she puts in her program.
3. Keep a marketing journal. Every time you work with a client or host a teaching call, make notes on: resources people want, questions people ask, and what topics or ideas they were most interested in and excited about. Over time, this journal will become a rich source of insights for your content devleopment — both in your marketing and in your courses.
4. Get out of your everyday environment. Laura schedules “Creative Cafe Time” for herself. During this time she goes to a coffee shop with her creative supplies (markers, pads, etc.) and gives herself freedom to simply explore creative ideas for courses and marketing. By moving into this separate environment, away from her computer and office context, she finds her creativity soars.
5. Embrace your unique way of delivering teaching and content. This is so important. Your personality, your unique personal brand, the way you teach a program and your flair is going to be very different from anyone else. Embrace your uniqueness to create a distinctive personal brand and build deep connection with your community.
6. Follow basic design principles. You don’t have to be a designer. Start by putting in an extra 10% of effort on your course materials. For example, say you’re creating a worksheet: put a nice border around it, add a photo, put lines for people to write their answers on, and use an attractive, large, easy-to-read font. As your courses become more established over time, considering investing in a professional designer to further polish and improve your course visuals.
7. Think in layers. Start as simple as you can, then iterate on your course content, enhance your design over time, and deepen your marketing content.
8. Self-test your marketing ideas. For any marketing message, content or campaign, ask yourself “Is this something that I’d want to receive myself?” Laura uses this question to make sure all her emails, videos, calls, and other marketing content will be valuable and engaging for her community.
9. Make marketing fun, instead of a chore. If you feel stuck in your marketing, ask yourself “What will make the marketing process fun for me?” This simple question can open up your thinking.

Laura’s #1 tip to be unlock your course design creativity

Never start creating your course “cold” on your computer — by staring at a blank screen.

Instead, prime your creative pump and let the ideas flow… You can always edit later!

Give yourself time to have fun and explore.

The fastest way to get into fun, exploratory, creative frame of mind, is to change your physical location.

So start designing your course in a different, creative environment: out at your favorite local cafe, or sitting on a rock by a river… a place you’ll feel free to explore new ideas. Then have fun!

Resources & Links

Check out Laura’s free Creative Marketing Resources, including her favorite “Miracle Marketing Messages” to inspire your marketing.

Transcript

Coming soon!