Grow with less, but better
There’s a point in every business owner’s journey where you realise you’re doing way too much.
And for a period, it felt great.
But activity can be a seductive liar.
Usually, this comes from an overload of all kinds of ideas and information from the internet and books.
The late Gary Halbert called this “carbonised crap” in your mind. Because what happens is you get so many inputs of information and trainings that your brain gets completely filled with junk that you think you have to do… And soon, your skull is full, and all that information starts to ‘carbonise’, or go hard like a diamond under pressure. Eventually, you walk around in your business, doing a million things at once, speaking a million miles an hour and smiling like a Cheshire Cat with a noticeable gleam in your eye. But the gleam isn’t happiness, it’s the light reflecting off of all the carbonised crap that goes into your head.
You find yourself in a trap. Where you’re ‘doing’ constantly.
And yes, you can still grow like that.
After the allure of busyness fades, you begin to feel like there’s no end in sight.
The alternative path to growth - doing less, better.
One pattern I noticed very quickly in my own businesses and with every client, was the more successful the business was, the more time off the person had. A month back, I met a guy Rob who coaches accountants. He’s built a multi-million dollar business at over seventy percent profit. And last year he worked a mere 321 days all year.
Sheesh.
Anyway, I’m going to share with you three ways you can start to do ‘less’ this month, and still grow. But before I do, realise that there is a big identity shift that has to happen to do this.
True story:
I worked with a successful physiotherapist for a while. She grew her business from zilch. Pretty soon she was making decent money. But she was starting to feel burned out. I pointed out how much easier it might be if she had some help. But she was adamant that she would never have a big team, et cetera.
The identity she started the business with was ‘practitioner’, not leader.
Frankly?
I understand that. I’ve had decent teams before, and I prefer to keep it lean as well.
Anyway, she eventually made some hires, first for admin, then another couple practitioners.
Soon?
She hit record numbers and record profit, and took a big holiday to Africa.
But the ‘big deal’ in that shift - and you’ll know this if you’ve been there - ain’t the technicalities of the hire - it’s the willingness to let go, and become the leader who trains and leads a powerful team on the mission. It’s a whole different identity, not just a different set of actions.
We have an identity upgrade to work on, if we want to change how the business feels as we grow.
That said, there are three things you can focus on for the next month if you want this ‘easier’ kind of growth.
No.1 - Simplify and streamline
Cut unnecessary crap and extra complexity.
The number of meetings you have, offers you’re running, or the number of marketing platforms you’re trying to uphold as a new business.
Couple weeks back I sat down with a client and mapped out a big campaign with three offers.
At the end of the day we were out for a walk, and as we were talking we realised we could delete the offer in the middle. This probably saved 50 hours of staff time, plus a whole bunch of complexity with marketing and sales.
The end solution was much cleaner.
But to get there, we had to cut through the limiting belief that you need ‘more’ to grow.
No.2 - Leverage systems and people
This is about having the right people in your business so that your business works for you.
If you’re earlier in the journey, and there ain’t anyone else on your team, then it’s about systems.
And that’s really a complex way of saying that you need a rhythm, with simple steps to follow, in order to do stuff.
A great one to look at is marketing, for example.
Marketing works really well with a monthly rhythm when you’re new. Each month, at a certain time, you can run a campaign. Maybe it’s a webinar, or product announcement, or email.
Well now that you know that, you can set up the steps for the campaign.
And it’s much easier to prepare and execute.
Most early businesses struggle to get a rhythm going, because they have too much stuff going on. Then when the team comes in, the chaos is amplified through more people.
No.3 - Focus on your composure, not just your revenue
How you choose to show up in your business is part of your identity shift.
When your business is set up well, it’s still going to take a bunch of work…
But you’ll be able to show up with some amount of ease and it ain’t going to feel like a grind.
Part of that thought is deciding to sit down to work with a level of grace and authority.
You aren’t a cog in your own wheel that’s about to grind itself into dust.
You’re a leader and a composer of an intentional business that brings value to the world.
Every business will have periods of intense output and work.
As well as periods that are more stable and predictable.
But neither of those are correlated with how you feel in the work that you do. You can grow through these by drinking the hustle culture cool-aid. Or, you can grow through these in a way that’s a little more relaxed and even fun, while you do less, better.
Focus on these three for a month or two and you may be surprised at what can happen.
Type in your best email address below to sign up for our infamous and often humorous biz-ness emails.
Why Thinking ‘Small’ May Be Best, Even if You Want to Grow Big
The first business I opened, was a small retail store.
The floor space was around sixty square meters, and ten minutes away, was Rebel Sports, a big chain sports store. The sales reps for the shoe companies used to come in, and talk about the order sizes that Rebel would make.
Ten times bigger than my orders, for any particular shoes.
Man.
I did the numbers in my head. How many shoes they must be selling. Multiplied by the price of the shoes… Plus, they sell a whole bunch of other stuff as well besides shoes.
And here in my little store, I was picking my orders, balancing my budget with what I expected to sell each quarter.
Often, I’d catch myself thinking about ‘more’. How do I catch up with these other guys?
But the fact is, our business was successful because we were the opposite of Rebel.
We grew, because instead of thinking ‘big’, we thought ‘small’.
While they focused on scale, we focused on service. Our staff were good runners. We would custom order shoes for customers. We supported local races. And, we built a horde of raving fans, that continued to buy, to the point where even after they would leave the country they would call up the shop, and place an order for shoes to be sent to them.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing ‘big’, when often, thinking ‘small’ is best.
Even if the goal is to grow over time…
Let’s say you open a bakery.
Well, there’s a lot of bakeries in my town. There are cheap ones. Gluten free ones. Bakeries with a café tied to them. There’s a pet café with a bakery tied to it!
And in your bakery, you have a few customers, but you want to grow.
What are your options?
Install the point of sales systems that work better?
Get a better website or brand package?
Learn to do home delivery?
All that can work. But, what about thinking small? Zooming in to your unique business, the customer, and the story you’re inviting them to be a part of, and how this affects your products and service, so that it’s memorable enough for people to talk about?
Rather than chasing bigger, think ‘smaller’, focusing on one, two, or ten individual customers, and figuring out how to surprise and delight them, so they talk (online, offline, whatever).
(I have a friend Kat, who did exactly this with a sourdough bakery on a little island in New Zealand. And by delighting a few customers, she quickly was in so much demand she was maxed out).
Focusing on ‘small’ doesn’t mean staying small. (But it can).
It’s a way of thinking, that helps you to build your business the way you want, and service your customers, properly. Which, if you want, allows you to create scalable offers and systems, on top of a story that resonates, to grow.
Or, you can do what Ruby and I do, build a business you love that’s just the right size, so you can live the life that you want.
But how do we stay out of the ‘hype’ culture, and avoid feeling like we’ve got to ‘chase’?
We focus on three principles:
Set upper boundaries on services and offers
Drop the word ‘scale’
Realise you can lead, even if you’re in a team of one
Step 1 - Why set upper boundaries on your service or offers?
A few weeks ago, I found out that my friend had some t-shirts made for his personal training business. They said ‘Uncommon Strength’ on the front, and the graphic was a Jimmy Hendrix style font.
So I asked him for a large, and he said they were sold out. But I could put my order onto the next batch.
I’m still waiting for that shirt…
Since there was limited supply, I want one. And it keeps pulling my attention.
Another friend of mine, just announced she has some shirts for her business as well. I wanted to support her too, so I looked at the shirts. It directed me to a print-on-demand website that does shirts for you. There were ten different designs, in different colours and sizes. And, they’re always in stock, because they are printed to order.
After five minutes on the site, I left the whole thing, knowing I can go back whenever I want.
No urgency.
When you set an upper boundary, you restrict supply creating desire and demand
This often (assuming there’s a quality service), increases demand.
A little while ago, one of the brands Ruby follows, Sézane, did a ten year anniversary product drop. They had told their customers it was coming, via email and social media. When it went live, it all sold out in thirty minutes.
A lot of people missed out. Including Rubes.
In fact, some people were straight up furious, raging in the instagram comments.
But you know what? It just created more demand. And the result was, the next clothing drop sold out just as fast. Now there’s a reputation, and they’re always selling out.
But, how do you sell more?
Do you need to sell more?
If it’s revenue that’s the question, you can adjust pricing, or, you can repeat a similar offer a couple of times per year, creating a constant ‘drip’ of supply, with high demand.
Setting boundaries reduces overwhelm
The other week Ruby ran a small networking dinner for women in business.
It was a chance for a dozen women to come together, and catch up. Anyway, the first thing she did, was limit it to fourteen people. Then, when she sent out the first email with the invites, she was already coming from a place of limited supply. She wasn’t trying to get 100 people in.
Fourteen is easy to deal with. When she organised the emails, the location and the decorations, it was low stress.
Then, at the event, everyone got a chance to talk to each other.
Could she have made it bigger? Sure, but would everyone have been talking about how intimate and special it was afterwards? Probably not.
Now, she can run a second one, at a time that she chooses, and it’s highly likely a lot of the women will already want to come back.
Everywhere you look, people will tell you to chase ‘more’
And certain businesses and offers are suited for that. Many of the businesses we work with have evergreen, highly scalable offers. But what happens when we slow down and look small first?
Rather than trying to get the customers excited and market and sell with hype, we can explain the situation, see if it’s for them, and invite them in rationally.
It destroys neediness from your sales, and makes you more magnetic straight away.
Which, paradoxically for you as the business owner, means you can ship the work more easily, produce more over time, and invite more people to work with you.
Step 2 - Staying ‘Focused’ When Everyone Yells Scale
Every time I check on instagram, I’m hit with some advertisement about how so and so agency just scaled to 100k months. Or how to go from zero to ten million dollars in three years. Fact is, the entire space has been ‘scale-washed.’ Brainwashed into thinking that the only way to go is up.
The first thing to realise is - and this is from someone who’s seen behind the scenes for a lot of businesses... It ain’t always what it seems on social media.
And I won’t go into names, but more than a few of these guys might be showing the flash online, but behind the scenes the profit (and often revenue) ain’t there. I heard one guy was a big name coach, but turned out the dude is struggling to pay the bills.
Marketers know the ‘scale’ angle is attractive
It looks like you can suddenly get ‘high ticket leads’, without doing the work over time. ‘Scale’ has become go to word, to get the lifestyle of holidays by the pool at the lake Como mansion.
Now, this isn’t to say businesses shouldn’t grow
A lot of businesses we work with, grow. That’s the point. We’ve had clients from from 30k months, to 150+ k months. Growth is a great idea for the right business.
But they didn’t grow because they focused on getting bigger straight away.
Instead, on each step of the journey, the business owners check back in, to see how they can create a better service and a more compelling business story with more humanity.
When the business story is kept as the North Star, and customer service is a priority, the business owner can choose to look at systems or ways to leverage growth.
But trying to cram people in is rarely the path that gets there.
Realise you don’t have to scale
You may want to, and that’s fine.
But you might get your business to the perfect place where you can travel, take time off, work good hours doing what you love, and serve your customers or clients in the way that you enjoy.
For a lot of people, this will be the sweet spot of business, rather than trying to triple it in size.
There’s a gym based in Sydney that has ruffled a few feathers. It’s built specifically for executives, there’s a laundry service, one to one coaching. And the membership pricing is around $400 per week. More than most gyms. Anyway, what they did was limit the membership to 100 spots. In a city of millions, that ain’t a lot. From there they built a story that resonates with a particular group of people.
Within a year or so, they were full.
Now, they’re onto their second location, with the first membership capped.
They are growing, but it came from focusing on each individual member, one at a time, without racing to be huge.
And, they’re doing work they enjoy.
We found a similar thing in Creator Club, our business coaching membership
In a world where most business coaching programs are trying to get thousands of people in, we help a few of the right business owners do work that matters, that gets them to where they want to go, and have a biz-ness they love.
Some of that model doesn’t scale easily.
And that’s OK.
So, we’ve limited the spaces for the coaching. As I write this, we’re full.
And from there, we create small, specialised offers on the side for specific skills or tactics that businesses want to learn.
Step 3 - You Can ‘Lead’ Even When You’re Small
But can you become a small business ‘leader’ if you don’t grow a huge team?
I think when most of us in business think about leadership, what we’re really referring to, is the ability to take creative risks on new directions, and invite others to come along.
It ain’t about team size.
When you write your article, and ship it to the world, in a sense, that’s leadership.
When you run an event and invite twenty people to come, your leading.
A lot of our clients have VA’s, assistants, part time staff, or remote workers, and all of this can come under the banner of a team that you lead. But if you’re flying solo, you can also lead yourself, and the clients that you serve.
To lead means, not to follow
You’re creating a new business story, and opening the door for others to walk through.
All business owners should aspire to be leaders, but it has more to do with marketing positioning, than it does having to have staff or a team.
A lot of times, when a new business owner comes in, they say how they’ve been listening to the latest podcasts on how to get success in business. They’re fired up, and ready to ‘scale’.
I say well, OK, what’s your offer? What’s your marketing?
A lot of times we find that this is where we need to work. The basics.
This is a kind of guru syndrome. Focusing on scale, rather than starting with an attractive offer for the people you want to serve, then finding more ways to serve them that are in line with that story.
And until we can circle back to the work that matters for a few people, it’s hard to grow at all.
When we take the focus off of rapid growth, we can focus on helping customers win
When we do a good job, people talk about it. They hang around. They want to come back. Instead of chasing for more, we find ourselves with opportunities to serve more.
Whether that’s more people, or the same people, for longer.
Scale, growth, and stacking revenue have a particular place and time. But if the process to ‘scale’ gets away from humanity, or the reason why you’re in business in the first place, then the end result rarely works out.
All that’s to say that if thinking ‘big’ ain’t working, try thinking small first.
Build a business you’re proud of for your particular audience.
Then, grow bigger if you want to.
Sign up for the latest articles and additional business emails:
Taking Your Biz to the Next Level: Focus and Stamina
Your mind hits a prolonged mental block.
Annnnd your business is flat, just like it was last week, and last month.
But, you know it doesn’t need to be this way, because your offer or service is solid, and people have bought your stuff before. But, you just can’t seem to get a grip on doing the work that matters.
And it’s diabolically frustrating. And it’s painful - and what better way to avoid pain than to distract ourselves. Which, when we finally catch that distraction, is even more frustrating.
How do we break this cycle?
How do we switch from being entertained by social media and distractions, to feeling interested or driven by our work, so that we can go to the next level?
This must be at the root of thousands of self help books. Some say to do more through time blocking or brain optimisation. Others say to do less and you’ll be more effective at getting key tasks done on your business. It can all get confusing, quickly.
Here I’ll share three steps that have been helpful for me.
These have saved me in business at least twice (once I’ll share below), and are behind how I got the first book done in a few months, publish articles, and podcasts. In fact, every stage of growth in any business that I’ve been involved with, has come from this.
The steps are: Create “death ground” urgency, Know what matters, and Find Focus.
1 - Create urgency
There’s a great book by Robert Greene, called 33 Strategies of War.
A lot of people know Greene’s other books, especially 48 Laws of Power. But 33 Strategies of war is great. It’s not about war tactics. It’s about strategy and philosophy, and can be applied directly to business. Anyway in one of the chapters he talks about a concept called “Death Ground”. Basically what this is, is when you’re in war, you position your own army so that their back is against the wall. This eliminates all ability to procrastinate or remain lazy. Then your army becomes more effective and stronger.
The idea underneath this is that our procrastination or inability to focus becomes our worst enemy.
“You don’t have time for this display, you fool,” he said in a severe tone.
“This, whatever you’re doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute…”
“… Acts have power,” he said, “Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one’s last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light… Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man.”
“Is it so terrible to be a timid man?”
“No. It isn’t if you are going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is not time for timidity, simple because that timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realise that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.”
- Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan ,Carlos Castaneda, 1972
Our first business was a running retail store.
I’d sunk all my cash into getting as much stock as I could, but still couldn’t fill up the wall of shoes.
So I had sporadic models, with half size runs.
Anyway, rent was over $5k that first month, and I was already running low.
My back was against the wall. I needed sales.
So what happened was a Nike representative came to me. His name was Mike. Mike from Nike.
And Mike helped me out with a contact list of emails, of all the podiatrists and trainers in the area.
Basically what I did was emailed all of them for an introduction, and then went out and met them.
I think I emailed 271 people.
I met up with twenty or thirty.
It was enough to get a few referrals, and then the word of mouth started to spread.
If I wasn’t ‘back against the wall,’ would I have emailed them?
Probably, but it may have taken a lot longer.
As long as we have the ability to act, creating a positive pressure to act is a great way to see change. The only problem, is you need to find a way to manufacture this urgency. For most people, they’re living in a pretty comfortable life. So there really isn’t much urgency. And we have a lot of things to distract ourselves with - social media, Netflix et cetera.
We need to figure out some way to create the urgency despite all of this comfort.
One way is to actually create it. Make the metaphorical ‘death ground’ more real.
Sink a bunch of money into something. Invest in a marketing project. Invest in a mentor. Invest in a book you want to publish.
Figure out what a meaningful amount of money is to you, and then put that on the line. It needs to be enough to create urgency, so that you wake up and you move.
Now, having said all that, I don’t know if it’ll work for everyone. I’m reminded of one guy I worked with when I was a personal trainer. And he had a heart attack. And then he made it through, but the doctor told him that if he doesn’t change up his health quick - he was a highly stressed out accountant - then he probably wouldn’t make it much longer. And the dude wasn’t that old. Maybe mid sixties. He was literally on death ground.
But then this guy came in, and he wasn’t even that committed to his training. It was sad. If there’s one thing that will help with health - it’s some movement, and fixing up your diet. He just couldn’t be bothered though. He was an awful client. Always late. He had too much money, but not enough sense.
So it might not work for everyone, but it’ll work for most people.
2 - Know what work actually matters
Say you’re really focused on your business - you’re on death ground - but then you’ve got to figure out what the heck to work on. Do you work on your offer. Do you work on your sales process? Or what about your marketing?
To be honest, this is where a mentor can come in. Someone who has overcome the force of resistance, and overcome distraction, and is keeping you on track with the right tasks.
We need to either immerse ourselves in the problem very deeply to know where the work lies, or, we can consult or talk with someone else who is familiar with the problem and benefit from their insights.
Both can work, but either way it’s important, and can lead to growth.
Example:
I’ve seen business owners at $30k months want to stop, and start a new business on the side to make more money… My job - why they would pay me, is to slow them down here. We would talk through this, and realise that there was still a lot of potential and work to be done with the main offer. And in fact, even from a financial perspective, it would be a lot easier to grow through the first offer, than it would be to create an entirely new offer for a new customer segment.
When he kept going, the guy went to 50, 60, 80, then $100k + months, all from this one principle.
Figure out what matters relative to your mission, and stick to it.
3 - Find your focus
How do we stay the course?
It seems like such a simple task.
And yet, it’s fraught with difficulty for business owners all over the world.
A while back I met a guy from New Zealand who had built an online education platform. Basically it was a SAAS product. Anyway, the business was seeing some success, and soon the guy was making good money with this startup. The problem was, he was also spending it. He was starting to go out, drink more, gamble… Because there was so much money flow, it was a case of why not have some fun? Anyway, soon they started to think about growing this company and exiting it. Or selling it off. And so he talked to his own mentor, because there was no way that he could grow it doing what he was doing. What happened was the guy basically forced him to lock himself in his office, and do sales calls. So he was constantly calling, setting up meetings with educational facilities, making sales.
Eventually this created the uptick they needed in the user base.
And soon he sold it off for somewhere between $30-$50 million dollars.
Once we know what to work on, we need to figure out a way to find, and hold, our focus. And the way this dude did it was through brute force.
Personally I go on a slightly different angle. I prefer interest-driven focus.
I’ll explain with an example.
Right now I’m writing the second book, which is on World Building. It’s no easy task to write a book. It takes some work. And a lot of time.
And to be honest, there’s a lot of other stuff I’d rather be doing than sitting there and pounding out words on a keyboard.
BUT…
When I can reframe that situation, and reconnect with the fact that I am actually deeply interested in the topic, and that it is interesting to me to write and teach these concepts, then I can really write.
And so this is the concept of writing from a place of interest.
And so it is with all of my work. To an extent, there’s really no difficulty in staying focused, because as long as I have enough energy, this is the main thing that is attracting my attention at the time. Or in other words, it’s easy to focus on things that hold our curiosity.
This leads us to the final point there…
I don’t know about you, but to me, when I’m in a low energy state, it’s easy to get distracted.
So this sounds super cliched, but figuring out what gives you enough energy, and what takes energy away, and maximising, or limiting, accordingly, is super important.
For me, to stay focused I need enough food and enough sleep. Maybe some walking and some training here or there.
It ain't super complicated, but it is important.
When we want to grow a business, it takes what can feel like an incredible amount of work.
One way to reframe this, is see it as a large amount of energy, that you are directing into the work, and not into a bunch of other random things. Simple right? Not always easy though. But that’s OK, because our three steps are:
See that if your hand isn’t being forced into urgency and action, then you need to force it yourself.
Put yourself on Death Ground somehow.
The second thing is you want to be focusing on the right thing.
If you get this wrong, you can spend all kinds of time doing random stuff, that feels like working, but doesn’t get you anywhere at all.
Ask some questions, get some help, and make sure you know exactly what it is that you need to focus on.
Our last step, is to get focused.
Some people seem to thrive by brute forcing this. Others, like myself, tend to do better when it’s interest led. i.e. orienting the work itself towards problems you like to help solve anyway.
If you follow these steps, and create ways to be interested in the work as you go, you’ll be surprised by your output, productivity, and in many cases the growth and maturity of your business.
Skyrocket your weekly productivity
Download your own ‘CEO Hour’ weekly productivity guide, so you can start each week clear, energised and organised. Stop wandering in circles, get clear on the work that matters and grow your business.
The hidden power of 'vision' in your personal goals
One of the thing I’ve been thinking about coming into the new year is the whole dynamic of how people set goals.
It probably got triggered by all the stuff you see on social media right now:
“Twelve months is enough to transform your life if you buckle down”
“2022 I was only going at half speed. Wait until you see me in 2023”
“It’s a holiday not a holimonth, make sure you get back on the grind for your goals”
et cetera.
What’s funny was it’s the first year there’s been that sort of vibe since 2019, when it was about to turn into the birds nest of 2020 and for most people they threw away their goals. So I think a lot of people were psychologically scarred from that. And still, people are positive but you never know what’s around the corner. I actually think there’s going to be some challenging stuff ahead.
One thing I’ve realised is with any goal or project, you’re always in negotiation with yourself.
This kind of comes from the great Jim Camp, who was a pillar in our vision based sales stuff in Creator Club.
So if you have a goal of some kind, as you work towards the goal, you’re always negotiating with yourself.
We either keep going with it, or we slow down and quit.
Like I’m writing the second book right now, and if I wanted to, I could get stuck in that negotiation every day.
“Ah, I feel good, I’m gonna write some more on this book”
or
“Ah it’s never going to get done anyway… I’m going to quit”
So there’s this heavy negotiation that can be going on, without us even knowing.
Probably between your conscious mind (assuming the mission was something we consciously chose) and the unconscious mind. And certainly there’s an energy component under all of that as well.
But here’s the thing I wanted to talk about.
Camp also teaches us that “Vision Drives Decision.”
Meaning if we’re in a negotiation or sale, it’s our ability to ‘see’ the future that involves the product or service, that drives the decision to take action.
So if your car needs a service, you can see a vision of what will happen if you let it go. Not good right,? Imagine you break down on the side of the road somewhere, you sit there on the highway, you run out of food, you try and fix it, but you struggle, you have to get picked up, and you get all embarrassed. Plus, you miss the appointment you were going to. It sucks. Maybe you end up losing your job because of it. I know a guy who ended up homeless after he lost his job… It wasn’t good.
So, you make the decision to book it in.
So coming back to the goals stuff - the big driver I believe for the success in the goals, is to set a strong enough vision. To be really clear on what it is that you’re working on for the next 90 days, or 365 days.
Or even one day, right?
Do you know what your vision is for the next one day?
Something to think about for a lot of people.
Because if you aren’t clear, then what’s going to happen?
You’re just going to lose out to that voice in the head that talks about quitting.
You must have a current, or future problem to be solved.
With my book, I’ve got a current problem to solve, or transition to make:
To help people get a basic understanding of world building principles and apply them to their life.
With my marriage, same thing, how can I recreate or create a better marriage, with more excitement or adventure going forward?
If you get the vision clear, you can successfully ‘sell’ yourself on why you follow your system every day.
If you’re vision ain’t clear, you’re just going to drift around.
How can it go any other way?
And you can do this today. You don’t need to take a week out and do a big ‘vision’ board exercise. You can just start by going today, what’s the vision I have for the day? What am I working on? What’s the problem that I’m solving? When you’ve got that down, you can get to work. You’re going to be happier too, because happiness is a feedback emotion of working towards a vision that you create.
So there we go.
Write it down on a piece of paper.
I write it down on a little card that sits propped up on my desk.
Two or three things that I’m working on.
This is why you came into this world as a human. Not to drift. Not to push buttons, but to set a vision, and realise it.
That’s the definition of the Creator.
"Game of shadows" - Two common mistakes for new online coaches and creatives
When we were younger, I was put through homeschool for a bit.
My father was my teacher, headmaster and tutor. He put me through a blend of his own ‘syllabus’ and the stuff we got sent from New Zealand correspondence school.
It was fairly brutal at the time. He was a strict teacher.
But there were two really cool things that came out of it.
First, we were finished ‘class’ by 12pm each day.
We started at 8am, and in four hours, we’re done with everything. In the afternoon we could go do other stuff.
Second, when we got back to normal school (we were living on a boat at the time), I was way ahead of the curriculum.
Not because I was particularly bright.
But because the schedule we had created had ‘removed’ so much dead time - going to and from classes, ‘morning tea time’, travel to school, et cetera.
I ended up being able to ‘coast’ for a year or two, and still get great marks.
I realised that the school system (even back then), had a bunch of inefficiencies in it.
To be frank, it was downright slow, because of these ‘shadows’, or faults people don’t see.
And so it is with online businesses.
A lot of people want an online business today.
They want to be able to stay in their lair, and work on their terms, with the people they like.
And so there’s a lot of people doin’ it. Teachin’ it. Spruikin’ it. And so on.
But it isn’t always easy.
Over the years, there are two big traps I’ve seen people fall into (and fallen into myself) which can add years to the journey, and generally slow things down.
But first we can see there are generally two categories of people who want to launch their business ‘online’
(I’ve used the term ‘coaches’ here, but it could be anyone)
The two categories of coaches:
While we risk getting a little too simplistic here, there are two big categories when it comes to starting out as an online service business.
And it all comes down to audience and reputation.
The first category is “known and new.” These people are already known online. They have personal brand, an engaged audience, but are new to the business side. The second category is “unknown and new.” They aren’t known (or at least aren’t known in their new area), and have no existing trust. Then they are trying to launch a new business from this context.
Let’s break each one down, and see the major mistakes (and, how you might be able to fix them)
Category one: “Known and new”
You have an existing, engaged audience, that knows you in a similar industry that you want to work in.
Example:
One of the clients we work with was a well known CrossFit athlete and coach.
She had a thriving audience on instagram (i.e. rabid ‘fans’ that hang off her every word).
So when she launches her own nutrition program, she has no problems getting leads.
In her words, “getting leads is never a problem”
Another way to think of this, is that she has great personal brand.
If you have a thriving personal brand, then you have an entirely different situation when you start an online business.
Common mistake or problem:
If this is you, the main problem you might face (depending on the size of your horde of fans), is systems, financial acumen and attention, and coming up with a clear offer that people want.
Example:
A friend of mine is an athlete.
He has over a million followers on instagram. It should be easy to monetise this right? Well, he put out a line of t-shirts, and the things barely sold. I think he sold thirty of them. He’s also tried to run workshops, and had to run ads in order to get a dozen or so people. I was blown away when I heard this.
But basically what happened (and often happens) is that he put out something that people couldn’t get behind. They followed him for his sporting entertainment, but didn’t have a huge emotional investment in his world. So his shirts were kind of meaningless.
Getting the attention and even the leads is not the problem here.
The problem is the story and the offer need to be compelling, (and sometimes, the back-end systems need to be boosted.)
Solution:
If you’ve got a huge bank of raging fans, or at least a big audience base, the first step is to make sure they’re engaged, and that you know what they’re interested in. Test ideas with content. Listen when you’re in conversations. Look at your comments on social media or emails, and see what’s firing people up.
What do people want, and what are they struggling with as they try to get there?
This is at the root of a compelling offer.
Once you see what’s resonating, then share the story of your offer, as you put it together and release it to the world.
Example:
Let’s say you’re an online yoga teacher, with a big following, because you’ve shown up over the years, and connected with people. You are experimenting with different content, thinking about your offer. You see something that lights people up. This is a thread. You talk about it more. You do a podcast on it. You write some more emails about it. Then you think about it, and you realise there’s a way you can teach this to people at a deeper level. Now you have a direction for your offer. You’re solving a problem that’s front of mind for people, and connecting with something they have shown that they want. This is called “reading between the lines” and is only something you can do when you’re connected with your market. This makes it pretty easy to share the offer, and direct people to a landing page or your site.
If you have an existing brand, and engaged audience, you’re off to a great start.
You may be able to go straight to a group program or scalable offering, as the demand may be there already.
You just need something that resonates.
Create a simple offer, then make sure your systems are in place to handle it.
Category Two: “New and unknown”
You have a new business, with a non-existent, small, or unengaged audience.
Often we think with access to so many people, online should be easy to launch and scale.
However, this isn’t always the case.
If you’re new to the online space, and you don’t have a lot of connections, you’re in a unique situation.
It’s worth looking at the ‘scope’ of the task ahead:
Common mistake or problem:
The big mistake I see over and over again, is expecting to see results just from posting to social media, when you have much less trust in the online space than you think.
i.e. Just because you ‘go online’ doesn’t mean people will ‘buy from you online.’
This mistake tends to come about because people focus a lot of their own attention on instagram, and they see other people ‘supposedly’ making money there.
It’s easy to think “hmm.. I could do this. I just need a good bio, some posts, and I can sell my wares.”
Not quite.
Many of the truly successful people you see online have been creating content, and shipping out helpful resources and value for five, ten, or twenty years. Without an existing audience, it takes much, much more effort than many think to create a trusted online profile, and viable online business.
But it can be done. Read on.
Example:
You might be a personal trainer that wants to go online, or a mindset coach, or a life coach that is starting up.
You have a way to help people, a lot of passion, but really no audience that knows you, likes you and trusts you.
I know, this is a bit of a hard truth.
But it’s super common. In fact, this is most of the people who want to start an online business.
And the most challenging of this subgroup - if you are entering a new market where you don’t have trust.
i.e.
Let’s say you’ve left corporate to become a health coach.
But you only have a handful of people who follow you on social media, or no email list. And you rarely publish content or engage.
There’s no real brand.
And no real online personality…
And now you want to kick off this buisness.
Problem:
As you can imagine, the big problem here is no matter what you ‘launch’ online, hardly anyone is going to see it. And the few that do may not want it right now, or may not trust you yet.
The single, biggest, hottest problem, is that there is no awareness, even for your great program.
So, you now have to do the work to build this awareness.
Solution:
There’s two sides to this, depending on how quickly you need the revenue…
If you need the cash pronto, then without a big audience, you’re forced into direct sales (conversation based selling) at the start (or ads - but good luck with no audience and low trust online).
This can help you build revenue and a track record (social proof).
But then on the other side, you want to be building brand, audience and online awareness.
Because this will help you long term.
You need both.
Example
One coach we work with teaches women how to build strength through online programming.
When she started out a few years back, she had only a few hundred followers on social media. She rarely used the platforms. What happened was, she launched the offer, but only a few people bought in.
So, she started to build awareness - she collaborated with people on podcasts, ran a ton of workshops and events. (Sometimes with only a few people showing up), got people onto her podcast, was a guest speaker at events… She worked hard to create a much bigger online “position” for herself through radical content production, outreach and connection.
[I need to reiterate… This takes consistent work, and often a ‘behaviour change’ - as in, it’s not something everyone is going to comfortable with straight away. There’s a learning curve.]
Anyway, now when she shares her offer, she gets much more engagement because there are more people engaged in her audience.
She had more trust, and more personal brand, so now had more buyers.
Now, there is a little nuance that can be a part of this solution.
And that is using the “offline” side to build your online.
People don’t often talk about this…
But typically, most people who have a bigger online ‘personal brand’ are also aggressively connecting with people, or are active with people offline too.
(As I sometimes say, there are very few “purely online” businesses. There’s typically an offline story somewhere, somehow)
All of that is just to say - if you don’t have any online brand or trust, you may well benefit from creating offline events, connecting with people offline, and then tiring that back into your online world.
Something to think about.
Example:
When I first started to sell an online coaching program, I had no instagram.
No emails.
No podcast.
I just knew people in the community, and committed to meeting other new people.
So I went head first into direct sales. I would have conversation after conversation. Meeting new people wherever I could. The result was that in a very short space of time, I sold around $40k worth of coaching. It was a great start, that helped propel me forward.
Then alongside this, I started to write the emails, articles and podcasts.
And slowly use a bit more social media. Then I kept connecting it all together as the story became clearer.
If you have no real audience, you can’t stay isolated, or only do the odd ‘post’ and hope that it works. You need to do both direct sales (for early revenue) and work on building the audience, by connecting with others, running events, or producing content.
Conclusion
There are two big mistakes we see over and over again with new online businesses.
One for existing personal brands, and one for brand-spanky noobies.
For thriving personal brands, the mistake is tone-deaf offers, not sharing a compelling story, or not having the systems in place to support the thing that you sell.
This happens, but it’s not the main issue we see today.
The second mistake, for the new coaches and creative business owners, is over-reliance on posting on social media, even though their trust is fairly low (because they are new).
Or rather, a general overestimation of the ‘market value’ that they have as a professional.
And so, the solutions are different…
For the former - it’s about listening, and creating a compelling story, then paying attention to your finances and systems on the back end, so you can create a business you’re proud of.
For the latter - embrace direct sales early on to build revenue, and aggressively work to build your online awareness at the same time. Go without the former and you’ll have very little revenue to start. Go without the latter and you’ll always be chasing sales, with no brand building over time.
There can be a lot of obstacles when you’re starting out in business, especially online. But once you ‘shine a light’ on these shadows, you can work on overcoming most of them, and build a business you’re proud of.