How to grow your business by focusing your effort and doing less work.

So you have been struggling as a business owner, it happens to the best of us, and after talking to quite a few business owners over the last several years I realized most of them were facing the same issues.

Below I outline exactly what I tell clients when they come to me asking about how to grow their business without adding extra layers of work!

• Go back into your P&L and pick the 3 or 4 things that brought in the most revenue or highest profit over the last 6 and 12 months along with the previous 2-4 years.
• Find the one or two core services (or if you are in e-comm the 5-10 products) that did the best and FOCUS all your effort on selling more of those services/products.
• SAY NO to anything that does not fall under those core products and services will allow you to control your time and scale your business with more predictability and profitability.
• STOP following false gods and fake social Guru’s – find a real mentor, join a mastermind group & pay the money to get into a REAL course or hire someone you can trust to handle the work so that YOU can focus on being the best in your field, regardless of what you do for a living.
  • Doctors and Lawyers didn’t go to school to be in advertising, and Advertisers didn’t go to school to be a DR or Lawyer. If you think by taking advice from your colleges you are getting the help you need, you are sadly mistaken. People come to you for your expertise or for the products you sell NOT because you were the person marketing yourself or your product.
• Stop listening to the noise and focus your ad dollars on things that actually show a return. If you can’t track a customers engagement with your business from click to a customer, then you should think twice before buying into the program.
  • Start with Google Ads then follow up with social.
    • Visitors that come with Google Search intent are more responsive to social retargeting campaigns and are more likely to become customers after viewing additional relevant ads/content.
• In 2019 Data and Tracking are THE most important parts for your business. If you do not understand what you are looking at and how to read the reports that are given to you, it is a sure way to lose money fast.
  • If you are using an omnichannel marketing strategy, then you will need to know exactly who came from where so that you understand what is successful and what needs to be canned.
  • Each business will have different performance indicators, and understanding what is essential to your business will help dictate how and where you grow your business.
• Treat your social platforms like a job, and Unless your business requires you to be on social media, 24/7 use it when you need and get off.
  • Don’t worry about all the NOISE happening on social because it is just that NOISE.
  • If you want to use social for your business, then come up with a plan and stick to it. In general, we tell companies to start with posting three times a week and gradually move up. Make sure the content is of high quality and features your core products or services.
  • Most small businesses see success by posting original, authentic content and use up to 30 relevant hashtags.
  • YOU DON’T NEED A MILLION FOLLOWERS to be successful, do not buy into the cheap follower programs or software, Social platforms are getting smarter, and they WILL suspend your account.
• I read once that YOU are your own worst enemy and throughout the day your mind processes on over 5000 thoughts both good and bad.
  • It is natural to doubt yourself if you own or operate your own business. Sometimes you don’t see the progress because you are in the weeds or you lose track of your goals because life happens, AND THAT’s OK!
  • Finding your ability to overcome self-doubt happens gradually over time; there is no silver bullet. What DOES HELP is having a process and writing down your goals.
  • Having a proven process will keep you on task regardless of how you feel about yourself and your ability. Writing down your goals and creating check-in’s is how you begin that process, as you see, your goals have attained that fear of not being right or good enough goes away.

So now I guess you are thinking, “man that is great… what are my next steps”?

• First, as I mentioned above, you need to focus your efforts, so start by finding the most profitable products or services you offer.
• Second, observe no more than 2 subject matter experts and follow them, listen to what they teach, buy their stuff, and ask a lot of questions.
• Eliminate all the other noise coming into your life that could distract you from your goals, too many cooks in the kitchen will spoil the soup.
• Next, find out exactly what it takes to get a new client or sell a product. Use 3rd party tools to assess what your actual CPA and time per acquisition are so that you can start to find successful things and eliminate things that were not.
• Then come up with a content strategy, what is your pillar content, and how does it get seeded through social. Start with posting 3-4 times per week, per platform.
  • Make sure the images are high-quality and relate directly to your core products or services. DON’T WORRY ABOUT POSTING TO OFTEN as long as the content is useful to your audience you can post as much as necessary.
• Finally stick to a process, even if it sucks and you are tired, and you don’t think it’s going to work, just do it & track everything.

I hope you found value in this information and it helps you focus your efforts to make more money by doing less work!

If you are ready to take the next step in your business, and prepared to discuss your marketing strategy, set up your free 30 min consultation today.