I don’t know if you, like me, sometimes feel like you are walking uphill through honey? Now- don’t get me wrong – I am not complaining about where my business is right now. We are in a good place. We have fabulous clients, who we love and who regularly recommend us to others. We spend all day doing what we love. And we have a lot of fun.
However, as we have become busier over the last 2 years with our Social Media Management in Manchester (yep – it will be 2 years on June 1st for Strategy Social Media), what I have found is that I am spending less and less time developing our own business whilst we are developing everyone else’s. I’m sure this might have happened to you too.
And because I love helping my clients – I say yes to almost everything that anyone needs from me. That’s not good, because – whilst I can do lots of stuff, I do only have 24 hours in every day and I have to goddamn sleep for 7 of them (or sometimes 8).
Has this happened to you?
You look at the clock and realise it is 6pm/9pm/midnight – and you haven’t stopped to eat, and your ‘To Do’ List which was a page long this morning – is now a page and a half long?
OK – just me then?
Well things changed when I was in Athens a few weeks ago with my good friend Julie, when we decided enough was enough. And things got a lot more focused today when I spoke to my good friend Mark Attwood, of Attwood Digital, whom I haven’t spoken to since he moved to Morocco a couple of years ago.
Mark is a natural coach – he just can’t help himself, and as well as giving me some great feedback on our SEO, (he is AWESOME at SEO), and he also told me some stuff that I already knew but wasn’t doing. And I realised what the reason is that it sometimes feels like pushing a big rock up a hill covered in knee high honey – well, before I tell you that, let me tell you what is stopping YOUR business from growing as you want it to.
Here is what it COULD be:-
Lack of time
Lack of knowledge
Lack of money
Lack of support
Lack of equipment (refer to point3)
Lack of teamwork
Lack of Leadership
Lack of ideas
Those are all the things it could be. But actually it isn’t any of those. You see all of those things can be learned or acquired. There is always a way to get more knowledge, or more money, you can learn how to leverage your time, or develop your leadership skills.
No – the thing that is stopping your business being even more successful, is the same thing stopping mine. It’s me. Well – it’s not ME stopping YOUR business being more successful – that would be YOU, but you get my drift.
It is probably you getting in your own way, so busy in the thick of it, doing social media management (in my case) that you don’t have time to lift your head above the parapet.
Possibly you have some self-limiting beliefs (as another friend of mine said the other day – the fact that you think you have no self-limiting beliefs is in itself a self-limiting belief!). There may be a little voice telling you its greedy to want more, or that you aren’t good enough to grow your business or your income any higher. Maybe you feel you haven’t got enough knowledge and if you try you will fail. Perhaps you are actually scared of what would happen if you succeeded and allowed your brilliance to shine through.
Well maybe it’s time for a different way of thinking.
What if your business could be everything you wish it to be? What if you ARE good enough to create your own future? What would happen if, instead of thinking of the reasons why you can’t do something, you started asking yourself why you are so freaking awesome and focusing on what you have already achieved.
And perhaps the reason you sometimes feel stuck, is that you are not focused on the bigger picture, but are stuck in the detail. You are not allowing your natural brilliance to shine, because you are trying to be cook, cleaner and bottle washer all at the same time. Maybe it is time to realise what it is that you are uniquely qualified to do, the things that are natural for you, that you think are nothing because you find them easy (but someone else sees as a chore or a block), and do more of those whilst outsourcing as much as possible of everything else. Even if you are cash poor – there are ways to get rid of the stuff that doesn’t light you up – you write the press release for your accountant and they do your VAT return for example.
Now I know that many small businesses think they are not great at digital marketing – and mostly that is because they don’t have the time to work it all out. And what you really want is a simple way of getting that phone to ring or that email box to ping frequently with new leads.
In my moment of sticking MY head above the parapet a few weeks ago, I realised that we can help. We are currently developing a new product – a sales funnel in a box. This is where you can interest your potential audience, your social media tribes and your website traffic in your valuable free stuff and then capture leads into your email system, as well as potentially offering products for sale right there and then.
Our Sales Funnel in a Box will involve minimal work or technical knowledge on your part. I am launching this at the Excel Business Show in May and will be running it as a 1 day workshop – come along and by the end of the day you will have a fully functioning, live, sales funnel, and a social media management strategy – bringing you in leads and sales. If you are interested in being one of the first to trial that at a low price – let me know – email me. As someone on my MBT emails – you get first dibs!!
Finally, never underestimate your impact on others. Mark said to me today that I have always inspired him. Wow. I have always found HIM massively inspiring and I love spending time with him, but I never knew he felt like that about me. Now I say this not to have a mutual love in – but just to share with you that we don’t always know the effect we have on others. And therefore the effect we could and should have on ourselves. If I can inspire someone like Mark, then what can I not achieve? And if YOU can impact that way on others (and I know you can and do) – then what can YOU achieve if you put your mind to it.