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In today’s episode, I am joined by someone who I admire tremendously, Gemma Went. Gemma is an award-winning online business mentor and growth strategist; she is helping small businesses grow and scale with consistent recurring revenue.
In our conversation, Gemma reveals that one of the biggest pitfalls in entrepreneurs, when it comes to being consistent is self-doubt.
People come up with the strategies and the action that they need to take. And then they get bombarded with all the different messages and all the other strategies and all the other ideas, and they doubt themselves. They don't stay consistent and try one thing out for long enough to actually see the results. They jump from idea to strategy, to idea to strategy, and then they just get overwhelmed with trying to do too many things, which then increases the self-doubt.
Consistency in Business
After you decide on the action you're going to take, all the strategy that you're going to follow, then perfectionism might crop up. And so, you spend forever getting the thing ready. But as a business, you need to be earning money as quickly as possible. You need to take the fastest action with this thing and test it. It's all about testing and validation. Not everything is going to work and not everything should work. And the lessons that you learn in those things that don't work normally send you in the direction of the things that are really right for you and your customer. So, test it as soon as you can, get those results in, and then go again. Never throw something out that didn't work the first time; look at what your approach was and if there is anything that you can change there. It's about just getting out there and committing to it and taking that consistent action every day.
In order to get on ladder of consistently leads, you first need a really clear system that you commit to. Find one thing in each of the key marketing and sales areas to really focus on. Where is your traffic coming from- is it through SEO, is it through Pinterest, is it through YouTube- and just focus on one of those things. After that, you go on the next step-converting those leads.
Do you have a really relevant lead magnet that's taking them to email? And then how you nurturing that relationship on email with a nurture sequence? And of course, all of that can be automated. Then you focus on your content, choose your lead content format, which could be text, it could be video, could be audio, whatever, and then repurpose that across lots of different formats. You then feed it out to your different platforms, and then pick one engagement platform to really focus on. So instead of trying to be on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook, choose one and do it really well and serve the others with your content. Having that all set up as an automated system just creates so many leads once you have it working. And the key thing is to focus on one thing in each of those areas, get that right, leave it for 90 days and then add something else in and grow it organically from there.
Another important piece is looking at your analytics. Everything is in the data. The data is the only thing that can tell you whether this system you've put in place is working, and what you should do moving forward. Both Gemma and I love to use Cyfe for our analytics. Analytics are scary as hell for most people, but so useful for your business. Once you get over your fear of data, what it can tell you can drive everything in your business: what you're selling, how you're selling it, the content you put out there, everything that you're doing. You don't have to measure everything, but just kind of the key things on each of the different platforms so that you can understand- Yes, that's working; Yes, that's worth my time; Yes, I can see the leads coming through from that. As long as you can see all of those things, then that's all you need to kind of prove that what you're doing is right.
Why is consistency in business important?
In order to be consistent and avoid procrastination:
- First you need to be super clear on your personal vision-what are you trying to achieve for you, your family, your life? What legacy do you want to leave? And then get clear on your business mission that's going to help you achieve that vision. What is your business here for, what do you want to achieve with that business? And then once you have those two things hooked in and they are in your soul and driving you, then get clear on your business goals that are going to help you achieve that mission. And then get used to regularly asking yourself is this thing I'm doing right now moving me closer to that goal, and if it isn't stop. You can have a post it note up, you can put reminders every hour on your phone with an alarm to come through and say, is this moving you closer to your goals? That is a really good check in.
- Second thing is to be really smart with your time. Dividing up your time, time blocking all of these kinds of things can really help to create that consistency that you need. And can remind you what you need to do at each point.
- Third thing is creating habits. Choose one thing, one behavior that you want to turn into a habit that month, so you become consistent in that one thing, and you then attach that to an existing habit. So, it follows after an existing thing. And you do one every 30 days, and that creates the consistent habits.
If you are interested to learn more, click HERE to take a Gemma’s free online business assessment. This assessment asks you questions about current performance in your business with no shame, no blame. It's just where are you at right now. And from that, we can then determine what kind of stage of growth you're at in your business. And it will take you to a page that tells you- this is where you should be; this is what you should be focusing on and this is what you definitely shouldn't be focusing on. It just gives you a bit of a roadmap for what you should be doing now. You’ll also get all the advice that you need to really help you at the level you're at. And there are five different levels. You also get a copy of Gemma’s full roadmap that lists all of those different stages, and what should be done in each of them. So, you can actually see what is going on in the other stages and what you should be focusing on later on when you get to that stage.
