← Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Ep 203 // 8 Tips to Survive an Extra Busy Season in Business With Grace
00:16:58
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Well, hey there friends. I have a very timely and very practical episode for you today, all about how to survive a super busy season. So whether you are somebody who just takes a pause for the holidays from business or you just have to go gangbusters with Black Friday, all the sales, all the promotions, regardless, I'm quite certain that there will be a time in your business, even if it's not today, that you will need these tips about how to survive a busy season as a business owner. So y'all know that I'm a mom of three, we homeschool, I have horses. I mean, I'm running this business. We have a client side of things like we got a lot of irons in the fire. And so these are some tips from the trenches about how to survive and really even thrive during busy seasons in business. So sit back, relax and listen to these tips. And you know what? You might even need to share this with your business bestie. All right, we're going to jump on in. Hey there fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and Marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads, high converting leads. Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist and barrel racer. And for the last eight years I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic. And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take note. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. Okay, so I've shared before in emails, dripped a little bit into podcasts about how I was just neck deep in work for my business, specifically project work. And what that means on a practical level is I'm working, or I was working a lot more than my usual, like 10 to 15, sometimes 20 hours a week. And so in that, I had to be a lot more efficient in my work time than normal. So just for some context, we have a client side business and then I have the content and like teaching side of my business as well. So we have ongoing clients that we do SEO blogs for and emails, and then we have copywriting clients where we do SEO copywriting. So we have that side of my business that we, that we do. And then I have like the education side, which is my content. So it's like running two full businesses. But yeah, it's fun. But from a time perspective, those, those things I feel like are an important distinction, right? And then within my business, I had my giant launch, several collaborations, and I decided to redo my entire course all within about like a month and a half timespan, which was not very practical. And I knew that going in. However, just like timing wise, everything just kind of all came together in the end of September and October. And just because of my family life and my husband is an elk hunter, September is usually pretty full and I don't work as much. So October was nutso. I felt like October was absolutely nutso. And the first part of November was bananas. And then like recovering from all the bananas. So here are some very hot from the trenches tips to help you in a heavy workload season. Because this is not the first time that I've had a super heavy workload season. I'm kind of a sprinter by nature, and that's carried over into work as well. But anyway, we'll jump into the tips. Okay? Tip number one to surviving and even thriving in a super busy season, tip number one is to set an end date. Sprinting is not sustainable forever, either physically. Right. Or in business. Right? If you think about the different types of runners, the different types of races, there are sprinters and then there are the distance runners, okay? I am naturally a sprinter. I have become a distance runner. But sprinting is not sustainable forever. You can't sprint for 10 miles, okay? You cannot keep up that pace for 10 miles. Right now. Sprints have their place in fitness and races, and they also have. Sprinting also has its place in business, okay? But you need to know that whatever this crazy pace is that you have, have to work or have to do things in this particular project or this particular season, that sprinting is not sustainable forever. It will Burn you out. And when we see people, you know, in various positions of leadership that are just going hard constantly and then they burn out or drop off or quit or whatever, like a lot of times, I honestly believe that's because they've been going too hard for too long now. Don't, don't take this the wrong way. I am a believer in hard work. Right. In all work, there's profit. Like God has created us to do good work, right? To do the good work that he prepared in advance for us to do. We're not just supposed to sit around on our duffs, but at the same time, we also serve a God who. The God who created seasons. And so sprinting is not sustainable forever. Right. And even if you just look around at nature and the world that God created, you see that not everything is going full bore all year long. Okay, I could talk a lot about that, obviously, but I'll get on to tip number two. And tip number two is this. Communicate with your people. So my husband and I frequently like have, we call them business meetings weekly or even more often. Right. He's very involved and knows what's going on. We have a really great relationship, but we have conversations about what's going on in work, what my goals are, like how much time I'm going to need, when I'm going to need to work. And now that my kids are a little bit bigger, seven, four and almost one, I will communicate with my bigger kids about, hey, mama has a really important project. Like, these are the people that I'm helping. This is how I'm helping them. This is how mama is using her gift. And I've got to work really hard for like these days and then things will be back to normal. Okay? But when you don't communicate with your people and you don't have an end date set to whatever your sprint is, right. Then they're just left out in the dark and they're not going to know like, oh, why is there's working for how long? Like, oh my gosh, is this my new life? And so I think if you can just set that end date from the get go and communicate with your people, you're going to be setting yourself up for success in the long run. So much better than if you just forget to talk to people and put your head down and work constantly. Okay, all right. Tip number three is honestly one of my favorite, favorite tips of all times. And the tip is this. You have to choose your suck. What does that mean? That's actually a strategy that I first learned from John Acuff, and I've had to remember or be reminded about it during whatever busy seasons that I've been in, you know, whether it's like a busy season at home or work or family or whatever. And the theory behind it is this. You can't be the best in the whole world at everything at all times. And John Acuff gave the example. He's like, I can either be, you know, really great at writing books and, you know, being a really great husband and a really great father. I can be mediocre at writing books and a mediocre husband, a mediocre father, and a mediocre, like, lawn taker, carer of her, but I can't be great at all of them. And so he used the example. He just chose to suck at taking care of his lawn. He wasn't going to have the best lawn in his neighborhood, and he had to be okay with that, because the fact of the matter is, and I'm sure you have seen this in your life, you can't. You can't be great at every single thing all the time. And if you don't choose what you're going to suck at, it will be chosen for you. Because, y'all, we. We all need sleep, right? God created us to need sleep, and that's a good thing. But you can't go ham on every major goal while being a gold medal, gold medal winner in every other category. And so you have to either pick what you're going to suck at intentionally, or you find yourself extremely frustrated that you're sucking at something, or you just suck at everything. Right? And that's something that I've had to really actually make myself do because I love to achieve. I like to be good at things. I like to do a good job with whatever I have. But for me, I'm like, you know what? Okay, for this season, I am not going to be the best at xyz. And if you decide that ahead of time, it takes a lot of pressure off and it takes a lot of frustration off of your shoulders as well. All right, Tip number four, Very practical, very faith is to pray as you prep. So because my workspace is in my bedroom, and I know that I work better in a tidy environment, I just always tidy up before I work. And what I've gotten into the habit of doing is I intentionally take this time to pray over my work, to pray over my tasks, pray over my clients, to pray over my mind, to ask God for wisdom so that I'm not just like, you know, willy nilly, going into my work time. Right. Like, if you can just integrate that prayer into your prep time, your work goes so much better. Okay. And in this, it's just like a great time to be like, okay, Lord, direct my steps, direct my time. Give me wisdom. Help me to serve this person, person well. Give me words for this project. Help me to know the best business strategy. Like, guys, God wants to give you wisdom, so ask for it. Okay. All right. Tip number five is to plan the right way. So I feel like planning is like, it's almost like there's, you know, for every mile of road, there's two mile a ditch is what my pastor used to say. And you can either plan and get stuck in the planning and making your planner all pretty and perfect and never actually get into the execution side, or you can skip the planning and just jump right into the doing and look up and be like, oh, snap, what did I just spend my time on? Oh, I spent my time on the wrong stuff and didn't do the important stuff. Dang it. Right? So you have to. And I have to intentionally plan the right way. Especially when you're short on time and long on work, I can be really tempted to just dig in and start doing the work or to freeze and be like, I'm just going to put stickers on my planner. But planning the right way really alleviates both of these issues. And I have several podcasts on planning and my methodology that I use, that I learned from Chelsea Jo over at Systemizer Life that I've kind of adapted. But when you can just map out, I have these projects to do and I have this much time to work on and then prioritize accordingly, you're going to be really effective in your time and you're going to go further, faster and get a lot more done. Okay. The next tip is to prioritize. So again, with big projects, there's a certain order that things need to be done. Yes. If you're not all over the place. Right. You can get those things done, but make sure to not overcomplicate it. So for one of the projects that I finished out in October, I started planning this big project inside of my project management system and just started, like, try to make it all fancy, when in reality, a spreadsheet was going to do just fine. And so thankfully, I caught myself and went with the spreadsheet and it saved me so much time. Was it as pretty? No. Was it as fancy? No. But you know what? It worked really well. For me and my assistant and it got the job done. Okay, number seven is to know the must dos from the nice to do's. Because the fact of the matter is there are some things in business that move the needle more than others. There just are. And there's always going to be some place that someplace more that you could show up, someplace extra or something extra that you could do. But especially when you are in a super busy season, you have to pare down the nice to do's and just get rid of those for a minute, all right? You have to focus in on the must dos. Okay? Like so for me, I had to create the content, I had to create the marketing material, I had to actually create the course, right? I had to follow through on my promotions, I had to, you know, communicate with my team. I didn't have to post on social media. I don't anyway very often. So like I'm not going to add that to my list, right? I didn't have to, you know, draw pretty graphics or create a ton of pretty graphics for all of these different things, right? Like I knew, okay, these things are going to move the needle and these things aren't really going to make a big difference. So why waste my time? All right? And when you know the difference, both in business and in life between the must dos and the nice to dos, you're going to save yourself a lot of stress and extra overworking, especially in the sprint seasons. All right? Tip number eight is give yourself some extra downtime or recovery time or family time at the end of your sprint season. Like if you're not somebody that likes to go on big fancy vacations, don't plan a vacation at the end, just plan some downtime at the end, okay? But know that you're going to need to rest and you're going to need to recover after a sprint season in business, just like you would after a really hard marathon or a really big sprint. Like you don't run 100 meter dash and then just get up and run another 100 meter dash and expect your body to perform optimally. Like your body needs some rest. Just like your mind needs some rest at the end of a big push. All right? There you'll have it. There are eight tips for surviving and thriving during a super busy season. Number one, set an end date. Number two, communicate with your people. Number three, choose your suck. That's really important. Number four, pray as you prep. Also really important. Five, plan the right way. Six, prioritize. And seven, no than must do from the nice to do's and 8 give yourself some extra downtime at the end. All right y'all pray that this blesses you and you go into Thanksgiving with just a refreshed attitude and you're able to serve your people in home and in business with the God given strengths that you have. All right, talk to you next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more or Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website faithhannon.com until next time. God bless and I'll talk to you soon.