← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
909: Things You Need to Remember About 2024
00:35:37
I’m sharing these reminders with you because I believe they can help guide your own journey. They offer a little more ease, a little more grace, and a little more peace of mind.
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If you aren't yet utilizing AI to save yourself time to help you brainstorm, to help you streamline reoccurring tasks to help you amplify the work you're doing, to help you improve your writing, to help you create more consistent messaging, you will be left behind. Welcome to the Strategy Hour Podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way, one that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Business settle in. It's time to talk strategy. Looking for a way to make a difference with your morning coffee? Grab a bag of talitha coffee@bossproject.com Coffee Every purchase helps support survivors of human trafficking. Make every cup count@bossproject.com Coffee we're getting ready to close out the year and it's that natural inflection point, the time of the year when we think about all the things we've done, all the things we would do differently. Maybe some things we regretted along the way. But as I sat down to go back and really reflect about the last year, I found myself craving to just remember some things, some important lessons, some things I already knew. But I got important reminders this year and they're ones that I know are only going to help me moving forward. And so I wanted to sit down and share them with you. Because I don't think they're just reminders for me. I think they're reminders for all of us. I think there's things you can take from this and use on your own journey to continue to help you move forward. But do so in a way that gives you a little more ease, a little more grace, a little more peace of mind that you're not alone in this crazy world and we're all in this together. I have a tendency to create. I'm a creator by nature. I'm a creative person. I went to school to be a creative person. I think that's just part of who I am. But when I think about the last year, I can see so many Reminders that less is more. And I have a tendency to do things, do them hard, do them well, and then immediately move on. I don't necessarily abandon an idea, but I definitely move on to the next thing prematurely. And I think it's an important lesson that when we move through the year and we market our offers, that we really need to pay attention to what's resonating. Because the things that work and work well should be clues for what we should be doing more of. And while it's something I know, I was so committed to following through on developing these new offers and hitting this launch calendar plan and doing all of these things that I didn't really pause to think about, what would the business look like if I really just leaned into these couple things that were really proving to be points of traction for me. Now I get the reason why I didn't move on. I know what actually the reason why I did move on. I know why I kept going. I know why I went on to the next thing. And I think so much of it is rooted in starting small. Like every time you're building a business from scratch, you start with no audience, you start with no following, you start with no customers, you start with no offers. And you are putting things out into the world and seeing what resonates. But you just have to try again, and you have to try new things, and you have to see what sticks. But I'm almost 10 years into business, and I have a rather large audience. If I needed to really, really, really focus on just a small group of people and I needed those to be my clients again and again, then sure, I would need to adjust. I would need to continue to pay attention to their needs, and I would continue to need to create new things to really support that small group of people. But when your audience grows and something starts being sticky, that is an opportunity to continue to see more growth and bring in new people. And I think I did a lot of moving on out of fear. I moved on because I was worried that if I only focused on one offer or just a couple of offers, that I wouldn't get the kind of results that I was after. And so I definitely think you need to take this with a grain of salt. I think the smaller your audience, the more you do have to kind of flex and move and adjust. But as that audience grows, you really slowing down and being focused on one, two, maybe three things, it will make a difference long term. It's going to be less stressful for you to run, but it's Also going to be an opportunity for scale. The second lesson this year was one that I was already convicted of, but I just saw the power of again and again and again because it has been a couple of years since I had developed something new, like completely new, completely from scratch. And I always have felt convicted that pre selling was the best method for putting a new offer out into the world. But I was absolutely shown just how powerful of a strategy this is, regardless of the size of your business. And it is a strategy I teach every entrepreneur I work with, especially those going through my digital product Jumpstart course, because I am helping people take an idea they have and validate it and generate real revenue before they go through the process of developing the offer. And the reason it's so powerful, one, yeah, you earn the income upfront, but two, you get to adjust the offer based on your audience's response. And I see so many people who get so caught up in feeling like it has to be this way or that way, and they go down the road of making the thing before they even know how someone is going to respond. I have even gotten to the point where I have already pre sold the offer, started development of the program itself, gotten three quarters of the way through development, and realized there was a gaping hole or realized there was something I needed to do differently. And because I pre sold, I didn't hesitate to go ahead and adjust. Sure, sometimes that means people getting more bonuses than I had planned on or a whole extra program that I wasn't expecting to produce. But I feel better about the curriculum I'm putting out into the world. I know I'm getting my clients better results because I really understand their unique needs and I can show up for that, especially that first cohort that comes through my programs. If you want all my details on pre sales, you definitely need to go through digital product Jumpstart. You can find out more@bossproject.com jumpstart Now, I've been confirmly convicted in this idea of building an offer ecosystem for a while, but I think this can get really messy really quickly. And so it's important that you come back to it and revisit and make sure that you audit your current offers and you identify gaps and you see opportunities and you working towards creating a seamless customer journey is going to make everything work together in a much more meaningful way. Now, I know earlier I talked about only doing a couple of things well, but I want those couple of things, those couple of offers, regardless if they're a digital product or a course or a one on one service. I want to see those offers connected. I want to see you solve a problem that sets someone up for the very next thing that you do and then help them solve the next problem that sets them up for the next thing you do. And I don't necessarily think you need a lot going here. I think at the end of the day, your offer suite can be as small as three to five products total. But there's obviously room for experimentation. Things are going to adjust over time and as your audience evolves, you're going to have to revisit what this looks like. I just feel so good about really making sure that these things work together because it really is such an incredible opportunity to build relationships and help someone go on a journey, work with someone for a longer period of time. I don't want to be the business where someone just like comes in, buys one thing, and as soon as I got the sale, I don't even care what happens next because I got the sale and I need more leads and I need more conversions. I want to foster that relationship. I want them to see real results so that they want to work with me again. I know that someone who's already bought from me once is seven times more likely to buy from me again. And so really making sure that my offers work together in a cohesive way is important to me now I talk way more about what this looks like and how to build your own offer ecosystem inside the accelerator, which is the first step I send everyone through as soon as they join the co op. So definitely a training that if you haven't watched yet, I highly encourage you to because this will help you to see what is the long term game plan and where are you going from here. But I need you to know that this year I rebuilt my entire offer ecosystem from the ground up. I knew even 10 years in that some things had to change. And part of it is because the economy has changed and my clients have changed and all of that. That is still true, but I also just saw a different path for this business moving forward and I wanted to create offers that align with that. And I feel good about the time I spent in development. But I also know that I was working the long game and I spent a lot of time distracted from like being out in the world and focusing on visibility. Even though visibility was a massive part of what I did this year, I want it to be even bigger going into next. Now I think speaking of visibility, I want to see more people focused on one engaged platform. I Think there's this pressure to be in all the places. Like you need to do reels and then repost those to YouTube shorts, and then you need to put them over on Facebook and you need all of these things to work together. Now, I'm not going to say who, but there's someone in my life that I deeply care about, and they put out content consistently for an entire year. But it was very, very, very, very clear that they were just reposting content across multiple platforms and not really making sure that it made sense for the culture of that app or that community. And I watched a ton of work that they put in, only for them to get 50, 150, 250 views, and their followers didn't go up. Like they had less than 50 followers at the beginning, end of the year, and they have less than 50 followers now. And to put in that level of effort and have it not work, that's exhausting. I want to see you put stuff out into the world that's going to resonate, but if you're trying to spread it out across too many different platforms, you're not going to know what's going to work. And so you're going to end up doing things for the sake of creating content rather than knowing the ins and outs of a platform and truly enjoying building a community there. And I think if you're too spread out, you're thinking about too many things and you're only going to dilute your efforts. And so while I think you can have multiple platforms long term, and I'm not saying you can't even balance multiple today, but where are you putting your time and energy and gumption and love and care, and where are you building community? You know, it's not just about like, putting yourself in front of a microphone or a megaphone and like projecting out into the world. We want this to be a conversation where people are engaged and people are paying attention and people are attracted to what it is that you're doing. And I think that's only possible when we double down on a place we genuinely enjoy showing up. Now, to admit this next one feels a little vulnerable for me because while there's things I have said out loud, I am not sure I've always believed them myself. And I needed this reminder this year because I too have fallen into the trap that I didn't want to come across as too salesy. I wanted to provide high value. I wanted to give people something that showed them that I was really, truly there to support them. I keep seeing it happen. You're caught in a loop, waiting for that perfect moment, overthinking every decision and comparing your progress to the curated realities of others online. I've been there too, and I made a shift that changed absolutely everything. It simplified my approach and allowed me to start trusting my intuition again. Truly, everything changed. My business doubled, then doubled again. I rocked $300,000 launches, enrolled over 10,000 students in a single course, and finally started showing up in a way that felt effortless and aligned. Now I'm sharing those exact tools and strategies in my new three part workshop series, Mindset Reboot. Right now you can grab it for just $11. Hurry. Visit creative templateshop.commindset to find out more. Hiring with Indeed, your search is over. When it comes to hiring, don't go searching for the 1. Just meet your match with Indeed. Get unparalleled access to job secrets with over 350 million unique monthly visitors globally according to Indeed Data and an extended reach through Glassdoor, I love that Indeed makes it easy to hire when we've hired in the past, the process was full of unqualified applicants. With Indeed, we can target the right candidates for the right position, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comstrategy hour, just go to indeed.comstrategy hour right now and support our show by seeing you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com strategy hour terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. And while all of that can be true, I needed the reminder that selling is serving. And when you are selling something that someone truly needs and it provides a real transformation, their gratitude is proof that you should be showing up in that way. We don't need to be holding back. We don't need to be focused on well, this email shouldn't have any calls to action because I've been selling too much. Why does that matter? Like Target sells in every single email they send. Madewell sells in every single email they send. Why do you feel this pressure to just give, give, give give give give give without thinking about how your business is gonna survive? How are you going to bring in sales? How are you going to bring in sales consistently? How are you going to remind people of what it is that you do? It has been so evident to me that despite creating content, producing a podcast emailing my list. People are always, always in a world where they are the center of their story. You aren't it. They have other stuff going on, as they should, but because of that, they may see a little thing you do over here and a little thing you do over there. But if you're not loud and proud of what it is that you offer, making sales is going to be hard. And so I am reminded and firmly of the conviction that you can pitch in a way that still feels authentic and still provides value and serve every single day and still give things away for free and sell your stuff. Like all of those things can coexist. We can sell every day. We can make sales every day. And I've taken for granted that a little bit because I started making sales every day years ago. Years and years ago. I am used to transactions coming in many times throughout the day, sometimes many times in the same hour or the same 10 minutes. But not everyone is in the same boat. And I didn't get there by holding back. I didn't get there by saying, oh, I'll wait to put that in the email tomorrow. The irony is I even found myself, even though I know this, even though I've learned this lesson multiple times. I was thinking about a new email sequence I was going to do and I was like, okay, after three months I'm going to. And I was like, whoa, I'm going to wait three months? Why? Literally, why? Not that I can't bring something up again in three months. But why am I so worried about mentioning something early? Why can't I plant the seed and then water the seed? I think people should know what you offer. I think you should be excited about sharing it and let people into the world, which P.S. what am I excited about? I'm excited about Digital Product Jumpstart. I'm excited about helping people grow on Instagram with Instagram Profit Playbook. I cannot wait to continue to grow my catalog of AI prompts inside your digital va. I look forward to building a community and continuing to foster that community even after five years inside the co op. These are things I'm proud of. These are things I'm going to continue to work on. I can't wait to help people build their email list with a thousand subscriber roadmap. I am so excited about the curriculum I am building inside next level funnels, which hasn't even come out yet. All of those things are part of my ecosystem. They are part of my world. They work together. And honestly, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I have way more products than I would suggest for the majority. Even for me, it's too much. But I have built this beast. I am going to drive this moving. I mean, it feels like a moving train at this point. I'm going to keep going. I do want to challenge you though. Before I move on. I want you to set a small goal. How are you going to pitch your product or service every single day? It doesn't have to be in the same place all of the time, but you could do it on email, you could do it on social media, you could do it through conversations. How are you showing up every day to keep your business going? Now, I've known for the last two years or so that AI was going to be critical to the long term growth of not just my business, but for how this entire business economy works. When ChatGPT launched, when Open AI was like, here, here's our baby, here's this thing I've been working on. It was so quickly proof to me that we are going to go through the fastest technological change we've seen in our lifetimes. And in the beginning I was intimidated like so many people. And then I learned how can I start utilizing this product? And the wild thing is waking up almost two years later from when they've launched this out into the world. I cannot believe how integrated AI is into my every single day. And if you aren't yet utilizing AI to save yourself time, to help you brainstorm, to help you streamline occurring tasks, to help you amplify the work you're doing, to help you improve your writing, to help you create more consistent messaging, you will be left behind. It is going to be so incredibly critical to the long term health of your business. Now I'm not saying it needs to do whole things for you or that you need to completely offload something to it. That's not what I'm saying. But people will continue to use this and you knowing how to use it is like you learning how to type as a kid. I didn't learn how to type until I was in eighth grade. My mom learned how to type on a typewriter, but this is that equivalent for the next generation of children. And so you knowing how to utilize AI and become less intimidated by it over time is so necessary. It is so necessary. I do want you to start experimenting though. Like, is there a task that you are consistently doing in your business that you're like, this is taking forever. Ask AI how it can help. You don't even have to have the answer anymore. That's the wild thing. Prompts have gotten so insane that you could go in and you could say, hey, I'm working on this task. I find that it's taking myself way too long. I'm not really sure how to streamline it. I'm not sure how I could leverage you or leverage AI to help me do this task faster. Guaranteed it will come up with ideas that you hadn't thought about. Okay. And then you can come back and have a whole conversation with it. I think people get intimidated by prompt engineering, but truly, if you think about it as a conversation, as you providing feedback, you're going to get places you didn't even think was possible. Like, it's wild now. As much as AI saves you time, I think because we are in this fast moving online world where everything is changing at a lightning pace, it really provides, you know, a jaded view on the pace we should be going in our own business. The thing is, we're not machines. You have a life, you have a body that has its own plans for how you're going to feel and how you can show up. And I think we're constantly putting pressure on getting somewhere by X timeline. When the timeline is completely self induced. I want you to worry less about your pace and worry more about your direction. Where are you going and is it in alignment with your priorities and where you want to be? Your pace should match your capacity, not your like willingness. Because often you're willing to do more than you possibly can. One thing that kind of hit me this year, I heard someone say this and they said like, your 100% is what you can do without depleting yourself. And I was like, wait, what? Because I always thought my 100% was what I could do until I've completely nailed myself to the ground because I am so depleted and exhausted. Your 100% is exactly what you can do without negatively impacting your mind, your body, your circumstances, your family, all of those things. So I want you to be a little more chill about navigating your pace and understand there are circumstances out of your control. Whether you got your own things, coming up with managing your own health, or maybe that of a loved one comes up. I could not have anticipated that three of the last 12 months I would be so distracted with my dad's health. I didn't anticipate him having a stroke or him having. I can't even say it out loud yet. I could not have imagined everything that he's gone through and how it impact me and did it affect the pace I could show up this year? Yeah. I'm running a small business. I have a team of four. If it had been just me, part of the business would have come to a complete halt. I am so grateful that I had a team that helped me keep going. But not all of you have that luxury. And so I need you to give yourself way more grace. Now, the lesson that, like, again, I know this, you know this, but, like, really accepting it has been hard for me because I want to solve everything with logic. I want to solve every problem with an action. But mindset work can sometimes be all that is needed. Mindset work will move the needle. I want to see you spend more time here because I know there's a lot of you that are to the point in your business where you don't need one more strategy, you don't need one more thing to try. You just need to believe that you have everything necessary. You need to reframe how you're looking at challenges. You need to start to see the things that you consider flaws as potentially your superpowers. I saw just how important this was to me, which is why for the first time in actual years, I dedicated a ton of time to building out some really foundational mindset trainings. Like, they are so foundational. I make every single client go through them, every single one. And I want to ensure that you have what it takes, that you have what you need to make this happen. And so I have tried to make them as accessible as possible. You can go to bossproject.commindset to see what the heck I'm talking about. But dedicating more time here is going to be one of the massive things that gets you unstuck going into next year. Now, thinking about all of this, I realize nothing I've said is revolutionary. There is nothing about this that you likely didn't already know on some level. But that's why I'm bringing it up, because you are so much smarter than you give yourself credit for. You constantly think that people around you have some secret that you don't have access to, and that's why they're doing so well. That's not true. You simply need to remember the things you already know, reflect on them, accept them, understand how you can integrate them, understand how you can live by them. Those are the things that are going to help your business grow now and into the future. I want you to focus on keeping things simple. I want you to focus on your best ideas. I don't want you to move on too quickly to the next thing. What if you kept going on this one topic that is clearly resonating with your audience? How can you utilize pre selling more often when you want to bring a new offer into your ecosystem? How can you make sure the offers you do have are working together? How can you show up consistently on one platform and sell every day, not just on that platform but on everywhere you are online? Utilize AI to align your pace with your life and really utilize it as an asset to fill in the gaps. Because you're just one person, I want you to commit to doing more mindset work and build a business that works for you. I cannot wait to see all the things you accomplish going into next year and I want you to utilize this time to pause and rather than reflect on everything you change, reflect on what you need to remember about this year that's going to set you up for success more long term. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me igaleseaysaysays and ossproject so we can share it. Okay. Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.comcomsignup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.