You hear it everywhere. “How are you?”
- “I’m good, but I’m just too busy. I don’t know where all the time goes.”
- “Things are stressful. I’ve got too much to do, and there’s only one of me.”
- “I just can’t put another thing on my plate right now. I’m already too busy.”
Are any of these familiar, either what you say or what you hear–or both!
Part of it makes sense. As an entrepreneur building a soul-inspired business, you are going to be busy. If you are in stage one (building to $5000 per month income with 70% of your client base full), then you are probably wearing most if not all of the hats in your business. You are doing research on marketing, outreach to your people, working with different offerings to find the right fit, following other experts in your field, sorting through all the free information that’s available to find the golden nuggets, figuring out what to do on Facebook, and learning to shoot video. Oh, and then of course there’s service delivery, and bookkeeping, and building your systems (Whaaaat, I’m supposed to be doing that, too?). Wow–it’s no wonder you are busy.
And busy isn’t bad. Don’t get me wrong, you are going to be busy if you are serious about your business.
But the real question is–is your busy getting you the results that you want?
Because I talk with people every week who are super busy, but who are also struggling to make ends meet, who are going through or who have gone through all their savings, and who are still not creating the foundation they need to have a viable business. Instead they are spending way too much time, with too little understanding of how things fit together.
If you are in stage one, are you engaging in these time sucking activities that seem like a good idea but are actually unproductive?
- You’re listening to free teleseminars that “sound good” and reading email that comes from lists they’ve opt-ed into for this or that in the hope of getting that one piece of information (read magic bullet) that will change everything.
- You’re signing up for programs, listening to the calls (or at least some of them), and then not doing the work that you are assigned to do into action that information in your own businesses.
- You’re cruising on social media–Facebook especially–seeing what people are doing, posting images, looking at posts on groups–without actually engaging, interacting, or asking people to have conversations about how you might work together or support each other.
- You’re working on building a website before you have a clear sense of your marketing message–including what makes you unique (I call that your Soul Signature), what you bring to the table that differentiates you, who your people are, and what specific solutions and outcomes you provide for your people.
- You don’t have a compelling free offer, just a sign up for your newsletter, so you aren’t effectively building an email list
For people in stage two ($6000-9000 per month income, lots of clients, group programs happening, and (I hope!) at least one support person, the picture is usually different. If this is you, it’s more like this:
- You’ve got a group going, and it’s fun to teach, people are getting results (the ones who are actually serious, which is about 20% of the whole), but your enrollment is smaller than what makes it really an income producer for you.
- You’ve taken some group programs, learned a lot, and have implemented some of the strategies here and there. You’ve had some successes and know you could have more. But you feel confused and pulled in different directions because they all sound good and have great potential. You just are not sure what to do and in what order–it feels like you have to do everything at once, even though you know (on some level) that you can’t actually do that. So you forge on anyway, hoping for the best.
- You’ve got some great clients, and some not so great clients, and you are realizing that given how much you are offering you are not charging enough. But you are committed to them already, and you feel uncomfortable about raising your rates–even though you can see that with all of your expenses, you really can’t make ends meet the way you would truly like to.
- You are so full and busy, but the amount of $$ actually going into your personal account is not enough to feel abundant or do what you really want to do in your life.
- You have one or two support people working for you, and it’s helping. But you’re not really sure the best things to direct them to do for you. You can tell they are waiting for your direction, but you are unclear about what to have them do that is really the best use of their time and what you need most to move your business forward. You have an uncomfortable feeling that you are making them busy, just like you are busy, but the results and the traction you are seeking are still illusive.
Okay–take a breath!! You ARE busy. And you are like so many others.
AND–this is a BIG AND–life could really be easier, more productive and more satisfying–and more lucrative. You just need a PLAN. A plan and someone to help you implement, tweak, update, and follow through on that plan. This is even MORE the case with those of you in stage two because you DO have so much going on and you don’t know how to put it altogether most effectively.
Virtually every client of mine came to me in one of these two situations. So if this is you–don’t worry, you’re not special (not in this regard, anyway)! And there is hope.
Tune in next week for my best tips on how to create a plan so that you can make priorities that make sense, know what to do when, see how to strategically lead one offering into the next.
And if you really want to move forward, you can still join my Creating Money Program this week –but this is the LAST week you can join in. It’s all about creating that plan. It’s geared for stage one folks, so if you are in stage two, then email my team and we’ll talk.
Creating Money: www.soul-signature.com/creatingmoney. Last chance.