ERIN MARCUS LIVE: BUSINESS OUTLOOK 2024

Transcript by Descript

All right, hello, hello. So, for the past few weeks, with a nice little break for Christmas and New Year’s, but for the past few weeks, I had been doing shows that gave you tools to use to reframe how you’re thinking, reframe questions you could be asking yourself, as you made your plans. for your business in 2024.

And I wanted to do one more piece of that for you as we are now officially in 2024 and kind of give you a business outlook. There’s a reason I did it last instead of first in this series, because. As much as I believe to be rooted in reality and aware of the what’s going on around you so that you can respond.

To challenges that come up instead of reacting to everything that happens around you. I wanted to give you tools that let you dream bigger before we kind of tap into reality of it. Because I do really believe that regardless of what is going on. You do have absolute control over what it is that you can create.

You know, we can’t control every little thing that happens, but we can certainly control how we respond to it. And as business owners, we can have more control over our reality than someone who has a job, for example. So I wanted to do that part for you first, but I did want to take a minute and give you Kind of a 2024 business outlook, what I’ve seen happen, what I think the trends are that are going to continue and always tactically, what can you do with this information?

So let’s dive into a few of these for you. So the first one I’m going to touch on is AI, the use of AI, this is going to be more and more and more prevalent if you haven’t already seen it in your business, seen it in your, ecosystem. You’re going to see more and more of it. So what does this mean? It means it makes it easier for people to create volume, both from a quantity standpoint and truthfully from a yelling standpoint.

But that means that the market is going to be noisier if you can even imagine, right? Noisier than it is already. But what’s the opportunity here? I think there is a tremendous opportunity to stand out. More and more and more, everyone’s gonna look the same. If everyone is using chat GPT, even if you get really good at your prompts People are going to start to look even more the same than a lot of people already do.

This is an opportunity to embrace your authenticity and stand out. So use the AI tools. Use them to make you more efficient. Use them for grammar. Use them for tweaking. Use them for, again, efficiency. But! The less you rely on them for thought leadership, which is where you should not. Be relying on them.

The easier it will actually be to stand out. If you are in the top 5%, top 10 percent of your category, let’s face it. There’s always going to need to be a human to press the button to hit go that everyone else then builds upon. So take this opportunity to really dive into your opinions, your content pillars, where it is that you stand in the marketplace, what do you stand for and what do you stand to get?

and go deep on these topics so that it sets you apart in your unique way. So again, AI is going to become even more prevalent as these tools get better and better and easier and easier to access. But this is actually an opportunity to stand out with your authenticity as a thought leader and not look like everybody else.

So, which kind of leads me to the second thing that I, have already seen happening. And if the past is a predictor of the future, we’re going to see it even more so this year than unfortunately any previous year, just like AI is going to increase the noise in the marketplace. The world is going to increase the noise, not just in the market, but it’s Place.

But in our lives, when I was in corporate, we were in finance, I was in financial services and every year that was an election year, we would see sales dip. And the reason we would see that is because people did not like the uncertainty that elections bring from a financial decision place. People don’t make big financial decisions when there’s a lot of uncertainty.

And the way that elections are run now I don’t care what side you are on of the aisle, this is prevalent on all sides, unfortunately. The noise, we have completely normalized chaos. It’s not new in politics. If you go back to the founding fathers, I forget which ones they are, but many of them hated each other.

This is not new, but the ability to get the volume of that chaos out into everybody’s daily lives and immerse people in that chaos has never been greater than it is now between social media, between 24 seven news channels. The human brain needs predictability in order to function. That’s, that’s just neuroscience.

The human brain dislikes when things are unpredictable. And when things are unpredictable, it kind of paralyzes people. So. With things that are going on in the world with things that are going on with country with things going on with elections that the unpredictability that that creates is going to cause people to stop, they’re just going to stop.

So what can you do about this? If your business? It’s clients, right? We need people to not stop the number one pieces of advice that I can give for you for this is be the calm in the storm, be the predictability that people are not just desiring, but like they’re starved for right now, the more you can hone in on the exact thing that you do.

Right. Which brings me to being specific over generalities. Like the more you can hone in on the problem that you solve, the outcome that you provide, being specific and calm and predictable and steady in the marketplace is going to help you get the clients that are out there. needing to move forward because right now, I mean, I don’t know if you’re experiencing this, I would imagine by the videos I see on tic tac that most people are experiencing this.

Things don’t work. Things don’t work the way they used to work. The medical and insurance feel like nothing works. Nothing is easy the way things that used to be easy. And then when you add on top of that, the chaos, like I’ve been talking about, people are going to want that steadfast predictability that you might be the solution for what’s the problem that you write.

This is a marketing situation, not necessarily a business model situation. People are wanting specific outcomes over general feel goods. Again, this is not terribly new. I think what you’re going to see is just an increased in intensiveness Intensity making up words here an increase in intensity around these needs so the more you can talk about the specific outcome you provide instead of just feeling better instead of just making more money.

What is the specific problem you solve? What is the specific outcome you provide? Being that calm in the storm is going to be what your audience needs from you. And to wrap that all up, I really have been seeing a pent up demand for in person Intimate connections. There are still some thought leaders out there who are putting big events together.

And that’s fantastic. They’re amazing at it. I attend some of them, but I think there’s even more of a pent up demand for intimate in person solve one problem opportunity for people be the calm in the storm. If you can wrap this all together and create community around your brand. And there really isn’t such thing as a brand that can’t create community.

I mean, Harley Davidson is a perfect example. They’re motorcycles and yet they thrive on community. If you can create the calm in your storm, predictability, solve the problem, intimate. Experience within your brand. That is really what is going to propel you forward in 2024, because again, going back to my experiences in the financial industry, the year after the election, regardless of who wins, because again, it’s not necessarily so much of who’s in charge as it is the human brain for most of us needing the predictability.

The more you can do what you need to do this year, when 2025 hits, and the elections are over, and hopefully we’re experiencing some calm in the marketplace, you will just be that much better positioned to take off from work.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the ready yet podcast. I truly enjoy bringing these stories of success and inspiration to you. Please join us in our mission to empower entrepreneurs to be in charge of their businesses and in charge of their lives by sharing this with anyone you know, who would benefit from our tactical and motivating advice, leaving us a review and letting us know if there are any particular topics you would really appreciate hearing about.

See you next time.

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