One of the reasons that so many small businesses fail – or fail to achieve the success they really want – is because they have not “done the work before they go to work.” In other words, as business owners, we often start by doing things that we think we need to be doing… we need to go to networking events, we need to post on social media, we need to advertise, we need to build a website, and we need to sell something and get a client…but we don’t realize that before we can do these things there is other work to be done!
While it is true that a business does need to do all of those things, there are other important actions to take to help you be more successful. If you have been doing all of those things – even if you have been successful at doing all of these things – there is some additional pre-work that you can do before you do any more of those activities.
What Guides Your Business Decisions?
I believe that you need two guiding lights, or sources of inspiration, in your business. First, you need a really clear goal of what you want to achieve. Second, you need to have a strategy that gets you to that goal. When you have a clear goal plus a strategy to achieve that goal, it services as a litmus test for all of the decisions that you have to make in your business.
When we think about the idea that being a business owner equals being the Chief Decision Maker, the goal that you have and the strategy that you are using create a way for you to ask yourself if what you are doing is going to move you toward your goal or further away from it. In business (and in life in general) there is no standing still. You are either moving toward the result and the outcome that you want, or you are doing things that move you away from the result and the outcome that you want. If you are not clear on the goal and your strategy, you will not know if you are making a decision that is moving you away, because you won’t know where you are trying to go in the first place.
Understand your ideal client’s needs
Before you do any other work, it is essential to have a very clear understanding of the client you wish to serve. What is their biggest problem, and what is it that you offer that can solve that problem for them? I usually refer to this as the intersection between the problem they have, and the problem your business solves.
Have a way to talk about your business
Having a way to talk about your business is essential. Labels, processes, and technical jargon just don’t land or really mean anything to anybody. In order to attract an audience, it is important to create an emotional connection. Every buying decision is made based on emotion and then justified with logic. You have to have stories that land because stories are how humans connect with each other. I like to use the term Magnetic Messaging, because good messaging draws clients to you like a magnetic pull.
Know and understand your numbers
You absolutely have to have a full understanding of your numbers, including the number of clients you close versus the number of potential clients who you talk to, the products and services that sell the best. You have to know your profit margins, your expenses, and all of the metrics behind your business.
Create a marketing plan based on data
If you read our recent blog, Making Strategic Decisions In Your Business, you know that your feelings can and will lie to you. That’s why your marketing plan needs to be based on data. And yes, this actually means more numbers! But when you track what works and what doesn’t work, you can make data driven decisions for your next marketing plan.
Why Do So Many Business Owners Struggle?
So, why do so many small businesses not have these things in place? Why have they not done all of this work, when it is so important to their success?
Your Subconscious Gets in the Way
Taking these steps starts to bump up against every limiting belief and subconscious fear in your brain. You may have heard me talk about the fact that your brain has one job: to keep you alive. When you start doing this work, your subconscious tries to keep you safe. When you start to make a move to be more visible, or to do something that you view as scary, your subconscious tries to keep you in your comfort zone by bringing up fears that make you play small and safe instead of going for big goals.
Hard Work Is Not Fun or Glamorous
The second reason so many business owners struggle is that this work is hard. We are programmed to avoid things that are hard or uncomfortable, and to want to do things that feel good. Truthfully, scaling your business takes a lot of work, and it’s not necessarily the work that you wanted to do when you started your business.
When you started your business, the work you wanted to do was helping your clients, and none of this work is fun or tied to why you started your business. It feels as if you went into business to help people and now you wake up one morning thinking, “I’m a business owner, this is not what I signed up for. It’s not glamorous work to have to figure this out!”
Even for people who know how to do this, it can feel uncomfortable and as if you don’t know what to do. I have a MBA in Marketing and Executive Leadership with corporate experience. I focus on Business Strategy. This is my jam, but if I am being completely transparent, when I am doing it for my own business, it’s not the most fun I’ve ever had. I would rather be working with clients or speaking with business owners.
Feeling Like Going in Opposite Directions
The third thing that stops business owners from doing this important work-before-the-work is that you have to learn how to do two things at the same time that don’t necessarily feel like they go together: hold onto the vision we have for our business, while making sure the action we are taking is squarely in the present. It took me a while to truly learn how hard this is, because doing these two things feels like going in opposite directions.
We want a North Star, a guiding light of where we want to go, but if we focus too much on the end result and don’t take into account where we are now, we end up with big missteps. We overreach financially, or jump into things our business isn’t ready for. We become victims or say yes to insta-tactics because they promise us the big outcome that we want, even if our business is not ready for them. So it is important to have the goal so you know where you are heading, but to also have a solid grip on where you are now so that you know what steps to take.
Not Understanding How to Do the Work
The fourth reason that we don’t do the pre-work before going to work is that we just are not sure how to do it, or that we need to do it at all. This is not what most people know how to do. It makes sense, and it’s ok. You started your business because you are good at doing the thing that the business does. Whether you are a photographer, a graphic designer, an organizer, or a consultant of some sort, most businesses aren’t in the business of building businesses. It is completely normal to not know how to do this work. It is also completely normal to not even know that this work is important to do.
Out of Hours in the Day
And finally, by the time you realize you need to do the work, you are already out of hours in the day and days in the week to actually do this work. You started your business one step at a time, adding the next step, and the next step, until you realized that you are out of bandwidth. And not only are you out of bandwidth, but you are the only person in your business who knows how to do all of the work that you are trying to do. This means that when you try to take a step back to do the pre-work, it feels impossible to find the time to do it.
Moving Past the Struggle and Going to Work
It can feel completely overwhelming to do more work at a time when it feels as though you are maxed out on time, and when it feels as if you are struggling. Fortunately, it does not have to be hard, and it does not have to happen all at once.
To get your ducks in a row, start with picking up one duck, then the next duck, until you get them in a row, one step at a time. You don’t need to line up all of the ducks right away, nor do you need to shut down your business for a month to figure all this out. It is perfectly ok to take this one step at a time. Once you start chipping away at each of these tasks, you will be surprised at how quickly you can go, one duck at a time.
If it feels like this work is too hard, remember that working all day, every day, and not getting the results that you want is also very hard. It is also extremely hard to reach the point in your business in which you are overwhelmed, frustrated, and burnt out because you just cannot do it anymore. And the hardest thing of all is feeling as if you are ready to give up and settle for what you think you can have instead of what you really want.
The truth is, most people don’t go into business thinking that it’s going to be easy every single day. Chances are, you expected things to be hard. However, you get to choose which hard to keep. Which hard work do you want? Do you want the hard work that involves learning some new skills and having to do some thinking? Or do you want the hard work that I call the “banging your head against the wall” approach to business? Your biggest asset is the ability to choose, and in this instance, you get to choose which type of “hard” you want.
We are coming up quickly on summer. If we reverse engineer the rest of the year, what happens in the fourth quarter is what sets up your next year. And the work that you do over the summer is what sets you up for the fourth quarter. So rather than wait for what I call the “Holy Crap” season of business – which begins after Labor Day but before Thanksgiving, when you realize that you only have two months left to do everything that you planned on doing this year – you can choose to do it differently. You can choose to get one duck at a time into a row, so that by the fall, you are ready to just go to work.
