Huge hack. If you are struggling to stand out online, find out what
your ideal client is struggling with. Find out what words they use to describe
it, not the words you think that they used to describe it, the
words that they are actually using to describe it, and then create content that
speaks to this. If you are struggling to stand out, it's either that
you haven't defined your ideal client well enough, you don't know them well enough,
or you're not communicating with them in a way that resonates. Welcome to
Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books,
downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't
until I started taking imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year.
Imperfect action is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over
perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right.
On this show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips,
and strategies to build a business that brings you more profit, more freedom,
and even more joy. You want the list to get my daily businesses.
Every day, I'll send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow
your business in a more intentional way. Sign up at Steph Taylor dot co,
forward slash DBB, or at the link in the show notes. Hey,
welcome back to In Perfect Action. This is episode seven hundred and seventy
nine. Today I'm sharing six the essential steps that a lot of people consider
to be a little bit too beginner, too basic, but that are really
important for success in your business. Now, the beginner stuff, the basics,
the first steps that everyone teaches you in courses in starting a business.
When you google how do I Start a business? There's a reason those things
come up over and over again. They are important for a reason. And
over my last like seven or eight years working with other businesses, I've noticed
that the businesses that end up being the most successful are the ones that do
the basics really well. And I see this with courses as well, Like
when people are investing in a course. When business owns invest in a course,
they want to skip to module six because they assume that modules one to
five are the basics. They're two beginner and they have convinced themselves that the
secret to success lies in the more advanced modules. There's some kind of magic
pill that's in the really far along modules that they haven't heard somewhere else.
But then they don't end up getting the results from that particular course, or
even particularly even working with a coach and the coach tells them the foundational steps,
they don't see the results because they are too busy trying to find that
magic pill that they think exists, and they're skipping over the beginner steps,
the stuff that's actually going to make the difference. If you can't do the
basics, well, then the advanced stuff isn't going to make any kind of
difference in your business. Now, I survey my email list twice a year,
and from the questions that they are asking, I can tell that the
reason many of them are struggling in bit business is because they are focusing on
the wrong things. They are asking questions like how can I create a good
website? How can I make my Instagram feed look pretty? And how can
I get followers? How can I get reels that get more views? Should
I be on TikTok or LinkedIn or Instagram? How do I develop a catchy
name and tagline for my business? Should I create a low ticket or high
ticket offer? First? And from these kinds of questions, I can tell
that they are focusing on the wrong things. They are looking for some kind
of magic pill, some kind of right answer, when they should be spending
a bit more time on the basics, the foundations, the boring parts of
business that if they can do really well, that's what's going to amplify their
results from everything else that they do in their business. You know, the
stuff that they have probably labeled as a little bit too beginner for them.
They're like, oh, yes, like I've done this before, but they
actually haven't really done that. That's the stuff that is worth doing. So
I'm going to share a couple of those things in today's episode. And look,
I was guilty of doing this as well. At the start. I
was constantly looking for the one answer, like the one reason why I hadn't
been able to grow my business. And it wasn't until I actually stepped back
and went through a process from start to finish. If it wasn't until I
actually followed those steps in order that I started to see the shift. Okay,
so the very first step was defining your ideal client. And this is
probably like you're gonna be rolling your eyes at this I know, like how
boring, right, I did this way back at the start of my business.
Guess what, I still do this every time I launch a new offer,
every time I relaunch an existing offer, So like multiple times a year,
I'm going back and I am revising who is our ideal client for this
particular offer and for this business. And it sounds really boring, but it
makes life so much easier because if I know who I'm talking to, then
the content I create can resonate a lot better. The messaging that I used
to communicate my offers and my business is going to land a lot better.
Okay. And when I talk about your ideal client, I don't mean your
target audience. I don't mean the woman aged thirty five to forty five who
lives in Australia and runs a business that's a target audience. That's not an
ideal client. I mean the one ideal client. And I don't mean your
niche either. Now, if you if you're not really sure what the difference
is between those, go back to episode seven hundred and thirty six where I
talked about the difference between your ideal client, your target audience, and your
niche and whether you really do need to niche or not. So if you
want a link to listen to that episode, send me a DM on Instagram.
I'm there at Steph Taylor dot co. Send me the number seven hundred
and thirty six to seven three six and I will send you a direct link
to that episode. All right. The second thing, the second step audience
research. Now, I don't care how well you think you know your audience,
how well you think you know your ideal client. You don't know them
enough until you've spoken to them one on one and until you've asked them questions
about the things that they're struggling with and really uncovered what's going on between their
ears, what are they say thinking, what are they telling themselves? Surveys
are great, but on their own they're not enough. Now, I love
surveys for content ideas, but when it comes to messaging for offers, you
need to know a little bit more. You need to go a little bit
deeper and asking your existing clients questions can be effective, but you're probably missing
out then on insights from the people who didn't buy, and the people who
didn't buy from you their intel. Their insights are going to help you to
make your messaging and your offers more compelling because you'll understand what stopped somebody from
buying, so you can address that before it stopped somebody else from buying.
Now huge hack if you are struggling to stand out online, find out what
your ideal client is struggling with. Find out what words they use to describe
it, Not the words you think that they used to describe it, the
words that they are actually using to describe it, and then create content that
speaks to this. If you're struggling to stand out, it's either that you
haven't defined your ideal client well enough, you don't know them well enough,
or you're not communicating with them in a way that resonates. Okay, number
three articulating exactly what problem your offer solves for your ideal client, or what
task it takes off their to do list, or what transformation it delivers for
them, and being able to do this in really specific terms, like I
see too many businesses with really vague messaging. It gives them clarity on their
vision. Great, that's great, but what does that actually mean for them?
Right? What does that mean for their ideal client for their life?
A better version would be clarity on their long term vision, so they know
exactly what tasks to focus on in their business this week, this day,
this minute. That's a tangible, specific outcome. Right, tangible problem is
being solved because they don't know what to focus on. Now, force yourself
when you are identifying this, force yourself to write it out. Don't just
think it. It's really easy to tell yourself yeah, I know that,
But then when you're forced to put pen to paper and actually articulate it,
you might realize that you don't know it as well as you think you do.
And if you aren't clear on what your offer does, if you can't
clearly communicate what your offer does, your ideal client isn't going to know what
it's about, okay. And if they don't know what it's about, they're
not going to spend money on it, okay. Number four, Getting clear
on the long term vision and building out a priority plan to get there.
I know that when you are just starting out in business, and even a
couple of years in, it can feel like you are just surviving one day
at a time. But this short term survival mindset can be the thing that
keeps you stuck where you are rather than building something that you really intentionally want
in the long term, and having that short term mindset can keep you stuck
on focusing on the wrong things, prioritizing the wrong things. So instead of
having a vague idea of what you are trying to build, what exactly do
you want your business to look like five years from and what needs to happen,
what practical actions need to happen to get there, and then how can
you break that down into tasks that you're going to do over the next years,
months, weeks, and days. Because otherwise, if you don't really
know where you're going and you don't know what needs to be done to get
there, you're going to end up focusing on the wrong thing. Whereas when
you know what to focus on to get you there, then you can make
you can take those intentional actions rather than sitting down at your desk and being
like, well, what do I feel like working on today? Because that's
not going to move you any It's my movie a little bit further forward,
but it's probably not going to be the quickest way to get that. Okay,
Number five creating a budget, right, So when you've got a budget,
that means that you can make decisions based on what is in the budget,
not based on your gut feel, because you know, maybe you don't
want to miss out. Somebody's got a great course that's launching with awesome bonuses,
and you don't want to miss out on that. And I know that
finances can feel a little bit icky and they can be a little bit challenging
if you're more creatively minded, but it's important to stay on top of them.
And budgeting means estimating your income and estimating your expenses and then using that
to make better decisions. For example, December is always a pretty quiet month
in this business, and you know, especially because I was mostly offline,
my team was mostly offline. But as my accountant said, when I pointed
this out to her, she was like, well, well, you budgeted
for that. It would have been really different if you had a bad month
that you didn't budget for. So there was no need to feel bad or
feel stressed out about the fact that it was quieter because we actually had a
plan for it. We knew what was going to happen. We had a
launch plan for January. We knew that would be fine, like it would
all be fine because we had budgeted for it. But if I hadn't.
If I didn't have that kind of forward thinking budget, then it would have
been really easy to go into panic mode of like what now, Like where
do we bring sales in? How have we cut? Like what negs?
And just freaking out rather than actually having a logical plan and actions to take
Number six, intentionally designing your office suite to maximize your sales and create consistent
cash flows. So rather than just haphazardly creating offers without thinking about where they
fit in or why are you doing them and how they're taking your clients on
a journey over time, if you can design your office suite so that it
helps the same ideal client again and again and again, then you don't need
to spend as much time marketing a business because instead of having to always try
and find new people, you can keep helping the same person in a deeper
way. And it's not about, you know, not delivering the entire solution
in your off It's not about leaving them wanting more and like not actually giving
them the solution to their problem, but instead it's about uncovering the different ways
that you can serve them at different stages of their journey, so they might
have one problem at the start, and then once they've solved that problem,
then there might be another problem that's now their main focus, and you can
help them to solve that one, and it becomes this beautiful little journey of
how you can help them over time, rather than trying to help so many
different people. And I know it's really difficult because, especially if you have
a skill or your expertise is something that could help a wide range of people,
it's so hard to narrow it down to one ideal client when you could
do all of the different things. But trust me that it's much easier marketing
your business when you do that. Now, your office suite is the one
thing that will determine whether your business is a little bit consistent or all over
the place. It's going to be the one thing that determines how much freedom
you have in your business. Like if that's if your office suite is not
if your office suite is not structured in a way to intentionally create freedom,
then no amount of growth audience revenue is going to fix any of that.
Okay, And I cover this in a mini course. I have a self
paced course and workbook to help you strategically design and refine your office suite to
make more sales, help more people, and step off the all or nothing
revenue roller coaster. You can find offer less sell more at stephtaylor dot co
slash OLSM. I'll pop the link in the show notes, or if you'd
prefer, you can send me a DM on Instagram, send me the word
OLSM to stephtaylor dot co on Instagram, and I'll send you the link to
find that one there as well. All Right, that is it for today's
episode. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.