Now I know that success doesn't come from jumping on trends early. I know
that it doesn't come from constantly chasing the new shiny things, the things that
are working right now. Instead, it comes from strategy, It comes from
intentional focused, and it comes from consistent action. 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. Are you on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day,
I'll send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you'd grow your business
in a more intentional way. Sign up at step taylor dot co, forward
slash DBB, or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome
back to Imperfect Action. This is episode seven hundred and eight. Today,
I'm doing a little bit of a compare and contrast and then and now of
what I used to do in business versus what I actually do now. I
mean this business I've been doing for more than five years now actually closer to
six years, and how my approach and my strategy has changed. So back
then, back in my early days of business, I cared about how many
followers I had. Now I care about how many email subscribers I have.
And it's pretty funny because now that I have a decent sized Instagram following,
I think I've got like, I don't know, thirty eight thousand followers or
something like that. I actually don't even really care about Instagram anymore. I
hardly ever show up there outside of the content that my team is repurposing for
me. But that's also because I know that my email list is what is
converting my subscribers. They click through to listen to these episodes, they register
for my free webinars. They're the ones who are signing up for my courses
more than the audience that is on Instagram. And that matters to me so
much more than this number of how many followers I have, Because followers on
its own is a vanity metric. Yes, it is the one clue to
someone's business size that you can see externally. But I've met people with one
hundred thousand followers who are broke, and I've also met people with less than
a thousand followers who have a super engaged email list and a very profitable business.
So it's not a very reliable gauge of how big somebody's business is or
how successful or how profitable they are. Number two. Back when I started
out, I would show up online when I felt like it, and now
I have systems and structure in place to ensure that my content is always consistent.
I hardly ever actually log into Instagram, but my team repurposes and schedules
my content. So as long as I'm creating these three podcast episodes every week,
everything else happens consistently. We've got emails going out three times a week,
We've got posts going out to Instagram. I don't have to think about
it anymore because we now have the systems and the structure in place, and
it has taken a long time to get to this point. We definitely weren't
always the content machine that we are today, Like when it was just me
doing every single episode. I wasn't creating all of the other content. I
was so scattered. I would I'd show up on Instagram when I felt like
it. I would occasionally miss a podcast episode if I didn't have an idea,
or if I was a little bit uninspired, I would I would try
to email my list each week, but I would often miss those emails if
I didn't know what to write about or I didn't feel like writing. Whereas,
now that we have these systems in place, I have to show up
and record the podcast episodes even when I don't feel inspired, because otherwise my
team can't do their jobs right. And once I've recorded those podcast episodes,
then everyone else can step in and do their roles to make sure that everything
is consistent everywhere. Okay, number three. Back when I first started out,
I worried about the outcome of every single launch. Now I treat every
launch as a learning experience and as an experiment that we can build upon.
The few failed launches that I've had they've taught me so much more than the
successful ones ever could have. And the lessons that I've learned from the failed
ones means that I can help my own students and my clients a whole lot
better than if I'd only ever had successful launches. Successful launches. Imagine if
I was like, hey, guys, I've only ever succeeded in my launches,
you probably wouldn't relate to me. You would just think I was lucky
and that I didn't have to work for it. But instead, I've been
through all of those same tough times, and I have learned so much from
them, and I can share the lessons that I've learned through those tough times
with you so that you avoid making the same mistakes that I did. And
when my launch magic students find themselves freaking out because yes, launching does bring
up so much mindset marks, so much fear, so much imposter syndrome,
all of those things, I can empathize with them because I have been there.
I've been through all of those things, and by going through those things,
I've been able to come up with my own tools and strategies for dealing
with it, which I can then share with my students to make that journey
a little bit easier for them. Okay, number four, I was constantly
searching for the magic pill, what was working right now, and I'd be
chasing that. These days, I know where I need to focus my time
and my energy, so I can be a lot more intentional about growing the
business. I was constantly I was looking for that magic pill. If a
new social media platform or a new format like reels came out, I would
try to be the first one on there so that I could be on that
trend early. And that was a huge waste of my time. Now I
know that success doesn't come from jumping on trends early. I know that it
doesn't come from constantly chasing the new shiny things, the things that are working
right now. Instead, it comes from strategy, It comes from intentional focused
and it comes from consistent action. There's no quick, fixed tactics involved in
growing a successful business. Okay number five. Back when I started my business,
if it felt easy or boring, if any part of my business felt
easy or boring, I thought that that meant there was something wrong. Now
I know that actually bottom isn't bad thing, and I started to lean into
things that feel easy. It can't always be exciting. Yes, uncertainty creates
excitement, but it also creates anxiety and stress and all of those other things
that maybe don't feel so calming. I remember reading a quote on Instagram a
while back that's stuck with me. I think it was from Jeriicia Hawk,
who was a guest on this show a little while ago, and the quote
said something like, your business isn't here to entertain you. So true,
right at the end of the day, Yes, you want to love what
you do, but you can't expect it to always be super fun and super
exciting. The truth is that parts of your business will feel boring, and
that's not a bad thing. When I first started this podcast, it was
so exciting. That was because it was new, It was shiny, it
was novel. Every time I put an episode out there, there was this
dopamine hit of how many people listened, how many downloads did we get?
And seven hundred episodes later, I still love it, but in a different
way. The honeymoon phase has ended. I don't get the dopamine hits from
each podcast episode that goes out. And now I keep showing up and I
keep being consistent with it because I know that by sharing these podcast episodes,
that is how I get to help people, and that is how I get
to drive growth in my business as well. Okay, when I first started
out my business, I was so attached to everything happening the exact way that
I wanted to, And now I am so much more flexible and open to
what else is possible outside of what I had planned. These days, when
something doesn't go to plan in my business, I'm able to see that bigger
picture because I've been through so many little failures that have redirected me in the
right direction. But if you told me back in twenty sixteen that the very
first business, the business I was building back then, would fail, I'd
have been devastated. I wouldn't have been happy at all about that. But
what I have built instead is so much better than I ever could have imagined
or planned for. And it took me way too long to let go of
that first business. Unfortunately, I didn't want to swallow my pride and close
it down because I didn't want to accept that I had failed at something.
And while I was desperately clinging on to that first business with all of my
might, I probably missed all of these other opportunities for success. I could
have started my current business earlier if I'd let go of the first business earlier,
and other things that might have been a better use of my time and
energy, I would have maybe spent my time there rather than hanging onto it
looking this one way that I was so attached to it looking okay. Number
seven. Back when I first started, if something didn't work right away,
I thought that that meant I should give up on it all together. And
now I know that consistent action over time is what creates results. When I
first started this podcast, it took six months to hit the same number of
downlaw that we now get in a month, and it didn't happen quickly,
but through showing up over and over again, that is how the momentum started
to build. And even now sometimes growth feel slow, But then I look
back to twelve months ago and we've nearly doubled our monthly downloads in the space
of twelve months. These last twelve months are also the only twelve months since
I started the show where I have not missed a single Monday, Wednesday,
or Friday episode. And previously I would sometimes miss episodes, or i'd miss
a week or two if I just didn't feel inspired, or if things weren't
working out great in my life or in my business. But in the last
year I have consistently shared episodes every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My team
has been consistent with the content that we now repurpose from this episode, and
so everything has grown okay Number eight. I used to compare my business to
everyone else's businesses online, and now I know that what you see online is
only part of the story. I so completely. I remember this recently.
I was sitting down with a friend and we were talking about somebody that we
both went to school with and hadn't seen in a long time, but we
follow her on social media, and I remember saying to her, Oh,
wow, Like, you know, they've such a beautiful family. They're such
a good looking couple, such beautiful children, Like they look so happy.
And my friend said to me, well, you know, he's been having
an affair, and you would never have guessed that from looking at them on
the outside. And there have been so many times when you'd look at my
business online and it would look like I was crushing it, I was nailing
life, and I meanwhile, I was miserable behind the scenes for whatever reason,
something might have not been going to plan. And what I've learned is
often the people whose lives look the best online, they're the ones who are
least happy, and they are the ones who are living for the validation that
they get online. Not everyone. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule,
but this is very and now I barely even look at Instagram. I follow
a few people on my personal account who I actually care about, my friends,
you know those people. But I don't compare myself to other people's businesses
because I know that that's not actually an indication of what's really going on.
Okay, number nine. Back when I started my business, I worried a
lot about what people would think of me, and now I focus on how
showing up means I can help more people. What will they think of me
when I start a podcast? That is what I had spinning through my head
when I started this show back in twenty eighteen, And now nobody has said
anything bad to my face, Nobody has judged me for doing it, yet
nobody's told me out loud yet, And seven hundred episodes later, if anyone
did judge me when I started, well, guess what, I'm the one
who is laughing now right because this show has helped a lot more people than
I ever could have if I'd never started in the first place, and it's
helping people beyond what I ever believed I could share. As I learn new
things in business in life, I share them with you. As my business
grows, I learn new things, I share those with you. And magically,
over the last few years, I've really stopped caring what people think as
much. I have learned let them think what they want to think. If
they're judging me for doing something, it's probably a reflection of them. If
somebody is judging me for starting a podcast, it's probably because they don't think
that they could ever do that themselves. Okay, and then number ten.
When I first started my business, I would overthink every little detail, every
little decision. Now I take imperfect action and I figure it out as I
go. I've learned that overthinking is so unhelpful because you're usually trying to solve
a problem when you don't quite have all of the fact and so your brain
makes up facts to fill in the gaps for you. For example, when
you are planning out a launch, you have no idea whether that launch is
going to fail or succeed, but your brain is going to tell you a
hundred reasons why it is going to fail, and so it's going to feel
really true to you, so you don't end up launching, and now your
brain's like, yes, I've won, I'm safe. This is your brain
trying to protect you from failure. Right Whereas if you take action, you
do the launch. Now you have facts, you know for sure whether that
launch failed or didn't fail. And if it failed, great, you survived
it. First of all, you didn't die, and second of all,
you can learn something from that, and that is how then you can tweak
the launch. You can do it better next time, and that is also
how you grow. This applies to every area of your life and your business,
not just your launches. Okay, you need to take that action to
get the facts rather than sitting there ruminating on it, overthinking it, trying
to make up facts when there actually aren't any. So they have ten things
that I now do differently, how my approach to business has changed. If
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