When you're busy and you don't have enough time to do everything, you have
to prioritize. But the problem is, I see so many online business owners
prioritizing the wrong things, the things that feel really easy to do. Engaging
with people on Instagram, spending an hour writing in Instagram caption, spending two
hours editing a reel. Those things, Yeah, like they feel like you're
doing something, but they're not going to actually move the needle. They're not
the best use of your time. 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 businessters 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 com, forward slash DBB, or at
the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to My Perfect Action.
This is episode eight hundred, which is honestly a little bit wild.
I always joke that I'm like, this is the most committed I've ever been
to anything ever, this podcast three times a week for five years now,
six years, six years. Started this on the first of May twenty eighteen,
and now we're at eight hundred episodes and six years. So for this
episode, I am going to do a special episode, well this episode and
next episode, where I'm going to highlight some of the biggest takeaways, lessons
and tips that I've shared in the past eight hundred episodes. The things that
I'm sure sharing in this episode are the things that I have personally found have
moved the needle most in my business, or the other things that have had
the biggest impact on our listeners. Because I often get some of you message
me and leave reviews and things that's letting me know what's impacted you, and
I love all of those. Even though I might not be the best at
replying to messages, I do read them, so I do appreciate all of
the messages and all of the reviews. Okay, so number one, the
first takeaway, if people aren't buying your offer, it doesn't mean that nobody
wants it. If they are looking, if they're shopping but they're not investing,
or if you've launched something and nobody bought during your launch, it's not
necessarily a flop. There are seven reasons that I shared in a previous episode.
There are seven reasons why somebody might look but not by Firstly, they
might have no money to spend. And it's not somebody saying, oh I
can't afford it, but it's actually like they literally have no money. I
talked about this in the last episode as well, where you need to pick
a niche that has money to spend. So they might have no money to
spend, and that might be why they're not buying. Maybe they're not the
right people for the offer. Maybe they're not ready to solve the problem that
your offer solves. Maybe you just don't have a big enough audience to reach
that arbitrary goal number that you have set. I see this quite a lot
where somebody's like, well, I want to have a fifty thousand dollars launch,
and then when you actually work backwards and you look at it, how
many they have to sell to hit fifty thousand dollars, and you look at
how many people are on their email list, you think, well, actually
you won't hit fifty thousand in this launch. You might hit a smaller goal
this launch, and then you need to reinvest, You need to grow your
audience a bit, and then you can launch again and again, and then
eventually you will get to that goal. Then other reason might be because they
don't trust you enough yet. Maybe you haven't been showing up, sharing content,
emailing them enough for them to trust that you are the right person to
solve the problem they have. Maybe there's no reason for them to buy right
now, there's no deadline, there's no incentive for them to act today,
so they're going to put it off. Or maybe they have unanswered questions questions
about your offer that they're not sure if it's going to be the right one
to get them the results, so they're not buying. I broke each of
these down a little bit deeper in episode four hundred and seventy four, which
was a long time ago. So to save you having to scroll back through
the feed to find it. You can send me a DM on Instagram.
I'm there at Steph Taylor dot co. If you send me the number four
seven four, four hundred and seventy four, just that one number, then
I will send you a direct link to listen to that episode. Okay,
The second big takeaway content marketing is still a super effective way to grow your
audience and nurture them to be ready to buy from you, but you have
to be consistent. And being consistent is easy for the first few weeks when
it's all fun and it's shiny, but then when you get busy, it's
a lot harder. So you have to make consistency as easy as possible,
otherwise you just won't be consistent. And it's very easy to say, well,
I tried showing up on Instagram, or I tried showing up on tick,
or I posted a few times to LinkedIn and I just didn't see results.
Or I started a podcast and I shared episodes for four weeks, but
then I just stopped because I wasn't seeing results. And it usually takes a
little bit longer than four weeks before you start to see the actual return on
any of the time that you're putting into these things. So yeah, you
do have to make it as easy as possible, otherwise you're going to struggle
to be consistent with it over the long term. And you know, I've
stuck with this show for eight hundred episodes, which is incredible. If anybody
who knows me in real life will be like, how on earth have you
stuck with one thing for so long without getting bought? And that is because
I've made it as easy as possible to be consistent with this show. So
back in episode five hundred and seventeen, I shared five ways that you can
make content creation less time consuming, and I'll give you the quick overview.
So firstly, you can survey your audience to give you content ideas. That'll
save you time in coming up with ideas. Secondly, work with your strengths
rather than what you think you have to do. If you hate being on
video, don't try and do Instagram reels because you're not gonna be able to
stick with it. It's going to take you a lot longer. You're gonna
hate it, you're not gonna be able to stick with it and be consistent.
Number Three, you don't need to be on every single platform. Just
pick one and do that one consistently, rather than taking the broad scattergun approach
and trying to be on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all of
the places. Just pick one and do that one really well, and do
it consistently. Repurpose every piece of content. So all of these podcast episodes
become snippets for my daily bizbooster emails, they become Instagram reels, they become
all of the different pieces of content, so that we're squeezing maximum juice out
of the time that it takes to create one piece of content. And then
finally ask yourself, what would this look like if it were easy? So
that's a great question that I love from Tim Ferriss's book Tribe of Mentors.
What would this look like if it were easy? Like, what is the
simplest way that you can do it? For example, I do Instagram reels,
but I know for me remembering to make up a camera and record myself
talking to the camera and sharing that as a reel, that's a lot of
work. So for me to make it easy, what I do is sometimes
when I'm recording a podcast episode, I switch by webcam on I record the
video of it, my team splits that into little reels they edited, we
schedule it, they go on Instagram. So very very minimal amount of work
of extra work for me to create a reel from a podcast episode if you
want that whole episode on how to make content creation less time consuming. And
I go a little bit deeper into each one of those tips, send me
a DM on Instagram, send me five, one, seven, five hundred
and seventeen. I'm there at Steph Taylor dot co. Okay, number three,
You can have a super profitable launch with a small audience. So when
you are launching a course, program, membership, any kind of digital product,
basically any kind of online offer, it can still be profitable with a
small audience. It just might mean that your first launch is a little bit
smaller than your expectations. But launching is something that you do more than just
once. It's not something that happens the first time you put your offer out
there. It's more of like a limited time campaign, a limited time push
to sell an offer, than something you just do the first time. Now,
launching to a small audience is much much better than not ever launching,
because if you keep waiting around for your audience to be big enough to launch,
you'll probably never end up launching the thing. Once you have that small
launch, the first small launch, now you have a little bit of a
cash injection that you can potentially reinvest into rinsing, repeating, scaling it because
now you know that it converts, so you can grow your audience a lot
faster because you now have a little bit of budget that you can put into
Facebook ads or Pinterest ads or Google ads or hiring a marketer, whatever,
you can reinvest and that allows you to grow a little bit faster. In
episode five hundred and nineteen, I shared five things that matter more than your
audience size in a launch. These five things are how nurtured and engaged your
audience is, so how much they know you, like you, and trust
you. How well they under stand the problem that your offer solves or the
transformation that your offer delivers. How well they understand the solution, so,
how well they understand that your offer delivers that solution to their problem. How
well you how well you address their hesitations, because if they still have hesitations
that are not addressed, they are not going to buy. And then,
lastly, how well you show them why they need to prioritize spending money on
this thing right now. Okay, number four the fourth takeaway you find time
for the things that you prioritize, so there's not enough time to do the
things you want to do in your business. It's because you're not prioritizing them.
And I know that sounds really harsh, but when I look back over
the last eight years that I've been in business, I have been most effective
with my time when I've been the most busy. So for example, when
I started my very first business, I was working full time. I was
working close to sixty hours a week, and on top of that, I
was launching a business, so I was getting up at like four or five
am doing it couple of hours of work on my business, and because I
only had a few hours before I went into the office each day, I
had to be really, really intentional about where I was spending my time.
It forced me to prioritize the important things, the things that had the highest
yield, rather than the things that made me feel like I was being productive
but weren't really moving the needle. Another time was when I was working part
time for a startup. I was doing client works. I was growing essentially
what I was trying to grow into an agency, and I was also studying
full time, so I was pretty I was pretty busy at the time,
and these things I had to be really intentional with my time. When you're
busy and you don't have enough time to do everything, you have to prioritize.
But the problem is, I see so many online business owners prioritizing the
wrong things, the things that feel really easy to do. Engaging with people
on Instagram, spending an hour of writing an Instagram caption, spending two hours
editing a reel. Those things, yeah, like they feel like you're doing
something, but they're not going to actually move the needle. They're not the
best use of your time. So in episode five hundred and sixty, I
shared five things that I've done to prioritize my tasks and find time to take
action on the things that matter. So these five things are Firstly, I
identified my queen bee role in the business. If you haven't read the book
Clockwork, go and read it because it talks about the queen bee role in
a bit more depth. But essentially, it's the one thing in my business
that is the best use of my time. I've also automated nearly everything that
can be automated. I mean, our software expenses are second only to human
expenses team expenses because the systems that we have can save so much time.
I've also delegated more to my team. Now, if you don't have the
budget to delegate or to invest in those systems, that is why I created
my membership conversion campaigns, because I honestly believe that you need to start generating
cash injections so that you can start to buy back your time through those systems,
and that support doors are currently closed for conversion campaigns, but they'll be
opening up again for three days in early May. If you send me a
DM, send me cc on Instagram, I'm there at Steph Taylor dot co,
and I will put you on the wait list so that you don't miss
out when doors are open the next time. Okay. The next thing I
did to prioritize my tasks and find time to take action on the important things
was creating processes and templates for as many things as possible, and then lastly
creating structure in my weeks, my months, and my years. So,
for example, we put our launchers in the calendar for the year, so
that we know exactly this is what we're working towards at any point in time
in the business. Now, if you want that whole episode to get a
little bit deeper into those things that I've done to find that time and to
prioritize my tasks, DM me the number five hundred and sixty five to sixty
on Instagram and I will send you the direct link so you don't have to
go looking for it. And then last the fifth takeaway for this part one,
there will be a part two to this episode to stick around for that
one on Wednesday. If you are struggling to make consistent sales in your business,
it's likely due to one of these four reasons. Number one is that
you're not giving your audience enough different ways to work with you. Number two
is you're giving your audience too many different ways to work with you, and
you're letting them pick and choose. Now, the problem with this one is
it might intuitively seem like the more offers you have, then the more sales
you'll make. But if your audience is picking and choosing, they don't necessarily
know what is going to be the right offer to solve their problem. You
are the expert you know what they need. They're going to just pick what
they think that they need, which is not always aligned. It could also
be that you are trying to solve the same problem in all of your different
offers. So let's say that you have a course, a coaching, and
a membership of course, one on one coaching and a membership, and they
all solve the exact same problem. Somebody who has done your one on one
coaching is not then going to go and join your membership or sign up for
your course. Somebody who's done your course, they've ideally, by the time
they finished that course, they've solved that problem. They're not then going to
go and sign up to work with you one on one because they no longer
have that problem. And then, lastly, it could be that you are
trying to solve all of your audience's problems in one offer. I see this
a lot with people who are creating an online course for the first time.
They try and solve about twenty different problems in one course and it ends up
being this big monstrosity of a thing that they can never ever finish creating.
It overwhelms them when they're creating it, and overwhelms their students when they buy
it, and then they're like, Ah, there is just so much to
do here, I can't do it. So I break down each of these
a little bit deeper in episode five hundred and sixty four. DM me five
sixty four, five hundred and sixty four on Instagram. I'm there at Steph
Taylor dot co. Send me those numbers if you want those episode numbers,
and I will send you the direct links to listen to those and tune in
on Wednesday four Part two. Now, if you're not already subscribed to the
show, hit the little plus or the follow button and you'll just get that
episode straight into your podcast app on Wednesday when it goes live. That is
it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you
for listening to the last eight hundred episodes. If you have anything you want
to say, any feedback, anything you've learned over the last eight hundred episodes,
I really would love a quick rating and a review in Apple Podcasts.
It takes you thirty seconds. I read all of them, and it just
reminds me that there are real humans on the other side of the microphone that
I'm always talking into thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.