You can't control the external things that affect your growth and your business growth,
but you have one hundred percent control over your own actions. And way too
many business owners try to change the external things and they fail, and they
think like, oh, if only this was different, or if only that
was different. You can't change how many hours there are in a day.
You can't influence whether the Instagram algorithm shows your content to people, but you
can change how you work within these constraints. 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 dollars 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, adviceable 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 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 Imperfect
Action. This is episode seven hundred and ninety five. Today, I want
to share a bunch of little random lessons and things that I wish I'd known
before I started my business, because hindsight is such a beautiful thing, and
these lessons might feel and seem really obvious to me now, but a couple
of years ago they weren't. And even though I might have heard these lessons
from people I followed online or podcasts I was listening to, or books that
I was reading, I think we often don't learn the lesson until we actually
go through it ourselves. We hear it from someone else, but we have
to go through it, and it has to hurt for us to learn.
You know. It's like the child where you're like, don't put your hand
on the hot stove, and the child doesn't listen, and then they only
learn that lesson when they put their hand on the stove and it hurts.
So I know that some of these lessons, you will listen to them and
you'll be like, yeah, of course, Like that's so obvious, but
until you actually implement that lesson, it's gonna keep showing up until you figure
it out yourself. Right. So some of these you might think on the
surface they seem really obvious, but if you dig a little bit deeper,
you might not actually be in accordance with these lessons just yet. Okay,
so I'm gonna jump into the lesson number one. You can be the best
expert, have the best offers, deliver the best results, but until you
get good at selling, you're going to struggle to make sales. I learned
this one the hard way. I used to hate selling. I felt like
whenever I was telling anybody about how they could work with me, whenever I
got to the end of a webinar and I was pitching my course or my
program, like all of these things, I would sort of rush over my
offer. Oh, by the way, this is how you can work with
me, rather than making it the main event, right, I would just
rush through the sales pitch part, and then I would wonder why people weren't
buying. And here's the thing that I think has really flipped my mindset around
selling is my offers are incredibly good. They get my students and my clients
incredibly good results, and they are the solution that somebody is looking for to
solve their problem or to achieve a particular outcome, and they can't buy that
solution. They can't achieve that outcome unless they know what I am selling.
So by me getting better at selling, I get better at also serving my
audience. Okay, the second thing that I learned is cash flow and profit
aren't the same thing, and you need cash flow to survive in business.
This is kind of oh my goodness. Like I have an accounting background,
I worked in accounting for four years, I have an accounting degree. Like
I've worked. I also even worked in insolvency with businesses that literally ran out
of cash flow. And I still had to learn this in my own business
for me to understand just how important the difference between cash flow and profit,
and also the difference between cash flow profit and sales. How important these differences
are. Right, you can have a super profitable business and no cash flow.
You can make a lot of sales and not have any cash flow and
not have any profit. So I really can't emphasize how important it is is
to be on top of your cash flow to be tracking what's coming in,
what's coming out, and having a budget for it so that when that unexpected
tax bill arrives, it's not so unexpected. You know, the tax bill
is pretty expected every single year, like it's going to arise, and if
you've made a lot more sales one year, you're gonna have a bigger tax
bill. So making sure that we've always got that cash flow and you know
what's going in and out. Number three. Unless you do the things that
feel scary, you and your business won't grow. The scary things are good,
but I think a lot of the time we take it as a sign
that we shouldn't do something. Oh, creating a course feel scary because somebody
might not buy, so I'm not going to do it, Like that's a
sign that I shouldn't do it. No, fear isn't necessarily your gut telling
you that it's not a good idea. I actually think it's the opposite.
I think fear shows you what matters to you. You are afraid of this
thing because the outcome is important to you. You're not afraid of it because
it's a bad idea. Okay, there's a difference between feeling afraid of something
because it's outside of your comfort zone versus your gut being like, oh,
this doesn't feel aligned with my vision or doesn't feel aligned with me for whatever
other reason, it doesn't feel in integrity with me, or it's not allied
with my values versus this thing's scary because I might invest time into it and
it might fail. Big difference. Number four. Failure and rejection are a
good thing because you can learn from it. Okay, this segues beautifully because
a lot of the time, when we're afraid of something, it's we're really
afraid that we're gonna fail at whatever we try, or we're gonna go for
something, we're gonna, you know, pitch a collaboration, or we're gonna,
you know, pitch a potential client and they're gonna reject us. We're
afraid of failure and we're afraid of rejection. But these things are good because
there's always a lesson in it. When we launch something and the launch doesn't
quite meet our expectations, there's a lot we can learn from that launch.
And it's actually been the launches where I've failed that I've learned the most from
than the ones that have been so good. Where I'm like, oh cool,
this one worked. I don't need to go back and dive deep into
the lessons because it obviously worked. Same with rejection. If a client didn't
want to work with us, if they've rejected our pitch, we can find
out why what was it that made you decide not to work with me?
Okay, great, I'm gonna take that on board and potentially tweak my process
or tweak my messaging or tweak something. And that way I've learned from it.
I'm not just collapsing into a heap and crying about it and having a
little pity party for myself. I'm taking something constructive from that experience. Number
five, The stuff that really truly matters in growing your business can feel really
boring. Like HD brain loves sparkly squirrels, it loves novelty, it loves
all the new things. But I've realized that it's not about doing all of
the shiny fun things, and it's actually more about structure, systems, consistency,
things that do not come naturally to me. But that I realize I
have to prioritize getting comfortable with getting good at if I want my business to
grow. You know, It's always going to be so much more fun to
create a pretty Instagram graphic or write a caption or chase some shiny idea than
it is going to be to sit down and do your cash flow budget for
the week. But only one of these is going to ensure you have enough
cash in your bank account to pay the bills. Number six, your self
worth has nothing to do with your business success, Okay, and vice versa.
Your business success should not determine your self worth. Okay, you feel
good about yourself, then yes, that's going to make it easier for your
business to succeed. But if your business isn't succeeding, or you're having a
bad month or a bad year, this shouldn't define how you feel about yourself.
And I know this can be really hard when you've put so much time
and effort and so much of yourself into your business. But your business is
not an extension of yourself, and because your business is having a bad year
doesn't make you any less of an epic human than if you are having a
good year. Number seven, it is okay to say no. Say no
to that client, that collaboration, that opportunity. You only have a certain
amount of time each day, and every time you say yes, that takes
time away from something else you can be doing. And whenever you decide to
do something, you are also saying no to something else. So it's always
a good idea to think about what else by saying yes to this thing?
What else might I be saying no to? I remember a couple of years
ago reading Tim Ferriss's book Tribe of Mentors, where he interviews a whole bunch
of high performing people in a whole bunch of different industries and fields. And
I can't remember who said it, but somebody gave the little quote that was.
When I'm thinking about whether to say yes or no to something, I
ask myself, would I say yes to this if it was tomorrow morning?
That is always a little fun one to play around with, because we'd like
to think we're going to be less busy in the future. We're going to
have so much time in the future, and we have not that much time
right now. So if it was tomorrow morning, would you say yes to
this thing? Number eight. Measure your success in the context of your vision,
not someone else's success. Okay, So when we go on social media
and we see somebody else celebrating a million dollar a year and we're like,
oh, why is my business only at one hundred thousand dollars? Oh my
goodness, that doesn't feel great. And we don't see all of the other
bits that went into that person's success. We don't see the hard work,
we don't see the struggle, we don't see the tears. We don't know
if that million dollar a year actually translated into profit. Maybe they spent nine
hundred and ninety nine thousand dollars on Facebook cards to have that million dollar year.
Okay, so we don't know the full story. And it's so easy
to look at somebody else and be like, Oh, they've just got it
so perfect. Their life looks so good, their business looks so smooth,
and mine's just feels like a mess. Okay. It's so easy to feel
that way. And I think by measuring your own success against your vision and
against your goals that are moving you closer to that vision, that gives you
a better picture of where you are and how you're going. You know,
you might it might not be in your vision to build the kind of business
like that person you are comparing yourself to has, And that's fine because that's
not your vision. Like I've speaking about this a lot lately, the fastest
way to create a business you hate is to follow somebody else's vision. All
right. Number nine, you can be grateful for where you are and still
have big dreams you are working towards. You can enjoy the moment right now.
You can reflect on how incredible it is that you quit your job,
or that you started this business, or that you got that first client or
that ten client, or had a fifty thousand dollar a month or a hundred
thousand dollar a year or whatever it is. You can be so grateful for
that and celebrate that without accepting that, you know, without it being like
an acceptance of this is all I'm this is where I'm going to be.
Like, it's not settling to be happy for where you are. Okay,
you can still have those big dreams, those big visions and celebrate where you
are right now. Otherwise you're going to get to those big dreams and those
big visions and you're going to have missed that entire journey along the way,
and you're gonna get there and you're gonna look around and be like, Okay,
cool, what's next, and you're going to keep working towards that next
thing, So enjoy the journey. It is such a journey. Number ten,
The strategy behind what you sell is more important than how you promote it.
You can have the best marketing in the world, the best followers,
the best podcast and still struggle to make consistent sales if you don't have any
kind of strategy behind your offer suite right. Offer Less sell More was born
out of this struggle that I've seen way too many business owners in where they
think the solution is to get more clients through the door, and they put
all their time and energy towards growing their audience when they don't even have the
right things to sell their audience yet, and even once they do have some
of the right things, they don't have anything else to sell them next.
Then they have to get new clients in for the same offers, rather than
thinking how can I keep helping these same people over and over again? And
that's why I created offer Less Sell More. It's a three hour self paced
course to design and refine your offer suite so that you make consistent sales without
constantly having to try and grow your audience and get new people through the door.
You can find that at Steph Taylor dot co. Slash olsm will put
the link in the show notes as well. It's self paced. You sign
up, you get instant access, so you could literally have redesigned your office
suite entirely by the end of today. Number eleven. You can't control the
external things that affect your growth and your business growth, but you have one
hundred percent control over your own actions. And way too many business owners try
to change the external things and they fail, and they think like, ah,
if only this was different, or if only that was different. You
can't change how many hours there are in a day. You can't influence whether
the Instagram algorithm shows your content to people, but you can change how you
work within these constraints. The only thing that is blocking what you want to
achieve is your actions, your habits, your thoughts. If you change the
things, everything else changes too. And it's a much more empowered way to
approach it, like how can okay, great, this is my constraint.
What can I do within this constraint? Rather than being like, oh,
like, I can't help it, I can't change like if only I could
change this, if only I could change that, versus okay, I can't
change this, what else can I do? Number twelve. You don't always
have to launch new things. I thought I always had to keep launching new
courses. I thought I had to build this entire library of things, and
each time I had to have one launch, and then that would go and
live in my library and it would continue to generate sales. But it wasn't
until I doubled down and I launched, and I launched, and I launched
the same product, the podcast launch Plan, over and over and over again
that I started to see measurable growth. And from tracking those numbers of those
launches so well, I could start to put fuel on the fire. And
by that I mean I started running paid ads because I knew this was generating
a good return, and then from that I could scale it up because it
was profitable. So doubling down on one product and launching it over and over
again that allows you to grow your impact and your income a lot faster than
if you're constantly creating these new things to launch. And this is the whole
basis of the Launch Magic framework. It's a system for a launch where you
can repeat it over and over again, each time learning, taking intel,
applying that tweaking it and scaling it up. It doesn't teach you how to
create a course, or how to build a membership, or how to run
a group program. But it does teach you how to create your own launch
strategy, your own launch strategy, not a copy and paste one, not
a Trello board with a strategy on how to launch, because that's not a
strategy, that's a plan. So you create that strategy that you can repeat
over and over again so that your course, or your membership or your program
becomes an income generating asset time and it's not just once. That'll be opening
up again in July. You can get on the wait list for Launch Magic
at Steph Taylor dot co. Slash Magic all right, number thirteen. There
are no shortcuts, hacks, magic pills, nothing like that. Right.
If it was quick and easy, if there were shortcuts, everybody would be
doing them and they wouldn't work anymore. The people who succeed in the long
term are the ones who put in the reps. If you've read the book
Atomic Habits, you'll know his analogy about putting in the reps. You go
to the gym every day, you put the reps in and that's how you
get fit, and you build muscle, you reach your goals. So you've
got to keep showing up day in day out, doing the work even when
you are not seeing those instant results, and keeping your eye on that long
term goal. A lot of the time, the things that give us short
term wins are not the things that are going to give us long term success.
They feel the short term wins feel like we're getting some where, But
a lot of the time, the things that don't feel good in the moment
are what gives us that long term success. You know, you might be
so tempted to skip the gym because it feels better to flop on the couch
after a long day of work in the moment, But over the long term,
if you keep skipping the gym, you're not going to see the results.
And unfortunately, business is kind of the same Number fourteen. You are
the most important resource in your business, not money, not your software.
You and unfortunately, many business owners put themselves last. They live in this
constant state of stress. They prioritize work over healthy eating and exercise. They
prioritize everybody else around them over themselves. I see this especially with women.
They burn out after all of this, and you are most valuable to your
business When you have energy. You can't show up well for your clients,
or for your team, or for anybody else. If you are burnt out,
You can't have incredible ideas for offers, for content, for ways to
better serve your clients if you don't have the mental white space to allow these
ideas to pop up. So prioritizing that self care is so so so important.
And I know it sounds so fluffy, like, yes, self care,
but you really need to and you need to find what works for you.
For me, one of the things I always prioritize in my budget is
travel because I know I feel my best and I have my best ideas when
I'm in a new environment, when I'm on a plane, or when I'm
sitting in a cafe in Rome, or I'm walking down the street in Mexico,
Like, that's when I have my best ideas. They pop up when
I'm not thinking about work, when I'm not at my desk frantically typing away.
That's when I have my best ideas. And from having that travel,
I also feel best, and that means I can show up better for my
team, for my students, for my clients. All right, Number fifteen,
You can't think or plan your way to success, no matter how scary
it feels. You're never gonna The only way to overcome those fears and those
doubts is to take action. You're never gonna plan your way through those fears
and those doubts. And unfortunately we can think, well, I'm not confident.
I'm gonna wait until I feel more confident. I'm not ready. I
don't know enough yet, so I'm gonna wait until I know enough yet.
And a lot of the time, the only way to feel confident, the
only way to learn enough is to do the things before you feel ready.
Like a lot of people are like, oh, Steph, I wish I
could be confident like you. I am the first person to say, like,
I am not a super confident person. I am very comfortable talking into
a podcast microphone because I've been doing it for five years. I am very
comfortable now teaching a workshop in person, or speaking on stage or doing a
virtual class for my Freedom fast Track students, for example, Like, I'm
so comfortable doing these things because I've been doing them a lot. But the
first podcast episode I recorded, like you can go back and listen to that.
It was terrible. The first time I taught a live lesson on Zoom,
the first time I stood on stage. All of these things felt so
uncomfortable. But I would never have built the confidence to do them had I
not done them. Like I'm not extroverted. I'm not a super confident person
at all. Like put me in a room at an event or in any
kind of networking, and I will probably you'll probably find me at the food
table or at the alcohol table, like to be completely honest, because I
don't feel that confident around people I don't know. But for me, like
this microphone, I could now riff into a microphone because this is something I've
become comfortable doing. So you build that confidence by doing it. When you
do it, you get this little feedback loop where it's like, huh,
I didn't die. This wasn't so bad. Maybe I can do it again.
And then you do it again, and then you get a little bit
of feedback that's like, Oh, this wasn't so bad, I didn't die.
Do it again, and then maybe somebody's like, oh, you're really
like I learned something from you, and you get another bit of feedback that's
like, huh okay, this is making a difference to people, So you
do it again. And that's how you build that confidence. You don't sit
there waiting to feel more confident or absorbing tips on how to feel confident and
saving all of the mindset quotes and all of that. Like, you just
have to take action. And that's why the name of this podcast is in
perfect action, all right, that is it. Hopefully, even if you
only take one of the tips out of this episode, hopefully you can apply
them to your business and save yourself from making the mistakes that I made.
If you have any friends who you think would better fit from listening to this
episode and applying some of these lessons to their business, hit the share button.
Share it with them. It's how I get to help more people.
And if you haven't taken the time to leave a review yet, please I
do read every single one of them. It takes you like thirty seconds,
and it means a lot to me because I do spend a lot of my
time talking into this microphone and it's always nice to know that somebody's listening and
it's making a difference. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time,