Speaker 1: Once you are already feeling burnt out. You can't push
Speaker 1: your way through it. You can't just muscle your way
Speaker 1: through it and hope that it goes away on its own.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I have tried. You can't push through it.
Speaker 1: You have to do less. You have to rest, You
Speaker 1: have to allow yourself to be bored. We don't like
Speaker 1: to feel bored these days, but sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: allow that space before you can start to feel creatively
Speaker 1: inspired again. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years,
Speaker 1: I read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and
Speaker 1: did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started
Speaker 1: taking imperfect action that my business had its first million
Speaker 1: dollars year. Imperfect Action is about doing things before you're ready,
Speaker 1: prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even
Speaker 1: when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show,
Speaker 1: you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies
Speaker 1: to build a business that brings you more profit, more freedom,
Speaker 1: and even more joy. You want the list to get
Speaker 1: my daily businesses. Every day, I'll send you a bite
Speaker 1: sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in
Speaker 1: a more Intentional Way. Sign up at Steph Taylor dot co,
Speaker 1: forward slash DBB, or at the link in the show notes. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Imperfect Action. This is episode eight hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty eight. Today we're talking about setbacks and obstacles
Speaker 1: in business because I think it's pretty much impossible to
Speaker 1: run a business and not face a lot of setbacks
Speaker 1: along the way. I think back, oh my journey and
Speaker 1: all of the highs and all of the lows, and
Speaker 1: even now when things are going good, I'm like, hmm,
Speaker 1: what's the next thing that's going to go wrong? So
Speaker 1: I know they are pretty much impossible to avoid, and
Speaker 1: even if you try your best to avoid them, you're
Speaker 1: probably still gonna end up facing various setbacks along the way.
Speaker 1: So today I'm talking about six of the most common
Speaker 1: ones that you may face as a business owner and
Speaker 1: what you can do to overcome them and in some
Speaker 1: cases even prevent them. So the first setback is slow
Speaker 1: income growth, very common. This one. You're doing all of
Speaker 1: the things and you think you're doing them right, and
Speaker 1: yet your monthly income just isn't growing. And this is
Speaker 1: so totally normal because growing a business can take a while.
Speaker 1: But then we're shown all of these beautiful overnight success
Speaker 1: stories that this leads you into believing otherwise. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the hardest places to be because this
Speaker 1: is that point where you've got a business. It's running,
Speaker 1: but you're probably not earning as much as you would
Speaker 1: be in your job, or you are earning as much,
Speaker 1: but you're working much harder than you were in a job,
Speaker 1: and you might be questioning, is this worth running my business?
Speaker 1: Or am I just wasting my time? Would it be
Speaker 1: so much easier if I just got a job. The
Speaker 1: ways to overcome this, firstly, I would say stay focused
Speaker 1: on your vision, because chances are you started your business
Speaker 1: for a reason other than as an income source. It
Speaker 1: might be that you wanted the freedom to travel. Maybe
Speaker 1: you wanted the freedom to be at home with your kids,
Speaker 1: the freedom to spend more time with your family. Whatever
Speaker 1: that reason you started your business for, tune back into
Speaker 1: that and remember that when you feel like you want
Speaker 1: to give up, when you feel like you're getting nowhere. Next,
Speaker 1: identify the source of your slow income growth. Is it
Speaker 1: that your business simply isn't reaching enough people, or is
Speaker 1: it that you're not converting those people into buyers? A
Speaker 1: lot of the time when we think our growth is
Speaker 1: because our audience growth is too slow, it's actually not
Speaker 1: an audience growth issue. It's actually a conversion issue. People
Speaker 1: are coming into contact with our business. They might be
Speaker 1: visiting the website, but then they're not buying, or they're
Speaker 1: not inquiring, or they're not signing up to work with you.
Speaker 1: And then also with the clients that you do have,
Speaker 1: how well are you getting them to come back and
Speaker 1: buy from you again and again. You can do this
Speaker 1: really well with a strategic offer suite right. You can
Speaker 1: ensure that you are selling the right offers to the
Speaker 1: right people and getting those people to come back again
Speaker 1: and again, which increases that lifetime value, increases the amount
Speaker 1: that they're spending with you over their lifetime. It also
Speaker 1: means that you can help them at different stages of
Speaker 1: their journey. And this is what I teach inside offer
Speaker 1: Less Sell More, which is like a three hour course
Speaker 1: to completely redesign your office suite to have that strategy
Speaker 1: in place to speed up your income growth and make
Speaker 1: it more consistent. You can find at Steph Taylor dot co.
Speaker 1: Slash OLSM will pop a link to that in the
Speaker 1: show notes as well. The next way to overcome that
Speaker 1: is to get really good at budgeting. So slow income growth,
Speaker 1: You've got to be really good at budgeting. You've got
Speaker 1: to be really good at minimizing your operating expenses. You've
Speaker 1: also got to be really good at minimizing your lifestyle expenses.
Speaker 1: I don't think we talk about this enough, but especially
Speaker 1: when you are a one person show in your business
Speaker 1: and you feel like you can just dip into your
Speaker 1: business account and withdraw it spend it, and that's when
Speaker 1: you can you can run out of money, you can
Speaker 1: find yourself in a bit of trouble. But because it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like it's a business expense, it's not showing
Speaker 1: up in your profit and loss, it doesn't you don't
Speaker 1: feel like it's really impacting your business's growth. But by
Speaker 1: minimizing your operating expenses and your lifestyle expenses, that means
Speaker 1: you can invest a little bit more back into your business,
Speaker 1: investing into something like paid advertising, or working with somebody
Speaker 1: who can help you to be really strategic with your
Speaker 1: messaging or your positioning or your marketing so you can
Speaker 1: or your sales so you can reach more people and
Speaker 1: convert those people into paying clients. Buyers and then grow
Speaker 1: your income that way. The second common setback is slow
Speaker 1: audience growth. This is similar to the last one, but
Speaker 1: not quite the same. Slow audience growth. Maybe you are
Speaker 1: posting to social media, maybe you've got a podcast, you've
Speaker 1: been growing your email list, but it's all just feeling
Speaker 1: so slow, and you're ready to start growing faster, but
Speaker 1: it's just not happening fast enough. And that's because organic
Speaker 1: audience growth is slow. I've often said this, Instagram is
Speaker 1: not an audience growth tool. It's a nurturing tool for
Speaker 1: your existing audience. A podcast is the same. It's not
Speaker 1: an audience growth tool, it's a nurturing tool. So to
Speaker 1: speed up your audience growth right now, you have two
Speaker 1: main options. The first one is paid advertising. I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't recommend doing this one until you've got clear messaging.
Speaker 1: You know that your sales processes convert, you have a
Speaker 1: strategy for taking somebody from cold to buying from you,
Speaker 1: and you know all of this is working. You're not
Speaker 1: just blindly throwing money into paid ads and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: three people clicked. I don't know if that's good. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's bad, because you really don't until
Speaker 1: you have some way of knowing that people are going
Speaker 1: through this process and how many of them are converting.
Speaker 1: The second way to speed up your audience growth, and
Speaker 1: this one you can do for free, and that is
Speaker 1: getting yourself in front of other people's audiences. Partnerships and collaborations.
Speaker 1: These are really effective. They sound really lame because everyone's like, yeah, collaborations,
Speaker 1: but there are really effective way to grow your audience.
Speaker 1: Pitching podcast interviews that's a collaboration. Pitching to teach to
Speaker 1: somebody's online course or membership, that's a collaboration. Speaking at
Speaker 1: somebody's event that's a collaboration. Pitching the media with a
Speaker 1: story idea. That's a collaboration of sorts. These all get
Speaker 1: you in front of other people's audiences, where then you
Speaker 1: can send them back to your audience. Setback number three.
Speaker 1: You might face running out of cash even if your
Speaker 1: business is technically profitable. Your business can be making money,
Speaker 1: it can be super profitable, and you can still have
Speaker 1: no cash in your bank account if you haven't retained
Speaker 1: enough cash to pay your tax bill or your GST,
Speaker 1: or your sales tax bill, or your pay as you
Speaker 1: go withholding, which we have to pay here in Australia,
Speaker 1: if we have employees, these things can be a little
Speaker 1: bit of a surprise and you can suddenly end up
Speaker 1: with not enough cash in your bank account, or maybe
Speaker 1: if you've been withdrawing money from your business account to
Speaker 1: pay for lifestyle expenses. Those lifestyle expenses aren't a business expense.
Speaker 1: They're not showing up in your business profit and loss,
Speaker 1: but they are coming out of your bank accounts, so
Speaker 1: they're affecting your cash balance. And if you don't know
Speaker 1: the difference between profit and cash, please google difference between
Speaker 1: profit and cash because that's one of the most fundamental
Speaker 1: concepts you need to know as a business owner. It's
Speaker 1: more important than how to get more Instagram followers, I
Speaker 1: promise you. So how to overcome this, get really good
Speaker 1: at budgeting for cash flow. Find a spreadsheet. You can
Speaker 1: google templates for cash flow budgeting, cash flow forecasting and
Speaker 1: use this spreadsheet every week. Update it and it'll allow
Speaker 1: you to forecast your cash inflows and your cash outgoings,
Speaker 1: so you can see what your bank balance will be
Speaker 1: into the future. And if you see that three months
Speaker 1: from now, your bank balance is going to hit zero
Speaker 1: because you paid that tax bill, well now you know, okay,
Speaker 1: you need to do something to make sure that you
Speaker 1: are bringing in enough cash now so that in three
Speaker 1: months time you're not going to run out of cash.
Speaker 1: Set Back number four Unexpected tax bills kind of related
Speaker 1: to the last one, but very unfortunately, very much a reality.
Speaker 1: When you start making money, you also have to pay tax.
Speaker 1: I know it sucks sometimes, and you might already have
Speaker 1: spent this money by the time your tax bill is due.
Speaker 1: Here in Australia, if you're a company, our end of
Speaker 1: final actual years at the end of June, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we don't have to pay the tax until
Speaker 1: May the following year, that money might have already gone
Speaker 1: by then. Now Here in Australia, the ATO, they're really
Speaker 1: good with small businesses. They'll let you pay it off
Speaker 1: on a payment plan with fairly minimal interest, and it's
Speaker 1: really easy to set up. That's one great option for
Speaker 1: managing cash flow. If you're not in Australia. I don't
Speaker 1: know what your local tax departments do, but I would
Speaker 1: recommend always get a good accountant, make friends with them,
Speaker 1: ask them, Hey, what's my tax bill looking like for
Speaker 1: this year? Seriously, because then you can start to budget
Speaker 1: for it. Start putting away a percentage of each sale
Speaker 1: that you make into a separate account for tax only.
Speaker 1: That money is not your money, that is money that
Speaker 1: belongs to the tax department, tax office. And then at
Speaker 1: year end, if your tax bill ends up being less
Speaker 1: than what you saved, great, Now you have a surplus
Speaker 1: amount of cash that you can invest in something like
Speaker 1: a group program or some coaching, or some marketing for
Speaker 1: your business, or you can pay yourself a little bonus.
Speaker 1: But at least you know you've got enough to cover
Speaker 1: that tax bill. And if you haven't read the book
Speaker 1: Profit First by Mike mccullowicks, I would highly recommend it
Speaker 1: Profit First. He teaches a really great way that you
Speaker 1: can start to manage where you're allocating the different amounts
Speaker 1: of money that you get from each sale, and it
Speaker 1: makes it so much easier. You don't end up with
Speaker 1: these unexpected bills that you just don't have the cash for.
Speaker 1: Set Back Number five copycats and impersonators. I get a
Speaker 1: lot of impersonators on Instagram where somebody's literally just copy
Speaker 1: my entire Instagram account and they're pretending to be me
Speaker 1: and then they DM my followers. So just as a
Speaker 1: heads up. I will never DM you and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you should buy my core or you should buy this
Speaker 1: thing unless you have expressly said that you would be
Speaker 1: interested in it. So just be mindful of that. And
Speaker 1: also so never click a link that looks really weird,
Speaker 1: because that is how you get scammed. So that's impersonation.
Speaker 1: Copycats are more somebody who is copying your intellectual property,
Speaker 1: your IP. And that might be your business name, it
Speaker 1: might be your course name, your course content, your podcast name,
Speaker 1: your ebooks, your designs, your logo, anything that is your
Speaker 1: property that you have created. It's like digital property that
Speaker 1: is theft. If you think back to the two thousands
Speaker 1: early two thousands when they had those wonderful ads, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal this, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: steal that at the beginning of like every DVD that
Speaker 1: you hired or every video that you hired IP is similar.
Speaker 1: It's property that you can't physically hold on to and
Speaker 1: keep and somebody can go and copy that and it
Speaker 1: is still stealing. So if your business name isn't trademarked
Speaker 1: and somebody goes and copies it, most of the time
Speaker 1: there's not much you can do now this very from
Speaker 1: country to country, so always talk to a lawyer in
Speaker 1: your country. My general understanding in Australia, I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but my general understanding is that your course content, your ebooks,
Speaker 1: content that you've created on social media that is all
Speaker 1: under the Copyright Act, so you don't need to go
Speaker 1: and trademark the actual content. But if your course has
Speaker 1: a really cool name, like launch Magic, for example, I've
Speaker 1: trademarked that name so that nobody else is going to
Speaker 1: go and create a launch Magic. But if you have
Speaker 1: a course and somebody goes and copies all of your
Speaker 1: course content and then start selling it to their audience,
Speaker 1: that is copyrighted content, and then you can take action
Speaker 1: against them. That is my general understanding. Talk to a
Speaker 1: lawyer if you have a copycat. But prevention with this
Speaker 1: is always better than having to deal with it when
Speaker 1: it happens. So trademarking brand names really really important. I
Speaker 1: know it's it's not cheap. It's kind of annoying when
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I'm spending, however, many hundreds of dollars
Speaker 1: doing this thing and I'm not really seeing any kind
Speaker 1: of result from it. It's one of those things. That's
Speaker 1: like insurance, right. We don't pay for insurance because it's
Speaker 1: giving us a win. We pay for insurance to cover
Speaker 1: our butts when something goes wrong. And if it could
Speaker 1: be expensive if somebody copied you, Like if somebody copied
Speaker 1: launch Magic, it would be really annoying because I would
Speaker 1: have to go and get a new logo done. I've
Speaker 1: built up a lot of brand equity around Launch Magic.
Speaker 1: People know the name, so if it would be expensive
Speaker 1: for somebody to copy you, it would be expensive for
Speaker 1: you to change things, then go and trademark them. Get
Speaker 1: legal advice as well. My friend Riz from found Legal
Speaker 1: that's found with two d's found d. She and her
Speaker 1: team have created this fantastic copycat kit. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: if you even just google copycat kit you'll find it.
Speaker 1: But we'll also include a link to it in the
Speaker 1: show notes. And essentially what it is is it's a
Speaker 1: little kit of legal things for if somebody has ripped
Speaker 1: off your trademark or has copied your things, and what
Speaker 1: to do and all of the templates and things that
Speaker 1: you need to fix the situation. Okay, set back number
Speaker 1: six burnout. I've experienced this a few times in my business,
Speaker 1: and I've seen this happen to a lot of my
Speaker 1: business friends over and over again. And it's a big spectrum.
Speaker 1: Like on one end, on the extreme end, burnout can
Speaker 1: look like severe depression. But on the less extreme end
Speaker 1: and maybe like the earlier warning sign is when you're
Speaker 1: experiencing a creative lull or you're not feeling inspired, you're
Speaker 1: not enjoying what you do anymore, super super common, especially
Speaker 1: in the missy middle stage of your business, when you
Speaker 1: might be working really hard, spinning your hamster wheel and
Speaker 1: you feel like you're not getting anywhere and it's exhausting.
Speaker 1: Now with burnout, preventing it is much easier than fixing it,
Speaker 1: but it's really hard because it goes against what most
Speaker 1: business owners naturally what then natural tendency is, which for
Speaker 1: most of us, the tendency is to work harder, the
Speaker 1: tendency is to be overachievers. But preventing it means prioritizing rest,
Speaker 1: it means doing less. It means prioritizing exercise, connection with
Speaker 1: friends and family, eating well, not living off coffee and
Speaker 1: adrenaline NonStop, which I have gone through stages in my
Speaker 1: business where I have literally been living off coffee and adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and it's not good for your body, it's not good
Speaker 1: for your mind. And then that's when you stop feel
Speaker 1: feeling inspired, you stop feeling creative, because you are literally
Speaker 1: in fight or flight. You're literally in survival mode, and
Speaker 1: it gets to this point where your body's like, I
Speaker 1: actually cannot do anymore. And that's when burnout sets in.
Speaker 1: So once you are already at that stage where you
Speaker 1: are burnt out, and I know that some of you
Speaker 1: listening to this will be because this is a question
Speaker 1: I get a lot of the time, like how do
Speaker 1: I deal with it? Once you are already feeling burnt out,
Speaker 1: you can't push your way through it. You can't just
Speaker 1: muscle your way through it and hope that it goes
Speaker 1: away on its own. Trust me, I have tried. You
Speaker 1: can't push through it. You have to do less. You
Speaker 1: have to rest, You have to allow yourself to be bored.
Speaker 1: We don't like to feel bored these days, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you need to allow that space before you can start
Speaker 1: to feel creatively inspired again. If you can try to
Speaker 1: cut back on your work, take time off, if you
Speaker 1: can maybe bring in some support, maybe hire an assistant
Speaker 1: to help take some things off your plate and then
Speaker 1: create some time to do a few things that you
Speaker 1: love each week, catch up with a friend, or do
Speaker 1: a pottery class, or do yoga, whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you can put in your calendar, so you've got something
Speaker 1: there that you enjoy and you look forward to that
Speaker 1: isn't related to just the monotony of every single day,
Speaker 1: and it's not related to work. Okay, So prioritizing those
Speaker 1: things they are so important. You know, we talk about
Speaker 1: we talk about self care a lot in our society,
Speaker 1: and we talk about putting your oxygen mask on first
Speaker 1: so you can help other people, But how often do
Speaker 1: you actually practice that? How often are you prioritizing yourself
Speaker 1: so that you can show up for everybody else in
Speaker 1: your life, your clients, or your family or everybody who
Speaker 1: depends on you. So I mean this is like this
Speaker 1: warrants an entire episode on its own. I've talked about
Speaker 1: burnout a bit in the past, but this is really
Speaker 1: just an overview, like you need to prioritize yourself otherwise
Speaker 1: you will burn out. You need to rest otherwise you
Speaker 1: will burn out. Okay, So there you have at six
Speaker 1: very common setbacks that you may face as a business owner.
Speaker 1: I hope you don't face all of them at the
Speaker 1: same time, but it's not uncommon to face a couple
Speaker 1: at once, and it can feel really hard, and you
Speaker 1: can feel like you want to give up. But I
Speaker 1: promise you they will pass, and you will become stronger,
Speaker 1: and you will learn lessons from them so that they
Speaker 1: don't happen again. But in the meantime, I hope this
Speaker 1: episode really helped you to overcome these stepbacks. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you haven't already left a
Speaker 1: rating and a review, please do take two minutes to
Speaker 1: do so, probably even less like thirty seconds. Hit the
Speaker 1: little number of stars for however many stars you think
Speaker 1: this show is and write a little sentence about what
Speaker 1: you enjoy about this show. I really appreciate every single one.
Speaker 1: I read them all, And if you're not already subscribed
Speaker 1: to the show, hit subscribe or follow and it'll just
Speaker 1: mean that you get every new episode straight to your
Speaker 1: podcast app every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Catch you next time.