Online Business Tip: Is There a Secret?
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
The context and inspiration for this blog came to me on my morning Peloton ride.
I then found myself scrolling on social media, which doesn’t happen very often, and came across an ad, marketing, after marketing, after marketing, that was talking about quick results in business.
Some of the language was 10K in 10 days. We're all familiar with that. And it got me really thinking about what I wanted to share with you on this topic. So that led us to the secret sauce in business.
Which, if you know me, you know there isn’t a very specific, copy and paste, universally used secret sauce that you might be looking for.
It doesn't exist. But, when I was riding on my Peloton yesterday, Cody Rigsby, my favorite instructor on the Peloton app kept saying, "Do the work, do the work, do the work."
And I started thinking maybe that's the secret sauce.
Maybe the secret sauce isn't some brand new strategy, or this template, or this platform, or this launch messaging.
Maybe the secret sauce is doing the work.
When you look at the entrepreneurs, and the business owners, and the brands that see results maybe quickly, maybe in three months, six months, maybe in a year, you can see that the thing that connects them is that they're willing to do the work.
They're willing to show up. They're consistently showing up and doing the work. They're committed to doing the work. They don't shy away from it.
So since this isn't a very, "Hey, apply this to your business and go make 10K in 10 days,” strategy, I wanted to break it down for you.
What does doing the work look like?
How do you do the work?
And what are some things that you need to keep in mind?
What is The Work?
What am I talking about when I say “the work?”
There are four key pieces that I believe require you to show up and dedicate time and energy to as a business owner.
Some of them, you do it once. You don't need to circle back to it very often. Maybe every year, every two years, depending on your business.
Some of them are ongoing.
FOUR PILLARS OF A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
PILLAR ONE: Clarity on Your Business Goals
How do you know what work to do and how to measure the impact of the work that you're doing if you have nothing to measure it against?
If you don't have goals, if you don't know why you're showing up every day and doing the workaround, what your end result is, then you're constantly going to feel like you're just busy.
And when I say do the work, I don't mean busy work. I don't mean piddle over here and change this color over here, and change this font over here. And let me update this page that nobody visits anyways over here.
I mean do the strategic work.
To figure out what that is, you have to first start with your goals. The first thing you need to identify is what you are moving towards. And that will allow you to reverse engineer and set those goals.
Recently, I released a YouTube video on planning six months in your business. In that video I break down how to look at the big picture and reverse engineer, to break it down into smaller more manageable steps; the same applies to all goals!
The first goal is to get clear and specific with your goals. And just like we learned in school, make them measurable. If they're not measurable, how are you going to know your progress? You're not going to know how things are working out for you and this measurable piece is going to play a role in the kind of work you ultimately do (more on that later).
PILLAR TWO: Brand Foundations
The second piece of doing the work is your brand foundations.
If you want to grow scalable and sustainable, meaning you're not losing your mind in the process, online business, you have to have a solid foundation. Newsflash, you have to have a solid foundation for everything in life. Anything that you want to keep growing or scaling, there has to be a solid foundation.
In an online business, that just happens to be your brand.
When we're building the brand foundations, we're focused on your niche. We're focused on your ideal customer, focused on your messaging, and focused on your offer. I believe that your offer is part of the branding process because when you have this early on you can create your marketing plan to match. And then, of course, that emotional branding component, which plays into the aesthetics.
Now here's the beautiful thing about this work. This is not work that you do every day, every week, every month. You take the time and dedication to do the work around your brand foundations, build that solid foundation and then determine how often you want to revisit it.
Is it once a year?
Are you going to be rebranding?
Do you need to go back to it and freshen it up? That's one of those things that's not constantly changing. And that's why it's important to dedicate the work to it right from the get-go.
I love to have my clients give themselves a deadline. In my course, You! Branded, we encourage clients to complete it in three weeks, so make that a frame for you to show up and do the work. Do the work, the worksheets. And then implement it in your own life. And then we get to move on, but it is essential.
If you want to learn more about You! Branded, head here.
PILLAR THREE: Set Up Systems
I keep hearing all these entrepreneurs talk about how incredibly stressful scaling is because they never had systems in place.
If you know me, you know that I'm all about systems. And I credit that to the fact that I've been able to have a small team for so many years. That I was able to do most things by myself for a long time when I couldn't necessarily invest in team members and be a woman, and a mother, and show up for myself.
It always came back to my systems, and these systems have continued to serve me as a business owner and continued to serve as we scale.
When it comes to setting up your systems, here are some things to consider.
Think about your client onboarding and the process that you go through to bring on a new client. What does this look like for your business?
I have a blog and video available if you need inspiration.
When you think about this, can you automate any of it?
Are you manually scheduling your clients?
Are you manually sending out invoices and contracts?
What does that look like?
Take some time to look at your business and see where you can streamline and automate things to improve your overall systems.
What about your workflow?
Do you know how you’re creating content every single week in your business?
Is it a copy, repeat, copy, repeat, copy, repeat type of system? To the point where you have it set up in a task management software. And when you mark it as complete, it kicks it to the next week.
What about your SOPs?
How do you do things in your business? When it's just you and you're just getting started, document what you're doing.
If someone's a new client, what's the process?
What do you do?
Do you send them an invoice first, a contract?
Do you email them?
Do they get tagged with anything?
Just start documenting that in a Google Doc or a Word doc, so when you hire team members, you just get to hand them that information.
I think so many entrepreneurs skip over the systems piece of it and find themselves feeling overwhelmed with the process. Everything can be streamlined, even if it can’t be automated.
And this pillar is ongoing. I'll be honest with you. They're going to be updated. You're going to create new systems as you expand and as you do new things.
But this is an area where you've got to sit down and do the work.
PILLAR FOUR: Marketing
And then we come to one of my favorite topics, the ongoing, happens every day in your business. Even if it's automated, it's still happening every single day, whether you are manually posting it or not.
And that's marketing.
That is getting people familiar, introducing them to your brand. Building trust with them. Telling them about your offers. Then continuing to show up and serve them even after they become a client, yes that is also part of the marketing strategy.
This area is ongoing, and this area requires your commitment, and your dedication, and your consistency.
Don't look for an easy out when it comes to your marketing. If someone comes to me and says, "I'm just looking for a way where I don't have to do any marketing. I don't want to market."
I'm like, "You're going to have an issue as a business owner. You're going to have a really hard time."
The first step is to create a clear marketing strategy.
How often are you creating content?
What platforms are you showing up on?
What is your weekly workflow?
How are you repurposing your content?
What are the core pillars and topics that you're talking about?
You can set those up, and you can say I'm going to dedicate 30 to 60 or 90 days to this strategy.
I recommend a minimum of 30. I try to push for 90 days now because I know sometimes, it just takes a little bit of momentum and testing. But give yourself a clear period of dedication and commitment.
The reason for this is the consistency will show you want needs to be improved upon. You need to do the work to know what to change. There is always work to be done with your marketing.
One of the biggest myths that I see entrepreneurs believing is that automation means they don’t have to do anything. I believed it for way too long.
We think that if we are creating a course or creating a funnel, we're automating something in our business that we make, and we get to walk away from it. And we never need to worry about it again. And that is so far from the truth.
Once your automation has been optimized, it will help with consistent revenue in your business, depending on what that automation is. But it doesn't mean that you don't have to check in on it. It doesn't mean that you don't have to look at the data. It doesn't mean that you don't have to make changes. You absolutely do.
It’s so important to choose a simplified marketing strategy, like the one we teach inside of Brandmerry Academy, and implement it for at least 30 days to know what should be improved upon.
HOW DO YOU DO THE WORK
So nothing is just done. It's always evolving. So how can you do the work more efficiently?
Let's talk about that. I've got five key pieces that I want you to walk away with today.
How do you actually do the work?
What are the things you need to keep in mind?
NUMBER ONE: Make Time For It
Schedule a very specific time to make your business a priority so that your business becomes a priority. On the flip side of that, schedule a very specific time to make your business a priority so it doesn't interfere with your other priorities.
I'm a big fan of scheduling every part of my business because it allows me freedom.
An example of this is what I just wrapped up doing. I prepared 90 days of content. It's something like 16 videos and 18 podcasts.
The reason I'm putting in the time and the energy and I am committed to doing this is because I'm going to be in Greece for three months. I want to work 10 hours or less every single week and still hit my monthly minimum cash goal.
So I am making time to do the work. I am scheduling early mornings on Saturday because that's what I want to do so I have all this extra free time. I'm scheduling every little thing in my calendar. I'm scheduling my workouts. I'm doing all of that.
So make time to do the work. Schedule it or you won't do it.
We'll keep pushing it off and saying, "I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'll do it in two weeks, whatever." And then finally you're like, "Wow, okay. I haven't done any of that." So now I have to spend tons of time going back through that process.
NUMBER TWO: Set Clear Objectives
So this is kind of a piggyback of what I shared in the first part, which is all about clarity on your business goals.
How do you know what work to do if you don't know where you're going? It's all reverse engineering. That is the best strategy for a business owner.
Where are you headed? Now break it down step-by-step in how you're going to get there.
When you're talking about the step-by-step, set clear objectives for yourself. This will help you know how the work is playing out. So you might be doing something and you might be doing it consistently and you're like, "Man. I just don't know if this is working."
Look at the data.
Let the data drive your decisions.
What does the data say? And then make adjustments. But you don't know how to shift things, or change things, or know if that particular thing isn't working anymore unless you have clear objectives.
NUMBER THREE: Be Open to Evolution
Be open to things changing. All automations, as I mentioned before, will need adjustments and changes to keep optimizing. We have to be open to looking for those small shifts.
We can't be stuck in our ways as marketers. We have to be open to change, and new opportunities and switching things up.
Going back to the clear objectives, those will tell you when it's time to switch things up. It doesn't have to be a guessing game. Marketing is not a guessing game.
It's based on data.
NUMBER FOUR: Test
The fourth piece of doing the work is giving yourself plenty of time to test things. Stop saying, "I'm going to work for 48 hours and see how it goes." Going back, we don't have enough data. We can't decide off of just 48 hours of work.
So you have to give yourself time to test the work that you're doing.
Let’s say you want to test Reels. You know how fun and engaging they can be and you’re looking for more reach in your business.
Do one reel every day for 30 days. Now that's some testing. Especially for a platform that changes every five hours.
Let’s say you want to start blogging and see how it impacts your SEO ranking.
Make it a point to blog every single week, once a week for 60 days.
You've got to be willing to test. That is part of doing the work.
NUMBER FIVE: Evaluate
Finally, and I think what brings all of this together, is evaluation.
Put your marketing lens on, look at the data. Look at the time that you were testing, and evaluate what's happening with the work. Remember, this isn't about busywork. I'm not saying sit down and just work for eight hours.
We're talking about that commitment and that clarity on the work.
What specifically are you working towards?
How can you measure the progress that you're taking?
And then be open to evaluating and making those changes as well. If you are not open to evaluating, I really think that's how people get burnt out. Because it's like you just continue to walk into a wall over, and over, and over, and over again when there's a door and another avenue like right next to you.
We're just like, "I'm just doing the work. I'm just being busy. I'm just working today. I'm going to work every single day on my business." But we need to be intentional with the work that we're doing.
The only way that we can be intentional is through this process of having clear objectives, of being open to things changing and modifying based on the data, to give yourself time to test.
And of course evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. And see not only what's working based on the data, but also how does it feel?
DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS IN MARKETING
We talked about measurable goals. Let those be an indicator for the work, and also what needs to be adjusted based on the work.
Let’s say your webinar is in one week and you want 100 people on the webinar.
How can you show up and do the work?
What haven't you tried?
What haven't you done?
Where could you give a little bit more?
These are the types of evaluations that we have to be making.
So when you're first starting as a beginner, what can help determine where to focus your energy is where and how do you enjoy showing up online?
What comes a little bit more naturally to you?
I'm not saying it's easy. You have to be uncomfortable a little bit, you don’t just want to take the easy route, but what would you enjoy the most.
For myself, this was video. Even early on, it worked with my schedule. I didn't have to write a bunch of stuff. I could just show up, deliver content, repurpose it. This worked for my business because my audience loves video and I love making it.
Where is your audience? Where are they spending their time and their energy the most?
Where do you enjoy showing up? What medium?
If you need permission to focus on one area, here it is!
That's one of the reasons that we decided to drip the content inside of Brandmerry Academy every 30 days, because I didn't want someone jumping into the academy and saying, "I'm going to do SEO, Pinterest, and this all in 30 days."
No. It's not going to work. It's going to be so hard.
When I first started, everyone was on Instagram, but Instagram intimidated the crap out of me. I did not want to edit photos. I was stressed about choosing the right photos.
What if the photo is not good enough? I was nervous about it all.
So I just went all-in on Facebook and Facebook groups. That's all that I did in the beginning. Not my favorite strategy and not what I recommend today. But five years ago, it definitely was. Video was just getting started on Facebook at the time and it made sense to focus on one area.
So that's all I did. And I would think about going on Instagram. And I would maybe dabble a little bit. And then I'd back off a little bit.
Then, when I felt solid in my Facebook strategy I looked for ways to repurpose my content on Instagram. Then Pinterest was of interest to me and I hired someone to take that on because I didn’t want to add more to my plate.
Remember work does not mean busy work.
CONCLUSION
Speaking of doing the work, I’ve done a lot for you!
I’ve compiled all my favorite lessons inside of this free eBook that I put together for you, where I am sharing the 15 lessons to propel your online business. It's really the ultimate guide of shit I wish someone would have told me.
I talk about a lot of the elements that I see holding entrepreneurs back from reaching the income level and the impact that they desire. And as you can probably imagine, I made the same mistakes.
So whether you're just thinking of starting your business or you're three or four years into it, I recommend that you head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free eBook.
Because even if you get one little golden nugget from this eBook, I know it is going to support you in achieving your goals in 2021. Head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free eBook today.
This is only available for a limited time.
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MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
