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So you’ve been grinding and hustling within your business, but not seeing the growth you were hoping for?
It might be because you are doing too much.
If you are like me, you may have left the corporate world because you were allergic to the structures of office life. However, when I started my business, I realized how important it was to have SOME type of processes in place in order to not spend my days getting heart palpitations thinking of all the work I had to do.
In short, you are working TOO HARD for so little of your potential.
Hard work and business go hand in hand, but nothing runs well when you are doing everything on your own for long amounts of time. Sleepless nights occur, you forget to eat, and money slips through the cracks that you can’t cover on your own.
Enter business optimization.
WHY OPTIMIZE?
I find the biggest roadblock of entrepreneurs is feeling their business is their baby, so they need to be involved with every single task. This line of thinking, however, breeds overwhelm and burn out. When you are trying to stretch yourself thin to cover everything in your business, you have zero time to look up and see the big picture of where your business is going!
Think of optimization as Marie Kondo’ing your business; sparking joy by learning to let things GO.
When you do a job over and over, you learn how to streamline tasks to make the work less strenuous. The same can be done with different operations of your business. From technical areas to customer service, optimizing your business not only makes life for you WAY easier (because you aren’t working as hard), you also gain trust with your audience the more they see you have your ish together.
People trust those who make their lives easier; that includes how they discover, connect, and purchase from you. The fact you HAVE optimized your business at all does a lot of leg work with you and your audience. #winwin
Optimization not only saves you time, but it also helps ensure you don’t lose money from not being able to answer someone in time, not posting content consistently, or not sending out a follow-up email to those who were on the cusp of joining your program.
It’s time to make money in EVERY aspect of your business, not just the ones you manually touch.
This post is all about helping you find what areas you can optimize your business systems, start feeling like the CEO (not the employee) of your own business, and in the process, increase your reach and sales.
Here are 3 places you can optimize your business right now to make raving fans for your business:
YOUR LEAD GENERATION
Are you still manually talking to each and every lead at random in hopes one will pan out? As you start to focus more on other operations like marketing, managing teams, basic life in general, spending all day everyday working to find leads just sounds exhausting. This can come down to us focusing too much on trying to FIND leads, they add on additional work that can be shaved off.
What this can look like:
Having a system to TRACK your current and potential leads, and a process in place on connecting with them every single day. No more scouring Facebook and Instagram messages to see when you last followed up with someone. You can use something as simple as an Excel sheet to lead capture software (I use Dubsado as it handles other parts of my business as well).
Having a clear opt-in set up to draw leads to your business (and not the other way around!). Look at current or past content you’ve made, what your audience asks you constantly about, and see where you can delve deeper into it with free, valuable content!
YOUR CONTENT GENERATION
If you still find yourself staying up at night writing content like a last-minute college assignment? I for one need to be in a creative space to create content that speaks to y’all, and it’s hard to do that when I am trying to figure out what to talk about each and every day. It’s important to have a clear content strategy that will educate, entertain, and engage with your audience as you promote your business. Having a schedule set up of what content is going out, when, where, and how often can cut so much headache out of your day.
What this can look like:
Setting up monthly/weekly themes of content, answering the tough questions your potential clients have
Determining the top 2 platforms to post to consistently, and picking others as just distribution streams (the power of repurposing!)
Scheduling posts/content ahead of time so you don’t have to think about posting!
YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
You ever see those businesses that clients seem to immediately buy after a product comes out and you’re like, how the eff did they do that?
That comes down to how you treat people from the moment they meet you (not the moment you decide to sell to them). This however can feel tricky if you are manually trying to handhold every single client that comes your way. Having systems in place that can help potential clients get to know you and trust your expertise before they talk to you will increase your close rate, while also decreasing your insanity.
I can tell you that 9/10 if I am losing a customer, it’s because the product they went with had a better customer experience than my own. The overall experience your potential customers have is crucial to the overall success of your business, so optimizing to increase the trust with your processes saves you (and your clients) a lot of time.
What this can look like:
If you take appointments, set up a calendar link with your availability to cut down on the awkward back and forth trying to find a time to meet (especially when dealing with different time zones. I live in AU and it’s never fun). For bonus points, add a questionnaire having prospects answer questions about their current situation so you can address them immediately on the call. It’s a great way to learn of any objections so you can handle them prior to the call. I use Dubsado’s scheduler, but you can also use Calendly or Acuity for free alternatives.
Capitalize on the excitement of someone purchasing from with you an automated email series with next steps. Don’t have them need to contact you in order to receive their offering! For coaches/consultants/service providers, having a client onboarding pdf that outlines what they can expect when working with you (see a snippet below).
Have automated emails sent out to greet your customers the moment they pay! That way they aren’t waiting for their purchase, it’s provided to them instantaneously!
The wonderful thing about optimization is that the moment you find where you can be saving time, you make space to be creative. You are able to spend time being a human, not just a business owner. That time is crucial to help you begin scaling your business beyond what you have imagined. If you would like to see specific actions you can take to optimize your business, snag my checklist so you make sure you never lose a client again!
Let me know below which of these optimizations you will be taking on below!
Pssst…share the wealth with others and pin the graphic you like best!
