Up for a few months and then crashing down the next? Feast and famine strikes extra hard when you’re in business, especially because it’s tied to most people’s livelihood. But how do we solve it?
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
AND, the multitude of pieces in your business that you can tighten which will help alleviate this troublesome cycle.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
Up for a few months and then crashing down the next? Feast and famine strikes extra hard when you’re in business, especially because it’s tied to most people’s livelihood. But how do we solve it?
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
AND, the multitude of pieces in your business that you can tighten which will help alleviate this troublesome cycle.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
H ey guys, welcome to the podcast, super excited to jump into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:Today we are talking about the feast and famine cycle in business and I'm going to share five different solutions to help you if you ever experience any particular ups and downs in business that are what you could consider unexplainable. So they're not seasonal things, you know. They're just a little bit what the F is happening here, kind of thing when you really can freak out in business. So I've been on so many conversations or calls or things where people talk about the feast or famine cycle and it's so I've got to do a favor to everyone who ever mentions feast or famine cycle to let them know that it's not just about the number of clients that you're working with or the number of leads that are coming into your business. If it was that simple, people wouldn't be going through the feast or famine cycle in business. So there's a few things I want to share with you before I jump into five solutions. Number one this is not one of the five solutions, but the first thing I wanted to share with you is that so much in business comes down to solving the right problem, and if you solve the wrong problem, you're not going to get the result you're looking for. So diagnosing what is the true cause of the situation, or what's the root cause of what you're experiencing, really needs to be the starting point for it. So when people just focus on more leads, more clients, it often perpetuates the problems, the root causes, the underlying issues that are happening in a business.
Shannon Stone:For example, if you are not retaining your clients, I think we've got something to look at in the business. So if you're always focusing on new clients all the time, new clients all the time, new clients all the time but none of your clients, or very few of them, are sticking around and there are exclusions to this. There can be nuances where it can depend on what you're selling, it can depend on your business model, but there is also a space like I'm your girl for life, like if we work together, I plan to work with you for 10 years and I love sharing that with clients. And a client of mine, who has to now be my all-time favorite client, said yes, that's how it should be. We should be wanting to work together for 10 years, especially the kind of work that we do. All my clients are my favorite, but I just love do I just love when people agree with you? Well, I love that in that moment.
Shannon Stone:But, coming back to it, we have to be solving the right problem and if someone is going through a feast or famine cycle while they're going through the ups and downs in business, it's not just leads and it's not just clients. The other thing I wanted to share before we get into the five solutions is that it very rarely comes down to just one thing that needs solving. And also, on this note, we can't just solve something one time. It's like we can't just create the most perfect marketing strategy and say that's going to produce, like, even if you had the perfect funnel that produced leads for you for a really significant amount of time. Are we going to trust in that? That that's always going to be the case?
Shannon Stone:I think if we did, we would be a little bit naive and it's kind of like hope for the best but plan for the worst. What if your best performing funnel stopped producing leads all of a sudden? Or Facebook changed the iOS and everything changed in the paid ads landscape on Facebook, like so many people experienced a couple of years ago. So we want to be proactive in business. We don't want to just hope that it's just ever one thing. So just knowing there's probably multiple factors at play that can cause the feast or famine cycle in business and just business for the long haul, forever. There's so many things that are the reason why any person experiences anything. It's never really just one thing. But if you can identify the biggest piece that is causing that issue, I think you're going to have a much better time, and that's where solving the right problem is most important. So getting to that root cause.
Shannon Stone:So I wanted to share that with you, first and foremost because so many people will come to the conclusion that they just need more clients. They just need more leads, and I wish it was that way, but it is not the case. All right, so now let's jump into the five solutions. As we go through these for your own benefit, I would recommend that you highlight or note down which of these have contributed to any kind of upward, downwards and roundabout kind of cycle you may have ever experienced in business, and you can even just use these as a checklist where the business is even going amazing, just oh, ok. Well, yeah, here's some areas that I want to be proactive about, or I could probably close the gap there a little bit more. So, no matter how business is going for you at the moment, I think it's always great to check in on all the different moving parts in our business, because it's like, well, what is good could actually be great if we put a little bit more attention on it.
Shannon Stone:Ok, the first solution is cash management. So cash flow really is king when it comes to business. I remember the dialogue that kept going around that content is king. Like for businesses, content is king, but actually the truth of it is, the root cause of it, is cash flow. Cash flow is king when it comes to businesses, particularly your cash management. So there's a lot of different ways that we can talk about this. But say, your business has some really up months, some really high months and then it comes down again. You should and I say should, but this is totally up to you obviously but I think people should really manage the cash in their business in a really sensible way, and getting support around this if you need it is definitely important as well. So maybe using something like Profit First, maybe getting some type of expert in the space around the financial side of business, is really going to help you.
Shannon Stone:But the cash management influences the feast or famine cycle in business. For this reason, humans have a relationship with money, especially when it comes to business, and the behaviors that come from how they see that money or possible lack of money can influence the behaviors that they then transpire in business. So if someone's the cash is dropping down, for example, in business, it's like dropping, dropping, dropping. How is that going to start impacting the business owner? And this is very personal as well. For some people who have done their work around, this might just be okay with it. They just know, you know what it's fine. Business always picks up, and I know business is up and down and all these kind of things, and they just know it's going to even out. It's going to be perfectly fine. For some other business owners, they can see it dropping down, dropping down or just plateauing. They just don't see it going up and that just changes their thinking. It changes their thoughts about what they're doing. Maybe they start to reduce the hours of their team member, maybe they start to change up their marketing and you see the marketing start to get a little bit desperate or you'll see that behaviors and the thinking start to change based on the cash the business has.
Shannon Stone:And you know we obviously most of us don't see behind the scenes of businesses. I'm in quite an interesting and lucky position where I do see the behind the scenes of businesses and so I see the good. I don't want to say the bad, but I see everything. I see everything that goes on, especially in the early days when I like to get to the root cause of well, how is like? Tell me about your business. I want to learn everything, show me what's going on, what normally happens when this happens. So I'd like to dig in right in the beginning to see where it is. We need to be spending our time, but cash management is huge when it comes to businesses. So I share this and I'll share the other four as well, because I just see the faces on people when they're talking about going through the feast or famine cycle and they feel helpless that they've been pushing for sales, they've been pushing for more leads in their business, but if that's not the real thing that's going wrong, then you're not going to get the resolution that you're looking for. So that is why these are so important and it's not just more leads that you need in your business.
Shannon Stone:Okay, solution number two is your business model and your business focus. I've kind of bucketed them in the same space. They're different things slightly. But your business model are you selling retainer services? Are you project based? Do you re-sign clients when they get to the end of their project? I have you got a membership model. Have you got an ascension model? What does all of it look like? What's your pricing structure? Do clients stick around with you? So all these kind of things come back to the foundations of your business and just very briefly, I had a client who had two offers in her business. One was a low ticket membership, the other was a group program and, long story short, she was focusing for the most part on the membership. When we started together it was doing pretty well, it was producing the revenue that she needed in business, but it wasn't overall business wasn't going where she wanted to be earning more. So Shifting her focus to the group program, which was close to $10,000, that is when she started to really produce the revenue that she wanted in her business. So sometimes shifting our business focus and ensuring our business model is aligned to what we want can really help us to smooth that feast or famine cycle from being dramatic ups and downs to either being steady in an upwards direction or just rapidly in an upwards direction, whichever you choose. So your business model, your business focus, it can really have an influence on what you experience in business.
Shannon Stone:All right, number three solution number three is leads, marketing and sales. So we obviously can't have this conversation without suggesting more leads, better marketing, higher converting sales. Not going to help you, because they absolutely will help you. It just depends on the landscape that you've got happening now in your business. But it is definitely a big area that can help people to get out of feast or famine and, coupled with the other areas as well. So if you're able to dial in the way you do your sales and marketing and you've got the right business model where it retains clients and they stick around and your focus is right and you're also managing the cash side of things effectively as well, all of them combined help you to have this stronger, strengthened, more sustainable business. This is why it's never just one thing, so we won't go too much into leads, sales and marketing, because I think we get a good idea as to what that is, and it's just about producing more leads and increasing our conversion rates. Obviously, we can go much more into that, but we've got lots of podcast episodes to help you with that. But it really does. We can't say that it doesn't influence a feast or famine cycle. I think more so.
Shannon Stone:The truth of it is is when it's coupled with the other areas of your business, is when the sales and marketing is strengthened. When you've got the business model and the foundations checked in, when you've got your cash management checked in and you're regularly on top of it and you're talking to the right people whether it's a profit first person or really switched on accountant who understands your business you've got those pieces in your business to really help support you, not just when things are going good, but when things haven't been going good as well and everything in between. It's like you don't just have support from certain people at certain times. For example, I always see that I've had so many clients where They'll have incredible results right at the start and I know, having done this for so long, that there is this integration phase. So it could seem like, especially in the early days when I only helped people with sales and marketing less on the team and the systems and the operation side of thing like the rest of it that kind of made it a lot more smoother. It was almost like, oh well, I've helped them to make the money, there mustn't be anything else to do. Now I learned that there was this integration phase because business, as we know it's very up and down and if you did one thing, perfect, and it went off and it produced all the income they're wanting say a launch or whatever it might be Is it going to happen the next time around? We just don't know. And so there is this integration phase that so many people went through.
Shannon Stone:Okay, solution number four is client retention. So if you aren't retaining clients and like take no offense to this, please, but if you aren't retaining clients and if clients aren't coming back to you, this is an amazing thing for you to solve, like if you can solve that. So if you're like pretty good or okay or really good even at getting clients to come to you, but it's kind of falling off because they're not sticking around, they're not Doing another project with you or they're not resigning after the three or six or 12 months or whatever it might be, this is an amazing area for you to work on, and it's so directly tied to the feast or famine cycle. Oh my god, it would just blow your business up if we can work on client retention.
Shannon Stone:And there are lots of different pieces around the client retention as well, like do you have retainers? For example, are you a retainer style business or do you have a retainer style offering? Or when clients come to the end of working with you, are you asking them about moving forward and what the next steps might look like or how you can help them next? Some people don't even ask that question, and so your client retention might often have no influence on the work that you do. It's just that you didn't ask the question, and a mentor told me in the very early days like some people are almost like shy or ashamed to ask the question, that you are shy and ashamed to ask, so like someone's got to ask it, otherwise no one's going to ask it, so let it be you so asking that person how you can help them next, what that would then look like next. So client retention it can be these big changes that you make to really investigate what needs to happen there, but it might just be a really small thing where you need to just have a conversation about how you can work with them next. But it definitely ties into the feast or famine cycle because, if you think about it, if all the clients you have Maybe 80% of them re-signed or even 50% of them re-signed you're not going to have to get as many leads and new clients coming into your business as often because you're retaining as many of them that do come with you and that is a bliss. Like that is amazing. That is really what you want to be focusing on. So that is solution number four.
Shannon Stone:The last solution that I'll share with you is inconsistent actions. So if there's ever anything that is so easy to look at to see why is this person or this business having ups and downs and erratic kind of results? It might very well come down to the inconsistent actions. The erratic in actions create erratic results. Inconsistent actions create inconsistent results and it's very, very obvious and for some people May not realize. When they step into being inconsistent, you know you fall off your marketing and that's just like a regular cycle that you go on like that break For your audience, for your network, for just the momentum that you had created. It really falls down so much. If we only just focused on we just spent a lot of attention and working out how can we be more consistent at what actually matters in our business, we would see so much upside.
Shannon Stone:So don't underestimate the impact inconsistency will have in your business and I think it's very directly tied to the morale of the business owner as well. It's like always starting again, always starting again, especially if you're the one who wears all of the hats almost of the hats in your business. Maybe you've got a team member who supports a little bit, but if you're never Trying to move away from being the only person who does everything, then I think Obviously we're going to come up against some inconsistency in our businesses. Where is? If you start to delegate to someone, then become someone's role, it comes someone's job to follow through on those actions and they can get done consistently. So then you can shift to other needle movies in your business, such as Client retention or such as making sure you're focusing on the right areas in your business. So these are five solutions I have for you. They're not the only solutions as far as solving for the feast or famine cycle, but I do see them as being five critical areas and, as I explained, they all tie into one another.
Shannon Stone:It's never just one thing, it's multiple things. So action steps for us here today. So at the start I said, if you were able to highlight or note down which of these have kind of just put your ears up a little bit or kind of said to yourself oh yeah, actually I could really solve something there. So the action step is coming back to the ones that you highlighted. I would love for you to prioritize and plan which ones you need to tackle. Is it that it's inconsistent actions in the business? Is it the client retention? Is it the business model? You know you've got clients in a few of your services if you offer multiple different packages and things like that, but you want to get them into the premium packages, the ones that you can really help them with. Maybe that's where you need to be focusing on and, again, like I said, it's never really just one thing, but that's why we prioritize which of those that you highlighted that you need to tackle. So there's an array of solutions to help you if you do experience the feast or famine cycle.
Shannon Stone:I think my main goal with sharing this episode today Is to share with people that it is not just about more clients and more leads. I would love, I would so love, for it to just be directly tied to that, but it's not. And so if that kind of relieves the expectation that you might have placed on on yourself, on your actions, on your marketing, whatever that might be to say, oh my God, actually it is other areas of my business, it is other areas that I also need to focus on, and that just empowers you to almost like, okay, well, now here's all these different tools, all these different levers that I can focus on To help me to get my business to the place I want it to be, and it's not just one single thing, because I think if we think it's only one single thing, we can be out of choices and then we can start to feel a little bit hopeless. So if this gives you more insight into what can help you to grow your business, to get it on track, to move it in an upwards direction, then I hope it's done that for you here today. I'm going to leave it at that for today. If you have any questions at all, definitely let me know and I hope you have an awesome day and I'll talk to you soon.