Good Marketing, Good Business
Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy - what they’re saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to DO?
That’s where the Good Marketing, Good Business podcast comes in, this is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service based business. Everything from exactly where to find more clients through to how to follow up properly without pestering.
Your host, Shannon Stone is an award-winning business and marketing consultant and for the last 10+ years she’s been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time.
The Good Marketing, Good Business podcast is here to make your life and business a whole lot easier as long as you’re ready to put in the work - if you’re a good-hearted business owner who wants to grow, this is the podcast you'll want to call home.
Good Marketing, Good Business
066: Why Your Business Doesn’t Stay Busy
You’ve had busy seasons in your business where you had more work that you could keep up with and to some extent, it was a great thing. You’ve likely had those quieter seasons too, which are not so great. So why is it hard to strike a balance between the two?
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
- How important and “urgent + important” and “important + not urgent” tasks impact your business
- How your business is a state of constant and never ending improvement
- When every area of your business grows your whole business grows.
There are some brilliant models shared within this podcast episode, enjoy having a listen!
Links Mentioned:
→ Join the waitlist for the Service Business Boardroom here.
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 I am talking about why your business doesn't stay busy or as busy as it could, as often as it could. Definitely have your pen and paper for this one. Let's jump into it. So I was updating my LinkedIn about section, as we all do from time to time. I'm spending so much more time on LinkedIn these days than anywhere else. Isn't a lot of people, it's like, become a crowd favorite at the moment, but what I find and I've always found this whenever you create content or do any kind of writing for your business. The podcast is obviously a big example of that. But anytime you're writing and communicating anything around what you do, trying to even just like work out your bio you get clarity, even more clarity as to what it is that you do. And the more that you do it and this is I'm going on nine years doing this, so I've done it a gazillion times these types of things where you're constantly updating and improving things, you get even more insight into oh, that's a really good way to write it or that's a really good way to say it.
Shannon Stone:So I wanted to share a bit of the about section that I updated, because it's actually not really about me. It's actually as it should be. Interestingly enough, your about section in some ways on LinkedIn should be more about the people that you can help. And if I didn't do what I did, I would absolutely be a copywriter because I love it. I'm a bit of a wordsmith. One of my good friends calls me Shan GPT, so Shan short for Shannon because a lot of people do come to me and like ask me to wordsmith things or they're trying to convey something, and it can be quite difficult. So, yeah, if I wasn't doing what I do, I would definitely entertain being a copywriter, but I want to share this with you because, coming to today's topic around why your business doesn't stay busy, so many people just think it's just got to be about their marketing, it's just got to be about getting more leads. But, as you're about to hear hopefully I'll convince you otherwise, so I'll read you a snippet of what I've written.
Shannon Stone:So it goes you're told that to grow your business, you need more leads and sales. If that were entirely true, you wouldn't still be searching for the solution. Let me prove my point. Think about a time in business where you were extremely busy with clients, orders, projects. Things were looking good, even if you were chasing your tail. But in that season, did you still ask every single client for a review? Did you keep up with your marketing? Did you have to get on the tools more than you would like, even when you had exactly what you wanted, which was more clients? It's likely your business wasn't set up to manage the influx, so the rest of business still got done. Another area for this is understanding that maybe you didn't have the right strategies and systems in place to ensure this busy season was more than just a season and instead your new normal. It's possible for your business to handle more. It's been there before. That's a snippet of it. You can definitely check out my LinkedIn if you want to continue hearing that.
Shannon Stone:But what I'm trying to say here is that in order to grow your business, it does need to be done holistically. You've been in busy seasons in your business. You've had so many clients probably more than you can handle at one time and it's a very double-edged sword, isn't it? Because it's like this is exactly what we want. We want to be busy, but then there's the reality of it, and I've seen time and time again where, like it can actually be quite easy in many settings to drum up a lot of new clients for businesses, and sometimes I just think you know, be careful what you wish for, because if you just throw yourself in the deep end and just get that influx of clients, other things in the business can break, which is not a bad thing. I don't ever think it's a bad thing when things in our business reveal to us areas we need to improve or to fix, but it's not just about getting more clients. So I absolutely believe that your business is a constant state of never-ending improvement.
Shannon Stone:You might have heard, if you're into like Tony Robbins, he calls it CANI, c-a-n-i, so constant and never-ending improvement. I believe businesses are just that. We can never just improve our sales process one time and think we'll never, ever have to fix it again or improve it again. Same with getting clarity on who your ideal clients are Probably one of the most tedious, maybe annoying activities we can do over and over again. But it's not a one-time thing. We're continuously getting insight and new ideas and new perspectives and things change as well. People change. So your business is that constant state of never-ending improvement.
Shannon Stone:It's also your business is also a balance between what's important and urgent versus what's important and not urgent. So you might have heard of the Eisenhower matrix, so this is where this stems from. I'll just kind of reshare it a little bit again. So there's two in the Eisenhower matrix. It's a quadrant, so four and the two at the top. They're both important, important on the left, important on the right.
Shannon Stone:But one is important and urgent and often for us in business, that is clients, projects, orders coming in. They're the things that are screaming at us or softly screaming at us at the time, and so they are important and they are urgent. They need to get done. The other side of this is things that are important but they're not urgent. They're the nice to do, they're the things that we should be doing. We should be asking every client for a review. We should make sure we're sending all of our invoices following up on all of that. We should be following up with all past leads. We should be delegating more in our business. We should be systemizing our business, creating documents and systems and SOPs, standard operating procedures. It's like they're all the things that, yeah, sure, they're good to do, they are important but they're not urgent.
Shannon Stone:And how often that's like often the working on the business side of things. How often do we spend time intently to work on that? Probably not as often as we could or should. So if we're always only ever addressing the important and urgent activities, like, say, like two extremes of it is okay, we're super busy, lots busy, lots of clients, lots of orders, lots of projects. Got to work on all of that. The other extreme of that is now we're not busy because we didn't maintain our marketing, we didn't make sure, on a consistent basis, we're asking people for reviews or turning our clients into case studies. Then we come to that other end of the spectrum where we're not as busy, and so now that's like another big pain point for businesses. So often it's like switching between the chaos. It's like feast or famine often for many businesses.
Shannon Stone:So we can't only address the important and urgent things. We have to address both the things that are coming to us on that day to day, week to week, month to month, that do need addressing we cannot get that wrong. But we also coming to us on that day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, that do need addressing. We cannot get that wrong. But we also need to focus on the other areas that are important but not as urgent, because at some point in time they are going to start screaming at you and that's often where you go from not being busy or from being super busy to not being busy at all, and they're probably the times where you start to hopefully work on some of those areas that we could have, would have, should have, at a certain point in time.
Shannon Stone:So to wrap this up and to prove the point any further, or just to make it really concise so when every area of your business grows, your whole business grows. So, for example, you can have lots of clients, which is an amazing thing. But we want to make sure that you're retaining them. Or another area is if you're clear on your vision, the vision of your business and even, to some extent, the vision of your life. When you're clear on that, you're clear on your vision, the vision of your business and even, to some extent, the vision of your life. When you're clear on that, you're clear on your marketing. So if you're clear on the vision of your business and the direction that you want to head in, it makes your marketing so much more clearer. Or if you're clear on who it is you want to target, that makes your marketing even more clearer. So just kind of showing you that every area of your business should grow and that's when the whole business grows. So breaking each piece down into little segments rather than just focusing on, say, I just need more leads and that's the way my business will grow.
Shannon Stone:Another great area is when you have streamlined systems, you're probably more focused on what needs to happen. So you've got your streamlined systems, maybe a project management tool or just a clear way of doing things, and default of that beautiful byproduct is that so much happens a lot quicker and a lot faster, and even automated in certain cases. So when you look at all areas of your business and you get back a lot more time because maybe you're doing things in smarter, not harder, ways, but you're also dotting all the I's, crossing all the T's, you're asking clients for reviews, you're doing all the things that you know in inverted commas we should be doing. I believe that's when a business grows. So when you are in those busy seasons and we want them, we definitely welcome them your business can keep on maintaining that busy season because we're not chasing our tail, we're not running around, we've got even in that busy season. You want to capitalize on that. Make sure we are getting all the reviews, make sure that we are turning those one-time clients into long-term clients. We are delegating things to our team or starting to grow our team even more now that we are busier, and that can lend to future growth of our business. So I do see it as like this one big, nice ecosystem and it's one of the big reasons why I've set up the service business boardroom in the way that I have.
Shannon Stone:And the key thing I guess the heart of that program is there's two sides to it. One is that every person, every business, there's certain things that are specific to you. You know it might be that you do need to generate more business right now, or for someone else it's like they need. They're just so busy, they need to get more systems in place or they need to delegate, for example. Every person, every business, has something that is the important and urgent area that does need addressing right now. So one part of the service business boardroom is that we focus on what is your particular thing that needs addressing right now, and the second half to it is looking at what are those important but not urgent but still important areas that you also need to be focusing on on a continual basis. So it's like you're making two improvements to your business at any point in time. One is the thing that really does need addressing right now and the other is something that is going to help set you up for the future.
Shannon Stone:And inside the program, there's seven different areas that I help people to focus on from their offer, ideal client, marketing, sales, their client, client onboarding, client experience, client retention there's seven of them that we go through on a continual basis. So if you are someone in business, you have a service-based business and you would like support to help it to grow in a really holistic way and you definitely resonate with this episode and, I guess, a lot of the things that I share on the podcast. I would love for you to join the waitlist. We'll be launching the program very soon, but the waitlist is the place to learn about it and get notified. So that is your action item for today. If it's a fit for you, definitely join the waitlist. The link will be in the description or if you come check out on LinkedIn, it'll definitely be all over my LinkedIn somewhere as well. But that's what I have for you today.
Shannon Stone:I hope you found this useful and if you have any questions, always throw them my way, but I appreciate that you listen. I hope that you took a lot of notes and if we added one extra action step for you, what is that one epiphany, that one thing that came from this episode that you thought you know what I really do need to do that, and maybe it is. You assigned for yourself something that is important and urgent, which you're probably addressing, because we always address those things. But what is something that's important and not urgent? But you would like to start to prioritize what's one particular task, not a whole project, just a task I invite you to use that as an additional action step for you. So that is what I have for you today.
Shannon Stone:I hope you have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it. Whatever you need to do, the more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.
