Today, we’re talking about how too much information can be keeping you stuck and overwhelmed. Let’s dive in.
It’s no secret that I am a complete lifelong student. Nothing makes me happier than learning something new. Learning just excites me. My favorite time of year is back to school.
A bouquet of fresh pencils and a brand new clean notebook is my love language. You will find my nose in a book any day of the week. But, too much information could actually be one of the biggest reasons why so many entrepreneurs are kind of stuck in this entrepreneurial purgatory where they’re not making any progress in their business.
This really hit home for me not too long ago. I was having a conversation with an incredibly smart woman who had a brilliant idea for her business. This is somebody who is highly educated.
She has all the advanced degrees, she has all the certifications and that desire to learn. That predisposition to educating herself first had followed her into her business. But it was actually at her detriment.
She had invested in a brand new website and how to do social media and how to build a course and how to do webinars. But as I dug deeper and dug deeper, I realized she hadn’t really started her business in the couple of years she had been investing in her education.
In the last few years, she was spending all of her time trying to learn the exact pieces of the puzzle, but she never actually got to see the full picture.
She never saw the lid of the puzzle box that showed her all of those pieces actually fit together.
This is something so many of us find ourselves in the trap of. When you just scroll through Facebook, it’s no secret why. It’s because we’re marketed to. All we need is this one piece. All we need is that one piece.
You need to see the 10,000 foot view first. You need the big picture before you get all the individual pieces of the puzzle.
This constant learning mode, being a professional student, is actually a great way to procrastinate what you really need to do first. Which is, to get out there and get some people to hire you, to validate your business idea or to validate the next big offering you have in mind.
What do you really need to learn as an entrepreneur? What do you really need to know how to do before you start taking action and, most importantly, getting yourself out there in front of potential clients that you can serve? First, you need the lid of the puzzle box.
I started my career over a decade ago writing business plans for startups and working behind the scenes to get them funding. The biggest reason why a business plan is such a helpful thing is it’s a strategic document.
It helps you to see the big picture, everything that needs to go into that business. When you write a business plan, you know because you’ve identified who you’re serving, what it is that you’re offering.
- What is that products, programs or service?
- How are you going to market that offering?
- How are you going to stand out in the marketplace?
- How are you different than others out there?
- What problem are you solving?
- How are you selling and delivering that product, program or service?
That business plan, that strategic plan, is the 10,000 foot view of what your business looks like, how your business works, who you’re serving, what you’re offering and how you’re getting it out into the world.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Without that 10,000 foot view, it’s like trying to put together a puzzle without seeing what the full picture is.” quote=”Without that 10,000 foot view, it’s like trying to put together a puzzle without seeing what the full picture is.” theme=”style2″]
It’s like trying to put together a puzzle without ever seeing the lid of the puzzle box. There’s no reason to do that. That is the hardest way to put together a puzzle. Go grab a 1000 piece puzzle and then try to put it together without ever knowing what the picture looks like.
That is what happens when you go out there trying to start a business and you start with the pieces, you start by trying to learn social media, webinars or how to build a course but you’ve never taken a moment to look at the big picture of your business.
Once you have that big picture of your business, is exactly what we do here inside of Sweet Spot Strategy is to get that big picture for your business.
Once you have that big picture, once you can answer those core questions:
- Who do you serve?
- How do you stand out?
- What do you offer?
- How do you market/sell/deliver your products, programs and services?
Then you need a marketing plan to implement. You need a sales strategy to get new clients.
If you listened to the last episode, I talked about the three by three marketing plan: attract, engage and nurture. It’s really the first three steps in a five part system that takes somebody from brand new to you potential client, all the way through to happily paying client.
The three parts of the marketing that we talked about in episode 62 are attract, engage and nurture.
Attract, engage and nurture is pretty straightforward. Attract is all about getting in front of new potential audiences, new potential clients who have never heard about you and sharing your message, sharing how you help them.
Once you attract people into your world, then you’re sending them somewhere, either through the doors of your business or through the virtual doors of your website.
You want them to actually come to you and continue the conversation. That’s engage. Once they step through that door, they’re raising their virtual hand and saying, “I like what you had to say there,” in that guest post or in that podcast interview. They engage with your business. Then you continue to nurture them.
You nurture them through useful, relevant, helpful content that they can get a taste of how you work. They can decide if this is a fit for them or not before you ever make an offer.
The attract, engage and nurture piece is so important because when this works seamlessly together, it’s like turning on a faucet. You really have a system in place that is continuously flowing and continuously bringing new people into your business.
The next couple of pieces of this bigger strategy are invite and delight.
Invite is where so many people get stuck. This is different from marketing. This is sales. This is when you’re actually inviting people who have already found you, they’ve already raised their hand and they’ve said,
“I’m interested in what you’re talking about. I want to learn more.”
Now you’re telling them how they can take the next step. Whether that is signing up for a consult with you and potentially working with you one-on-one or joining a masterclass, a webinar or a workshop where they can hear about products, programs or services that you offer.
Invite is all about telling them and guiding them through the decision-making process. Helping them take that next step and deciding whether or not this is a fit for them or not.
You have to have a strong invite strategy because without that invite strategy, you will not convert all of those email list subscribers or social media followers into paying clients. It’s a key part of the process.
You have to know how you are inviting people.
- Are you having conversations one-on-one?
- Are you hosting workshops? Webinars?
- Teleseminars or running a challenge?
- Are you doing a promotion via email?
- Are you just sending people to a sales page?
- Are you going for high touch where they can actually reach out and talk to you?
That’s a really, really important thing you must have in place as part of your overall marketing and sales strategy.
Next is delight. You need to know what happens when people sign up to work with you.
Whether they’re signing up to work with you one-on-one or they’re signing up for an online course or group program, what does that customer experience look like?
What happens once they hit the buy now button? What happens once they pay that invoice? What’s next?
When you have that clear customer experience mapped out, then you really delight people because you’re showing them that you’re first class. You have taken the time to think through what the experience is going to look like for them.
Then, you can add in those surprise and delight that everybody loves to talk about. You can add in the little gifts. You can add in the surprise bonuses.
Those are the things that keep people coming back for more. Actually, delight leads to people buying more from you. It leads to people signing up for the next offering you have or continuing to work with you.
[clickToTweet tweet=”When you have a clear customer experience mapped out, suddenly you have clients who work with you for years. ” quote=”When you have a clear customer experience mapped out, suddenly you have clients who work with you for years. ” theme=”style2″]
I have some students who literally have clients who have worked with them for a decade or more because they know how to take care of those clients.
These are the big pieces of the puzzle you need to learn as an entrepreneur.
You need to have the lid of the puzzle box. You need to have the big picture for your business, the 10,000 foot view. That helps you to see really quickly, you know exactly who you’re serving, what you’re offering, how you stand out, how you’re different, how you’re marketing, selling and delivering that offering.
You know the marketing strategy that you’re going to use to guide someone through the entire customer journey, all the way from finding you for the very first time to being a happily paying customer who comes back and buys from you again and again.
That is what you need to focus on learning before you start going out there to get specific individual trainings.
If you can’t answer those two things, if you don’t have the 10,000 foot view and you don’t have the marketing, sales and customers experience strategy, do not go out there and invest in a bunch of hodgepodge trainings and strategies that don’t fit together into a cohesive business.
Once you have these two pieces of the puzzle, the next thing is to get out there and to find people that you can serve so that you can validate your business idea.
What often happens for most entrepreneurs is they find very quickly, usually within the first six to 12 months, that what they thought their big idea was, is actually going to change, usually very, very quickly once they get in front of real people and get real feedback.
Please, please, please. If you do anything…
Please don’t let education, please don’t let too much information put you in this entrepreneurial holding pattern where instead of getting out there and working with people and seeing how things actually work in your business, you’re waiting for it to be perfect.
You’re waiting to first get in place all the things you think you need like a website or a brand, logo or business cards.
Or, you’re trying to make it all work in the hopes that when you launch, you’re going to have the exact thing that everybody wants before you’ve done these pieces, before you’ve gotten your 10,000 foot view, you can see the lid of your puzzle box and you know the picture of your business.
You have that marketing strategy, attract, engage, nurture, invite and delight. You know how you’re going to get people all the way from first hearing about you all the way through becoming a paying client. Then you’ve gone out there and started the process of getting in front of actual people.
Too much information, being a perfect student, does not serve you as an entrepreneur.
In fact, there is something I tell myself all of the time. There are no A’s for entrepreneurship. The only way to know whether or not what you’re doing is working, whether or not you’re on the right track is being out there, talking to real people, getting in front of real people and seeing how you can help them and how you can make a difference.
I would love to hear from you.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Has TMI (too much information) been holding you back from creating the business you really, really want to create? ” quote=”Has TMI (too much information) been holding you back from creating the business you really, really want to create? ” theme=”style2″]
Have you been finding yourself spinning your wheels because you’re trying too many new things instead of consistently putting a clear strategy into action? Do you have that big picture in front of you – the lid of your puzzle box?
The one that helps you to see who you’re serving, how you’re helping them and how you take them on that customer journey, all the way from finding you for the very first time to becoming a happily paying client who comes back again and again and again.