It used to be that if you wanted to earn a little extra money, you’d get a part time evening or overnight job at a fast food restaurant or Kinko’s. Now there’s everything from part-time multi-level marketers to renting out your home or car – or a portion of it – to secret shopping and piece work for both industrial and personal assistance tasks. The last numbers I saw recorded approximately 16-million freelancers in the United States.

What was once a growing trend quite simply exploded during the recent Coronavirus-induced lock down. While many industries suffered at first, people working for Postmates, UberEats, and InstaCart got considerably more work. And, thankfully, as essential workers, they were valued by the people receiving those deliveries. I had one friend, who between larger and more frequent deliveries and higher grateful tips, earned more in three months than he had for the prior year, even working multiple jobs.

Once we recovered from the initial shock of sheltering at home as a nation, many companies shifted immense amounts of their daily tasks to both online and freelance applications. But as often happens when there is such a quick, radical shift, some of the early benefits to freelancers started to evaporate or be subsumed by corporate interests. Even in small businesses.

In the words of Darth Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter any further.”

Not the Best of Both Worlds

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen are companies pivoting to more freelance arrangements, with a caveat. The companies want the benefit of employing freelancers, but expect the freelancers to behave as employees.

So they only pay by the hour – but they expect full availability. This can be a company that wants their employees to work for 5 days, but is only willing to pay 20 hours – 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. Or a company that demands that their freelance employees “clock in” every single day, seven days a week.

Sometimes, they’ll ask freelance workers to attend training or meetings, but as unpaid time. They’re paid by the project accomplished. That’s great when you’re getting $13 for remotely monitoring a phone conversation that runs 20-30 minutes. That’s $26-30 per hour, not bad in many parts of the country…until you add up the extra hours that they’re not being paid, because of how time is billed.

It’s not fair to take advantage of the benefits of having freelance workers while limiting the benefits to them. What’s more, you will see the best workers disappear as they get frustrated or seek better situations. Suddenly, you’ve cut off your nose to spite your face.

Something employers never seem to think about, but employees wrestle with all the time, is whether or not to pad their time, or look for loopholes in the system to benefit them. The more good freelancers you lose, the more likely it is you’ll hire one of these less scrupulous contractors – and the only one you have to blame is yourself.

Plus, if you don’t see the issue or course correct, you’re establishing a very negative work culture. It may not legally be a hostile work environment, but it’s certainly not a pleasant one.

Interesting Conflicts

Another related issue is restricting freelancers from working for other people. Now, I’m not talking about conflicts of interest. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want one of your employees or independent contractors working for your nearest competitor. But I’ve seen situations where employers will only guarantee a small amount of work, yet require the freelancer to sign an agreement that she won’t do the same type of work for anyone else.

Again, that’s fine if it’s a competitor, or if you’re employing them full time. But it’s technically illegal to restrict someone’s ability to make a living. This also crops up in unusual ways. When I was working for Paramount Television back in the day, my boss came to me angry because she found out I was working part time for the Home Shopping Network.

Now I wrote and produced commercials, promos and the occasional movie trailer for Paramount’s UPN network. At HSN, I was sitting in a cubicle, taking phone orders. I was in the same building as their broadcast facilities in St. Petersburg, but I was not in any way doing the same work.

What We Have Here is… Failure

With the sudden advance in adapting to virtual work, there’s one factor that may have fallen through the cracks. It’s not even necessarily anyone’s fault, it’s just that sometimes a new situation leads to added challenges.

When you’re in an office setting, quite often you hear and know even more than you’d like to. Unless you’re a busybody, or an energy vampire like Colin Robinson from What We Do In the Shadows, there’s almost too much information. But now, we have no water cooler, no office gossip, no back and forth. And, also, less communication, from both the leadership and your colleagues.

In most cases, it’s not intentional. But now that you’re aware of it, that’s exactly how you must handle communication – intentionally. As the leader of your business, you need to adequately communicate. This might even start with over-communicating, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page. You use tools like Basecamp, Slack or Cliq, to keep everyone in a very large loop. That way no one’s left out or forgotten about, or finds themselves suddenly in the middle of an emergency because they were uninformed. You must communicate with your team.

Fire in the Hold

A potential side-effect to lack of communication is the last minute fire bomb. The famous quote from Bob Carter comes to mind: “Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.” But all too often, especially if you have hard working, loyal employees and freelancers, they don’t invoke that clause. Instead, they bend over backwards, making an extreme effort to save you or your business from your failing. Imagine how frustrating that can become when it happens over and over.

You can have the best laid plans, everything in place, ready to go… But if you haven’t communicated that to your people, they feel left out or ambushed when things start to happen. Or, if you’re blessed with freelancers and employees who take initiative, they may be stymied or made to feel unappreciated. They’re not trying to usurp your position – they’re trying to help out by taking the reins, because you’ve left them uninformed.

When handled appropriately, freelancers can become some of your greatest assets. The wrong ones can also sink your business ship very effectively. The key to finding and keeping the best ones lies in making sure they feel appreciated. Income is nice and necessary, but hundreds of studies have found purpose is a better driver of achievement.

Keep them informed. Make them feel like a team or a vital part of the team if you’re split between full time staff and freelancers. Allow them to reap the benefits of being part of the gig economy without micromanaging them within an inch of their professional lives. Try to find the best win-win situations, and reward the ones who stick with you.

When we work as a team, we make everyone’s lives better. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, I can tell you there are a lot of opinions on story structure and development. Some people save the cat, other’s delve deep into formula and break everything out into minute by minute guidelines, and some swear by Aristotle’s Poetics.

But the most consistent and persistent story structure that all of them follow, to some extent, regardless of their stated approach, is one discovered a little over 70 years ago. I say discovered because the prevailing belief is that it was there all along, it just wasn’t fully examined until this century. It starts with psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Jung was originally a protégé of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, but after a long collaboration, the two split off. In fact, Jung eventually redefined his system of psychology separate from Freud’s approach.

One of Jung’s prevailing beliefs was the concept of a shared subconscious or collective unconscious mind. Jung believed that the consistency found in various mythologies and folk tales across cultures and generations came from the fact that our minds all drew from a universal well of thought and idea.

Later, mythologist Joseph Campbell proposed that Jung’s theories were proven by a concept called monomyth – all stories follow a specific pattern of development. Campbell wrote the definitive text on the subject, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

May The Force Be With You

When George Lucas was studying film at the University of Southern California (USC) he became enamored with the study of mythology and Campbell in particular. So much so that when he was working on drafts of the script that would eventually become the original Star Wars film (now subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope”), he modeled the entire story on Campbell’s monomyth structure.

Other movies and books follow the pattern – after all, it wouldn’t be a universal pattern if they didn’t.  But some stories go about it differently and sometimes you have to wrangle a bit to make the pattern work “perfectly.” George Lucas, along with his editor and ex-wife Marcia Lucas, followed Campbell’s pattern to a “T.”

And the beauty of that is, I can simplify Campbell’s overly complicated 400+ page book by just pointing to Star Wars. And what I want to do today is walk you through the monomyth approach to telling your stories – by making your customers the heroes.

The Ordinary World

This is where we meet Luke Skywalker. Space battles on the horizon aside, Luke’s life is pretty consistently standard. He works on his Uncle Owen’s moisture farm. He negotiates and buys droids. He’d rather hang out with his friends and/or join the Rebellion, than stay one more season on the farm. But Uncle Owen needs him, so he stays.

Your potential clients live here. They think everything is fine; it’s the way it’s always been. They don’t consider that there might be a better option. They might be in pain, but be so used to it, they can’t imagine there’s a solution that could fix the problem. They’re numb to the pain and to change – or even the possibility of change.

The Call to Adventure

In Star Wars, Luke’s call to adventure is literally that – a call. It’s not directed at him. Princess Leia has encoded a message for Obi Wan Kenobi. Luke wonders if she means Old Ben Kenobi, but doesn’t pursue it until R2-D2 disappears into the night. And once Luke connects with Old Ben after finding R2, the Jedi master tells Skywalker, “You must come with me to Alderaan.”

Your customer’s call to adventure isn’t quite so obvious most of the time. Although it could be, if your company does a lot of cold calling. But anything that gets your customer’s attention and connects you with them is a call to adventure. It might be a billboard or radio ad. It might be a useful blog post. More likely than not, in our world, it’s a Google search that leads the burgeoning hero towards his journey. Or the referral of a trusted fellow business owner.

Meeting the Mentor

Luke has met Obi-Wan Kenobi, the man who would teach him the ways of the Force, so he can become a Jedi, “like my father before me.” But he just sees him as an old man. Sure the light saber and the man’s ability to make the Tusken Raiders scatter are both amazing, but… In Star Wars, the call to adventure is intertwined with meeting the mentor – just as it is with Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, and often the hero realizes it when she is granted a new perspective.

In a business sense this is often the case as well. The introduction of your potential customer to your small business may seem incidental. It is often connected to that call to adventure, because the call also conveys how your company can relieve their pain. But they don’t see it, or don’t trust it quite yet, which leads them into…

Refusing the Call

Luke immediately responds to Ben Kenobi’s promptings, saying he can’t possibly go to Alderaan. He needs to stay on for one more season. He doesn’t even realize he’s using the source of his earlier frustration to justify his resistance. Even when Ben points out, “That’s your uncle talking.”

By and large, humans are resistant to change. Even if we suspect it may make our lives or businesses better, we sit on our hands and make excuses, and dwell in the pain. As I mentioned before, we have become numb. And sometimes even pleasure can seem painful when you’re not used to it. Routine has its own rewards. Simply knowing there is a problem doesn’t mean they’ll embrace the potential solution.

Crossing the Threshold

It doesn’t have to be, but this often can be one of those all or nothing moments. Luke doesn’t just return to the moisture farm. Because he sees the inherent danger – even though he wants to ignore it – he races back. To find the homestead gutted, and the burning corpses of his aunt and uncle left by the Stormtroopers.

Your potential customer crosses the threshold when they schedule the first exploratory meeting, or 30-minute free consultation. This may seem like a poor comparison to what happens to Luke Skywalker, but think about it. In order to accept help, to even consider that help, a part of the customer’s ego must die. They must admit that what they are doing now won’t fix the pain they feel and/or it’s not something they can accomplish on their own. They must die to the concept of doing everything themselves.

Tests, Allies & Enemies

This is exactly what it sounds like. The hero has met the mentor, now he meets the other players. Luke & Ben fend off goons in the cantina, after Ben uses the Force to manipulate the simple minded Stormtroopers. The droids have already encountered Darth Vader, to some extent, but Luke hasn’t, so the Stormtroopers represent the Empire.

After the initial altercation in the cantina, Ben hires Han & Chewie. The Stormtroopers appear again, chasing the heroes off Tatooine. And the Empire somehow beats them to their destination – arriving to see an asteroid field and a moon that isn’t one.

They get trapped on the Death Star, find Princess Leia, almost killed in the trash compactor and Luke faces the loss of his mentor.

In the storytelling world, this is often a longer section, and may be referred to as the “fun and games” portion of the story.

For your clients, it can be any number of things. Their investors or advisors may not see the value of what you are offering, or at least enough value to justify the cost. Your client may not see results right away – if you’re providing a service, it may be something that takes time to grow or to show results on – like Google rankings or social media.

Fellow business people or the board of directors may be just as numb to the pain of change as your new customer was. They didn’t have an answer before, or a sufficient one, but they also haven’t gone through the same change as the client did. Often times they can derail efforts.

At the same time, they may be allies who are helpful and excited about the new possibilities. Tests, allies, and enemies. It all leads up to…

The Ordeal

This is the final battle. The elixir or treasure has been brought back and now we have the final test of the hero. Will she win the battle, or die trying? Luke has the plans to the Death Star – had them all along, but didn’t understand what they were until they encountered the battle station for themselves. He must use the knowledge of the engineering design flaw to save the Rebellion and their home planet.

In many instances, you may not be around to see this moment for your new client. Or you may learn about it much later, after they have successfully navigated the ordeal, and blown up their small business ‘planet killer.’ Hopefully, they’ll share the story with you. Maybe they’ll post it on Yelp or in a Google Review. Or maybe, hopefully, you’ll learn how much the treasure you brought them has become valuable because they referred a new client to you.

Resurrection/Master of Two Worlds

In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the one resurrected, from a certain point of view. He returns as the voice of faith in Luke’s ear, telling him to trust what he has learned about letting go. Luke remembers his trial with the test probe in the Millennium Falcon and shuts off the targeting computer. He’s relying on faith.

But he’s also relying on R2 and the X-Wing fighter he’s flying. Much like the droids and the moisture vaporators when we first met him on Tatooine, Luke is still utilizing technology. He has become a hero by embracing both of his worlds/identities. The mystic and the mechanic. Sometimes we call this ‘entering the new normal.’

We know a little too much about ‘new normal’s’ these days, I think. In an example from our own business, we’ve learned to embrace the usual model along with the virtual, work from home model, and attempted to fuse the two. Like a phoenix rising from the COVID ashes.

But for your client’s, this is the moment that your product or service really comes into its own. The client is so happy with it, and/or understands it so well that they use it all the time. It becomes part of their new normal.

This is also when they freely give referrals, just by using the product or service. In court, testimony is presenting evidence. For Christians, it’s always being ready to give an answer for the hope they have. When your client is that happy with your product or service, they can’t stop talking about it. Or it’s so much a part of her life, that others see it and ask. The circle is now complete.

Now It’s Your Turn

You can see The Hero’s Journey as the one you are on. And that’s fine; I encourage that. In fact, I recommend utilizing this story structure as you build and tell your small business’ story. But if you can also use it to tell your potential customers a story that resonates with them – that’s where the gold lies. It’s great to be the hero of your story. But if you can make your prospective clients into the hero of your story, you’ll truly see your business change. You can be the entrepreneurial Han Solo or Obi-Wan Kenobi encouraging and guiding hero customers to win the day. That’s what we like to call a win-win situation.

I challenge you to reverse the perspective of how you see your clients and how they see you.

If you’d like help identifying those prospective clients – the perfect customers that you can serve best and bring the most value to – or help connecting to them, please reach out. We’ve built our small business helping other businesses succeed, and we can help you too. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Just can’t help myself. I crave knowledge and can become obsessive at times, filling my brain with facts and miscellaneous information.

One lesson that was consistent across all my sources was something that seems counterintuitive on its face. A $100 investment made in your 20’s, and never added to or touched again, can, over time, grow to dwarf the results of making weekly $1000 investments in your 50’s or 60’s. The power of compound interest causes the tortoise to beat the hare every time – assuming the tortoise starts early enough.

Sadly, this is a lesson we fail to teach our children in high school or college. (Along with balancing a checkbook and doing their taxes. But that’s a discussion for another time.) Too often they struggle to get ahead early in life, thinking they can always invest later.

Now take it one step further and imagine they don’t stop at the initial $100 deposit. Instead, they add $100 every month, and when they make more money, they progressively increase that monthly, weekly, annual amount.

The Content Connection

When you’re looking at content creation – especially doing a periodic content blog targeted at your ideal customer – it’s easy to think that it’s some sort of magic bullet. A one-size fits all solution that will guarantee the growth of your business.

And, in all honesty, it can easily and quickly cause a spike in your customers, sales and reach. One that easily justifies taking the time to plan and build strategically. It thrusts digital marketing head and shoulders above many traditional marketing efforts. When properly executed, it can vault your results high enough to create an illusion of instant gratification.

But, sadly, while it does work quickly, it doesn’t sustain that growth over time – not unless you take some additional actions. Content creation is not one of those “set it and forget it” tasks.

But just like the early investment I talked about earlier, content can compound. In fact, in many ways, content creation can be sustained and create continuous growth over time. Some small businesses would be content with that spike at the beginning and then slow, gradual increases year over year.

But I know the readers of our blog tend to aim higher. Their businesses were established, in some form or fashion to enact true change in our world. The goal is to make this world or life better. So why would you be content with minor changes, when a little more effort and strategy can lead to more global results?

To truly get the most out of your content creation investment – and it IS an investment in time and effort – you need to think like Warren Buffet or Peter Lynch. You need to create content like an investor.

Customer Experience Rules

At first this may appear to be pretty boilerplate advice. Of course you want to focus on delivering a good customer experience rather than making quick cash. But in this case, we’re not talking about customer service or CX or similar.

Specifically, we’re making sure the customer – and potential customer – get the best experience within the context of your blog posts. You need to make sure every post has value to your ideal customer. You can vary a little on subjects and angles, but you need to consistently create content that they find useful.

The stock market has its ups and downs; you win some, you lose some. But if Warren Buffet consistently made poor picks and his hedge fund dropped over and over, he would get booted. By the same token, your customers have limited patience for rabbit trails and content of little or no use. Fool them once, shame on you – you won’t likely get to fool them twice, cause they’ll go looking elsewhere for information.

And guess what? Google doesn’t send searchers to you if the content isn’t of value and authority either. And the algorithm is more ruthless than people are. It has to be.

So make sure what you’re posting is valuable to your ideal customer.

Long-Term Outlook

This is the most obvious parallel between investing and content creation. Again, one post won’t launch your business, no matter how clever your title or how valuable the information. Here at Grow The Dream, we recommend at the very least posting once a month. Realistically, though, if you want to see growth, you’re accelerating your posting to every two weeks minimum. The biggest bang for your content buck? Once a week – every week.

Depending on your product or service, the long term approach can also connect to repeat business.

You build relationships over time, and the same is true of content. The more content, going further back, builds solid credibility on Google search results and in your professional life. A track record builds on itself – that’s the content version of compound interest.

Follow the Numbers

The best investors will tell you that data rules. Despite the fact that our customers make decisions based on emotion, we must limit how they influence us. Yes, you’ll still make emotional decisions, but you need to let numbers and logic dictate whenever you can.

Of course, this is part of your strategic work as well. In profiling and targeting your ideal customer, you’re using whatever data you can to hone the final picture. The more detailed and specific you can aim for, the better your initial results will be. And the more likely you’ll still gather in the outskirts of that target customer.

Peter Lynch might deal in mutual funds, but that doesn’t mean he just rides whatever wave or crest is happening in the market. You don’t get 30-75% returns by indexing to the average. He follows the trends, tracks the data and makes picks based on past performance and strategically reaching for companies to invest in that haven’t hit yet.

Again, yes, he makes some mistakes. But he’s secure in the knowledge that he’s following a plan, based on the data and his interpretation of it, based on his skill-set.  

Always Diversify

No, this does not fly in the face of my customer experience section. All of these points build on each other. You do the strategic work. Make a plan for the long term. You follow the numbers. And, yes, you take a few “chances.” But they are always calculated risks.

We all know not to put all your eggs in one basket. And while you are always focused on your ideal client, there is room for different approaches to gain their attention. And to gain a stronger Google ranking.

So some posts are short, to the point – but valuable. 300 words or less.

Some posts are longer, more impactful, maybe even more evergreen – 500-1000 words.

And some are pillar posts – the ones that rank higher on the Google SERP scale – reaching for the Zero Position of search engine results. They become the paragraph that the searcher can read without clicking to your website – but that’s often what it leads to.

This is also where social media and email blasts fall. Both can be used as solo advertisements of your product or service. But they can also point back to your site, to significant articles. Diversifying means you can draw more eyes onto all of your posts, which, again, compounds your credibility and authority, which raises your Google ranking, and on and on. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Accept the Call

When you make the effort to approach your content creation with an eye of an investor, you will compound your efforts and outreach. But again, only when you’re creating consistent, regular content. If you don’t have the time and the resources to do that, you’re not going to grow – not very quickly anyways.

Let us help you. We can get you on the right track with a strategic approach – something no small business should be without. We can also help you implement the strategy, from the smallest efforts and planning all the way up to creating and posting the content for you. Our writers are qualified and experienced, ready to engage with your ideal customers.

There are no guarantees in life. But I can promise you – if you’re not taking a strategic approach, your business isn’t likely to grow to its full potential. If you’d like help with any or all of the above, please reach out. We’ve built our business helping other small businesses expand. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

I tried a few online services before settling with one suggested by my sister in Texas – Elevation, based in North Carolina. Pastor Steven Furtick just connected with me, as he did many others. Their church actually grew during the shut down, and one sermon in particular caught national attention.

Like many people, I struggle with seeing myself and my true identity as I see my seemingly more successful, happier friends posting online. But I can’t put the blame on them – I am just as prone to post only positives on my social media channels.

And not just to make myself look better – sometimes you don’t speak your mind for professional reasons, or you share positives to maintain good relationships, or because of contract stipulations, or any number of reasons. I personally try, as much as I can, to not complain, and only post positive, uplifting things, in the hopes that it helps others.

As business owners, or when we represent a business online, we can be just as prone to curating only positive content. Only good news, only positive vibes, nothing that can make us look bad or diminish our apparent value.

Yet…

It’s a Trap!

I can point to hundreds of articles online that vouch for the necessity of being as authentic and genuine as possible online. And they’re not talking about people, but about businesses. As far back as 2013, credible marketing and business analysts have pointed out that authenticity is more important than ever. And I have to agree.

Now more than ever, your customers need to see that there are real people behind a business; that sometimes mistakes happen. That the best laid plans are sometimes not followed – and even if they are, often still go awry.

Sometimes, you have to be willing to admit that nobody’s perfect. That the cobbler’s children have no shoes. And as bad as that sounds – it actually helps build credibility. Disclosing these truths may be painful, but sometimes it’s exactly what is needed.

Lessons From the Trenches

One of my favorite examples is from the other industry I work in. Streaming giant Netflix reports their subscriber numbers, good or bad, every quarter. They could just report this information to their shareholders and it would inevitably leak anyways. But as much as Netflix guards certain information – like total viewers of any particular show or movie – they do share some stats freely with the media. Even if they are not in their favor. Most recently, they noted that growth was lower than they had projected.

Of course, the knowledgeable industry insiders did what they always do – proclaimed that the bubble had burst, that Disney+ or HBO Max were stealing viewers from Netflix, or that we had reached a market saturation point. I’m sure Netflix knew those headlines were coming. As I said, it’s not unexpected, cause every time numbers dip, that’s the anthem.

But can I tell you a secret? Netflix is okay with those headlines, and releasing the data that’s interpreted that way. Because even when their numbers are down, or under projections, they know they will bounce back. They have data that confirms it.

Just like the big money men in 1929 invested more when the stock market crashed, Netflix can point to their charts that show their numbers always increase – in the long term. For them, the streaming race is a marathon, not a sprint.

What’s more, Netflix is still controlling the story. By being transparent, even when the industry insiders try to knock them down a peg, they show confidence. They don’t pretend everything is perfect. Yes, numbers are down – but guess what, the company is still generating buzz.

That whole, P.T. Barnum ‘no bad publicity’ thing? It’s sometimes very true.

Blessings in Disguise

When you’re honest and embrace your failures as well as your successes, you are telling your story. Your authentic, real, and trustworthy story.

Every failure becomes part of the foundation, a stepping stone towards continued success. We all know the aphorism, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but we want everything to be perfect now. I know it sounds counterintuitive, so let me repeat it again. Being transparent about your failures builds credibility with your audience – your current and potential customers.

Because just like Netflix, we need to look at the long game. Minor setbacks are just that – minor. By ignoring missteps, or sweeping them under the rug, we betray some of the confidence our clients put in us.

Do your customers want to be the ones whose ball you dropped? Of course not. Nobody wants that. They prefer that your interactions with them – your products or services are as flawless as possible. Be open that you – like everyone – has fallen on your face a time or two. But, despite that, you got back up, and continued to work to deliver as promised. They won’t see the failure as much as they see the perseverance.

Perseverance has value. So does a track record. When you combine those with transparency and authenticity in your message – you’ve got an advantage over your competitors.

The Story Behind the Story

You may be wondering how I settled on the topic for this week’s blog. I’ve talked numerous times about drawing from your own experience when creating content. I just did a long series on content creation, leading to a push to an event that we at Grow the Dream were hosting on the first Saturday in June.

If you didn’t sign up, you might not have noticed – but many of our clients are already aware… That event, the Strategic Marketing Workshop for 2021, did not happen as planned. There’s no one reason, several factors, some within our control, some outside of it, collided, or coincided, and we had to postpone the event indefinitely.

I’m not happy to be telling you this. It wasn’t pleasant to inform the people who had signed up for the in-person event that we were forced to cancel. It was necessary. We’re shifting gears, recalculating, and looking at several options. And I feel comfortable telling you this, because our ideal clients are often in a similar position.

As entrepreneurs, we often have to adjust, reconsider, be very adaptable and agile in our approach to business. For some of us, that’s when we flourish. Heck, some small business owners repeatedly put themselves in troubling situations because that’s how they get the dopamine flowing. They love solving problems – even if they are of their own making.

We get it. And just like you, we aren’t stopping. We might be offering different services – maybe returning to our roots, maybe charting a new, less traveled path. We’ve done it before – so we know we can do it again. And just like our timeless marketing principles, we’ve thrived doing it in down times and good times.

The Road Goes Ever On

We hope you’ll take this journey with us. If you had signed up for the Strategic Marketing Workshop, we’ll keep you informed via email, in addition to what you see on this blog. But regardless of where you stand, we’re moving forward.

We’re going to keep serving our clients and finding new ones, just like we teach them to do. We will persevere. We will keep reaching for success. If you’d like to find out how you can be a part of that success, I hope you’ll reach out.

As I’m fond of saying every week, we built our business helping other small businesses succeed and expand. That continues to be our mantra and our commitment. Let’s Grow the Dream together!

Depending on who you talk to, the ending of Facebook Analytics is equivalent to the end of social media marketing as we know it – or about as important as Google+ going away. It’s probably somewhere in the middle, akin to the end of Adobe Flash. It was great while it lasted, but it ain’t as much fun anymore. Already some of the lesser-used features were stripped away.

Interestingly, the timing seems to imply that the dumping of Facebook Analytics is in the same vein as the Google algorithm change rolled out last week (with a second update coming in July). Both are predicated on Apple’s new iOS 14 uber-privacy settings.

If you’ve been using Facebook Analytics – and you really should have been, especially if you’re running paid ads on Facebook – you should take the time to download the data available. You have until the June 30^th termination date.

The Past is Prologue

Around the same time that Facebook purchased Instagram for $1-Billion and launched their IPO, they quietly began adding certain tools for better business use. Presumably, they hoped to offer business users similar – or even more complex data – than Google Analytics had been able to offer.

This worked – sort of. Unfortunately, it would eventually backfire. People started asking how exactly Facebook was gathering and could profit from, all that information. The short answer was that nobody read the Facebook digital disclosures and user agreement before they clicked approve. And the lawyers designed it to be understandable… barely.

As both Facebook and Google (and Amazon) jockeyed to prove that they weren’t taking advantage of their users, a lot of the more powerful pieces of information were yanked. Facebook Analytics became less powerful, and/or significantly more generic. The value that the data once had was waning. I’m simplifying a lot of this, of course. For a detailed description of the data being collected from your online presence every day, you can check out this article.

The crux of it is not enough businesses – regardless of size – were using the available Facebook Analytics for much. Some used it to confirm what they learned from Google Analytics and other third party apps. Some just never embraced it. Or were afraid to admit that they had.

Either way, the tools were less valuable for the end user, making them less valuable to maintain for Facebook. The Apple privacy changes are just the final shovel full of dirt piled on the casket of Facebook Analytics.

Stayin’ Alive

But it’s not all gloom and doom for analytic information on the social media giant. While Facebook Analytics is going the way of the dodo, portions of it – some even improved upon – will live on in some of their other business-sided tools.

Creator Studio, Audience Insights, Business Manager, Events Manager, Ads Manager and Facebook Page Insights all still live on. They can be very useful tools in your arsenal for finding and tracking your customers’ interests and journeys. Even better, they can add valuable insights into the profile of the ideal customer you should be targeting. A lot of them are now better integrated with Instagram as well, adding cross-posting value.

And I would look for a significant update to Facebook Business Suite on or around June 30 – granting all businesses entrée to the “one-stop-shopping” account access small businesses have gotten a nice preview of for the past nine months.

The biggest loss we’ll see? The “accessory” data that Facebook probably wasn’t supposed to be gathering anyways. And some of that is still available on Google Analytics.

The More Things Change

The real story behind the death of Facebook Analytics is that we shouldn’t rely too much on any technology to assist us with our digital marketing needs. Yes, Facebook is a social media behemoth. One that we can’t afford to ignore or not have a presence on. But Facebook and social media marketing are simply tools within your digital marketing strategy. Likes aren’t sales.

Your strategy must be your guide. How much social media do you use? How much you engage with your customers – present and potential – on whatever platform? Everything must be factored out of your digital marketing strategy.

And you must have a strategy.

You also have to use it. Knowing who your ideal customers are does you no good unless you’re targeting them. Contacting them, updating them, sharing your business story. You have no one to blame but yourself if you know who your customers are, but don’t make an effort to connect with them.

While algorithms and platforms and tools may change, the principles of strategy don’t. In fact, we’ve seen over the past 20 years that the more those tools change, the more relevant and impactful our approach is.

The same philosophies and codes we taught entrepreneurs and small business owners back in 1998 are still valid. We helped hundreds of business owners through economic downturns – even recessions. The principles were so effective that Michael Pink, Zig Ziglar and his organization, and more, invited us to share our message with their teams and clients.

Now It’s Your Turn

We would love to help you too. Our website has plenty of articles on how business strategy and digital marketing work and can be used for your success. But some folks want a more hands on approach. If that’s you, I encourage you to reach out. We’ll give you 25 minutes of our time, free of charge, to look at your options.

We’ve built our business, educating and serving other small businesses and entrepreneurs and I know we can help you too. Let’s Grow the Dream together!

I’m not going to rehash all of the particulars. I just want to look for a moment at bare facts. The emotions of this ‘adventure’ have been all over the place and in many ways have distorted our perception of time. While it seems so much has changed, and so many things have happened, this apparent lifetime-length journey really has only been 18 months.

Even though it has only been 18 months, because of these seismic shifts – Coronavirus, social changes, political upheavals – our world will never be the same. It’s not just a feeling. We literally have either stunted the growth of or rapidly advanced many expected developments. And regardless of how you feel about it, as small business owners, you need to adapt – and there is a lot less time for dithering or thoughtful consideration.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t take the time to make an informed decision. But you absolutely need to adopt a strategic approach to your business – and you need to do it quickly. Otherwise, it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed by the options, the decisions, and to lose sight of the future.

We’re in a brave new world. Even the futurists have lost track of what’s coming.

But there is good news.

While there are new decisions to make and approaches to consider, the principles of small business strategy are still the same as they were decades ago.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You may be approaching your business as more of a remote entity. Yes, you may be employing more gig or freelance workers from all parts of the country. More of your business may be online than ever before. And, sure, Google is changing their algorithm one more time.

Oh, yeah. Did you miss that? It was supposed to happen this time last year, and the folks at Alphabet opted to delay it in light of everything that was happening. But it’s still coming – it’s on the horizon now, and businesses everywhere are scrambling to prepare.

If it feels like you’re suddenly overwhelmed with too many things going on, you’re not alone. That’s kinda been the theme of these past eighteen months – scrambling. Trying to keep up. Working to adapt. Trying to do anything. But most importantly, trying not to do the wrong thing. Cause there’s just not time, right?

We talk about strategy a lot at Grow the Dream. Not just in these articles I post every week, but overall strategy. Strategy for our small business. Finding ways to connect and communicate. Are we helping others? Can we assist ourselves?

There’s an old English idiom: “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” And we struggle, like many businesses, wondering if we’re helping or educating others on our principles, at the expense of not following them ourselves.

We love to help entrepreneurs define and share their stories – but we need to share ours too. Our success is a direct result of us helping your business succeed.

Brass Tacks

I could go on for a few hundred more words (and have in the past) justifying and explaining why companies in general, and especially small businesses, need to adopt a strategic approach. But I know who our target audience is. I know that they will take action when informed of what they need to do. Even if they sometimes often wait ’til the last minute.

There’s a reason I waited until today to do this article. And a reason for last week’s call to action. Last week I needed to make you aware that an event was coming. Today, I’m banging the drum, letting you know – sign up, because it’s only a couple of days away.

It might feel random and precipitous. It might feel like that moment when the preacher is giving a message and it seems like he’s staring into your soul and his words are only for you. I’m all about letting God work – but the twinge you feel in your stomach is the result of well-executed strategy.

I wish I could invite everyone to this – but we are limited in space and time. So if you live and work in the Sarasota-Bradenton area – or you’re willing to get up early enough to drive there – I have a special treat for you.

Saturday, June 5, 2021 (yes, this weekend), Grow the Dream is hosting a face-to-face strategy seminar & workshop. You’ll learn all about that Google update and how to leverage it for your business. You will learn how to tell your story – by actually working on it in the moment. You’ll get hands on literal experience as David G. Johnson deconstructs one of the participants’ website – maybe even yours – and shows how to make it work better. And we’ll even do some social distance networking.

Now Is The Time

I know your inclination is to wait, to be cautious, to get to it tomorrow after you’ve thought about it. I get that – I am probably more guilty of uber-overthinking everything than most. But as I’ve mentioned, the workshop is only a few days away. The Google changes are right on the workshop’s heels.

I have two quotes by my desk. One is anonymous – “When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it smaller.” The other is from the Biblical book of Habakkuk. It seems to contradict the first one, because it mentions waiting for the appointed time. But the first part defines the waiting – write down the vision, that he may run who reads it.

My deepest desire is to motivate people with my words. I want to help as many incredible, world-changing small businesses succeed as I can – and that starts this week with our “Strategic Marketing Workshop: 2021 & Beyond.” If it helps convince you to attend, breakfast is even provided!

It’s time to get back to business, and that means getting ahead of the changes – online or otherwise – that are coming. It means knowing and telling your story effectively. You owe it to yourself, your family and the people whose lives you hope to change with your business to be there.

The future is now. Don’t be left behind. Sign up for the workshop today. Let’s Grow the Dream together.

Return on Investment.

And if you’re more of a creative type like I am, you may have grumbled a time or two (or sixteen) about the difficulty of quantifying the ROI on an artistic venture. My go-to for those arguments is a quote by author Kurt Vonnegut:

“The arts… are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward.”

Unfortunately the people holding the purse strings usually want a more monetary return on their investment. So these days I point them to the ubiquitousness of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, etc. – the services that got us through the pandemic shutdown without losing our sanity or murdering someone – all filled with creative endeavors. Pieces of art that the platforms have (and continue to) pay a pretty penny for.

But that’s not what we’re looking at today. While we’ve all considered ROI, for the money lenders and our retirement accounts, I’m betting most small business owners haven’t considered the corollary: the Cost of Inaction.

What Are You Waiting For?

I can tell you, from my time educating people about retirement options, that bankers and investment specialists also focus on the flipside of ROI – COI. The most poignant example is the one where you take a look at how compound interest works. A dollar properly invested at age 20, even if it’s never touched again, after 10 years is worth nearly 100 times what investing $10 is at age 30. Even during the recent recession.

Stock Brokers and Mutual Fund salesmen are fond of pointing out that when the stock market crashed in 1929, the people who survived and thrived in the Great Depression were those who didn’t panic. While the average consumer was pulling their money out of investments and savings and loans, the Rockefellers and Carnegies “let it ride.”

Opportunity Cost is defined as “the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.”

Opportunity cost can be positive or negative. Cost of Inaction is the negative side. In Tim Ferris’ “Fear Setting” exercise, he calls the Cost of Inaction possibly the most important consideration you can take. For him, understanding the emotional, physical and financial costs for you and the people in your life is what truly drives us to take the uncomfortable action that moves us out of the status quo.

Put simply, every choice is in fact two choices. Every time you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else. And every no is really the choice to prioritize another yes.

Investing Your Time

In many ways, building credibility and visibility online is like investing for retirement. We don’t have an exact formula with marketing like they use in calculating compound interest, but it’s a similar mindset. The more you do now, the more your results will build on each other. The longer you wait, the smaller your potential returns could be.

Brokers will also tell you, the more consistent you are at putting away a few dollars every week, the more your investment will increase, not just compounding, but growing exponentially.

And just like investing for the future, consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts will exponentially grow your search engine visibility – regardless of how often Google changes their algorithm. Consistently providing extra worth to customers and searchers boosts organic search traffic. Adding value will always yield a profitable return.

Trust Doesn’t Rust

I’ve written extensively on the fact that 99% of the time, you won’t make a sale from a first visit to your website. In nine out of ten cases, searchers will never return to your site after the initial visit. I wrote those articles a few years ago, and I think if someone studied it, those numbers may have adjusted slightly since the pandemic began, but for the point I’m making they’re still valid.

You exchange valuable information like Lead Magnets for the potential customer’s contact information. That way you can keep in contact with them on a regular basis and when they’re ready to make a decision, hopefully you’re top of mind.

Online, there are seldom opportunities to do the old Tom Hopkins sales presentation to build company credibility. Even if you tried, people don’t have the patience for it, and often distrust the presenter, even if they appear interested. But every time someone visits your site and finds the answers they’re looking for, it adds to your trustworthiness in their minds.

The more often, and more consistently you provide value to the people who find you on search engines, the more you build credibility. And it’s an even stronger, more emotional connection, because they’re making the decision to trust you – not just taking your word for it. And as ol’ Tom has often told us, emotions make sales.

Investing in Emotional Impact

Psychologists tell us that as human beings we are more emotionally affected by losing something than by gaining something. We like to win, but we hate losing even more. To the point that if we worry that upsetting the status quo will cost us, we’ll sometimes ignore the fact that it can also greatly benefit us. Even with a track record of knowing change has been beneficial, we can still be stymied by the fear of loss.

The doctors call this “Escalation of Commitment.” But you might know it better by the economic take on it – the sunk-cost fallacy. Fear of losing, especially after we’ve invested so much time, money, resources, causes us to justify throwing good money after bad. To remix a couple of metaphors.

But as small business owners, we must resist this urge. Or better yet, counter it with emotional regulation. Emotional regulation strategies employ cognitive skills to redefine the meaning of a stimulus or situation. For example, both therapists and Weight Watchers employ and teach a technique called  “reframing.”

In therapy, the counselor helps you see things from a different perspective, presumably allowing you to put yourself in another’s shoes and see the behaviors you experienced as negative in a positive light. Weight Watchers, its own form of therapy, you look at why you overeat. In many people’s cases, the root cause is stress. So the program teaches you to look for alternative ways to relieve stress and try one of them.

The end result is the same – changed behavior due to a redefined emotional state.

Sacrifices Must Be Made

I know I got a bit technical with the last section, so let me bring it back around. Our topic last week was delegation and outsourcing.

There are only so many hours in the day. Even if you try to drive yourself 24/7, you’ll discover, as I did in college, that after about 72 hours of being awake, your brain starts sleeping for you, whether you want it or not. The phenomenon of microsleeps (mentally sleeping while awake) can occur in some subjects after just 48 hours without sleep. And after you pass 96 hours – awake for four days straight – your perception of reality is severely distorted.

Not the best situation for running a business.

Even if you’re the type of person who only needs four to five hours of sleep per night, you’ve still only got 19-20 hours to work and live life. Something sometime has to give. No one, no matter how talented, can do it all, not all the time.

One of the things we encourage our clients to do is to focus their attention and efforts on the things they do well. The places they succeed and get energized and do better than anyone else. It just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice your best time and effort – in areas where you are mediocre at best. I’m not saying that to be insulting, just asking you to face facts.

Spending time on one thing means less time for other things. Trying to do everything is not only untenable, it’s costing you the success your business could have. You’re wasting resources to save a few bucks – when it’s really costing you much more in the long run.

I can’t tell you how to run your business, but I can tell when you’re stretched too thin.

Faith Without Works is Dead

About halfway through this article, I repeated a phrase I’ve used often in the past five years of writing this weekly blog. You need to be “consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts.”

Valuable. Actionable.

I work very hard to research and write interesting, valuable content that will help your business succeed, even if you never once consider hiring Grow the Dream in any capacity. I do it for a variety of reasons. The most important being that I believe we should operate our business the way we recommend others operate theirs. So giving added value to every article is important to me.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a call to action. In most instances, I try to be somewhat subtle. I encourage you to reach out, if you need help or want to learn more. I remind you that we built our business helping small businesses and entrepreneurs scale up their businesses.

But today, I want to, at the risk of coming off as “salesy,” be very direct. You could read every word we’ve written in these blog posts, going back nearly 20 years. You could memorize them. Tell them to others. But unless you take action – it’s all pointless. You get nothing out of it.

So I’m going to tell you very bluntly. We can help. Grow the Dream has taught and executed small business marketing strategies for more than 20 years. We get results. Our work is successful and we are very talented at what we do.

On June 5, 2021, we are hosting a LIVE, face-to-face Strategic Marketing Workshop.

This workshop will provide you with the tools you need to succeed in the digital marketplace – and how to manage your time and reduce your stress. It’s an amazing morning, breakfast and coffee provided, worth at least five or six times the amount we are asking from each business owner.

And we only have 30 slots.

We have to limit attendance due to COVID Safety Parameters, but also because we want to give you very detailed, hands-on attention. You’ll walk away with the top strategies and most up to date information. No question will be left unasked – and you’ll know exactly what steps to take next.

This is a program you cannot afford to miss.

This is your opportunity.  Don’t miss out. It’s time to take action.

Sign up here.

Baking cookies requires three major steps/phases:

1. acquiring the ingredients
2. mixing the ingredients together, and 
3. baking

Strangely enough, achieving your organization’s goals also involves three major phases: 

1. input (activities)
2. output (outcome)
3. impact

The 3 Phases of Achieving Results

The Input Phase 

When we’re baking our pandemic cookies, the input phase involves obtaining and gathering all of our ingredients. This part is easy to quantify and measure. In fact, it’s even simple to measure the activities involved with tossing the flour, sugar, chocolate chips, etc. into a bowl and firing up the mixer. 

In our analogy to the process of achieving results, the input phase involves all the activities that an individual or organization executes in pursuit of a result.

The Output Phase

When we’re baking, we might refer to the cookie dough after it has been mixed together as the output from our activities. 

In our organizations, the output would refer to the immediate result of a program or initiative from our input activities. And this is where we might be tempted to stop measuring. After all, we have a result, right? And our result is often simple to measure and describe.

But if we stop here, we miss the most powerful and compelling part of our story.

To help illustrate this, let’s look at a real-life example.

Why It’s a Mistake to Stop Measuring at the Output Phase 

A great example of measuring inputs and outputs can be found in the grade-level reading movement. 

For some quick context, here are some important statistics about why children need to read on grade level courtesy of the United Way of Topeka: 

“74% of students who fail to read proficiently by the end of third grade falter in the later grades and often drop out before earning a high school diploma. 61% of low-income children have no children’s books at home. Poor children hear as many as 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers.”

Various initiatives have emerged to address the grade-level reading conundrum. An input would be volunteer readers entering a kindergarten classroom weekly to read with a child and work on sight words, social and emotional intelligence factors, and the general joy of reading. 

In that situation, the output would be the increased number of reading hours a child experienced because of the volunteer (or activity input.)

But wait. Who cares? Why does the number of hours a child reads matter? 

To be blunt, it doesn’t. 

The Impact Phase

The number of hours that a child and volunteer read together is not the problem that we are seeking to solve. We’re actually trying to address the grade-level reading crisis. 

What matters is the result or impact… specifically, that the activities by the volunteer lead to the quantity of hours necessary to help the child achieve grade-level reading. A child reading on grade level is the result (impact) that we intended with the original activities.  

Do you, your organization, or the organizations that you donate to take it all the way to impact? 

Do you have results in mind… or are you just looking to feel good about your actions, eat the cookie dough,…. and regret it later on when you have a tummy ache? (Or feeling that the needle is not moving on the real issue.) 

Too often we spend time thinking about the activities and ignoring trackable measurements that lead to impact. 

Going Forward

Starting with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound) goals increases the possibility that milestones and activities will create the desired results. 

We would love to help you to learn more about developing your compelling story at our “Strategic Marketing Workshop: 2021 and Beyond.” A $600 value for only $97, this impactful and interactive workshop will also cover the platforms and tools used to tell your story and to disseminate your services and products to the right audience. Register here to attend – breakfast will be served and discounted headshots available onsite! We hope to see you there!

Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called the Page Experience Update, and it involves the “core web vitals” that has website owners everywhere scrambling.

The timing for this change is tricky. Just as we’re all emerging from the pandemic in new and more meaningful ways, we all have to pay attention to our websites.

But if you’re like many people I’ve been talking with, you’re probably trying to figure out how to adapt right now… given vaccinations, changes announced by Florida’s Governor, and other factors that are in flux.

Frankly: it’s a perfect storm.

And that’s why we decided to put together an in-person workshop on Saturday, June 5th.

We’ll talk about Google and your online visibility, but more importantly: your strategy.

Even if you’ve updated your marketing strategy in the last year… it’s critical to revisit your plans and check your assumptions about the behavior of the people you’re marketing to.

This isn’t just about digital marketing: it’s about ensuring that your business or organization thrives in this rapidly-changing environment.

And that’s one reason I’ve teamed up with Cassandra Decker for this hands-on workshop. Her background as a cultural economic anthropologist doing research in the field gives her a unique perspective on how to collect the most important data and then turn that data into a compelling story that people respond to. This is something we can all use—both strategically and practically.

We’ve kept the cost low. Breakfast is included. It’s also limited to the first 30 people who register, so please check out all the details here right away.

I’ll hope to see you there!

Oh! If you want to bring a spouse, business partner, or colleague, you can do it for half price.

It’s an entrepreneur’s problem, typified by statements like “It’s just faster if I do it myself.” Which is something I hear a lot. And my response usually is, “is it?” I can say that, because I’ve both suffered from the perfectionist (and economical) drive to do it all myself. And I’ve dealt with supervisors who would suddenly offload – or try to – a huge project with an unrealistic deadline that they’ve suddenly run into.

And because of my own personal proclivities, I usually all but kill myself to try and relieve their emergency. But that’s a discussion for a later time.

As David says later in the podcast, “There’s only so many hours you can work in a day, or a week or whatever… You’ve got to be able to hand off the things that keep you from delivering your best value.”

I’m going to repeat that last phrase again… “delivering your best value.” You see, I think that most entrepreneurs and small business owners really do believe that they’re responsible for giving the best value to their customers. But at the same time, they often lack the perspective to see that they’re unable to do that. They’re spreading themselves too thin, trying to do too many things – and things they are not best at.

Expect the Ineffectual

Next week, I’ll talk about the specter of opportunity cost – and the cost of lost opportunities. But today, let’s look at an old analogy from John Maxwell. Or maybe it was Warren Buffet. Doesn’t matter. What’s important is the lesson, not the teacher.

Suppose that your earning potential is $100 per hour. You’re working from your home office and go to refill your coffee mug. Suddenly, you notice that the lawn is getting a little too high. Or the laundry basket is starting to overflow. Or those dishes need to be done. Maybe it would be good to run the vacuum…

Now for me, those tasks have the added “advantage” of being easy procrastination techniques that make it appear as if I’m being productive, while I’m just avoiding the work I should be doing. But that’s not why I’m bringing them up.

Now, if I spend an hour washing the dishes or vacuuming the house, that’s $100 of earning potential I’ve just thrown to the wind. Or – I can hire a maid to come in for 3 hours, pay them $75 and focus on the things that make me and my company money.

Now, instead of dishes, suppose I’m spending time tweaking the design on my website or posting social media posts. Or maybe minor accounting and spreadsheet work – things I am not very good at, which inevitably take more time to do than writing – which I am damn good at – and could outsource to a capable, qualified professional for a lot less than my hourly rate.

You’d balk at spending $100 an hour for a landscaper to mow your lawn – but you’ll spend 2 hours doing it, essentially wasting $200. That’s kind of the definition of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“Investments” Past the Point of no Return

As much as it pains us to delegate, outsource, let anyone else touch our stuff – and maybe screw it up – we have to look at it as an investment. We have to look at a cost-benefit analysis. I’ve discussed it many times before, but it’s relevant to revisit the Pareto Principle here.

The Pareto Principle, simply stated is this – 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. So which parts of your work are you spending the most time focusing on? Are you earning less because you’re spending too much time on things that don’t yield the greatest income?

Let’s put it this way – if your greatest skill is your ability to close potential clients and bring money into the company coffers, why would you reduce the time you have available to do that? You have an already honed skill – an advantage that cannot, so far, be replicated within your business. But, instead of closing customers, you’re spending an inordinate amount of time trying to learn a different skill. You’re struggling with a learning curve. Maybe you’re frustrated by the lack of progress from your efforts.

You’re putting off meeting with potential clients because you’re trying to get better at attracting new clients.

Of course, you’d never do that – except I see it happen every single day. Business owners put off the things they are super skilled and talented at, to focus on learning whatever the next new thing is that supposed to help their business.

Now, shiny object syndrome is a real thing – but I’m saying even proven techniques like writing and publishing a consistent content blog can be a waste of valuable time if you haven’t got the skill. And many entrepreneurs don’t.

Time is Money is Time

Let me use a simpler example. Suppose you launch your business and a large part of the daily activity is fielding incoming calls. Is it more cost effective for you to spend your $100-an-hour-value answering those calls – including the ones that will never yield customers or income?

Or would it be better to pay a secretary $20 an hour, plus benefits, to take those calls, freeing you up to create and develop the business? The only time you’re on the phone is for valuable tasks that yield $100 or more income per hour you spend on them.

Going back to the beginning of this article – there’s only so much time in the day. I’m an employee of Grow the Dream, so my hours are paid. But because I’m in California, I can work while David sleeps in Florida. And he can quickly prep things for me in the hours before I’m awake, so I can hit the ground running.

By using employees and freelancers in different time zones, Grow the Dream as a company is working 18-20 hours per day. David is talented and probably gets less sleep than he needs (I know I do), but he can’t consistently be working 18-20 hours per day, 5-7 days a week.

Neither can you. I don’t care how motivated and talented you are as an entrepreneur or small business owner, our bodies run out at some point. Are you limiting your success? Are you hurting yourself and your business (not to mention your significant others)?

Successful business owners leverage their time and resources.

If you want to be one, you will too.

Entrepreneurial Fulcrum

For more than 20 years, we’ve taught small business owners how to leverage their digital marketing efforts. Ignoring “conventional wisdom” about search engine optimization, and focusing on a strategic approach has led to faster than normal success. And the rest of the world is catching up to our methods, as Google and Facebook algorithms increasingly hamstring the old approaches. I’m not going to belabor that here.

But one thing we realized as we taught is that there was a need to assist small business owners with some of the more skill-based marketing efforts. A lot of entrepreneurs who went through our courses embraced the principles! But they lacked the ability or time to execute them most effectively.

So we pivoted a bit. We began offering our clients the option to not only learn the techniques – but also help implement them. We started with developing our unique model buyer personas. Other digital marketing services have adapted or ‘borrowed’ our methods, but didn’t focus as clearly on the specifics. Our clients get extremely detailed profiles to use for targeting their ideal customers – the ones that are a win-win for the client and their customer.

Then we went one step further. We offered clients who needed it the writing and graphics services we already utilized in house. Some clients have us write their content blogs. Some have us edit their writing into a clearer, more focused presentation. They leverage our highly-skilled, capable, talented staff for their benefit.

Which is more cost-effective… Spending valuable time learning a new skill, or utilizing a team with nearly 100 years of combined experience writing compelling copy targeted at a unique audience? This isn’t calculus. By taking advantage of what we do best, those small business owners were freed up to focus on what they did best.

“Automate” by Delegating

David is fond of telling our clients that our motto is to “train our clients til we’re out of a job.” And we do try to do that. But it’s irresponsible to not consider additional options when you need skills and talents that are outside your area of expertise.

Your business is your passion. But can you explain that passion or educate people on the necessity of your product and service effectively? Passion and speaking passionately go a long way. But at some point, you need to adapt or adopt captivating, effective communication techniques – especially if you’re doing it on paper.

Your passion is evident in your voice, your body language, your enthusiasm. But is that conveyed on the page? In my experience, often it’s not.

My passion is storytelling – and conveying it on the page. Words are my stock and trade. I know how to evoke visuals, emotions and engage readers. So does Betsy Dane, our other talented senior writer. She’s also top notch when it comes to grant applications and some of the business writing I find more mundane.

I can tell you, ‘you need to write consistent, targeted content posts,’ til I’m blue in the face. But if you don’t know how, or worse, are one of those people who hold off until it’s precisely perfect, but never published… that’s not doing anyone any good.

We may not be working our way out of a job – but we do want you to have the best chance of success. If writing or editing frustrates you, you’re less likely to do it. Hiring us to fill in that gap is not only a good investment, it may be a necessary one.

In this way, you can automate the important – by letting us help your business grow.

Areas of Expertise

The best way to grow your small business is to focus on the areas of your expertise. I know that’s hard when you’re just getting started. Even if you’re not a solopreneur, everyone in your business is likely wearing multiple hats. And that’s great when you’re getting started. For some, it’s that excitement that drives them.

That’s great if you want to be a serial entrepreneur. But what if your business idea isn’t one that Microsoft or Google or Facebook is going to pay millions of dollars for? What if you don’t want to start over and over and over again? What if you do, but recognize the value in having a strong business to sell off to the highest bidder?

Whether you want to create one awesome business that serves the world and eventually offers you more freedom, or if you want to create multiple world-changing entities… You still only have so much time.

Don’t you owe it to yourself and your family to leverage the best means at your disposal? Our services aren’t for everyone. But we are the best at what we do for the people we do it for. We have market proof of growth for our customers’ businesses year over year. Proof not only of the success of our strategic approach – but also success of the content we write for our clients.

We’re so confident that we’ll give you 25 minutes free of charge with our top consultant to see the difference. Just reach out and test the waters. We’ve built our business helping small businesses expand – and we can do the same for you.

Let’s Grow the Dream together!