3 things every NEW business SHOULD stop doing

When we launch our new business our heads are filled with visions of more fun, freedom and financial security…the reality can be starkly different!

We quickly discover that this is no joke, and all that freedom and money is gonna take a huge amount of courage and effort to achieve.

As a Business Coach, I work with loads of new business owners and have realised that they all do certain things that are either a complete waste of time or actually damaging to themselves or their businesses.

I thought I’d highlight 3 here so, if you are a new business owner doing any of these things, it may be time to get over them and move on…

OVER-SUBSCRIBING

The world today is very noisy – and when you become a new business owner you realise that it can get pretty deafening.

Every day we are bombarded by offers of magic-potions that are THE ANSWER to all our prayers, so we gladly hand over our name and email address to download the Next Big Thing.

This results in an AVALANCHE of emails hitting our inbox every day – sometimes three times a day from the same person!

Sure, some of these emails have some useful info – but remember that you are in a pre-programmed email sequence that has been cleverly designed to move you through a sales funnel straight towards a purchase.

These emails are distracting at best (I call them Email Earworms), but at worst they can seriously affect your mental health AND your bank balance!

The constant bombardment can make us feel unworthy (we clearly aren’t doing it right / enough / their way etc); confused (which of these should I actually be following?); and overwhelmed (so many emails and I’ve got to read them all).

If the emails convince you they hold the answer, you can end up shelling out loads of your hard-earned (or borrowed!) cash on The One Thing that’s gonna get the money flowing and turn your business into the success you know it can be!

Sadly – many of these pre-programmed sales-funnel email sequences are not going to lead you to a cut-and-paste pot of money at the end.

They are sales emails, often with little or no targeting so you could end up buying something that is not right for you, or something that holds little value for your business type.

MY ADVICE: UNSUBSCRIBE.

If you have hundreds of unopened emails from certain people, unsubscribe and mass delete – you’re never gonna read them.

OVER-COMPLICATING

New business owners sure have a knack for over-complicating their lives, and often it’s because of the Oversubscribed point above!

We are bombarded by strategy after strategy all promising to get our business working – it’s difficult to know which is the right answer for us so we end up cutting and pasting loads of different bits and sticking them all over our brand new business.

The end result is a complete mismash of strategies that often work against each other, and definitely work to confuse you even more.

MY ADVICE: KEEP IT SIMPLE

Business doesn’t actually have to be this complicated. Focus on the basics, get them right, and the rest will follow.

OVER-COMMITTING

When we start off we have all the time in the world to spend promoting our business, so we dive right into every social media platform, every Facebook group, every podcast we can get our hands on.

The problem with this is – it’s completely unsustainable!

The minute you start winning work you’ll find it impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of work required to keep several social media balls up in the air, and suddenly popping into 10 Facebook Groups a day and adding value drops off your priority list.

The problem with this is that, to everyone whose been watching, listening, and learning about you it screams inconsistency…which plants a seed of doubt in their mind about you and your ability to deliver.

Sounds harsh, but it’s true.

MY ADVICE: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Take the time up-front to really get to know your audience and understand where they spend their time, and focus all of your efforts there.

List all platforms in order of priority, so you know which one is the most crucial for you to master.

Once you’ve mastered one social media platform (and by that I mean it’s producing consistent leads into your business), feel free to head to the next one and master that too.

Ultimately all social media platforms where your audience are can be incredibly valuable – but they’ll have the opposite effect if you are burning yourself out and over-committing at this early stage!

I hope you have found this article useful. Let me know in the comments if any of this rings true and if there’s anything else you’ve caught yourself doing and stopped.

If you are wanting to get the basics right, a streamlined Business and Marketing Plan will help you focus in on what really matters and build a solid business.

If you don’t have such a plan, I can guide you through building one here.

Best of luck to you, Sally xo