A Secret Confession
Here’s a little secret about me: I love kid’s movies!
Not the old Disney ones that I grew up with. But the new ones they’ve produced for kids like my son Jake to watch. I love both Despicable Me movies, both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, all of the Shrek movies, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Inc and even the follow up University version.
I even loved the remake of the book Paddington into a movie!
Every time I watch these movies, I pick up some kind of message. I realize that they make these movies for kids to learn life lessons. But sometimes, I wonder if they ever think about how this connects with the parents who are watching the movie with their kids.
Recently, my son and I had a movie weekend. Not only did we go out and see the new Minions movie, we pulled out some old DVDs we haven’t watched in awhile.
One of the movies we watched that weekend was Bee Movie. I remembered how I loved watching Jerry Seinfeld as the voice of Barry the Bee.
So we’re watching the movie and we get to the part of where Barry gets caught inside the house. He doesn’t realize that he can’t get out because the window is down and blocking his way.
Wait, that’s me!
I laughed at Barry until I had this moment of clarity: Hey, wait a minute, that’s me!
{ No, I’ve never imagined I was a bee but stick with me for a moment as I explain }
I’m way past the point of just being newbie in business. Seriously, I’ve been in business since 1999. I believe I’m well past that thing they call the early stages of business.
Over the years, I’ve changed the type of work that I handle in my business. I’ve worked through who I am and what I do. And through that process, I found my focus and shifted my services.
And since I discovered my focus, I’ve started to see growth.
Growth in all areas – my blog, my social sites and even my overall revenue. I’m growing my business but not fast enough to hire full-time help, but certainly fast enough to feel the overload of my increase in workload.
Every time that one more thing happens, I feel more like Barry hitting my head on that window.
Another client signs on. This time. { wham, ow! what was that? }
A current client ups her budget to work with me longer than just one month. This time. { bam }
A couple of blog posts go viral causing an increase in my email list and more people reaching out to me.
This time, this time, this time. { wham, bam, ow this hurts! }
Creating a Strategic Growth Plan
So what do you do when your business is growing at a rate faster than you can keep up with it? Giving up sleep and spending money you just don’t have to pay for some help aren’t the only answers.
And if I read one more post telling me to wake up at 5am, I’m going to scream. The idea of getting up before the sun does because ‘it’s quiet in the house’ just doesn’t cut it with my schedule as a single mom.
As I looked for answers, I realized it was just as simple as going back to my time- tested solutions.
If you’re in the same awkward growth stage as me, hopefully these five recommendations will stop you from hitting your head against that window. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of banging my head against that thing.
{ And holy crap, it’s starting to hurt! }
1. Assess your Current Situation
Honestly, the first thing you should do is take a deep breath and review how you got into this place. Think about the steps you took or maybe the ones that you should have taken.
Your situation didn’t just happen to you. Somewhere along the way, you somehow actively participated in the drive down this path.
I know I did. I’ve been working so hard on my business, reaching out to clients and staying on their radar. I just didn’t think that it would all come at me at once.
Some days it feels like a flood of overloaded work that needs to done. Sometimes, I’m able to tread water while other days, I just have to give in and let the water flow over me.
As I assess my current situation, I can easily see where I can use some help to take this load off my shoulders. Where I went wrong was thinking I that I’d have more time to bring in some help, train that person and be ready to go when I hit this high growth time.
2. Improve your Systems
I’ve always had systems and processes in place. My assessment showed me that there are some areas that I could definitely tweak to make better use of time.
Think about all the things that you do in your day that just seem to take way to much time to get done. If it’s not something that will immediately make you money, you probably find yourself constantly putting it off and moving it to the next day or even the next week on your to-do list.
When you catch yourself doing this all the time, it’s time to develop a system to make sure you take care of the things you need to do to run your business.
If you don’t know the difference between and system and process – and why your company needs both – check out this post. It’ll walk you through the steps to create a streamlined system to make your days flow better.
3. Use a Planner
I admit that I still use a Daytimer planner. I have a thing about writing my to-do list with a paper and pen. It seems to connect better with me that way.
BUT I can’t deny the power of a mobile app that I can access from any mobile device and syncs with my laptop. I’m a big HUGE fan of Evernote and can’t imagine how I could run my business without it.
There’s nothing better that can help you stay organized than having a task management program to help you prioritize your daily top 3 – 4 things that absolutely, positively have to get done.
Some other great programs out there are Trello, Basecamp and Asana. It really doesn’t matter which one you use. It’s more important that you find one that works with your work style and you use it.
4. Focus on the Right Target
Yeah, I know you’ve heard this one before in one form or another.
The truth is you can’t be everything to everybody. So why do you think that spending your valuable time posting on EVERY social site is going to give you more results?
I totally get that one. One the first questions my clients ask me is ‘where do I spend my time posting every week?’
Let me share this one with you: As much as I get the importance of LinkedIn for my small business, I struggle with being a consistent user.
I want to be in LinkedIn, especially the groups, connecting new people. I want to start publishing posts in their shared content section but as every week goes by that I think about doing it, I don’t.
Because when the to-do list overwhelm sets in, I have to be strategic with my valuable time. I’ve learned to look at which social sites bring me the most site traffic and I’ll spend my time in those sites.
For me, my top traffic referral sites are Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. So when my schedule turns upside down, I have to spend my time where it makes sense for my business. It’s more important to spend my limited time in the social sites where I know my efforts will create better results.
You really don’t have to be in ALL of the social sites to have a successful social media marketing plan. You just have to spend your time focusing on the right target.
5. Think in Quarters
This is the first year that I’ve made a big effort to have quarterly planning sessions. It’s been one the best things to help deal with the growth in my business.
{ I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner! }
At the end of the year, we all make these big plans for the coming year. We think about products we want to launch and what we can do to make sure our services are aligned with our focus.
Some of us even get brave and create a yearly revenue goal with a breakdown of how much we need to make each month to get there. And then our bright beautiful plans sit there in our computer files or a binder on the shelf.
Occasionally, we’ll pull up our plans to see what’s next in our list but then we get discouraged when we realize that we’re so far behind of where we thought we’d be this time of year.
I know that dance because that was me. I did this same thing every year.
But this year has been different. I’ve made time in my busy schedule to have a quarterly planning session. I go somewhere away from my office and the distractions of what work needs to be done and I review where I am with my business plan.
I spend several hours looking at what I’ve accomplished. I see what didn’t get done and I make readjustments to what I need to do to get to my final goals.
I’ve found these quarterly sessions to be extremely helpful. I review everything from my social stats to which blog posts are getting the most traffic.
By taking the time to really assess where I am { and not where I thought I was! }, I can decide what I can realistically accomplish in the next 3 months.
Every flower must grow through dirt
When you find yourself in this growing place, just accept the fact that to get out, it’s going to get messy.
You’ll think you know where you’re heading and moving and going and then one day – BAM, This time! – something comes in and smacks you in the head.
Always remember that you have a choice about how to react to the window blocking your path. You can keep banging your head or you can follow my Strategic Growth Plan suggestions and get yourself back on track.
And prepare yourself to get a little dirty because to get the good in your world, you’ll have to push through the dirt. And the truth of the matter is, it really is the dirty soil that makes the flower in your business grow.
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