Growing Your Business or Blog
I love the song “Who Are You” by The Who, especially these lyrics:
I stretched back and I hiccuped
Looked back on my busy day
Eleven hours in the tin pan
God there’s got to be another way
This part of the song reminds of the time when I was struggling with my social media coaching business. I was working so hard and it just didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere.
I knew that there had to be another way.
And I knew it was time to take a step back and figure out how to move forward.
When you’re trying to grow your business, many times you’ll find yourself trying anything and accepting work for many different types of services. “I’ve never done that before but hey, if you’re willing to pay me to do that, I’ll give it a try.”
Too many of these jobs can take you off your focus, become a bad use of your time and often, end up hurting your bottom line.
Until the time comes when you realize you can’t be everything to everybody. Hopefully, when you reach that point, you’ll know you need to find your focus. And if you really want to grow your business, you’ll figure out how to find the center of your focus.
So how does this all happen? How do you find your focus in your business or even your center? What do you do to even get started?
I suggest that you start from putting yourself in this place —- when you started your business, you knew that you had many skills and talents for the work that you wanted to do. But you also knew that you had a passion that helped you go out on your own.
I mean, seriously, why would you put yourself through all this stress of being a small business owner or starting a blog?
I know why. Because when you find that place where your skills and passion intersect … it’s a rush like you’ve never felt before.
That’s your focus. And deep in that place, it’s where you find your center.
North’s Center
If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve got a thing for kid’s movies.
I pretend that I’m watching these movies with my son Jake because he likes them. But here’s a little secret – I’ve watched some of my favorite kid’s movies when my son wasn’t home.
{ Don’t tell Jake, he already thinks his mom is weird and this will just confirm my weirdness. }
The best way I can show you how to find your center is to watch this clip from one of my favorite movies, The Rise of the Guardians.
Santa { who they call North in the movie } is talking to Jack Frost about finding his center. North asks Jack, ‘What’s the core of his being?’ What’s that very special something inside of him that caused him to be chosen as a Guardian.
Finding Your Center
Finding your center takes a bit more than just buying a bunch of those wooden nesting dolls like North had in The Rise of the Guardians. It’s figuring out who you are and what you truly do.
It’s not just your tagline that you use on your website. It’s the core of who you are as a small business owner.
To find your center, let me walk you through an exercise that I like to call “Yeah But.” Every time you think you’ve got your answer, I want you to Yeah But it and drill that down even more.
Let me show you how this works:
Using myself as any example – When I introduce myself anywhere in person, teaching a workshop, networking in a Facebook Group, I always use the phrase, “I’m a social media productivity coach. I teach small business owners and bloggers how to fit social media into their crazy busy day.”
That all makes sense and you understand what that means, YEAH BUT, why does my customer care about this?
My answer is, “I show them ways to save time and get more done.”
YEAH BUT, why does that matter?
Drilling this thing down, I answer, “I help small business owners get more done in less time by showing them tips to work on their social sites to grow their social presence.”
YEAH BUT, how does that help them?
“It’s that balance we all struggle with, how do I balance being a mom and growing my small business and blog? I show creative and digital entrepreneurs how to create a routine to find a balance between taking care of their families and marketing their business on social media.”
YEAH BUT, so they get a routine, what does that REALLY mean?
It means that they have confidence in themselves to get on social media and create a social marketing plan with intention. They know the steps to take so they can add social marketing small bursts into their day. They understand how it works for them and when they log in, they say to themselves, “I can do this.”
This confidence is what I put into the world of the working moms who work with me.
It is my center.
What’s Your Center?
Think about the way you introduce yourself in a Facebook Group. Or the tagline you use in your website or email newsletter. Write it out and then Yeah But that thing until you break it down and find your center.
And when you figure out your center, sit with it awhile. It might take a little time to adjust your thinking away from a marketing tagline to your center.
I know it was tough one for me.
“Confidence?” I asked myself. It was ironic considering the number of hours I’d spent – or sometimes days – questioning my own confidence. I struggled with the irony of my center until the day I shared it with one of my close friends who owns a small business.
She asked me how I felt when I accepted that my center was confidence. I admitted that I honestly struggled with it. But when I finally accepted it, I felt more confident in myself. It was like I got my power back.
And she said to me, “Want to hear the funny part about that? It’s like that line in the Wizard of Oz, you always had your power. Your confidence was with you all the time. You always had your confidence and the power to go home.”
PS What if you could find a way to grow your presence in your social sites? And what if it didn’t add hours to your already crazy day?
Click here to learn more how to connect with more customers using your social sites with the Social Media Productivity Planner.
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