Where should you focus your efforts to grow your business? If you’re struggling to figure out whether email marketing, Instagram, Pinterest, or one of the many other alternatives will be the best avenue to grow your creative business, a powerful tactic from the book, The One Thing, by Gary Keller, will help you to determine the best course of action. In this post and video, Michelle shares how she implemented this strategy and caused a huge shift in her business growth.
There are countless ways to grow a business. But with all of those strategies to choose from, how are we supposed to know what is going to work for us? I struggled with that indecision for years. Until I read a book called The One Thing, which set me up to always have an answer to that familiar question: “what do I do first?”
Conversations about where should you focus your efforts to grow your business
In the past week, I’ve had two separate lunches with friends who run their own businesses. In true form, we spent a lot of our time together talking about growing our companies. We chatted about what our peers have been doing, what our favorite people on Instagram have shared, and advice that we heard from so-and-so.
Whether you have had similar discussions with friends over coffee, have stalked someone else’s conversation in a Facebook Group, or took part in a business coaching session, it’s likely that you walked away, feeling inspired, and with a bunch of new ideas on how you can grow.
But maybe, too many ideas.
You could focus on growing your email list, or up your Pinterest game, or sign up for that Instagram course, or optimize your website, or join that program, or reach out to that influencer. But then again, you could also add more offerings to your shop, or run surveys, or write a guest post, or begin making video content. YES. That person did say that this is the year of video.
Too many options will lead you to indecision
Guys, it is noisy out there. And introverts do not thrive on overstimulation. When faced with all of those choices and paths we could go down, we use up an enormous amount of energy, which usually leads to either making a weak decision or none at all.
So how do we choose the best course of action? The One Thing gives you the formula you need to set you off on the right path. Every time you are faced with indecision, ask yourself:
What’s the one thing you can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Ever since reading this book, and asking myself that question, I came to discover that I was doing a lot of things purely because I saw other people who I respect and admire, doing them. And those actions sent me down roads that were not in alignment with my business, or personal goals.
Get clear about what’s important to you, which are likely going to be different from that girl on Instagram. Set very strong standards for yourself. And your One Thing will become abundantly apparent to you.
Identifying where to cut back
After reading this book, I took a very close look at how I was spending my time and in doing a bit of an audit, I realized that I was spending up to two hours a day working on Instagram.
Not scrolling through it, but putting together my posts. And mind you, this is before IGTV, IG Live and Instagram Stories even existed. I’d set up these elaborate shots. You know the ones I mean. The flatlays with all of the props? So between the gathering of items, and the setup, the shooting, and editing, writing the captions and finding the perfect hashtags, you can see how this became a very time-consuming activity.
So I took a step back and said, ultimately, what do I want? I think many of us will end up in the same place here. I wanted to generate more income so that I would have more freedom. I’ll ruin the ending for you. Spending two hours a day putting together my Instagram posts was NOT my one thing.
Determining where you should focus your efforts to grow your business
I traced my steps back to how I would generate more sales. And for me, that vehicle was to grow my email list. So that’s where put those two hours a day. And since then, I’ve grown my list to 50,000 subscribers which has positioned me to make the kind of income that affords me the lifestyle that I want to live.
Every time I start to feel overwhelmed, I return to the powerful visual, that perfectly illustrates what ends up happening once the One Thing has been implemented. Everything else becomes easier. Like pushing over dominos.
All you need to do is tap the right one, at the beginning, and everything else falls into place.
If this post and video has inspired you to find your one thing, leave me a comment below!
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