Episode 158 - Your business, your rules: Diverse paths to business success
Welcome back to the new school of marketing podcast. I’m so grateful to you for tuning in. Before we dive in I would love to pay respect and acknowledgement to the palawa people of lutruwita who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates and pay my respect to their elders, past, present and emerging.
Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re well and if you’re a parent like I am, I hope you got through the school holiday period well. Tasmania is one of the last states to start school so we have two more days of holidays left and I can tell you that I can’t wait for them to be over. This was my first summer holiday navigating the school holidays and let me tell you that they felt very long. As a kid I alway thought the holidays went by too fast but as a parent I’m changing that opinion.
Anyway, we had great times, tough times and everything in between and my daughter is very keen to start school which makes it much easier as a mama.
In today's episode I want to talk about the one size fits all approach that I see a lot of marketing for. I’m not sure if your newsfeed is the same but a lot of coaches seem to market themselves from the point of having the holy grail to a successful business and if you don’t do as they say your business will fail.
Of course it’s the marketing message but I want to tackle this head on because it really frustrates me.
So, a lot of coaches and online entrepreneurs make it seem like there is only one path to success - and often it’s THEIR path. So they make it seem that if you don’t do what they did or what they teach you’ll inevitably fail.
This is a load of BS and I want you to know that there are many ways to business success.
Firstly, success looks different to each of us and yes, the majority of us are in it to make money. Whether it’s a lot or enough to pay the bills, let’s be honest and acknowledge that we’re in business to make money.
Money does not equal success. At least not in my books.
It goes deeper than that, it goes into what that money can do for me. But that’s not what I want to talk about right now, so let’s agree that success looks different to each of us.
In this episode I want to talk about the different paths to success (and you get to fill in what success looks like to you). I want to focus on it being your business, your rules.
And ultimately I also want to focus on confidence and ‘enoughness’.
So let’s look at the path to business success, or more specifically the different paths because there is no one path. What you’ll find though, is that there are common denominators but ultimately it’s up to you what you implement and what you disregard.
I’d like to address some of the common denominators and then I’ll dive into the, what I like to call, optionals.
The first one is to think about your vision and mission. This doesn’t need to be a ‘save the world’ type mission but having some sort of idea about what you’d like your business to stand for, what it does and sells and where you’d like it to go is helpful for its long term direction.
The second one is to know your audience. Without knowing the person, or type of person who could benefit from your business you’ll really struggle to offer something that resonates with customers. If you don’t know who they are it will be hard to create something they want, plus creating a message to talk about your offer will be extremely difficult.
The third is to build a brand, or rather, an identity that people come to know and trust. Building your brand includes communicating your values and creating something that your audience will recognise over a competitor’s business.
Number four is to prioritise your customers. Providing excellent customer service, listening to feedback and really put customer experience first. Without customers you won’t have a business so make sure they are looked after.
Number five is to be flexible. Things change so much in the business landscape, if you think back 20 years ago things looked very different. Embrace innovation and be willing to adapt and evolve your products and services. Be ready to change your strategies to take advantage of new opportunities. Businesses who stay stagnant will fade away because there will be someone who will innovate. We’re all familiar with the story of Bockbuster vs Netflix.
So these five are common across the board of building a business, but remember that they are a general framework and not set in stone.
Now let’s look at what frustrates me so much that I had to record a podcast episode about it.
The steps, or pillars I just spoke about are quite general but what I so often see these days is coaches or course creators selling something that is positioned as the holy grail of business success. For example, I’ve seen programs that teach how to scale your business beyond 7 figures with the power of Instagram. Or how to make an easy $5K a month with YouTube. Or the new kid on the block is making $10K or more with only a few hours of social media a week by selling someone else’s program through Master Resell Rights.
And on and on it goes.
Don’t get me wrong, some of what they sell or teach works BUT it’s only a tiny tiny part of the story. It’s all made to look easy, it’s all made to look like anyone can do it, it’s all made to look like you’re a failure if you’re not getting on board.
But in reality there are thousands of ways to make an income and build your business to be successful.
The most important thing is to take some time to figure out what success looks like to you and work out what you DO and DON’T want to do to get there.
I personally don’t have the time or bandwidth to record tons of video content. Sure, I could prioritise it and I’m sure I can do it, but I really don’t want to. It’s not a mindset matter either because I have zero issues with showing up on camera, it’s just not something that lights me up and if I had to do it every day or even every week I simply wouldn’t and then I’d feel like a failure and so on and so forth.
So think about what lights you up, think about what success looks like to you and what you do want to do in your business. If you love writing, start a blog to be seen, be visible and be found through SEO.
If you prefer to speak over being seen on video, start a podcast.
And I also want to mention that any of the strategies being sold as the holy grail generally goes hand in hand with email marketing. Plus no strategy works as a standalone, at least I strongly discourage you to build a business on one platform only.
Let’s say you’re building a business on Instagram and you have thousands of followers, you make sales daily and life is good…. Until your account gets hacked, or Instagram is down, or the next big thing comes along.
You’ll lose everything and let me tell you that this has happened to people. And there’s nothing you can do about it because you don’t own Instagram and they don’t owe you anything.
So any strategy to build your business is supported by another strategy and 99.9% of the time it’s email marketing. That’s a different episode though so I’ll save that for another time.
What I want you to take from this episode is that there are foundational elements of business that are universal, but there is so much blank space to play in. Ultimately it’s your business, your rules and I don't’ want you to get swept up in some of the hardcore marketing messaging that basically tells you that if you don’t build your business a certain way you’ll fail because you won’t. Businesses that survive are built slow and steady, with small but consistent steps and the main thing to remember is that whatever you do to grow your business needs to be something that light you up.
Outro
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the New School of Marketing podcast, I hope this episode was helpful and I can’t wait to share more marketing tips with you next week.
If you’re ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure you visit www.newschoolofmarketing.com to download practical free resources, plus subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.