Create more freedom, do less

It is exactly by having a laser focus that we can generate the most momentum possible in our business. Doing a little bit of everything is tempting but won’t land you any major impressions. And it takes up all of your time!

Take my client Amy Remark who I’ve worked with for 3 years. Amy has grown Remarkable Clean in the last few years from nothing to a savvy local business the Sea to Sky (Squamish and Whistler) and has recently expanded into Vancouver and Kelowna, BC.

For the first few years, with a lot of hard work, determination, strong values and a commitment to quality cleaning, her business grew organically. That’s the peak of the honeymoon. We start to think, “Woohoo! It’s all downhill from here.”

What that really means is that we’ve only conquered the bunny hill and the real mountain climbing begins. It’s a daunting time.

Early momentum has been reached, all the customers who were waiting in the wings have been acquired and it gets harder and harder to keep growing. 

This is when we begin to feel that mad panic that says, “Marketing! I need to get marketing.” and “Social media! I need to build an audience.”, and “Advertising! I need to get the word out.”, and “Sales! How do I convert more people? Help!” and so it goes.

While I think marketing should never be overlooked and is essential to growth, the mad panic doesn’t get the results we anticipate. We expend more energy trying to get anyone and everyone to buy our product and we aren’t getting enough new customers. Or the right kind of customers, the ones who stick around for the long-term.

Back to Amy. She went through a similar plateau and a similar phase of trying a lot of tactics to grow out of it. It wasn’t easy. She tried a lot of things and a lot of them fell on deaf ears. It was dragging her down and making her tired of working on her business. She had lost focus.

And that is really sad because Amy cares about a lot of things: the environment, health and the treatment of animals are just a few. She sees her business as a stepping stone to being more of an advocate for these important causes as well as a way to educate her customers and free up their time to do more good.

Through working together she began to rediscover this passion and her desire to do something about it and that means having a business that functions smoothly with or without her.

Aside from reconnecting to her big life purpose, she made a few important discoveries that make a big difference in how she is tackling the big mountain:

• Her marketing was unfocused. She was trying to do so many different tactics with so many different messages and none of them were really working. She is now standing out from her competition through a content marketing strategy that gets personal.
• She had no idea who her ideal customers were which meant her messaging was untargeted and not pricking up any ears.
• Her pricing didn’t resonate with her individual markets. She has begun to understand how her pricing affects her position in the market and attracts long-term clients.
• She now knows what her strengths are and knows that she has to use those more and get others to do more of what she’s less efficient at doing.

What it comes down to is that the most successful businesses are serving their customers in a very unique and specific way and by being able to pinpoint that they are doing it extremely well.

You can also create more freedom, more revenue and more impact without adding more hours in the day. Grow your business beyond you. Contact to see how I can help.