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Let’s explore eight powerful reminders to help you navigate judgment and maintain your focus on your entrepreneurial journey.
Just stop worrying about it! is not helpful advice, we know. The mental roller coaster we can all ride from time to time is real, especially when feedback and criticism are being slung at us easier than ever these days.
The next time you find yourself in a spiral 🌀 worrying about what people are thinking about you, we hope these tactics can help!
When was the last time you went to a party or event, worried about what you were going to wear? Now, think back; do you remember ANYTHING any other person wore?? That’s how everyone is thinking about you too — which is to say that don’t remember because they were worried about themselves too.
Understand that everyone tends to focus on themselves more than on you. Try to visualize the quantity of attention you receive and divide it by a hundred to reduce perceived scrutiny.
Recognize that when other people judge your choices, it’s often based on their values, not yours. Don’t let their lens distort your path; stay true to your values and vision.
Realize that sometimes harsh criticism may be a reflection of the other person’s struggles. We find that when a nasty email, comment, etc comes through, it’s almost always coming from a place of hurt NOT caused by us.
Shift into empathy and avoid taking unnecessary negativity to heart. Before sending a response, imagine the person you’re replying to is having an awful day and your reply could actually help them realize their negativity had nothing to do with you!
Understand that emotional reactions to criticism might stem from your own personal wounds. Give yourself time and space to regulate your emotions and gain perspective.
Is there a loop you continuously fall into when you get criticized? Is there something from your childhood that gets triggered which blows the situation out of proportion? Inspect where your heightened feelings are coming from before any outward response.
We realize this reminder is especially difficult, but it’s also one of the most helpful when you can recognize a mental pattern of your own.
Question whether the person offering judgment or feedback has walked in your shoes. Or, more importantly, if they’re even someone who you should be taking business feedback from.
We all love our friends and family, but if they don’t have experience building and running a calm business, it’s not worth entertaining their thoughts. Thank them for caring about you, but look to get guidance from folks who are “in the arena.”
Remember that your unique self is a gift to the world! Your experiences, your stories, your outlook, your values, all of it creates a perspective that only YOU have the ability to share.
Don’t let fleeting judgment dim your authentic light; the world needs your true self.
Value being seen and loved for who you truly are. Prioritize your freedom and truth over the need for constant approval.
We love the quote by André Gide:
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
Realize that life is limited; don’t spend it adhering to someone else’s rules.
Embrace the uniqueness of your journey and live life on your own terms.
Navigating judgment and criticism is an inherent part of entrepreneurship. By internalizing these eight reminders, you can learn to care less about what people think and stay focused on YOUR unique business path.
Remember, your journey is yours alone, and living authentically is a gift both to yourself and the world. Don’t let the opinions of others hold you back; embrace your true self and keep moving forward on your entrepreneurial adventure.
We want this article to be a reminder that you are the source of the magic in your business!
Let’s explore four important reminders to help you embrace your inner authority as you navigate your entrepreneurial journey.
One of the biggest reasons you started your own business was to take control of your life. When you work for another company, your schedule, your focus, your skill set, all of it is tied to the decisions of other people. And hey, if the 9-5 job thing can work for you, go for it!
For us, working for someone else just didn’t cut it. We knew we had gifts to give to the world and big ideas to chase down, which is why it’s always good to circle back to the best tool we have in our biz-arsenal: OURSELVES!
We cannot stress this tip enough: Don’t measure YOUR success against someone else’s goals or aspirations.
Your intuition is your best compass; trust it to guide you in the direction that aligns with your values and desires. Trust it to choose how much is enough, what things you should spend your time doing, and how to work productively that best suits your situation.
Remember that success can take many forms, from the pursuit of material wealth to seeking peace and relaxation. Only YOU know what will truly make YOU happy!
You have the ultimate authority over how you spend your time. While various strategies and tactics exist for business growth, only you can determine what truly matters to you.
Consider your priorities and values when deciding how to allocate your precious time. If you don’t want to be on social media, don’t! Just know, there are tradeoffs when not doing something or using a certain business strategy/tactic.
At the end of the day, your business is a living and breathing (kind of) entity, it will require a time investment but you get to choose where you spend that time!
Reiterating what we said above about working for yourself and not a 9-5 job, when you own your own business you make 99.9% of the rules. This is empowering and gives you a ton of flexibility and freedom.
You didn’t start your own business to be bound by all the trappings of a standard corporate job. If you don’t want pointless meetings on your calendar? Don’t have them! If you don’t like getting on the phone at all? Don’t do it! Whatever rules you want to break and yours to break with YOUR business.
Embrace your uniqueness and authenticity; don’t be afraid to be yourself. If conventional wisdom doesn’t align with your vision, forge your path based on your values and style.
Investing in your personal growth directly impacts your business success. You should always spend time improving skills, evolving beliefs, investing in your mindset, and building your habits.
Personal growth empowers you to adapt and thrive in the business world. If you are getting better by 1% every day as a person, your business will follow suit, no doubt!
While advice and guidance are valuable, always remember that YOU are the ultimate authority in your business. Trust your instincts, set your own definitions of success, and choose how you spend your time wisely.
By embracing your inner compass and investing in yourself, you’ll steer your business toward a path that aligns perfectly with YOUR vision and values.
While it’s great to have an end goal in mind with your business 🎯, the journey to get to that metaphorical finish line should be as enjoyable as possible!
Let’s dive into our E.X.C.I.T.E.D. framework to bring delight back to your work…
If you feel like you’ve fallen out of love with your business, things have gotten a bit boring, or you’re simply looking for a jolt to get you motivated again, we have seven tactics that can help you:
Investing in your knowledge is an incredibly powerful way to continue to uplevel your skills. It’s also a great way to gain inspiration and there are copious amounts of videos, articles (like this one!), courses, and conferences you can consume/attend.
There is ALWAYS something new to learn, but change can be hard. Give yourself permission to be in a season of education, but don’t rely on consuming more content as a crutch. Know when it’s time to stop filling your brain and start taking action on what you’ve learned.
Explore new skills and ideas to stimulate your mind and your business growth!
Yeah, yeah, we are obviously cheating on the “X” in EXCITED 😂😂. But, we find that leaning into experimentation and continuously trying fresh tactics and strategies can really up your enjoyment of working on your business!
As the world and the Internet continually evolve, it’s important to innovate, try new approaches, and avoid the fear of continuing to do things the same way you’ve always done them.
A couple of easy experiments to get started with:
Whatever experiments you decide to dive into, just remember that they are exactly that: EXPERIMENTS! These aren’t forever changes and shouldn’t be treated as such if they don’t work out perfectly.
It’s easy to lose the excitement you had for your business when you were first starting out. The to-do items pile up, admin tasks appear left and right, and the ebbs and flows of revenue can bog you down.
But, we believe that regularly getting in touch with your audience and customers can give you a boost of motivation. You can do this in many ways, but some of our favorites are:
Whatever way you feel comfortable connecting with your audience, carve out time to reestablish communication and get amped up about why you do what you do.
We ALL consume content all day long. However, there’s a big difference between mindless scrolling and intentionally seeking out content that inspires you!
If you’re feeling a bit stuck and blah about your business, seek out other stories, podcasts, videos, newsletters, or social accounts that you can relate to. Just remember, it’s easy to fall into comparison traps so you want to be mindful of relating your business to someone else’s (who might be much further along on their journey than you are).
💡 Pro-tip: When we go into Inspiration-mode, we create a constraint on the amount of time we can spend consuming that content. Usually, it’s 1-2 hours in a day, capped at one week. Then, we take that inspiration and invest it into our work.
Every couple of months it feels like everything is changing. That change can be scary, daunting, and completely overwhelming. But, the more you can lean into trying new technology and exploring the benefits for your business the more excited you might feel.
If new technology strikes fear in your heart, reframe your relationship with it as a tool that can enhance your work and how your product can help customers.
When your head is down and you’re working IN your business, it can be hard to zoom the lens out, look up, and see how far you’ve come!
We use weekly planning meetings, journaling, and annual reviews (like this one, or this one) to consistently review our progress. It can be hard to feel the motivation and excitement for your business when you’re trudging through the mundane of the day-to-day. By proactively taking time to see the progress you’ve made on your journey you can instantly get inspired.
When was the last time you reminded yourself of your big business goals? When did you last look off in the distance and let yourself dream about the point in the future you’re working towards?
Sure, it can be de-motivating if you haven’t made many strides toward your big goals, but we find it’s energizing when you visualize your future and how achieving your goals will impact your life.
As with the only parts of the E.X.C.I.T.E.D. framework, you want to make sure that the desintation you’re working towards is based on your enough goals and not someone else’s!
Reigniting your passion for your business is crucial for long-term success and fulfillment. By following these seven “E.X.C.I.T.E.D.” strategies, you’ll infuse novelty and enjoyment into your entrepreneurial journey.
Education, eXperimentation, Connection, Inspiration, Technology, Evaluation, and Destination—these are the keys to maintaining your enthusiasm and achieving your business goals.
So, get pumped up, stay curious, and keep rocking!
In the world of marketing, NOTHING beats the sheer power of word-of-mouth. Paid ads, content marketing, etc, are useful and have their place, but getting your customers to rave to other potential customers about what you sell is magical.
We believe when it comes to marketing, it’s not just about meeting expectations; it’s about exceeding them and creating unforgettable story moments.
The list below is (obviously) not every word-of-mouth marketing idea available, but it is a list we think is very actionable and many items on it have come from our own experiences.
There are 3 categories of word-of-mouth ideas we’re going to break things down into:
Ready to up your marketing game? Let’s goooo….
This is a tactic we LOVE, but it does take a good amount of physical effort. The idea is to go the extra mile by creating personalized thank-you packages for every customer.
The best way we’ve found to surprise people with these packages is to collect information about things they like and their shipping address in a post-purchase survey (💡 Pro-tip: Embed a survey directly on your post-purchase thank you page for highest conversion!)
Here’s a photo of the packages we used to put together for a previous product we sold:
Piggybacking off of #1, if you want a simpler version that still provides a lovely experience for your customers, a simple handwritten note can work wonders! It’s a small gesture that carries a big impact and you shouldn’t underestimate the power of a heartfelt message.
Turn your customers into superheroes with custom superhero avatars. You could do this by taking a submitted photo through a post-purchase survey or finding their photo through some Google sleuthing. Then, if you don’t have the talents to create superhero avatar images (we don’t either!) hire someone on Fiverr or Upwork. You could also try to use AI tools like Dall-E or Midjourney too!
Creating superhero avatars might be a silly idea, but it will make your customers feel like they’re part of an exclusive club (and it’s fun!)
Send your customers customized freebies or resources tailored to THEIR needs. It’s one thing to give someone an extra resource post-purchase, it’s an entire other to have it be customized to their business and their problems! Show your customers you care about their success 👍👍.
That post-purchase survey is a goldmine of content to help you wow your customers and create a word-of-mouth marketing moment! What answers did you get in the survey that you can act on in some way? And if you can’t act on the survey responses right away, just setting a follow-up reminder where you reach back out to a customer in 2-3 months to check in on them can go a long way!
What if you turned your customer’s ideal journey into a children’s book? Your customer becomes the hero of the story and you add magical and fantastical twists and turns they have to take on their path! Do they encounter a bridge-dwelling troll who wants to stop them from building an email list? Or is there a chasm that opens up in front of selling their first product? Your imagination could go wild and who doesn’t want to be the star of a children’s book??
Inject humor into your customer experience wherever possible. Right after someone makes a purchase, is there a silly or fun moment you can create with a video? Or, in your post-purchase automated email sequence that onboards your customer, can you add an email with a surprise video that creates a moment of delight?
Add hidden Easter eggs to your website or digital products! Surprise your customers with unexpected, delightful discoveries when they click on certain things or stumble upon a bit of text you added a link to that they didn’t expect.
Celebrate something fun that your customers all have in common. If you’re finding that your customers are always talking about their pets in your community, turn those conversations and photos shared into something fun, like a “Pets of [Your Brand]” yearbook for your customers’ furry friends.
This is one of the SIMPLEST word-of-mouth marketing opportunities! Call, text, DM, or email long-time customers out of the blue to thank them. Show them they’re valued and check in to see what they’re up to. Bonus points if they’ve been around long enough that you have something of value to give them to surprise and delight them.
For this one to work, you MUST not mention it anywhere! Pop open your Loom app or anything where you can record your screen and do an audit or personalized breakdown of your customer’s website, sales page, or even the product itself. Give them actionable advice (and praise!) to help them move a step forward. If you’re not excited about being on camera, you can also do a written audit or report too!
Many business owners use a charitable donation as a marketing tactic. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, but there is another way to do this that can add a spark of excitement. We want you to think about donating a percentage of a customer’s without them knowing about it, which creates an unexpected and heartwarming moment. Bonus points if you want to ask in a post-purchase survey what causes a customer is most interested in supporting and your donation is in that specific niche.
Digital workbooks are great, but we all love receiving something in the mail. Think about sending a physical workbook or resources alongside your digital products to exceed your customers’ expectations. Even if you don’t have a printed version now, could you cobble something together that helps your customer take action while holding the item in their hands?
We all know about Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket, but what about creating your own Golden Ticket? What’s a place within your product redemption flow where you could add your own Golden Ticket? A moment where your customers could stumble upon a secret item that they could redeem for another product, a discount, or something else from you!
This is our grand finale! Imagine you were to combine many elements from the previous 14 word-of-mouth marketing ideas and create a custom movie trailer for your customer’s business. What could be really exciting about this idea is if the movie trailer was so great that your customer wanted to use it and showcase it EVERYWHERE! That means they want to talk about YOU everywhere! It’s a wild and unexpected way to show appreciation and create shareable content.
There you have it—15 sensational word-of-mouth marketing ideas that will leave your customers talking and your business soaring.
The key to utilizing customer word-of-mouth growth is to surprise, delight, and exceed expectations. Make your customers feel special, indulge in silliness, and subvert expectations.
Don’t forget to make sharing known, easy, and rewarding. With these ideas, you’ll turn your customers into your most enthusiastic advocates, giving your business the ultimate power boost!
Fear not, for we are here to unveil the secret sauce to ensure that you never launch to crickets again! It’s all about product validation, a critical step in your entrepreneurial journey.
Let’s explore three powerful ways to validate your digital product idea!
Before we dive into the methods, let’s clarify what we mean by “product validation.” In essence, validation means confirming that real people are genuinely interested in buying what you sell. This is crucial because it minimizes the risk of investing your precious time, energy, and resources into an idea that lacks demand.
While it’s great to get followers on social media or a bunch of friendly messages encouraging you, that’s not product validation and 99.9% of the time will NOT lead to sales.
What will lead to sales when you launch your next product? Three things…
The first strategy for product validation is simple yet often overlooked—ask for feedback. Engage with your audience via emails, DMs, or social media and present your product ideas to them.
The goal in these conversations is to hear that the problem you want to solve with your offer is met with excitement. While this may seem like common sense, it’s astonishing how infrequently it’s done. Remember, you’re not looking for definitive answers here; instead, you’re gathering qualitative data.
Here are a couple of feedback tips:
When you’re in the first stage of product validation (asking for feedback), it’s a great idea to collect and keep that feedback somewhere where you can come back to it. Don’t forget, this is just the first stage of three stages of product validation!
The second stage of product validation is creating a pre-launch list, a tried-and-true method to assess interest and generate excitement. The steps to building a pre-launch list are:
Keep your pre-launch email capture page simple but compelling. Clearly communicate the value of your product and why people should join the pre-launch email list. Include visuals, even if they’re mock-ups, to make your idea more tangible!
Provide a rough timeline to set expectations, such as “Winter 2023.” This gives potential customers a sense of when they can expect your product.
Deciding whether to disclose the price of your offer on your pre-launch page has pros and cons.
Just because you create a pre-launch page DOESN’T mean people will find it randomly! Promote it to your existing audience through social media, interviews, relevant groups, other email lists, etc.
We find that setting a goal amount of email signups for your pre-launch list can help you make a decision to move forward (or not) with your product idea. Aim for an achievable list goal while also taking into account how many sales you hope to get in your first launch. Remember, keep your expectations LOW and know that your first launch is not your last launch!
The third and final stage in your product validation arsenal is the actual pre-sale. This strategy involves offering your product for purchase before it’s even developed!
You’ve built a list of potential interested customers, now it’s time to sell your product to them. You don’t want to just send one sales email and you don’t want to leave the pre-sale open-ended. We recommend a 5-day pre-sale with a discount as these are your very first customers! Send one sales email per day throughout the entire pre-sale period (yes, 5 emails in a 5-day period!)
For your pre-sales page itself, you can simply expand your pre-launch landing page. Add more details, benefits, visuals, and a clear timeline. Don’t skimp on building the pre-sale page out, but overall remember to emphasize the transformation your product/service will create for your customer.
Be sure to clearly communicate the timeline for product delivery, reinforcing the sense of trust and excitement among your customers. These folks just gave you money for something that doesn’t exist, reward that trust by delivering on your promise to them!
Product validation is the essential bridge between a great idea and a successful product launch. By following these three validation methods—asking for feedback, building a pre-launch list, and executing a pre-sale—you’ll not only gauge interest but also gather valuable insights, secure early customers, and create a sense of anticipation.
With these strategies in place, you’re well on your way to launching a product that resonates with a hungry audience, minimizing the risk of launching to silence and zero sales. So, entrepreneurs, validate, launch, and soar to new heights!
We believe a “boring-ish” business is the right mix of exciting and fun paired with repeatability and sustainability. It’s all about striking a balance between the predictably boring and the thrillingly unorthodox in your business strategy.
Let’s break it down!
🥱 When we talk about the “boring” side of business, we mean the good kind of boring. This includes factors like predictable cash flow, repeatable systems, sustainable routines, and an absence of unnecessary drama. It’s the foundation that keeps your business stable.
🦄 On the flip side, “unboring” business elements inject fun, excitement, and a dash of risk. This includes creativity, novelty, experiments, and unique approaches to common business concepts. Un-boring is the spark that keeps your business exciting!
The goal is to achieve a harmonious blend of boring and un-boring, creating what we call “boring-ish” business. Think of it like a unicorn accountant—crunching numbers but doing it on their terms, adding a touch of flair to the otherwise routine task.
Now that you understand the concept, let’s explore how to apply a boring-ish framework to your own business!
Incorporating the “boring-ish” philosophy into your business can lead to a harmonious blend of stability and excitement.
By carefully balancing predictability and novelty, you can create a unique business that stands out while maintaining a solid foundation.
Embrace the “boring-ish” mindset and take your business to new heights!
There are five popular time management strategies we’re going to cover and share our ratings of in this article.
Our goal is that you finish reading this and decide on ONE (or two) of these strategies to start using this week. Remember, there is no perfect way to manage your time, only the right way that worst best for YOU!
If you have the ability to not scroll down to the bottom of this article to find the winner, we are proud of you! 👏👏👏 We’ll count down from the fifth most effective time management tactic (for us!) and work our way to #1 on our list.
We both 👩🏻🦰👨🏻🦲 ranked each time management strategy on a scale of 1-10 and then we combined our scores to get the final ranking. Feel free to rank these time tactics for yourself OR identify five strategies you use and rank them.
The “Eat the Frog” technique advocates tackling the most challenging task early in the day to start with a sense of accomplishment. We are renaming it from “frog” to “bug” because frogs are cute and we shouldn’t eat them 🐸 and bugs are gross 🪳.
This time management strategy works well for people who have peak morning energy and self-discipline. However, it may not be effective for you if you use your morning energy for creative or enjoyable tasks.
That’s why Eat the Bug earns our lowest score of 14/20. Still effective! Just not the most effective.
From David Allen’s popular book, “Getting Things Done,” The 2-Minute Rule suggests tackling tasks that take two minutes or less immediately.
We’ve all felt the pile-up of all the tiny tasks in our days/weeks. Answering text messages, signing a PDF, taking out the trash, etc. David’s rule posits that if you just knock those small tasks out quickly they won’t take up precious mental space!
This strategy is great for staying on top of small tasks and preventing them from accumulating. However, it may disrupt deep-focus work which is why it also received a 14/20 score.
Time tracking as a tactic is pretty obvious! It involves recording and analyzing how you spend your time to improve time estimation and identify the time wasters in your day.
This strategy helps you understand how long tasks take, making future planning more accurate. However, time tracking requires extra TIME to track your time diligently so it can feel cumbersome.
We put time tracking in 3rd place (15/20 score) because it is helpful to learn how long projects will take to complete so you can work smarter and more efficiently in the future.
The Pomodoro Technique involves breaking your work into focused 25-minute sessions followed by 5-minute breaks. There are other time increments you can use, but 25/5 was the one that Italian creator Francesco Cirillo popularized this technique with!
While some find it highly effective for maintaining focus and accountability, others may find the ticking timer a source of stress (that’s me, Jason 👨🏻🦲).
Admittedly, our ranking score shouldn’t have Pomodoro Technique in second place BUT… this time management tactic is SO HELPFUL for 👩🏻🦰 that we had to put it as #2 on the list. Even if I can’t use it at all 😂😂. Ranking score 9/10 (but skewed for actual effectiveness for Caroline!)
Time blocking is the practice of allocating tasks to specific blocks on your calendar, accounting for the time you want to spend on each.
We also love time blocking because it helps in planning and visualizing your day, ensuring you allocate time for essential activities in your life BEFORE your work. This time management method is excellent for decision-making and protecting your non-negotiables.
We’ve been doing some version of time blocking for as long as we can remember and it continues to help us accomplish our goals while juggling multiple businesses and countless tasks! That is why this tactic earns a 22/10!
Just like so much of the advice in life and business, there is no one perfect time management tactic or strategy. We all work in different ways with different capacities.
Some people can work long hours, while some only have the ability to focus for short periods of time. Neither way of working is better as long as you find the right strategies to help you get the most amount done with the least amount of stress!
Find the right time management strategy that works for your brain and your circumstances. And if you aren’t sure which is best, experiment and find out 👍👍.
Many entrepreneurs share these fears when it comes to selling, but it doesn’t have to be that way! We have five tips to help you sell with confidence and authenticity.
Let’s transform selling from an icky and sleazy experience to a strategic and magnetic one.
Selling your product or service can often trigger fear and discomfort. Common fears include bothering your audience, the fear of rejection, reluctance to mention prices, and the perception that talking about money is impolite.
These fears are warranted, especially at the beginning stage of your journey, but it’s essential to overcome them to grow your business.
It’s a necessary part of business and a transfer of enthusiasm. Instead of having negative feelings about selling, we want to help you aim for a strategic, magnetic, and authentic approach to selling.
By shifting your perspective to enthusiasm for what you offer, you can build a thriving business while maintaining your integrity!
YOUR enthusiasm for your offer is contagious. When you genuinely believe in your offer, it becomes easier to communicate its benefits to your audience.
Right now, today, are you excited about the thing you are selling? If the answer is NO, then that’s okay and it just means you need to hone your offer or find a new one. If the answer is YES, then pour that passion and excitement into your sales process, sales copy, sales page, etc.
One way to sell is to make your offer so compelling and awesome that your audience tells other people about it. The other option is to proactively get your customers to talk about your offer on your behalf.
💬 Ask for testimonials: Many business owners think good testimonials (or reviews) will just fall in their lap. People are busy! In fact, when was the last time YOU went out of your way to send a testimonial or review to someone unprompted? Not often, yeah? That’s why you need to create a process for collecting testimonials and use them as social proof in your sales process.
🎁 Surprise and delight: Once a customer makes a purchase, the relationship isn’t over. In fact, immediately after a purchase happens you should plan to surprise and delight your customer in some way! In doing so, your customer will want to share that their expectations were exceeded.
🤝 Create a referral program: Whether you use a financial incentive (i.e. a 25% commission) or some sort of other reward (i.e. discounts on other products or access to other things), turning your customers into active referrers of your offer helps you sell less often!
It’s really easy to focus on the “thing” you’ve created: Buy my productivity course!
What you SHOULD focus on is the transformation your thing creates: Work fewer hours, have less stress, and have more free time by learning my XYZ productivity system.
Keep your attention on the transformation your product or service offers. Remember why you’re passionate about what you’re selling and visualize the positive change it can bring to your customers’ lives. This focus on transformation can fuel your enthusiasm and more easily drive your selling efforts.
For years we’ve watched new online business selling tactics pop up. Some of them we’ve found absolutely gross and some of them used and added to our sales-arsenal.
Take some time today to identify tactics that make you feel uncomfortable and avoid using them. Then, make a list of the sales tactics you don’t mind using and prioritize those.
Everyone has their own boundaries, so it’s crucial to choose selling strategies that align with your values. Whether it’s pricing tactics, upsells, or marketing channels, do what feels authentic and comfortable for you.
Selling is a skill that takes practice. The more you engage in selling activities, the more confident you’ll become.
We like to think about viewing each selling opportunity as a chance to earn confidence points. Every sales email, social media mention, or pitch is a step toward greater confidence in selling.
If you can gamify the process of selling and get more practice at it, your confidence WILL increase over time!
Selling doesn’t have to be a negative experience. By following these five tips, you can sell your products or services with confidence, authenticity, and integrity.
Believe in your offer, let your customers advocate for you, focus on the transformation, avoid tactics that don’t align with your values, and keep practicing. With these strategies, you’ll transform your approach to selling and build a thriving business.
And finally, remember these 3 things the next time you are selling:
It’s highly likely you’ve experienced burnout as a business owner. When burnout hits, you feel exhausted, demotivated, and probably want to set your computer on fire. In this article, and accompanying video, we want to help you break the burnout cycle just as we’ve (FINALLY) done!
Burnout is, sadly, an all too familiar experience for entrepreneurs, and its symptoms include sheer exhaustion and a complete lack of motivation.
If you think you’re alone in feeling burned out, you’re absolutely not! A survey by Quickbooks found that 29% of small business owners admit to feeling constantly stressed, and a staggering 41% of entrepreneurs report heightened anxiety levels, often linked to burnout. Another survey by ZipDo uncovered that 80% of entrepreneurs consider their workload to be overwhelming and stress-inducing.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that puts high praise upon hard work, “hustling,” and putting in long hours to try to achieve some arbitrary financial milestone — one that probably isn’t even necessary for living a great life.
We realized that waiting for burnout to strike wasn’t a viable strategy any longer (after the umpteenth time of experiencing burnout).
We decided, instead of letting burnout creep its way into our lives yet again, we would prioritize proactive rest early in our business cycles.
Proactive rest has been fully integrated into many facets of our lives, including:
While our proactive rest practices have been transformative, we also learned the importance of scaling back at the earliest signs of overwhelm.
We’ve developed strategies to ensure that we never reach the point of burnout. By building in buffer time, regularly assessing deadlines, and avoiding the perfectionism trap, we maintain a healthy work-life balance.
This is the old way we would go through a project cycle, always finding ourselves in the Land of Burnout at the end of the project:
This is the NEW WAY we go through projects, proactively PLANNING in rest periods throughout the entire project lifecycle, even small ones!
To effectively implement proactive rest, you must set clear boundaries and expectations with your audience and team. Things like:
We can attest that setting restful boundaries IS possible and that you’re business will NOT completely crumble to pieces while you take a break.
Our proactive rest journey began with our first-ever month-long break in December of 2015. Then, the next summer we took another month off with our first summer sabbatical. Since that time, we’ve continued to take off the entire month of December and as many as 3 months off in the summer! In that time, our businesses have continued to thrive and grow 💪🧘♀️💪🧘.
Taking proactive rest isn’t just month-long breaks, it’s also the small, daily and weekly choices you make to carve out time to recharge your batteries.
Creating a proactive rest routine involves deciding when, how, and what activities to undertake. You can start small with daily rest periods, gradually extending to full weeks or even month-long sabbaticals.
The key is to select activities that genuinely recharge you, like taking walks, reading fiction books, spontaneous mid-day movies, etc. You want to define and plan for activities that remove you from your business tasks and give your brain a much-needed break.
Whether it’s through delegation, automation, or having a team member or two cover your tasks, if you don’t ever pass the work-torch to another person (or robot), you’ll always be stuck working.
Avoid burnout by embracing proactive rest as a fundamental part of your entrepreneurial journey. Don’t wait until you’re a floppy panda (if you watched the video 😘) or ready to set your laptop on fire.
Start incorporating rest into your daily life and projects. With the right approach to proactive rest and a commitment to scaling back when needed, you can maintain a balanced, healthy, and thriving business.
Remember, a truly calm business values your physical and mental well-being above all else. What’s all the work for if you’re constantly feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and on the verge of burnout?
We want you to avoid the 🚧 DANGER ZONES 🚧 of online biz and help you discover and embrace your 🌱 “GOOD ENOUGH” 🌱 space – that sweet spot where your work meets the expectations of your audience without being hindered by the pursuit of perfection.
Whether you’re creating videos, art, or launching an online course, finding your good enough space can be transformative for your creative process.
All creative work exists on a quality spectrum, ranging from super low quality to super high quality. The crucial question is, where does your work land on this spectrum?
🚧 Danger Zone #1: Low-quality work that drives away your audience
🚧 Danzer Zone #2: Perfectionism which stifles your creativity and keeps you from publishing
As mentioned, the ideal place to exist is right in the middle at the GOOD ENOUGH space.
Your good enough space is not static; it can shift depending on where you are in your business journey.
Recognizing this is essential, as the importance of quality and quantity evolves as you progress through three stages.
At this initial stage, your primary focus is getting comfortable with creating. Quantity takes precedence over quality at Stage 1. That doesn’t mean you pump out crappy content, it just means that you shouldn’t obsess over quality and should, instead, use quantity to help you move forward.
Your goal is to establish a base level of quality that is achievable within a set time frame. For example, if you’re creating YouTube videos, aim to publish one video per week within a maximum of 15 hours.
Once you feel like you’re ready to move out of the “Get Started” phase, it’s time for Stage 2.
As you gain experience, it’s time to shift into refining your voice and skill set.
In this second stage of creation, the emphasis is on both creating AND raising the quality bar. While the quantity may decrease, you are honing specific skills and applying them to your work.
For instance, if you’re creating YouTube videos, you might decrease the amount of videos your product and publish but start learning 3D motion graphics and applying them to your videos.
In this advanced stage in your creation journey, the goal is to balance quality and quantity while optimizing your workflow.
Your quality standard is determined by YOUR priorities and your ability to maintain a sustainable pace. It’s imperative you avoid getting stuck in the trappings of perfectionism, but embracing a higher quality standard is important at this stage.
For our ongoing YouTube creator example, you might focus on improving motion graphics AND storytelling while aiming to only produce one video per week (or month).
To successfully navigate these stages, you need to define what “good enough” means for you in each one:
Your good enough quality is set by your quantity constraint and available time. Your focus is on establishing consistency and a foundation for your work. Whatever number of things you can create on a schedule YOU can stick to is all that matters.
Your good enough quality is set by the specific skills you aim to improve. Here, quality improvements may lead to a reduction in output and that’s okay! You want to get better at your craft, but you don’t want to fully disappear from the act of publishing.
Your good enough quality is determined by your priorities and the cadence that suits your sustainability. Quality may fluctuate for aspects other than your top priorities.
Perfectionism can be a stifling force in your creative journey. By understanding that your quality standard can evolve across stages in your business journey and by identifying your good enough space, you can maintain the delicate balance between delivering quality work and avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism.
Embrace your creative process, meet your audience’s expectations, and increase your skills by defining your quality standards at each stage of your calm business journey.
