The difference between successful businesses and those that well, fail, is not what you think it is.
It’s NOT that someone else is smarter than you.
It’s NOT because they’ve been around longer than you.
It’s NOT because they have more money to invest than you do.
“Successful business owners have clarity in their business and that is what makes all the difference. ” – Mallory Schlabach
How do you get to put your business in the success category?
Clarity is not a spark of genius you had one day. That’s vision.
The difference between successful businesses and those that I would bet anything they aren’t going to survive next year is that successful businesses know what to focus on and drive towards it with everything they have.
Beginning Entrepreneur Clarity
Clarity looks different depending on your stage of business though. For newish businesses looking to have SOME income coming in, what you need to focus on is: “What in the world am I actually doing?”
So many entrepreneurs are driven by the end-goal and plan to the nth degree the future. It’s not a bad thing to want to know where you are going. The problem is that if you get too hyper-focused, you become paralyzed by this plan and this single-minded vision of where we are going that we sometimes don’t’ care if it’s working, we don’t see it’s not working or we haven’t tested it enough to see if it can work.
Just try something. Put it out there before you figure it all out. Success loves speed and you’ll never know what you’re truly capable of until you try.
You also have to have conversations with real-life people to figure out what’s going to work. What offer they’re interested in, what pain points hits home the hardest, what descriptor they’re using to talk about themselves… all strokes of genius for marketing your business.
Messy Middle Clarity
In the messy middle, clarity = how do I expand what I’m already doing?
If you’re service-based, you’re already doing a lot of 1:1, which is hard to scale once you max out the physical hours you can work in a week. Clarity becomes important when you’re thinking about new models to adopt for your business, how do you expand without giving up any of the quality or personalization of your work?
Your market is going to tell you everything you need to know about being awesome in your business.
Why I’m harping on clarity
Here’s what clarity does for your business:
>>> When you can zone in on what exactly it is that you’re doing, it allows you to put up blinders so that you only focus on the things that drive your business forward.
>>> Getting clarity about what’s important to growth in your business, allows you to shift how you spend your time so that you’re focusing on revenue-producing tasks. The majority of business owners spend 20% on income tasks and 80% on busy work — things that seem important but aren’t actually moving the needle forward at all.
>>> Have the freedom and bandwidth to focus on your zone of genius and get into your creative zone faster
>>> Charge more for your services and step into the expert role
>>> Cut back on what you’re offering by seeing what to focus on what’s actually making you money
Three Questions to Find Clarity
1. Am I making aw much revenue in my business as I would like to? Yes or No?
– If no, look at pricing and your offer. Boost the revenue producing tasks in your business because you’re not doing enough if you’re not making enough.
2. Am I closing enough conversations to make sales? Yes or No?
– If no, you need to focus on sales conversations and your offers. Those things need to improve because it’s not jiving with your audience. Listen to episode #024 with Renee Hribar on sales conversations to get started.
3. Do I have enough traffic coming into my business that I can have conversations with? Yes or No?
– If no, you need to focus on where your people are hanging out, what are YOU doing to promote your stuff? How are you telling the world you exist?
4. If you answered no to all the questions above, let’s have a conversation about how to close these gaps above ☝️☝️to map it out into a plan of action that you can just take and run with to make sure you’re attracting the right people into your business, that you have the right offer, and pricing and copy to close the deal with clients you’re dying to work with.
