Easy Scaling with Jordan Schanda King

#POV | Stop trying to do all the things

January 28, 2023 Jordan Schanda King Episode 33
Easy Scaling with Jordan Schanda King
#POV | Stop trying to do all the things
Show Notes Transcript

I know you feel like you have to do all the things.

Like to get *the* best ROI on your marketing efforts, you've got to go ALL the way in.

If you've got a podcast, you might as well also turn the video clips into Reels, repurpose the episodes into blog posts, and so on and so forth.

If you're going to spend the time going live, you need to turn the content into an email series or bomb AF lead magnet.

If you're going to write a bunch of great content and captions for Instagram, you better repurpose those into LinkedIn posts.

Otherwise, it's really just a waste, right?

You better just wait until you can do it all, and do it well. 

WRONG.

As a COO, I see this all the time. You throw more and more cash at the things you think will turn your marketing volume all the way up.

But in reality, it turns into an operational nightmare. And if ops isn't your thing (which, lucky guess...it's probably not!) then you've just set yourself up for a shitload of headaches and hurt.

In today's episode of the Easy Scaling podcast, I'm giving you permission to stop doing all the things.

Seriously, shut it down.

If you've ever felt the pressure or expectation to show up in all the ways, this episode was made for you.

Enjoy ;-)

Connect with Jordan Schanda King:

Ep#33 - #POV - Stop trying to do all the things

Hello, hello and welcome. Today I wanna talk a little bit about where to focus your time. This comes up a lot, especially with my clients. Also with myself. I feel like everyone deeply feels this pressure and expectation to do all of the things. And I also know that we all hear that we don't have to do all the things, but there's something that gets lost.

There's something that gets lost between knowing that you don't need to do all of the things, but also feeling like you should do all of the things and it leaves us kind of in this place of not knowing what to do still Overcommitting feeling like we're missing out on something. I mean, FOMO is real, right? and so I wanna talk a little bit about this and give some tips that I would give to a client.

So what we wanna do, Before we decide what we should actually spend our time on, where to focus our time in our business is figure out what's gonna actually move the needle. And that's one of those things that sounds obvious, but nobody knows what the hell that even means. Right? So what does that mean to figure out what's gonna actually move the needle?

Well, first we have. Have data, we have to know what's gonna move the needle. we can't just guess. We can't say, oh, well, you know, everyone says that you should be on LinkedIn. LinkedIn does the thing to be on, everybody's talking about LinkedIn right now. I should do that. Well, if we don't have data, we don't know that that's the thing that we should be doing.

We don't know if that's gonna move the needle, but the only way to figure that out is to try it. Unfortunately, there's, there's really no way around that. Here's the problem, . Here's the problem. Ivett, you've got a long list of things and ideas of. Places that you should be hanging out, types of content that you should be creating.

It probably sounds a lot like my list. there's probably some combination of things like being on Instagram, doing posts, doing reels, showing up in stories, posting on LinkedIn, repurposing your content over there onto a, as a LinkedIn newsletter. well, of course you have to be doing email. If you're not doing email, then you don't own your audience.

Obviously. but what about Pinterest? Maybe Pinterest is where you should be hanging out. I mean, TikTok too, right? And if you're gonna do a podcast, you better be doing your podcast as a video and then repurposing that over to YouTube, cutting it down into short clips, using that for your Instagram or your LinkedIn or YouTube shorts or whatever the hell it is.

And then if you're. The podcast, you might as well repurpose that into a blog post because SEO is like critically important and it takes forever to build the seo. So you gotta get started now. I mean, come on. We all have this exact same list, and this isn't even everything. This doesn't even get into challenges and webinars and evergreen funnels and ads, and like there's so freaking much that we could be doing that we feel like we should be doing.

we don't need to be doing all of these things in a, in an ideal world, of course, we would be doing all of these things, but until you're to a point where you have a really robust team and money and time, resources that you can invest into all of these things, you just can't do them. I mean, probably if you're listening to this, you can do one to three of these things really, really well.

Right now everything else has to wait, and that's okay. You're not missing out. That is the reality of the situation. That is the reality of your resources. That is the reality of your capacity and your bandwidth, and that is okay, and by feeling like you have to do them all. You're either not doing any of them, or you're spreading yourself too thin and not doing the ones that you are doing well.

So let's just, let's push all of that aside. Let's accept that we can do one to three of them really, really well, and let's figure out what those things are. So let's go back to what's gonna move the needle. What's gonna move the needle is what you have data on that you know, works. We don't always have that when we're getting started.

We don't always have that. Even when we're a year or two years into business and we still feel like we're trying things all of the time and trying to figure out that one thing that's gonna work. Here's usually where that breaks down. It's that we don't invest the time into any one's strategy for long enough to know if it is going to move the needle in our business.

Sometimes we get really, really lucky. I feel like I was very fortunate in this, that I found something very early on in my business that worked, which is ads, and so I know that I can turn my ads on and turn 'em back off when I want to. Not everyone is in that situ. So if you don't have data, we have to pick something and we have to try it.

And so that's what I wanna talk about a little bit more today is how you go about picking that thing and then how to actually try it and get the data. so again, let's assume you have the bandwidth to do one to three things. Well, let's start with the one, and let's assume you don't have a ton of data. Let's pick something that sounds the easiest. If you know what works, we're gonna go all in on that. If you're not sure, we're gonna pick one thing that feels like it's the easiest for you to commit to because we're gonna need to commit to it and actually in order to actually get the data.

So for you, if you were to only do one thing in your business, like bare minimum, let's, let's talk content creation, or let's talk showing up online visibility strategy. If you were only to do one. What would that one thing be for you? What sounds the easiest For me, it's podcast. For some of my clients, it's writing a blog.

For others, it's going live, whatever it is. What is that one thing for you that at bare minimum you could do? It would feel fun. It would feel easy. , that's your one piece. I mean, there's lots of people who talk about this, like, you know, creating one core piece of content, one long form piece of content, and then you batch that into other things or cut it up into other things and repurpose.

And that's really what we're getting at here. but we gotta figure out what that one thing is because there's a lot of options for that one thing, as we've talked about. . So really thinking through what's gonna feel easy for you. How can you show up in a way that's not gonna feel like a big lift? Like for me, I wanted to email my email my list for the longest time.

I could never do it consistently because the actual writing of the content was a massive block just because of who I am, like how I like to create content that does not work for me. That's not easy and it's not fun. What is. is this ? This is fun for me. I can show up and talk on my podcast all day. so that's what you have to figure out is what is that one thing gonna be?

Is it gonna be video? Is it gonna be written content? Is it gonna be audio content? Is it gonna be creating beautiful reels? I mean, whatever. Like you can do whatever you want. Pick that one thing. All right, we're gonna move on from that. Now, once you've got your one thing, ideally what we wanna do is figure.

what a super easy add-on would be from that one strategy. So for instance, if you're creating a blog, and that's your one thing, you're gonna write a blog post every week, let's say, well, that's automatically an email newsletter, because when you write a blog, that is the exact same content that you can email out to your list.

So there we have two strategies. Now we have a blog, we have an email newsletter. If that's your bandwidth, that's your bandwidth, and don't add on more than that. But if you feel like you have a little bit extra capacity, you've got some more time. Let's think about one more thing that you could stack on relatively easily, and now we've got three strategies that we're trying.

So in this example, you're writing your email, you're writing your blog, you're copying and pacing that into your email service provider, and you're sending it out, or you're. , what would be an easy thing to stack on? It could be copying and pasting that into LinkedIn as a LinkedIn newsletter. It could be chunking it out into a couple of different posts for Instagram.

It could be posting it in a couple of Facebook groups. It could be doing a TikTok live about the content itself. I mean, there's a million options here again, but like we wanna add something on that's gonna be relatively. We don't want it to feel like a whole new thing. We can add on whole new things later.

Right now, we wanna do easy stack on, so if the two is all that feels good, the blog and the email newsletter, stop there. But if you're like, no, no, I've got more time, I can, I, I, I have the bandwidth to create some more content cuz this is the only content I'm gonna be creating. Then let's stack one more thing on.

So figure out what that. An important thing to also think about too when you're trying to identify these strategies is where's your audience even hanging out and had a conversation with a client recently about this because she was like, I find it easier to show up on Instagram, but I feel like my clients are actually on LinkedIn.

Okay. , well, let's test it. Let's test it. Let's, let's pick one. And for her it was deciding to go with the LinkedIn option one because it was easier just to copy and paste the content as is over to LinkedIn. And then we can test that to see are her ideal clients actually engaging with the content there.

Can she stay consistent in doing that? Like there's all kinds of things that can break down, when we're trying these new strategies, but we need to actually try them. So instead of her trying to be on LinkedIn and Instagram at the same. We're just gonna try one. We're gonna try LinkedIn. We know our clients are there, we're gonna see if that works as a strategy.

So that, that's kind of how she decided to approach it for you, you may decide, okay, I think my clients are on LinkedIn, but I, I just can't bring myself to be consistent there, so I'm gonna go with Instagram cuz that's where I like to hang out. And maybe the focus needs to be building your audience a little bit more on that platform so that your ideal clients are, are there.

So there's lots of ways to approach. Which I know doesn't always make it easy because you're gonna have to just decide and pick something and try it, and it may go great. It may fall flat, and, and we just won't know that we have to get the data. 

So let's recap. these, this plan here, these strategies first is we're gonna pick one core piece of content that we're gonna create that we know we can stay consistent with, and that can be whatever form you want it to be, works best if it's long form, and then if you have more bandwidth, you're gonna add one to two more things on top of that, that feel easy, that feel fun, that we think we can stay consistent with too.

Now we're gonna have to do this for at least 30 days. 30 days minimum. This is where, this is where people get tripped up on this because, It's really, really easy to make a plan and say, oh, I'm gonna do this. And then a few weeks in, you don't stay consistent and then one of the strategies drops off and then you miss a week on the the blog and then, you know, we get to a point where we can't actually get any usable data from this because we haven't been doing it consistently for long enough to see any kind of trends or patterns or engagement.

So we have to commit to it for 30 days. Ideally, we're doing this for at least 90 days, consist. But let's start with 30 and make sure it's working. Because if we find that we hate it, then maybe we need to switch the strategies up. Cuz if you can't stay consistent, it, it, it's, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the strategy is if you can't do it consistently.

All right. . Once we've gotten to 30 days, ideally 90 days, we're gonna look back. We're gonna ask ourselves some questions around, are people engaging with the content? Have I made any sales from it? How is it feeling for me? Is it draining? Is it straining? Or does it feel pretty easy? Does it feel like we can keep going and we can maybe stack on more?

If not, we maybe need to rethink the plan. So pretty simple, pretty straightforward. None of this is like revolutionary or rocket science, right? It's, it's creating one piece of content. only doing what you can stay consistent with sticking to that strategy for at least 30, ideally 90 days, and then looking back and assessing to see how it went.

Now, what's interesting is that sometimes it can take longer. That's the thing that is like a big question mark, is the timeline. Some of these strategies you may see. , you may see some traction more quickly than some of the other strategies, and there's just no way to know how long it's gonna take. If you've listened to any of our recent podcast episodes, you'll know that I had an interview with Emma Louise, who it actually took her five months to get her first client from doing consistent content creation and posting and email newsletter and all these things five months before she got a client.

I mean, that. , that's kind of a long time that like that takes some serious patience and commitment. And if she would've just said it for 90 days, she probably would've given up, you know? So just keep that in mind too. that sometimes it takes a little bit longer. Some of the, the, the buying cycles for some of these things, depending on your industry or how warm your audience is or a million other things, it may take a little bit longer.

So the longer you can stick with it, the more reliable your data is gonna be. When you look back and you say, okay, well I tried that for six months, or I tried that for a year, I know for sure that that's not gonna work. That that never got any traction. Okay, great. Get rid of it. I'm not saying you have to commit to everything for a year, but I'm just saying.

90 days, 30 days. These things don't have to be hard, fast rules. and the longer that you can stay consistent with something, as long as it's feeling good too, that's like a big part of it. Is that Emma Louise, I'm kind of speaking for her here. She can correct me if I'm wrong, but Emma, Louise like felt.

She enjoyed this type of content. Thi this, this content creation and sharing this information with her audience in these ways didn't feel like a big burden. And that's why she was able to do it for so long and really stick with it and believe in it. And she had support and encouragement behind her to help reassure her that she was on the right track and go listen to the episode.

It's a great, it's a great interview and you can learn all about it. but just as a reminder that there's, there's no promise, there's no guarantee on any of these timeframes. You, you may see a sale from creating consistent content in three weeks or four weeks, or five weeks or six weeks.

Like there's just, there's no way to know, but hands down a hundred percent of the time. When I see that clients are jumping from strategy to strategy and feeling like nothing is working, it's because they're letting the strategy go before they've been doing it long enough to get the data or to see the content convert for them.

Because a lot of this, a lot of this nurture content takes longer. It takes longer for people to, to buy in and, and to. To understand what you're selling to them and the value in it, and to feel comfortable and to trust you and to all of these things like that takes time. You have to have all of these touch points, and not everyone has seen all of your content.

And I won't go on this path of redundancy because you all know probably if you've heard me talk about this at all. That if you, if you don't feel like you're being redundant, you're doing it wrong. You have to be redundant in your content. People have to hear this information over and over and over again, and if anything, they like it, they seek it.

It's comforting to hear people telling you these strategies and this information and this content and over and over and over again because it helps your brain remember it and accept it and, and, process. and really integrate it into how you're making decisions and how you're thinking. So the redundancy is super important, so I won't go any deeper on that.

But what I also wanna mention is on any of these, with any of these strategies that you might be trying, the other thing that I, I see people get tripped up on, or the mistake that I see people make is that they. They focus too much on the nurture content, and they think that everything has to be nurture content, everything has to be value and education, inspiration, whatever it is, and they forget to do the sales.

So sometimes it's just a matter of you've been doing the work, you've been putting out the consistent content, people are maybe engaging with it, but you're not making sales. Well, that is maybe a sign that you're not asking for the sale often enough. You're not putting your offer out there. And inviting people to buy, inviting people to work with you, telling people about your programs and your services.

So we also wanna make sure no matter what, no matter which of these strategies that we are committed to and, and trying and experimenting with and staying consistent with, we also have to be selling. People are not gonna buy if you're not selling it. It's, it's like the simplest, it's the simplest concept, but so easy to forget.

And I've just, I've been thinking about this a lot lately that. , the amount of people who buy into my programs is a direct result of my energy, to sell them. The more that I invite people to buy, the more that I talk about what I do, the more that I say that there's open spots, the more that I say, Hey, we're doing this, or You should jump into this, and this is for you.

If the more people that buy. . It's that simple. It's that simple. People don't know your offers like the back of your hand, like you do . Like we have to, we have to tell them, we have to invite them. We have to remind them, and that's okay. So don't just make sure you're not forgetting to do that piece. It's super important, especially if you're seeing engagement, if you're seeing that people are interested in what you're doing, if they're asking questions, but they're not ever actually signing on to work with you, that may be a sign that you need to sell more.

That's all I've got for you. That's my monologue for the day. I hope that this is helpful. If you listen to this, I'd love to know what you decide. I wanna know what your plan is. I wanna know how long you're gonna stick with it. I wanna know what you've tried. I wanna know all these things. Tell me I'm super nosy.

I'm also super supportive. I want this to work for you. And so let me know what you decide to do. Email me my emails. Hello, easy scaling dot. I will respond. I wanna hear from you. I'd love to cheer you on and keep you accountable. So other than that, I'll see you next time.