Three Ways to Make a Bigger Business Impact
Don't neglect these simple resolutions for major transformation
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When I started my business,
I knew very few things... I basically launched myself into the pale semblance of entrepreneurship by way of a title I'd just given myself and a DIY Canva website (from a template and hosted on their subdomain). I truly didn't have a single clue about how to establish my processes (or even make an outline of a vague plan), my marketing, customer service, or sales. I was full of hope in my all-consuming desire to attain the lifestyle of my choice, and my internal fire of a drive to succeed at this sustained me while I output embarrassing attempt after attempt at running my business. But, I've grown and learned a lot since the iterations of those very early days, and you don't have to experience the same struggles that I faced.
What I'm going to attempt to do here is quickly dust you off, give you a bit of polish, and boost you off with just three testaments I had to come to realize all on my own in the hardest of ways. You can consider this guidance to be "quick and dirty" upgrades to make or easy-to-implement ways of leveling-up how you do your business as a creative or service-based online entrepreneur. And trust me, you can't afford to not digest what I'm about to show you if you truly want a fuller degree of quality or success to grace your business operation.
Many of the mistakes you're currently making are quite common and they have clear and actionable steps towards their resolutions. And I couldn't be better prepared to enlighten you about them as someone who has already learned their lessons through her own experience.
So, back up for a bit now and I'll meet you right where you are in order to get this done. If you can simply receive the soundness of the advice and embrace simplicity in following the methods here, you (and your business) will experience a remarkable transformation and become truly unrecognizable out here, and quickly so. I'm going to literally break down some of what you've put together (so far), and leave you much better equipped with the new parts we're about to explore.
Let's go.
Your Website is Your Digital Front Door
I have never met a credible online entrepreneur without a decent website of some kind. I just have not. Your website should be the most direct and accurate source of information that is professionally related to you. This is also not just a one-time project. Like you are yourself, your website should be a living and ever-developing work. And know that a DIY placeholder or a profile located on someone else's subdomain is not acceptable. Purchase a branded domain from a registrar like Porkbun with one of their 1st year sales and point it to a thoughtfully-designed website that you (or someone else) built. You can use a drag-and-drop builder from a free platform like Systeme.io to put together something worthy of visibility with pretty low effort. Be sure to configure your branded email too, because an email address ending in gmail.com isn't very impressive or converting. Appearance is what matters most at first, and taking these steps now prevents you from losing opportunities later due to not looking the part of a trustworthy and professional real business.
You Need to Use a CRM
If your work includes serving multiple clients like mine does, you already know that the acquisition of just one additional deal equates to loads of more details to remember, particulars to juggle, and duties to complete (by their deadlines). And it also greedily munches up a large portion of what's left of your capacity at that time. Then there are also the agreements, the correspondence, the meetings or calls, accounting... It can all very easily result in human error entering your operation with varying degrees of potential effects cascading into chaos afterwards.
Implementing a CRM to the client-related responsibilities of your business easily addresses most of your client management needs. Just imagine being able to reference information from every single conversation that you've ever had with a client... A robust CRM can offer immense value such as that to you, and all from one source. You'll be able to accomplish the otherwise time-consuming work of sending and signing agreements, creating invoices containing the services you performed and the time you tracked while completing them, and providing a client-side online portal for clients to view the progress being made on their projects from day-to-day. I just love how my CRM of choice, *Moxie, is able to deliver on all of this for me. (Need help setting it up for yourself? You've got an Approved Implementor writing this newsletter to you right now.)
You Processes Need to Exist and be Documented
How do you know that the work you are doing right now is being done properly? Back when you created your newest offer, did you spend even a minute afterwards thinking about all of the different steps that it would require for delivery? If not, and you just settled for telling yourself that you know how to do it from memory already and that you'll just begin it somehow, then you are working quite carelessly and not taking your business as seriously as you could. The public will perceive this low level of aspiration and applied effort from you and likewise never value what you have to offer.
You don't need to have a team before you begin documenting your business processes, including the ones you have for your deliverables. Even just a collection of simple checklists highlighting the different steps of getting something done will do.
Go around and carefully and thoroughly execute all the different jobs within your business while recording each action that you must take in sequential order to complete them. Then, store these (precious) documents in a digital repository somewhere secure like Google Drive. Create a recurring task to keep them all updated with any new changes or revisions routinely.
This will accomplish a couple of things worthy of the upfront time you'll need to invest in order to do all of this. It serves as your in-house Quality Control, ensuring that your work is performed the same way each time you do it to ensure a consistent, high-quality experience for everyone involved. It also legitimizes your business by preserving knowledge for future reference in the case that someone else needs to accomplish this work.
Conclusion
When your dedication leads you to the place of actually putting in the work required for addressing the three points of interest from above, the payoff will show up directly in the impact your business is able to make. It should come as no surprise that being proactive earlier on in your entrepreneurial journey will position you to more easily achieve greater levels of success. Not to mention, proactivity will also save you from coming to resent your once enjoyable work due to always having to hustle harder and feeling burnout.
You'll really appreciate what you've accomplished by executing simple action items like those found here when you begin to make the types of decisions that affect the future of your business. It will feel like having the security you'd get knowing that your path was already clearly marked all the way to your final destination when your strategies and activity start to line up with your vision.
So, be sure to never pass up a practical and direct way to uplevel the business you've built. View them all as opportunities to advance to the next level of impact that you're able to make by doing your type of work. Love whatever role you're in so much that you'd never settle for just "good enough" permanently. Feel the passion for whatever job you do so strongly that you always choose the path of wisdom over wasting your time with losing at the long game. It will literally pay off. You can take my word for it.
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As an expert in digital operations, systems strategy, and processes, I work with creative and service-based entrepreneurs to bring structure, clarity, and ease to their businesses.
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