Hey DIYer,
Everybody makes mistakes, and I've made my share. 🙄 Unfortunately, these mistakes cost me time, money, profit, and peace of mind!
But I want better for you, so I'll share my worst mistakes (and my lessons learned) so that you can avoid making them yourself. 😊
Mistake #1: Spending more time working IN my business instead of ON my business in the early years. Generating revenue, serving clients, and managing a business is even harder without the proper tools, structures, programs, and policies in place. Layer the misguided notion that "time=money" on top of that, and I had a recipe for disaster. I was overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated! Once I adjusted my perspective to think about delivering value instead of hours, I worked less, earned more, and had happier clients.
My Power Up: Leveraging time whenever possible, such as speaking to sell one-to-many instead of one-to-one.
Mistake #2: Not having "next step" programs and packages for eager clients. In my defense, I never bought into the concept that the customer knows how much coaching they need. Because if my prospects had their way, they would get a full marketing plan, messaging package with elevator speech and tag line, plus a branding kit in a 20-minute session for $75. But that's just not how it works.
I knew that my prospects were more likely to buy and commit when they knew exactly what they were getting when they bought, so I created packages. What I didn't realize was that they needed and wanted more support than just creating the plans; they needed some sort of maintenance program. So my retention strategies kicked in later than they should, but I can say with 100% honesty that I now have clients who have been with me continuously for over 15 years!
My Power Up: Creating a membership program to deliver great service affordably.
Mistake #3: Not repeating my most successful campaigns. It would be convenient to blame this mistake on my relentless commitment to innovation, but that would be a lie. I also underestimated my clients' interest in revisiting and improving their performance in some areas. Turns out that I can innovate through repurposing and/or updating material, and/or expanding the audience. So bottom line, every success is duplicable. Just wish I'd done it sooner.
My Power Up: Scheduling my year in advance with my marketing MAP*, cross-referenced with my Monitor* (the third tool in my Profitable Marketing Machine).
Mistake #4: Abandoning ideas with great potential too soon instead of working out how to make them succeed. This is about taking the "fail faster" concept to an extreme! I've thrown a lot of stuff against the wall, so to speak, to see what works, and when something didn't work immediately, I used to just move on to the next idea. Stupid mistake. What I do now is ask myself these three questions: Does this idea merit more time, energy, resources? What did work, that I can use and/or improve? What can I do differently, knowing what I know now (after failing on my first attempt)? In other words, I focus on incremental improvements for the win!
My Power Up: Quarterly "Focus Days" to review my Monitor* for actual versus projected or desired performance.
Mistake #5: Not setting up my own Profitable Marketing Machine* earlier. As a marketing professional, I thought I knew what I was doing, and I absolutely did, when all I did was marketing. But I had no idea how much easier juggling marketing, business management, and client service delivery would be with a fully functional integrated marketing machine. I am a total evangelist for this concept now, especially because I know with 100% certainty that it really truly works. Because it provides total clarity in terms of what to do, when to do it, and how it's working. And when you see your results in numbers, you don't have to guess what to do. You simply adjust your actions until you get the results you want.
My Power Up: Creating and using my own Profitable Marketing Machine*.
*The Profitable Marketing Machine includes 3 powerful elements: The Blueprint, MAP (Massive Action Plan), and Monitor.
The ENTIRE 16-session Profitable Marketing Machine video series, plus all the tools, exercises, and examples are ready for you right now! Feel like a weekend binge? YES!
