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You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. This is episode number 190 here on the sweet life entrepreneur business podcast. And I made real beach super glad that you’re here joining me. And this is part one of a two part series that we’re doing about how to reset and refocus your business this fall.
This is a super important episode, as well as next week’s. Now, let me give you a little bit of background. If you’re new to the Sweetlife company or the Sweetlife podcast every single year for the last five years, I host the reset in the refocus entrepreneur challenge. This is a challenge that’s usually just a couple of days long. That helps you refocus the most core components of your business so that you can thrive every fall.
And this is usually something we do because in the summertime I do a lot of traveling. You do a lot of traveling things, just get a little sloppy in the summertime. When it comes to business here in 2020 this year, it’s just been completely different. So this reset and those three focus challenge might be even more important than any other year. We’ve hosted it because we’re not rebounding from a glorious summer adventuring or traveling abroad.
We’re rebounding from some seriously rough months as business owners and parents and entrepreneurs and professionals. And it’s really time to refocus your business. As a matter of fact, as this show drops, I am currently dropping my oldest and first child off to college. So there are so many changes and big things are happening that are really outside of the norm this year.
So as you will likely be going through the reset and the refocus challenge with us, I hope that you do. I’m going to be going through it as well, right there with you. And so is my team. We always roll up our sleeves and participate because these are things that we need to reset and refocus on in our company as well. So before I dive into today’s show again,
which is part one of a two part show, I want to invite you to join me totally free. And the fifth annual entrepreneur reset and refocus challenge, all you have to do is go to sweet life, co.com forward slash reset. And you’re going to get a schedule of live events that you can drop into, or you can catch the live replay.
And you’re going to get an eight page quick action, fast implementation workbook with a couple of sheets to help you know exactly how to reset your focus, your business, and the most important areas that are going to move the marker for profit team building growth and scaling this fall. So before we dive into today’s episode, I want to make sure you had the invitation to join.
Simply go to Sweetlife code.com forward slash reset, and we’re kicking off the reset and the refocus challenge on Tuesday, September the eighth. So make sure you join by then. Otherwise you’re not going to get in. Okay, let’s go ahead and talk about who this actual episode is for in next week’s as well. These episodes are for established entrepreneurs. So you’re in phases two to four of my start to scale up business system.
This means you already have a business and, you know, things might just be a little fuzzy or blurry or overwhelming, not as organized as you want them to be right now. And you need to refocus your business for the rest of 2020. So you’re offering your services, your marketing, your systems, your mindset, where’s your mindset right now. I think that’s a really big,
important part of business development, growth and profit is your mindset. We’re going to talk about that on these shows as well, your network, and really what’s happening with your home life. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you know that I don’t believe or agree with the terminology work life balance. I believe in building businesses that are cohesive and that work in harmony with your life and with,
you know, being a busy and maybe even workaholic entrepreneur, like I am that it all flows. And those are the things we’re talking about here. So if you’re like me, you’re going to love this. Fall’s normally a time where we reset, right? It’s normally a time where the kids go back to school and we’re, we’re kind of looking at,
okay, Hey, quarter three is here. Where are we have we had our financial benchmarks. And so what we’re doing this year is of course, we’re looking at all those things, but we have to look at it through a little bit different glasses, just because of how weird 2020 has been. And a lot of us have different challenges than we have had in the past.
They are the typical, you know, regular resetting. There’s a lot of mindset and home office work strategy that we’re going to be talking about on these two shows as well. So as an entrepreneur, you’re fully responsible for the growth and success of your business. And so it’s critical that you make sure that the goals that you have are in line with your offer and your marketing and your systems.
And so those are the areas we are primarily focusing on in this show. So at the end of this show, you are going to have a clear understanding of whether or not you need to reset and refocus your offers, how your marketing and lead generation funnels are performing and what you might need to do to change those and any internal systems that you need to reset and refocus in a next week show,
we’re diving into resetting and focusing your mindset and your mental health as an entrepreneur, your network are you affiliating with the right businesses to help your company grow and also your home life and your home office spacing. If you’re in one of those situations where you’re working from home. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. Again, all of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife podcast.com
forward slash one nine zero<inaudible>. Okay. The first three key areas we’re focusing on helping you to identify how to reset and refocus these particular areas for your business are your offer, your marketing and your lead generation funnel and your internal business systems. So let’s go ahead and dive in, in just kind of take apart your offers. It’s incredibly important that what you’re offering,
what you’re selling, your services, your programs, your courses, your products, that they are in line with what your market is buying right now so much has changed. We’re looking outside the box of usual sales, growth and strategies. And we’re looking at your buyers, your clients with new goggles, right? Sometimes like beer goggles, like you can’t see clearly tell me,
you know what I’m talking about this, and you just really can’t see clearly. And so we want to clarify that on today’s show. So here are some questions that you should be asking yourself as we analyze whether or not you need to reset or maybe rebuild or refocus your offers to hit the benchmarks that you need to hit for your business at the end of this year.
So here’s some of these questions. And just as a reminder, all of these questions are actually written out for you with tips and resources in the workbook. That’s totally free. That comes along with our reset and refocus challenge. Again, you can join that challenge by visiting Sweetlife co.com forward slash reset. So as I go through these questions, if you’re processing them in your mind,
awesome, the best place to process them is on paper or written down. And that’s what that supplemental workbook is for. So the first question to ask yourself is what is your primary offer service program course, or product? So what is the number one thing that you are selling right now? What’s the most popular thing that people come to you for? And the second question is,
is, is it selling now when we answer the question, is it selling? That’s a little relative, okay. Everybody’s business is different. Everybody’s geographic territory is different, but what I want to know is is your primary offer selling, as you would expect it to be based on your business, your market, and where you are geographically in the world,
everybody is different. So is it something the way that you expect it to be right now? The next question I want you to ask yourself, especially if it’s not selling the way that you want it to be right now, is does your primary offer solve an immediate problem for your clients? Right now in 2020, people generally are buying things that are fixing their right now problems.
Didn’t always used to be this way. This is what’s selling right now. So I want you to look at your current offering your current services. And I want you to ask yourself, do my current services that I’m offering my primary service or program or product. Does it solve a right now problem? And if your sales have been falling off a bit,
maybe it’s because you’ve had this amazing offer, but for 2020, it doesn’t solve a right now problem. So it’s certainly an important question to ask yourself the next question I want to, I want you to ask yourself, especially if your offer is selling, is, is that something that you want yourself or your company to be known for? All right.
So whatever you’re selling, is that what you want your reputation to be known for? Do you want people to say, Oh yeah, I know Joe, because he does this. So whatever you’re selling right now, especially honestly, if you’re new in a marketplace, ask yourself, is this something that I would like to be known for and is your offer operating in your genius zone?
So is the offer that you have aligning with what you’re great at? What you’re an expert at what you have experienced at what seems to flow naturally from you as a human being, all those things are very important. I don’t care if you have a hundred employees or it’s just yourself, all those things and making sure what you’re selling is an extension of who you are.
As a business owner is a really important thing because when you’re selling something that aligns with your zone of genius, it sells easier. People are attracted to you and you get greater results. So does the service you provide align with yours zone of genius. And then the last question to help you identify, if you need to make some changes to your offer,
this fall is, does your offer make you enough money? We always want to come back and making sure we’re building a profitable business for you. So does your offer make you enough money? Is it one that is a lower priced offer? So you have to sell more of it or is it a higher priced offer? And so you actually work with fewer clients and give a more thorough delivery,
and that’s all relative as well. How much money do you want and need to make? What are your financial benchmarks? So the first area we’re helping you kind of wrap your head around here and I’d love for you just to stop for a second, wherever you are, if you’re cooking or driving or working out and ask yourself is what I’m selling, giving me the results that I expect right now.
And if you need to reset, if you need help on figuring out how to reset again, don’t forget to join me in the reset and refocus challenge. Cause we’re going to be chatting about these things live, and I’m going to be taking your questions. But here are some tips that you can use right now to process or whether or not you need to reset.
First of all, if it’s not selling, you have a problem. We have to take a look at what you’re selling. That doesn’t take rocket science, right beyond that, ask your clients what they really need right now. If you aren’t delivering something that’s, that is a current problem for your clients. Consider scaling back, maybe a larger offer. You have to give them immediate results in an area they’re struggling with right now.
The next problem for a lot of businesses is bringing you from offline to online. We have a lot of resources. I’ll drop links for you. In the show notes of this episode, there are a ton of different online business models where you can take the work you’ve already done. Take your assets, take your content and turn them into online business models.
And I’ll make sure and leave a link in the resources for the show notes for you to download our ultimate guide to the online business model. That’s right for you. And we will certainly be talking about that in our reset and refocus challenge to give you more wisdom in that area, if that is you. So the first area of identifying what needs to be reset for fall of 2020 is your offer area.
Number two is your marketing and lead generation funnel. Okay? So let’s go ahead and zoom in a little bit closer here on what’s happening with your lead generation. The first question is, is are you generating new leads right now? If not, if maybe you’ve stopped your advertising or you weren’t posting as much on social media, well fix those things. Those are easy fixes.
We’re not going to talk about on a business strategy. You know what you have to do. So just schedule it and begin to reset those areas from a business strategy standpoint. Here’s some questions. If you are doing those things and you just aren’t generating any new leads, here’s some things I want you to think about. First of all, where are the leads you’re getting coming from?
What’s working right now with the leads that you have, have they fallen off? Are they coming in, in a trickle in, what does that look like? And what process, what Avenue, what experience are leads coming to you? And is this pathway where you’re receiving leads? Are you getting the results you need from these leads? Are they high quality leads or are they just leads?
I would rather, you have a list of a hundred great leads than a list of 10,000 people that really don’t give a shit about what you’re selling, or they’re never going to buy from you. That is a waste of your marketing dollar and your time. And it really helps. It makes it harder for you to judge whether or not you’re servicing the right people because the people you’re servicing might not ever be qualified leads in the first place.
So the questions I want you to ask yourself are with the leads you’re getting. Are they the ones you want? Are they high quality leads? Are they giving you the results you want and are your leads coming in, in a trickle or are they coming in, in a flood gate? The next question is, if they’re coming in in a flood gate,
are your online business funnels handling that? Well? So one of the problems that we work with companies on when it’s time to scale is not that it’s trouble gaining a floodgate of leads, is it sometimes they’re online, digital funnels are not ready for those leads. It’s just gonna all collapse on top of each other. So you want to make sure that your business and the tech side of your business is set up properly so that you are ready to handle the volume of leads that come in when you’re doing a great job with your marketing.
So the first thing I want you to do is go back and look at your internal systems. What does that look like? Are your funnels built properly? Are your landing pages and your forms in your email followup sequences and all these basic digital marketing funnels that every single company, whether you operate only online or in person or a hybrid combination of both, you have to have your online funnels functioning properly.
And so that’s step number one. So when we’re looking at your marketing, your lead generation resetting for this fall, step number one is to look at the technical side of your business and let’s make sure that they’re all running and flowing properly. Once we know that your systems and your funnels are built correctly, then we can ask our associates questions. Is it time to increase the number of leads into your business?
Should you start running ads? Should you start connecting with other businesses and building affiliate relationships? Should you increase your social media presence, maybe be doing more live streams. And we can talk about the marketing side of it, but many businesses just jump into the marketing side, but the structure, the blueprint of how people get into their business is going to fail when they increase those leads.
So for our reset and refocus this fall, I want you to ask yourself, is your company actually ready for a flow of consistent leads coming in, in when those right perfect leads do come in, is your company going to give those leads and experience that completely wows them and makes them want to be returned customers or by whatever it is you have to sell?
Because the online experience you’ve delivered is so awesome. They love being a part of what you’re doing. That is area number two, to reset and refocus this fall. And we’re going to be diving into all that as well, and the reset and refocus challenge. So if you’re totally new to digital marketing, this is a great place for you to start to get tips and strategies and software recipes to make this work great for you and a fix for you is to hire a VA or hire help to fix broken systems.
If that’s what you need to do, put that on your, to do list and go ahead and delegate that out so that you’re fixing your funnels right now. And the third area we’re focusing on for our reset and refocus challenge this year are your internal systems. So your internal systems have to be in place and flowing very similarly to how the technical funnels work in your business.
In order for you to increase your profit, sustain your clients that you already have, and really be able to grow in scale your business. So here’s some questions to ask yourself, do you have standard operating procedures created for your primary business functions? Now, I’ll be honest after launch. When we start working with companies who are ready to scale online, many companies don’t have these basic SOP in place to run a smoothly functioning online business so that you can scale.
And that’s totally fine. So if you’ve been in business for years and you don’t have any of these, you’re not alone. Let me just tell you this, but here are some areas. I want you to focus this fall because once we can get these in place for you, once these are in an order and you can delegate clearly, then you’re going to be able to grow.
So ask yourself these questions. Do you have SOP is created for your content creation in your content and marketing distribution. Do you have standard operating procedures in place for hiring people and onboarding staff for duties that you would delegate on a regular basis to your team members? Do you have SOP is in place for client onboarding or client management or client offboarding? What happens when you’re done working with the client?
Do you have amazing systems in place to wish that client farewell, as they’re done working with you, that is a way that’s going to make them feel so great about it. They’re going to continue to refer other people your way. And do you have standard operating procedures and systems in place for your finances, your bill pay, and are you paying yourself?
These are all basic SOP is that every single business needs to have in place in order for us to get you to that point where we can scale your business to the next level. So as we go through and we really look at maybe some areas of focus to help you hone in on what you should be working on for your company, this fall looking at all,
those might be super overwhelming. So just pick one area that you would like to start by developing your systems. And it could be content marketing could be marketing, distribution, team, building, client support services, or internal services like finances and bill pay, whatever it is, just pick one. And that’s what we’re going to do in the challenge. We’re going to get you started with one.
And once you get started with one, then the next one is easier. And the next one’s easier. And here are some tips to reset in order to write out procedures. The thought of that seems really overwhelming. So, Oh, I recommend that you do is take one day when you were performing these tasks and simply document, it can be as simple as bullet points,
the steps that you’re going through to perform these tasks, and then share that documentation with your team or have somebody else clean it up for you. You can also hire a VA that specializes in systems to get your systems in place. And you can work with a company like ours, the Sweetlife company, where we help you get your systems in place. And we give you templates to copy so that the systems are in place.
Whatever’s going to work for you. Pick one system that you would like to create that you know, needs to be created that maybe not having the system created has caused problems. Maybe you’ve lost money. Maybe you haven’t been able to grow your business the way that you know that it should be growing because you’re recreating the wheel every single time you do this system,
we’ve got to stop that. And so, as we look at part one of this two part series on how to reset and refocus your business this fall, the first three areas that we’re focusing on this week are also the three areas that we’re going to deep dive together in our three day live reset and refocus challenge. These are the areas I find where you might have questions.
You might need more help. So these are the three areas we’re going to work through together live. And the challenge verse one is your offer. The second one is your marketing and lead generation funnel. And the third one is your internal systems and SOP. And so that’s a recap of what we talked about today. Next week, we’re diving into continuing our reset and refocus challenge.
We’re diving into your mind and your mindset, your network, and your affiliates and your home and office life also really important areas, but we won’t be focusing on those areas in the live challenge. So if you’d like to join us for the live challenge, again, it’s totally free. You can cruise over to Sweetlife co.com forward slash reset, and you’ll receive the complete reset and refocus challenge workbook.
Plus the schedule of live streams, where I can support you personally. That was a lot to talk about. Oh my gosh, I know it just seems so overwhelming. Sometimes we dive into these things that we need to reset, but we are simplifying this. We’re not going to reset everything. We’re going to reset. Just a couple of things that are going to hugely move the needle on your business.
I don’t even know if that makes sense, hugely move the needle. You know what I mean? We’re focusing on your offer. What are you selling? We’re focusing on your marketing. Are you generating new leads? We’re focusing on your systems. Is your business a well oiled machine. It needs to be in order for you to profit. So join me next week on Sweetlife podcast.
Number one 91 to dive in more and join me for free right now, the reset and refocus challenge kicks off on September the eighth, 2020 by visiting Sweetlife co.com Forward slash reset. I’ll see you guys there.