00:00:00] Emma: you ever had that feeling, where you are so scattered, you are unable, to know what to do next. It happens all the time. It's happened to me. It's happened to my clients. It's happened to my friends. It's happened to my subcontractors. It's happened to my suppliers.
[00:00:34] Absolutely happens all the time for a variety of reasons. little story for you. One of my clients, she was not new to business, but she was new to a brand new revenue stream. She was feeling so scattered when she turned up on a coaching call to me we were talking through, okay, how are we going to get the new revenue stream up?
[00:00:54] Was she clear on her offer? Did she know what she needed to do? And what we realized was the rest of her business is going well. So normally people will come to me and the issue is revenue. They need revenue. And they need it now. And so she did not need that. She actually was like, Emma, I'm okay for revenue.
[00:01:12] I just want to get this new offer up and running this new revenue stream up and running, but I'm feeling really overwhelmed by the task. And I get that. I totally get that. So we listed off all the tasks that we needed to do. She needed to get her socials up and running. She needed to look at her email marketing and she needed to create weekly email for her target market. She needed a LinkedIn strategy because that's where a lot of her clients were going to come from for this new offer.
[00:01:39] She needed a list of organizations that she was going to call. She needed to do business development. You see, she needed to do all the things. And when we looked at the list, we went, what's the theme here? And the theme was without a doubt, visibility. No one knew that she had this new offer, this new revenue stream that she was going to present [00:02:00] to the world.
[00:02:00] So we needed to get away from being the best kept secret and help her be visible in that space. What do you do when you're feeling scattered? I see my clients struggling with this and my advice normally is very basic and very practical and I thought I'd share a couple of things. First one is, Step away from the keyboard.
[00:02:23] I think a lot of people just push through, push through. Maybe if I keep working the scatterness will go and all of a sudden I'll have clarity. Ah, it does not work like that. Step away from the keyboard and take yourself off. Go and do a walk or go and just get out of your own head. Stop overthinking it and then come back when you're feeling a bit refreshed.
[00:02:43] That could be as simple as a cup of tea. We all know I love a cup of tea. That's what I suggest to people do first. Get away from your head, get away from the keyboard and just go get yourself a cup of tea. When they come back, I want them to sit down at their desk and I want them to prioritize the tasks that they feel like they need to do.
[00:03:01] So, you know, we've all got that long to do list. That, we think we have to get done, but actually, if we look at why we're doing that list, what is the actions that match that list? So for instance, if your thing that you need to do is revenue, then you need to do some clarity calls to do some clarity calls.
[00:03:21] You might need to be present on socials to be present on socials. You might need to get some content up. And so there's that. So what we want to do is we want to have a look at all the tasks we need to do. Now, here's a tip for you. Every Friday I sit down and I look at my next two weeks and I go, right, what's my to do list for those next two weeks?
[00:03:40] And I write all my to do list things down. And then on the Monday through Friday, I do. drag three things from the to do list each day. So Monday has three, Tuesday has three, Wednesday has three. And I do those things first and they are always prioritized, if I can [00:04:00] get that word right. They're always prioritized with what is going to move the dial in my business, And so one of the things that I ask people to do is jot down everything that's going on in their head. and a to do list, because they might be two different things. then prioritize the to do list. you might, give it scores. You might work out which bits are more urgent than others, but then you've kind of got a list.
[00:04:22] Tip number three. Get rid of distractions. How often do we fall down the rabbit hole of social media? Because we just check this thing. How often do we get pings from notifications from our emails? Turn those off. I don't have any notifications on my phone at all. Because I am easily distracted. So I need to take away those distractions.
[00:04:44] Sometimes I even leave my phone in the other room, set a time for 25 minutes. That's using the Pomodoro technique, which you've heard about me talk about before. And I get on with it. Small steps. But that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is focus on one thing. Just one thing.
[00:05:03] That's the question. What is the one thing that will help me move forward right now? And I read this quote the other day, which I loved. The quote is by a guy called Josh Billings. It's accredited to him. And his quote is, be like a postage stamp, be like a postage stamp, stick to one thing until you get there.
[00:05:24] Oh man, that really resonated for me. So it's one thing that you want to focus on. So how does that outwork practically? So if it's revenue. You need to make a plan, a business development plan, and then you need to stick to it also would help to put it in the diary.
[00:05:38] I have so many conversations with people who say, I'm just not getting the leads in. And I say to them, show me your diary. And they're like, what? I'm like, show me the diary with your hours of business development popped in there. So I know that you're doing the work. What do you think happens? Not much.
[00:05:55] People are like, Oh, I don't have time. I'm like, don't fit in the cracks. Make [00:06:00] business development. You own a business. You need to make business development an absolute priority each and every day, something to do with business development. If it's about creating content, awesome. Decide on what content you need to create.
[00:06:16] Batch it, get it done. It might not be all different types of social media content. It might be only Instagram. It might be only LinkedIn. It might be podcasting, whatever it is. Pick the one thing and do that and do that really well. It might be about your expenses. You've not got a handle on your expenses.
[00:06:39] What's the one thing you need to do? The one thing I did many years ago was spend an hour on a Friday pouring through every single line in my Xero account. The accountants and bookkeepers out there will be very happy with me. But what it did do is it gave me a great grounding and understanding of my own financials.
[00:06:58] If you don't know your numbers, the one thing you do is block out an hour on a Friday and go through it line by line. Is it mindset? Do you have an issue with your mindset? What's the one thing that will help you shift that from meh to yeah! I just made that up. Isn't that cool? Anyway, so if you're listening to a uplifting podcast, if you are not listening to the news, if you need to do some meditation to increase your mindset, or you need to talk to a business friend who is upbeat and energetic, do the one thing.
[00:07:36] If it's a new offer, you've got a new offer. You're not sure if it's going to hit the market or not. You think it might hit the market, but you're not sure. What do we do? We reach out to some people and we ask them, we ask them if we can share our offer and if that makes sense. If it's one thing and you need to give feedback, let's say you've got a supplier, a subcontractor, a staff member, someone within your [00:08:00] organization, vicinity, and you need to give feedback, what's the one thing that you need to do? The one thing you need to do is script that feedback. By the way, if you're gonna script feedback, I'll just give you a little quick framework.
[00:08:12] It's called SBI situation. Behavior and impact. It takes all the emotion out of it. And I know feedback is something rather difficult for business owners to do. So let's say you've had a supplier that has let you down. They haven't met the deadlines. it's a phone call normally, not an email. And you would say, Hey, Mr.
[00:08:34] supplier, current situation is that you have not hit the deadlines. And you've been late several times before. The impact to me, my business is A, B and C. We need to do something about that. It's as simple as that. I think we really struggle as business owners to know how to do that kind of stuff, But if it's feedback, what's the one thing you script it. So we've gone through a lot today. I've talked about, what you can do to get out of feeling scattered and back into clarity. I've talked about focusing on the one thing that is going to move the dial in your business. What is the one thing for you?
[00:09:11] What is the one thing that will help you move forward? I would love to hear it. I love discussions like this and I'm wishing you a great day.
