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124. What To STOP Doing In Your Business · Burning Brightly

• 0:00
  I would go, "I'm gonna go work on my quote unquote business," and sit there tweaking my website for three hours and five people were visiting my website, and none of which really cared where the font was or what
• 0:09
  color I had on the background in fact, I built three different businesses with pristine, beautiful websites that I tweaked all the time until I finally realized none of that matters.
• 0:19
  And so then when I started my actual coaching business, I made everything bare bones Because I knew it actually doesn't matter.
• 0:27
  You just have to have a way for people to get on your email list.
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  It does not have to be beautiful.
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  It does not have to be robust.
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  Just has to be a place for people to land and get into your world.
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  A website can support the customer journey, but when you change your button color for like the 13th or 14th time, that's not actually finding a lead or nurturing a lead or selling to a lead.
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  It's just procrastination If you're a Latter-day Saint or another woman of faith feeling called to build a business, welcome.
• 0:54
  I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, and each week we'll combine faith and practical business strategy to help you answer that calling with confidence.
• 1:00
  This is Burning Brightly.
• 1:05
  One thing I've learned in the last few years of being a business coach is that I can tell pretty quickly why some coaches make money and some do not.
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  I'll talk to friends or clients who are working very, very hard and are unsure why they're not making money in their business, but when I look at how they spend their time, I can clearly see why.
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  They do a lot of things that feel like business building, But they're not actually moving a potential customer any closer to becoming a paid client.
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  I don't want that for you.
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  So today I'm gonna tell you what to stop doing in your business to make sure that you get closer to being a profitable business owner if you've followed me for any amount of time, you know that I teach
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  a three-step customer journey.
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  Your marketing plan really only needs to do three things.
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  Number one, find people.
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  Number two, nurture those people, and number three, sell to those people.
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  If you are finding new leads, you are nurturing them, you're gaining trust with them, and then you're selling to them, you will have a profitable business.
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  Almost everything you do should support one of those three things.
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  It's quite simple, but it's not always easy to tell yourself not to work on the things that don't support those three things.
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  Today, I'm gonna give you permission to stop doing some of the things you think you should be doing in order to spend more time on that three-step customer journey.
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  You ready?
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  Number one, stop spending hours creating nurture content It's not uncommon for me to talk to clients who spend six to seven, eight hours a week producing a podcast.
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  Now, if you're working 40 hours a week, that might be okay, but if you're working 12 or 15, you should absolutely not be spending seven hours on one piece of content, especially when that piece of content is a
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  nurture piece, just nurturing the people that you already have on your list.
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  It's not that that nurture content is bad or that you shouldn't be doing.
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  I do want you to nurture your clients.
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  But when it's half of the amount of time you have for your business in a week, it becomes the entire business.
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  Obviously, nurturing people matters, but you do not need to be spending that much time creating the world's most incredible podcast or article or YouTube video.
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  Nurturing is not the same as producing content, okay?
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  Sometimes we're like, "Oh my gosh, I love doing this podcast thing, and I want it to be just right, and so I'm gonna outline it for an hour, and then I'm gonna record it three different times because I
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  didn't like how it came out, and then I'm gonna take two hours to edit it."
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  Then we think all that time is spent actually nurturing clients, and that's not the case.
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  It's just all spent creating a piece of content that could've been done at a C-plus effort with much less time invested.
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  Let me explain what I mean.
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  A simple weekly email is enough to nurture your audience.
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  Did you know that?
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  It can teach something or tell a story.
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  It can share your perspective about something or demonstrate your expertise in some area, and it can invite them to take the next step.
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  That's all nurturing is.
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  It's saying, "Let me teach you a little bit.
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  Let me help you progress a little bit, and I'm gonna invite you into the next step, which is where I sell my products or services."
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  You don't even necessarily need a podcast or a YouTube channel or a blog or a Substack or Instagram Reels or a 2,000-word article.
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  All those things are actually just delivery mechanisms, not actually your business model.
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  And you could do those beautifully and still not actually be nurturing your leads.
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  Okay, let me give you an example I have always done my podcast as a nurture step, okay?
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  I invite my audience to come listen, and hopefully that draws them closer to potentially working with me 'cause they hear my expertise, they know I know what I'm talking about.
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  a year or two ago, I decided to start a YouTube channel.
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  Now, I decided early on that YouTube was gonna have a completely different goal, because YouTube is actually much better at a lead generation strategy than a nurture strategy.
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  Now, can I still invite my existing audience to watch my YouTube videos?
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  Of course, and I do.
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  But YouTube is actually a very powerful search engine, so I have restructured my YouTube videos to be more of that step one, more of that lead generation strategy, more of finding people than nurturing people.
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  That was a very, very deliberate step, okay?
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  I knew that I needed more ways to find people.
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  So when you make decisions in your business, I want you to make them very deliberately.
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  How is this going to help me find people, nurture people, or sell to people?
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  And if you already have a way to nurture people, i.e.
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  an email list, and you send emails, you probably don't need another way to nurture them.
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  It can be fun.
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  Podcasts are fun.
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  Writing articles are fun.
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  But if you don't have a lot of time in your business, I highly recommend you spend more time on the first step and the last step, that finding leads and selling to leads, and we'll talk more about that
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  in a minute.
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  Second thing you can stop doing in your business, stop trying to be everywhere.
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  People start a business and think, "Well, I need to be on Instagram, and TikTok, and YouTube, and a podcast, and Pinterest, and Facebook."
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  No.
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  You just need one reliable way to get in front of potential clients.
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  Just one, but it does have to be reliable.
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  This is why I do not typically recommend organic social media as a way to get leads, because it's not reliable unless you really, really play to the algorithm And you know exactly how it works and you follow all
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  the trends, and that's exhausting.
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  Instead, I want you to choose a lead generation strategy that works for you and get very, very good at it Instead of asking yourself, "Where should I be creating content?"
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  Ask yourself, "Where are my potential clients hanging out, and how am I going to get in front of them?
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  How am I gonna entice them to get on my email list?"
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  Now, that is the main difference between lead generation or, or finding leads and nurturing leads.
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  Finding leads means getting in front of people and asking them to get on your email list, and that can be done better in some places than others.
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  For example, in social media, most people go to it for entertainment and the scroll factor, not necessarily to be educated.
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  Now, do some people do organic social media properly and gain leads from it?
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  For sure.
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  But in my experience, it's the exception, not the norm Nurture is what you do for the people who are already on your list, sending emails, inviting them to partake of other content that you've created just for them.
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  So posting for your existing followers, giving them a podcast, is not necessarily the same thing as finding new leads.
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  This is actually why I recommend ads as a lead generation strategy, as that finding people step.
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  Because instead of wasting eight hours on social media a week hoping you find the right people or doing podcast outreach for hours and hours trying to get on other people's podcasts, you could spend 50 to $100 and get
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  in front of your ideal clients and get their email addresses.
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  So you don't have to do it, but that's what I recommend because it is so much more effective than organic social media or organic outreach.
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  All right, the third thing you can stop doing, stop perfecting your website.
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  You guys, I was right there with you.
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  I would go, "I'm gonna go work on my quote unquote business," and sit there tweaking my website for three hours and, and five people were visiting my website, and none of which really cared where the font was or
• 7:37
  what color I had on the background or whether or not I had a professionally designed logo or photos or buttons or whatever.
• 7:42
  In fact, I built three different businesses with pristine, beautiful websites that I tweaked all the time until I finally realized none of that crap matters.
• 7:51
  And so then when I started my actual coaching business, I made everything bare bones Because I knew it actually doesn't matter.
• 8:00
  You just have to have a way for people to get on your email list.
• 8:02
  It does not have to be beautiful.
• 8:03
  It does not have to be robust.
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  It does not have to be more than one page, okay?
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  Just has to be a place for people to land and get into your world.
• 8:11
  A website or a webpage, simple webpage, can support the customer journey, but when you change your button color for like the 13th or 14th time, that's not actually finding a lead or nurturing a lead or selling to a
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  lead.
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  It's just procrastination All right, number four, stop building things nobody has asked for.
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  So I recently came back from a business retreat, and this was one thing we were talking about, because most of us who have online businesses are creatives.
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  We consider ourselves very creative people, and we know there are problems that our clients and customers have, and we want to create solutions for them.
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  But until people have asked us for that solution or have expressed interest in something like that, do not create it.
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  Here is what I see happen.
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  Someone will wanna be a coach or an expert, will see a need, and they'll go out and spend hours and hours and hours creating a giant course or building a membership or building resources, worksheets, a coaching portal, or
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  five different offers, and they have no clients asking for these things.
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  And guess what happens?
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  They start selling, and when they get the clients, they realize, "Ooh, that course wasn't exactly what people need," or, "Those resources are actually a little bit off the mark from what I actually need to offer my people."
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  And that is so easy for us to hide behind this label of productivity.
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  I'm building a course.
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  I'm doing this amazing thing for my business, and yet it's not actually what is going to help our clients I always talk about business being like a science experiment.
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  So if you spend weeks and weeks and weeks building an offer that nobody has said they want yet, you're not actually working on your business.
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  You're just building a very elaborate hypothesis, and it might actually not be correct.
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  You might put it out there and people go, "That's not actually exactly what I want."
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  Instead, you need to talk to people, find out what they want, sell something to them, deliver it, and then improve it.
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  That cycle needs to happen over and over and over and over.
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  So one thing I talk to my clients about regularly is that you're going to want to beta test your coaching program before you actually build anything.
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  So that looks like getting very clear on your messaging and then saying, "Who would like my help with macro counting, with coaching on the relationship with your mother-in-law, with help decluttering your house?"
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  Whatever it is, whatever your expertise is, offer your expertise early on, and then start helping people.
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  You can do it for free if you'd like, or you can do it for a discount.
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  Doesn't matter, but get people moving through this kind of framework that you've hypothesized might work with them, and then improve it over and over and over and over, okay?
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  That cycle of selling, delivering, improving will probably happen 10 or 15 times before you feel really confident in what you're offering.
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  So do not waste time building something until you've delivered it.
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  Now, I know it feels so much safer to sit inside my coaching portal and build it out and make it really pretty than actually offer it to somebody, okay?
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  So be onto your brain and notice that it's wanting to build something creatively that feels so good rather than actually offering it to people, but you need to offer it to them first and take people through it first
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  before you can build it perfectly, okay?
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  So you're just gonna have to kind of fly by the seat of your pants a little bit at the beginning.
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  It's gonna feel a little uncomfortable, 'cause you don't know exactly what you're delivering.
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  But you know how to help people.
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  Just try something out.
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  Do it at a discount, like I said, if it makes you feel better, and then improve it for the next person.
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  The fifth thing you can stop doing in your business is to stop learning instead of doing.
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  Oh, you guys, it's so fun to learn, isn't it?
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  We always wanna take another course or watch YouTube videos or listen to another business podcast, research SEO or Instagram strategies.
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  And yes, learning is important.
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  It's valuable.
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  I am a coach.
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  I do lots of teaching to my clients.
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  But you have to put your knowledge to work.
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  There was a time a couple years ago where I thought, "What's the next coach I'm gonna hire?
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  What's the next thing I'm gonna dive into?"
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  And finally, my brain was like, "No, honey.
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  It's time to work."
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  It's time to take all that knowledge and just try using it, and you will learn what works for you and what doesn't work for you.
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  So any time you learn something, maybe you go to a business seminar or a retreat, or you're in a mastermind, or you watch a video, I want you to immediately ask yourself, "What am I gonna do with this
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  information?"
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  Not just put it in my cute notebook and stick it on my bookshelf.
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  What am I going to do?
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  Am I gonna try something new?
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  Am I gonna try to sell a little differently?
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  Am I going to try to nurture a little bit differently?
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  How is it going to affect that three-step marketing journey in your business?
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  If the answer is nothing, then that learning was just fancy procrastination, and maybe expensive procrastination, 'cause some of the learning I've done has been very expensive.
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  So make sure learning always leads to doing.
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  All right, number six, stop making nurture content when you need leads.
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  This takes us back Two, number one, stop spending hours on that nurture content.
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  Okay?
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  Now here is the fact of the matter.
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  For most of us, finding leads feels uncomfortable.
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  Selling feels really uncomfortable, but nurturing feels delightful.
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  We want to nurture all day long.
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  We want to help people for free.
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  We want to encourage them.
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  We want to be cheerleaders.
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  That's what we're good at.
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  So we spend all our time in that middle section, nurture, nurture, nurture, nurture, podcasts, social media, emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we think we're building a business, but nobody new is finding us and nobody is paying us.
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  That's not a business.
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  That's just an expensive hobby.
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  Watch out for that trap of spending all your time in the nurture step.
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  Don't write another email unless you're actually gonna offer something for sale.
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  Don't create another reel unless you've gone out to find some new leads first the two most important steps in your business are finding new people and selling to the people you have.
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  That nurture step, like I said, is important, but I don't think it's nearly as important as the other two because without the leads, your business dries up, and without the sales, you don't have a business sometimes what we
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  call marketing or call working on our business is just kind of a sophisticated way of avoiding sales.
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  All right?
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  So make sure you're making offers, make sure you're finding new people every single week, if not every day All right, the last thing you should stop doing in your business, number seven, stop confusing preparation with progress.
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  You guys know I am a big action taker.
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  If you're not taking action every day in your business, then your business is either stagnant or dying In fact, if you keep track of what you work on in your business, I want you to look back at that
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  list.
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  Maybe it's a to-do list that you checked off, maybe it's in your planner.
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  And for every task you accomplished, I want you to ask yourself, "Did that help me find a client, nurture a client, or sell to a client?
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  Did that help me increase my list, warm people up to me, or make an offer?"
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  And if it didn't do any of those things, then ask yourself, "Why did I do it?
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  Did it feel good to make my website look nicer?
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  Did I think I just needed to?"
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  And then make sure each of those areas is staying within its lane.
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  If nurturing a client is taking seven hours out of your 10-hour workweek, that's too much.
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  You need to allocate some of that time for finding and for selling.
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  So if the only podcast you know how to do is a seven-hour podcast, it's time to put the podcast on the shelf for a little while.
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  Instead, try just emailing your audience for a while.
• 15:03
  If you have a little extra time, you can email two or three times a week instead of one.
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  That's a great way to nurture and stay top of mind.
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  They're much more likely to open your email than they are to listen to your podcast anyway.
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  And then take some of that time to make more offers and to find new potential clients.
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  Now, of course, not every task fits very neatly into each one of those categories.
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  Obviously, you have to pay your bills, you have to make goals, plan, and you actually have to deliver your coaching to someone, right?
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  You're actually taking clients.
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  That's important.
• 15:30
  But when we talk about actually growing the business and marketing, those three questions are incredibly useful filters, and they have helped me become so much more efficient in my business.
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  They've also helped my business become much more profitable All right, if you're still having trouble figuring out what tasks go where, I'll give you a quick little business audit.
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  Things that belong in the find bucket, in finding those new leads could be networking or collaborations, getting in front of other people's audiences, running ads, YouTube or search engine optimization, right?
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  Where you're writing something that is going to Get search traffic or maybe live speaking events or referrals, something that's going to get you in front of people who haven't seen you before.
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  The nurture step.
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  These are things that build trust with people who already know who you are and are on your list.
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  So sending emails, useful content like articles, podcasts, et cetera, conversations, and follow-up.
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  And in a week that is busy where you don't have a lot of time because you're working on the other things, email is plenty.
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  Finally, in the third bucket, that selling bucket, things like sales calls, consult calls, webinars where you're offering something at the end, a sales email where it specifically asks for the sale, "Hey, I have this thing.
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  Do you wanna buy it?"
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  Maybe DMs, again, making an offer in there or any other way that you get what you're offering in front of people And then ask yourself how much of my week is actually going into things that do not move
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  the needle in one of those three areas?
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  Now, obviously my friends, I'm not telling you to not have a podcast at all, or that your website can be ugly and doesn't matter, or that you should never create beautiful content, but keep it within its lane.
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  Those things need to earn a place on your calendar.
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  They don't just fill up the calendar because it feels fun.
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  Watch out for your brain telling you you need to do something that just feels fun to do.
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  Your most precious resource, especially as a newer business owner, is time.
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  So spend it on the things that actually move someone from being strangers to being a lead, to Building trust in you and to finally buying your offer.
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  If you're spending 75, 80% of your time doing business-building things that aren't one of those three things, it's time for a reframe.
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  Stop doing more and start doing what actually matters, and I promise you will see a difference in your business.
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  All right, friends, I'll talk to you next week.
• 17:44
  If today's episode encouraged you, my book, Burning Brightly, is the next step to answering God's call to build a business through faith and confidence.
• 17:51
  Grab your copy and the free companion workbook through the link in the show notes.
• 17:55
  The world needs more women willing to burn a little brighter.