Small Biz Life: Episode 76

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Episode 76 - Your first day 0

Feb 26, 2017

Whether you are planning your first day working full-time for your business or you had your first day ten years ago, this episode is for you. We discuss Jeff's plans for his first day working for Ingram Digital Media, Inc. and the three pillars of success for our business.

Your first day

If your first day in your business was tomorrow, what would that day look like? If you've been running your business for years, how would your first day and first week be different if you restarted today?

Jeff has spent a lot of time working on his time budget and master schedule (get our Mastering your Time course free and try Small Biz HQ for 30 days for just $5 with coupon code MARCHFOR5) to ensure that he can hit the ground running. We've also spent a lot of time planning what we want the next few months to look like.

You may not know this, but we actually have three active brands in our business: Small Biz Life, Accounting In Focus, and Gardul/Worldbuilder's Anvil. We've got a lot of ideas floating out there for each of these brands. We could sit down, plan for weeks, and still not get all of our ideas on paper. At some point, the long-range planning needs to be set aside and action needs to take over.

All of this planning can cause overload. I'm sure you have felt this before and are maybe are in this place right now. Unless you have a focus on your priorities, the overwhelming feelings you have will stop your momentum. Jeff plans to focus on three pillars for success.

Our 3 pillars of success

We have said multiple times on the show that revenue generation and product development should be priorities in your business. Those are two of your pillars. The third is customer experience.

Jeff is most excited about increasing his role in customer experience for our brands. He loves interacting with people and helping them achieve their goals. This is one thing he has not had much time to do because of his limited schedule. Customer experience creates raving fans and happy paying customers. How much time are you devoting to customer experience?

The second pillar Jeff will focus on is increased revenue generation from our existing offerings. Customer experience is an important part of this but we also know we must improve our sales funnels and marketing practices. Taking potential customers through a defined sales funnel will help increase our revenue. Do you have a defined sales funnel? What does your sales process look like?

Our third pillar is product development. This includes a few new products and adding content to our existing products. It is our goal to add one new major product per brand per year. We could develop lots of new products but that would take time away from the other two pillars. If you are only developing new products, don't be surprised when those products don't sell as well as you hoped. Unless you spend time marketing, all the products in the world are not going to make you the kind of income you want. Are you spending too much time on product development? Are your products and services well defined?

It's not all lollipops and unicorns

Since we announced that Jeff was leaving his job, we have had many trials and tribulations. Every week, something popped up that made us question our decision. Every time, we recommitted to Jeff coming to work with the business full-time. We knew we were making the right decision even though there were many personal challenges.

We could really use some lollipops and unicorns in March, though.