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Welcome, welcome, fellow entrepreneurs. I am really excited to share this broadcast because it happens to be the beginning of a new year, and I love new beginnings. But the content I'm going to share today is relevant. Whenever you pull out that wipe erase board and you begin to plan, or you pull out that calendar and you're starting to plan maybe a launch, this is going to be so valuable when you're in that planning stage. Maybe you do that every month, maybe you do that every quarter. Whatever rhythm you have, this is going to be really, really helpful. So I'm excited to share today how to choose the activity that will turn your vision into a thriving business here on the Resilient Faith Online Show.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Welcome. I'm Marissa Shatter, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective on the external and internal challenges we face as online creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips to create positive influence in the world. To continue the conversation, learn about my private resilient creator community. Go to MarissaShatter.com forward slash community. Yes, yes, yes. New beginnings.

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Love it. Love it. Second chances.

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Yes.

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Starting over, not necessarily. We might be tweaking, maybe updating, maybe changing, retiring some things that don't serve us well, implementing things that will serve us well. We're shaking things up. And that is totally natural and expected when we have an online business. But today we're going to talk specifically about the activity, the daily activity that you're involved in. Sometimes we can be so busy at the end of the day, we wonder, what the heck did I do? And we begin to think about the things that we have to do on our to-do list, and we can get so sidetracked and miss the things that are really going to help move us forward. So we want to work only on the activity that will propel you forward. Does that sound good to you? Absolutely. I know I want to do it. And it's been a challenge for me to stay on track. And so I know last year I really focused on working strategically on the things that were going to help me move my business forward. I know as we reflect back, maybe in the past quarter or the past year, and we look ahead to the future, it feels maybe a little unsettling. We're not sure of things. It's natural to have mixed emotions. That's totally normal. The past year maybe have brought challenges or setbacks, or maybe you had a wonderful year, right? And it brought growth and opportunities. Whatever the case, it's always good to stop, reflect, take a look at what we have, take inventory, so to speak, of all our assets, of our energy, and see what we need to adjust. So as we enter a new year, or if you're listening to this and maybe you're entering a new quarter, this would apply too. It's important to remember that each day is a fresh day. It's a fresh start. It's not tainted with anything. We don't want to bring yesterday's disappointment into today. Today, each day, every morning is a new day that is filled with new opportunities. And as a Christian, I believe God's mercies are new every single day. And so I walk in with lots of grace, not only for myself, but also for the day-to-day things that may want to try to derail me. It's a chance to let go of the past, even if it was just yesterday, and embrace the present. And that's why I journal a lot because I reconcile a lot of those things when I journal. If something didn't go quite right, or I didn't finish something that I was planning on finishing the day before, that was yesterday. That was history. That's not going to serve me well if I carry that over into today. So wherever you are in your business, each day is a brand new day. Typically, people start thinking about goals, but I want you to wait just a second before you start filling up your to-do list and your calendar with all these activities. Just listen to some of the things that I'm going to suggest here. And I want you to feel free to take some risks and be able to maybe get out of your comfort zone a little bit and try new things. Don't just say no to something because you've never done it before, or maybe some fear is starting to well up. Be open to different ideas. And the third, I want you to be open to change and embrace the unknown, which is really hard to do, right? We like the safety and we don't want to move forward towards something that is unknown. So don't let fear be your master. Don't let fear make decisions for you. Just determine that you're going to embrace grace, but you're also going to embrace courage and you're going to take baby steps, simple steps towards something that maybe is new. So are we good there? Okay. So I just wanted to clear that up so you can listen to this with an open mind. So many people set business goals. It's part of starting and running a business, and goals can provide direction and help us see if we're on track and see results. But I want you to think of setting the right goals, but even changing the wording. I want to suggest that you don't necessarily set goals, but that you choose priorities. There's a difference with that. Choose priorities. And so I think the problem is oftentimes we get busy on the wrong things, and it's not producing or at least providing the foundation that we need in our business to help us grow and move forward because we're working on the wrong things. So when I think of business, think of a rubber band, how you can expand the rubber band and it contracts, and you can expand it and it contracts, right? So in business, I want you when you're thinking about priorities to think of the macro view. You're stretching that rubber band and taking a look and maybe stretching yourself and giving yourself a good macro view of your business. And then as that rubber band contracts, and then you have the micro view, which is really how you're going to get things done. And one of the best ways is to whatever it is that you want to accomplish is to set some great habits around that that's going to help you. So we're looking at the macro and then we're looking at the micro. For a quarter or for a year, I want you to, especially for the year since we're in the new year, I don't want you necessarily think about tasks. I want you to see what is it that you really want to accomplish by the end of a particular year, right? What do you want to accomplish by the end of that year? You should have some kind of idea, right? There's something, maybe you want to publish a book, maybe you want to finally hit six figures, maybe you want to um launch some type of membership site. Something is is just stirring in your head that you want to accomplish. Consider those things, but also consider three separate buckets that I'm going to propose to you when you're looking at the macro view, the big picture, especially for a 12-month period. I want you to think of the list building work that you're going to be doing, the income-producing work that you're going to be doing, and then there's always admin, right? There's always some form of admin work. And some people I know they get started and they start filling out their calendar with a goal, and they have a goal, and they maybe they pick 90 days and they break it down monthly. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but you do need to have a broader view of your business for the year. And I think the buckets list building, income producing, and admin are great three buckets because you can allocate a certain percentage of your time to list building, a certain percentage of your time to income producing, and a certain percentage of your time for admin work. And the time that you allocate to it should be in that order. List building should have the biggest chunk of your time, then income producing work, and then the least amount of your time should be on admin. And I'm going to break this down to you and give you some examples of what I mean by list building work, income producing work, and admin. So we're real clear and we're on the same page. So list building would be anything to grow your email list. Now there could be a lot of things that come under that, right? But again, if you have this column, you're going to be focusing a good chunk of your time on how you're going to grow your email list. So some of the things might be of just maximizing and leveraging your website, right? Leveraging your website and make sure that the keywords are there. Make sure that you have a place where you either have a pop-up or a hello bar and you're really leveraging your website. If you're blogging, you want to make sure that you either have a widget on the side or you have some kind of call to action. So you want to make sure you're maximizing your website and you're maximizing your social media platforms. Make sure that that lead magnet is there. Do your due diligence and make sure that every place that you're online that there is a clear call to action so that people can download something. They don't always book a call. So I would suggest just having some type of great lead magnet, some type of resource that people would want to download and get. So cover all your bases, make sure all your T's are crossed, your I's are dotted, make sure that lead magnet is everywhere you can possibly think of. But you want to think of other ways to do this as well. You want to think out of the box. Now, many people spend a lot of time on social media giving free content and they think that's gonna grow their email list. If it's working for you and you're getting a lot of subscribers from doing a live stream or from posting every day or doing reels, great, more power to you. That's not the case with me, it's just not. And I was doing that a lot. I was doing live streams and I was putting it on YouTube and I was going and doing reels and I was doing all these things. I'm going, why am I doing all this? Because it wasn't really converting. And part of it is, you know, it's the algorithms. Part of it is the algorithms. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying just be very strategic on what it is that you're going to do and what platform you're going to show up on. So I kind of did some shaking up when it comes to social media and I'm camping on LinkedIn. Not that I don't post on other platforms. What I'm saying is that make sure that you're not spending so much time on social media if you're not seeing the results, if you're not converting, if you're not getting consistent leads from that, maybe you need to consider pulling back a little bit and trying another strategy. So there's other ways to do that. Um, I had mentioned this before, I think that I started doing workshops, I started doing guest uh blog posting. I'm going to be doing more of that. Uh, being on a summit is always helpful too. Collaborating with other people and being able to maybe have a workshop that you can present for their community is a good way to do that as well. Podcast guesting is another way. Find, think of ways that you can grow your email list and have those spikes in your email list so that you're constantly bringing in new people. It's really, really important. And I may be repeating myself, but it's so important to grow your email list. And one of the things to consider too that an email list can get old. And so you want to make sure that you're keeping it clean because otherwise it's going to hurt your deliverability. So you want to always be bringing in new people, and there's something called the law of recency that simply means that those people that come onto your email list are more receptive to the things that you share in your email marketing, which brings us to point two. Part of your list growth is email marketing. You need to continue to nurture that list and not just get them in and go, yay, you got them in and then forget about it. You need to send something out each week. Maybe the frequency is once a week, maybe it's twice a week, but you need to send something out and continue to provide value for those people. But one of the things that I realized I had to within my email service provider, I had to start eliminating some emails because it was hurting my deliverability. Because after a while, some of these email service providers they will not deliver emails if it looks like people aren't opening. And it could be some of those old emails. And sometimes people just change their emails, right? Or they use um a second email for things that they opt into and they never check it. So you want to make sure that you keep that list clean. And my email service provider, I use Active Campaign, they have an automated system. And I started this, oh gosh, I think I started this a year and a half ago. Yep, it was a year and a half ago. I started just cleaning my list. And I gave them enough opportunity, and there's email campaigns you can send that just lets them know, hey, you know, I haven't heard from you. I would love to, you know, see if if there's uh some question that you might have, or if you're still interested in receiving emails, uh, if you can click here, that would be awesome. And the system knows if there's activity to bring them back into the loop and tag them as active. But if they you don't hear anything, it continues down this path that eventually, if there's no clicks, if there's no views, if there's no activity whatsoever, there has to be like zero activity, it will send them down this automation where you know you give them kind of a last call that they will be removed from the list and then they're removed. And you can set that. I think I had mine set for uh a six month cycle. You can do three months, six months, a year if you want. I think the first time I did it, which was not in 2022, it was in 2021, I was kind of nervous about it, and I did a year, and then I upped it to six months. So um, so that's something to keep in mind, but that's all under list building. See, so it's not just, I mean, we can't just have a lead magnet and hope that it's gonna grow our email list. And we need to continuously be doing that, and you need to determine how many you want to add every single month. Now, I notice I have not said Facebook ads. I haven't said any ads yet. And so that's something that you need to really consider. I would prayerfully consider whether you're gonna do Facebook ads. I would see how it converts organically. And if it converts well, if you have opportunity to share the lead magnet and people download it and you see that they like it, you know, maybe after 30 days, 60 days, you see that this lead magnet is really getting some conversions. Maybe you can create a Facebook ad. But I would not um I would really caution not to spend too much money on the advertising unless you have a way to make it a wash. In other words, it's uh self-liquidating. So on the back end of that lead magnet, you sell something that will offset the cost of that ad. Otherwise, the ROI is terrible because I don't know how often you launch. If you're launching pretty frequently, um, you could make the money back then. But a lot of people that I know or that I coach don't launch that often. And so the ROI is terrible. You're paying all this ad money. So I would just wait until it works. I would try some of the other strategies first. But I think lead generation should be top on the list all the time. Doesn't matter how long you've been in business. So, in the other bucket, there was the income-producing work. That's the other that we want to do. We ought to want to always be providing an opportunity for people to come into our world, whether it's a low offer or mid-offer. Um, and occasionally we have those launches where we have a more high-value offer that we provide. But before we even do that, we need to stay very inquisitive when it comes to this bucket of income-producing work. We need to see how we can find out what's in the mind of our market, especially if they're on our email list, that makes it a little easier because we can email them and we can survey them. But we really want to understand and get the language that they're using so we understand how we can promote those products and services that we have. So, under income-producing work, one of the things that I'm gonna do that I would suggest you do is be very intentional, not only to grow your email list, but to survey your list, to be very inquisitive every opportunity you have on one-on-one calls, existing client calls, do little one-question surveys for them, have them reply back all the time. Be inquisitive, like be like that kid that says, why, why, why? Just be very inquisitive and try to capture the language of your market because that is gonna help you be able to promote in a way that not only give them what they want, but also word it in a way that makes sense to them. So there's different uh survey tools. You can just Google it and find them. You can use uh WooFoo, you can use SurveyMonkey, you can use Google Forms, you can just in an email, you know, have them click something or have them hit reply. So you there is a way in an email campaign to be able to set something up that if they click something, it will tag them. And so you'll be able to know, you know, um, not necessarily the language that they're using, but you'll be able to know uh what they're interested in. For example, if you offer multiple types of products, you might want to know, well, how many are interested? I'll give you a concrete example. Um, for example, for me, I'm gonna do a survey to find out how many are really interested in copywriting and how many are interested more in strategy. So that's something that's going to be a little different because the strategy, yes, you need good copy, but the strategy is a little bit more involved. So I hope that makes sense. That if you need to find out, especially if you sell more than one type of product, you might want to survey, but be very inquisitive. Um, even if you're on social media, whenever you do anything, if you're doing a podcast, if you're writing a blog post, just see how you can incorporate questions or little surveys to really understand your market ongoing, not just once a year. Ongoing, this is a perfect time of year. When you're it's the first of the year, it's a perfect time to do it. But I would do it periodically. And if you don't ask a whole lot of questions and it's just maybe one question, it's not going to even feel like they're being surveyed, right? It really isn't. And I'll tell you a little secret. Yeah, I'll tell you a secret. So um my membership, I have a membership on Mighty Networks, and on Mondays, I usually drip out quotes, like inspirational quotes, because I think it's important to have you know your headspace be healthy, right? So I have these inspirational quotes. I just loaded all of them for the entire 2023. All of them are all scheduled now from all these amazing entrepreneurs and thought leaders. And so I have all those scheduled to start the week in a positive way. And then on Fridays, I have these questions that are supposed to trigger just community involvement, but sprinkled in there are questions so that if they answer them, it gives me an idea of my market. It gives me information. So they might pick up on that, they may not. If you're part of the community, yep, I'm telling you on the back end, the method to my madness, they're questions to to stimulate some engagement within the community, but also there are some questions to be able to see what my market is thinking or what it is that they're struggling with. And so it's important any opportunity to see how you can survey your market. And lastly, the admin part, that's the third bucket. Now, regardless of these three buckets, right? These are the this is the macro view, right? You're gonna break it down and figure out what it is that you're gonna work on. And that's the micro view. But in the admin, it's anything, anything that is a repeatable process that is done every month, and it's you can systemize it, or you can automate it, or you can maybe create some internal system so someone else can do it. That's what I'm talking about, admin. So if it's something that you post-production work, for example, or editing, or putting something, um, your podcast on the host, or putting a video on YouTube with a show notes. Anything that's a repeated thing, you want to be able to create an internal system. And even if you can't afford to have a VA do it now, at least it will be there already documented. Have some kind of internal system. And I use some of you have Loom, I use that wonderful tool that I absolutely love, SunSpark. It's similar to Loom, but I'll just create. If I learn something new, I shoot a quick video to myself and I have a little folder in there so that I don't have to first I don't have to rethink it again. I think it once. I'll think it once. I think it once. And then if I forget, how was it that I did this? I just watch the video and it just helps me. It serves me well. But the beautiful thing about it is that eventually when I'm ready to hand that over to someone else, I can give them those videos. So that's the admin part. So once you have the overview, macro view of what are my goals or what is it, my priorities rather that I'm gonna have for list building and income producing. And you might even be thinking of your products. Am I gonna have a low-end offer on the back end of a lead magnet? And you have the admin things, the systems, internal systems. How can I make them tighter? How can I systematize it? How can I automate? So once you have those things figured out for the year, then you can start breaking it down into the micro. And then you can start setting up your 90-day goals. What's what is it that I'm going to do to grow my email list, right? Um, maybe you're gonna write a book, right? Maybe there's gonna be a book launch. And so you break it down on what you're gonna do and when the book's gonna be done and how you're gonna, you know, reach out to people to help promote it. Maybe it's that. In the income producing bucket, you can break it down. The micro view might be um just writing the sales page to some offer that you have, or writing the email campaigns. You start breaking it down to those things that are going to help produce income, or maybe setting up a Stripe account, you break it down into your 90 or monthly goals so that you can achieve whatever it is you're trying to achieve with the income-producing work. And then the um admin, you can break that down. Maybe you want to tackle, you know, within 90 days, you want to tackle all of your website pages. You want to give it a little makeover and freshen it up, and also your social media platforms. Maybe you set that up where you want to have that done within a 90-day period. So it's it's fresh and it's relevant. So I just want you to have a clear picture of your priorities. The macro, which sometimes we don't think about because we're so busy, you know, in the weeds doing things and listing a bunch of to-dos and tasks, and we forget what the name of the game is, and that is growing your email list. It's very, very important. So um, I hope that helps to break it down, and you need to break it down in a way that makes sense to you for your business as well. But I want to just leave you with something and and something to consider because I know some of this can feel very overwhelming. And when I started the podcast today, the recording, I mentioned about new beginnings and and I mentioned that God's grace is new every day, and it's true. Um, I really encourage you to know that each day, uh, God is a God of second chances, right? Um, even when we mess up, you know, he is guiding us in our business. And I just want you to know that each day brings a fresh start for you. And so I want you to just be grateful for the new day that you have that has not been written yet. Be grateful for the new year, a new year of life with all these experiences that are yet to come. It's gonna bring amazing opportunities, it's gonna bring growth for ourselves and for our business. Embrace that and see each day as a gift. See it as a gift, and all of that adds up to make every day a beautiful day of accomplishment. Even if you didn't accomplish what you had on your to-do list. Sometimes I write in my journal, you know, that what do I want to accomplish today? And sometimes it is a task, and sometimes it's simply I just want to honor God in everything that I do today, or I want to work joyfully, or I want to express gratitude, you know, in everything that I'm doing as I'm doing it. So it it's really looking at what success is before you see something tangible. What does success mean to you? And looking at success. And if success means being able to serve people each day and help people each day, then you are a very successful person. Kudos to you. And the rest will come. So hopefully that has encouraged you today. And I don't want you to feel overwhelmed or anything, but I do want you to consider, you know, those three categories of list building, income producing work, and the admin work. And those are the overarching priorities that should be top of mind, and then you break it down into those things that you need to create. And yes, you can set your 90-day goals and your monthly goals and so forth. I am looking forward to a new year. If you would like to add a review to this podcast, I would super duper love it. That would be awesome. I really would appreciate it. I know it's a little hard to figure out how to do that, but on my website, if you go to my website and you go to uh the tab that says podcast, if you scroll down, there's actually a video where I show you how to do it on desktop and how to do it on your phone. And I don't think anything has changed yet. I know Apple is making some changes right now, and maybe I'll do a broadcast on that sometime soon. But um, if you do need to know how to do that, how to rate and review, you can check that out on my website, marissa shatter.com, go to the podcast all the way to the bottom. There's a video there where I show you how to do it. Alrighty. Well, you take care, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.