You’re Not Unique
Ouch, I know, but I mean it in the nicest way possible. And I’m not even talking about you - you are beautiful, wonderful, and perfectly uniquely you. But your business, namely the components of your business, are just like all of the other millions of businesses out there.
What I’ve seen with a lot of the small creative businesses I’ve worked with is they think that something about their product, their industry, their team, etc, doesn’t work like other companies. We were guilty of it at my Real Life Company. But when it became obvious we needed to make some changes, we swallowed our creative pride and started working within a framework.
And this brings me to the first of five things we did to increase our gross revenue 91% in 15 months: we followed a proven process.
The products and services will look different, but all businesses share the same core building blocks. You have goals, people, processes, data, problems to solve, and a cadence to the work that gets done.
Consider a one woman copywriting business looking to take on two new clients in the following quarter. Her prospects have been low so she’s working on her marketing and tracking where her new inquiries are coming from.
Goal/vision: Two new clients
People: Just her
Process: Client acquisition pipeline
Data: Lead sources
Problem to solve: Low leads/prospects
Cadence: Quarterly
Now compare that to a $2 million marketing agency with a team of 17 people. They’re working toward $5 million within five years by offering a new service that will roll out this year. It’s in the early phases, but they’re getting some good feedback from their market research.
Goal vision: long term revenue goal and shorter term roll out goal
People: 17
Process: Market research
Data: Positive feedback
Problem to solve: How to roll out a new service
Cadence: Yearly and multi-year
Sorry if this brought up trauma from word problems in middle school math, but my point is this: these two fictional companies could not be more different, but they have the same components.
And this is why you’re not unique (again, sorry.) Your business has these same components, you just probably haven’t looked at them this way.
My challenge to you is this: reframe how you look at your business. When you feel like conventional solutions won’t work for your individual business, spin it around and consider what needs to change within your business to be able to reach that solution.
Of course, following a proven process isn’t the whole story. This was merely step one on our way to 91% revenue growth. But we had to start here before moving onto the next step: we got absolutely ruthless with our priorities.