If I had a dollar for every genius who told me, “you should start a podcast!” I’d be a wealthy woman.
They’re the same geniuses who told me I “really should do” a YouTube channel, Instagram quote pictures, and (my personal favorite) QR codes.
People in the peanut gallery are always eager to tell you what you should do to improve business (without considering, of course, if your business actually warrants said improvement).
It’s easy to identify what others should do.
That’s why it’s easy to market your clients, but not yourself. Doing anything for yourself is a lot harder. And not because we “can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Here’s why we business owners don’t do what we “should do.”
Reason One: It’s not actually what we should do.
Let’s go back to podcasts. Every colleague of mine has one or had one. Only one had a million downloads a month and was generating real revenue from it for his business.
It took him 6 years before he had an audience and was able to start generating any real revenue. YEARS. (For more numbers on podcasting that will sober you up, read this.)
Starting a podcast is what everyone is currently doing, but that doesn’t mean it’s what you should do. It just means it’s one of many other things you can do to reach your market.
Like all things in business, it should be evaluated on its own merit and applicability to your specific business. Not on its popularity at the moment.
Reason Two: Logistics are in the way.
I laugh whenever someone asks me for my marketing plan. “But aren’t you a strategist? Isn’t that what you did for a living??” Yes and yes.
And both of those are unrelated to the fact that today I have a laundry list of things that need to get done before I get the luxury of mapping out my marketing plan.
They can wax poetic all day long about best practices, but when you see that first my software needs to be set up to talk to that other software and then send that email and then link up with the payment processor – oh and also someone needs to take out the effing trash, refill the printer cartridges, and take that call with AppSumo about why pop-ups keep showing up where I don’t want them – then you can talk to me about best practices.
My advice is to ignore everyone who gives you advice on what you “should” do in business. Myself included.
There’s always more to the story when you’re choosing not to do something you should be doing.
And it’s never because you don’t know what you should be doing. If information was the problem, well, I default to the great master Sivers on this one: “Then we’d all be billionaires with 6-pack abs.”
True story Derek. True story.
