[From overwhelmed to awesomeness, a ‘how to’…]

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As I mentioned this week, content take over from my team and mentees

– I hope you have enjoyed the first two from myself and Carl Price –

Today we have the lovely Lianne-Carla Savage who’s going to help you get shit done the only way she knows how…

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Hey guys Lianne here,

Taking over for this post to drop you a little something to help you power through the next few months.

Ever said to yourself…”I need things and stuff but I don’t know what things and stuff or how to do them”?

You’re not alone.

In fact most entrepreneurs I speak to have been left confused and overwhelmed with all the information and tools out there.

They usually find themselves following one of two paths.

Path #1 The path of misfiring action

They join the lists and webinars

They make the investments

Try the tools

Pick up the courses

Bouncing from idea to idea and guru to guru with nothing ever quite clicking.

In their wake a pile of downloaded PDFs cluttering their hard drive, courses and tools still being paid for month after month and nothing but a few small wins and a whole lot of disheartenment to show for it.

Why?

Well they are getting tangles up in tech and tactics before finding out what works

Essentially creating a system for failure.

Path #2 The path of avoidence

Often the better path to start with.

This is because it bypasses the quicksand on the other path that gets people stuck.

Instead of doing all the things and getting tied up in knots, those on the path of avoidance stick to the basics and take meaningful action that gets results.

The problem with this path?

It only goes so far

Once you reach the end of the path you have to change paths if you want to go any further.

Otherwise you’ll walk right off the cliff edge and fall into a pit of burnout and collapse.

You have to get some systems and structure in place at some point along the journey before you reach that point.

BOTH of those options used to give you enough to get by although there was always a hidden limit in both.

Emphasis on USED TO

Times have changed

And if you aren’t

1. Nailing your message
2. Being completely focused
3. Dominating your chosen platforms
4. Showing up CONSISTENTLY
5. Generating a solid flow of leads
6. Pitching them in the right way with the right offer at the right time
7. Following up every single one enough times
8. Looking for opportunities to increase average order value and length of retention
9. Reactivating past customers

….and more besides

You’re going to leave yourself vulnerable

Big long list?

Yup

There’s a lot there and there is a lot you need to do.

And, it’s not “one and done”

Most of these things you need to keep working on again and again and again.

This is why you need to bring defined systems and processes into your business.

Why defined? Well, you already have systems in your business – even if you think you don’t.

There is a way that you do things that you typically follow unconsciously every single time.

Problem is, that unconscious half-baked system is costing you time, leaving you frazzled and spinning far more plates than you need to.

People think of systems and they think of things being complex and scary.

They should be the opposite of that.

Your systems should ALWAYS make your day to day life easier

Otherwise there is no point in them existing.

Systems are there to simplify what happens and how it’s done so you can manage the massive list of all the things you need to get done.

There’s one small step you need to take first.

When you start to get organised you shouldn’t be trying to automate everything and arm yourself up to the teeth in tech.

You need to find out what works.

How your audience tick.

What they want.

How you can reach them.

How you deliver your results and what can be achieved.

Once you’ve got that nailed THEN you can start systemising it.

Because that way you are creating a system for success rather than a system for failure.

Make sense?

Before I head off and leave you, I’m going to walk you through the 3 phases I take clients through during my 2.5hr systems and strategy calls.

That way you can take this process and run through it yourself for your own business.

You’ll want to block out at least a day for this.

Because I know the tools, the tech, the options, the offers you could make, funnels and launch process you could use – I already have the answers

If you’re doing this yourself you’re going to need to do a fair bit of extra ground work and research on this on this

1 solid day plus a few focused blocks throughout the week should do the job.

Let’s get into it

Step 1: the braindump

First thing you’re going to want to do is brain dump everything about your business so that you can get a complete picture.

There is no order or logic to it. Just drop everything out of your head and onto paper.

Who do you serve

What do you offer

Why do they buy

How do they buy

Where do you find them

Which marketing methods have you used, how much have you used them and what results have they got

How do you deliver what you offer

What works

What frustrates you

What has never worked

What would you love.

Get it all out of your head. I like to use a big A3 sketch pad to note things down.

Helps me to see it all laid out and connect the dots.

A standard notepad is my second choice.

Handwriting this gets the brain flowing much better than typing.

Step 2: the investigation

After the initial brain dump it’s time to go over it all once again and get greater detail.

I have a series of questions I run though to fill in the gaps.

What you want to do is go through each area of your business one by one and drill down into it.

What happens.

What should happen but doesn’t always.

What works.

What doesn’t.

Where are the opportunities to show up in a stronger way

What can be offered to prospects and clients to bring them the next step of their journey.

Which products and services work best together and how they can be bundled in different ways or offered in certain orders to increase sales.

This step brings into focus the kind of things you need to do, things that are needed to be brought in and things that should get dropped.

Step 3: the strategic action plan

This is the final step

The strategic action plan takes you from stage 2 where you figured out what you need to do

…to stage 3 where you know *exactly* what you need to do to get it done.

This is where you get complete clarity on

What steps you need to take

Which tools you need to use

How it needs to flow together.

E.g.

You know you want to reach out to clients who haven’t bought from you for 3 months with a special offer to bring them back into the fold

So

You need to have a way of populating a list of clients so you know who you’ll be wanting to reach out to each month, you need an offer to bring them back plus a basic template for outreach.

If you have a mass product then you’d be sending that email out to a list. If you serve a smaller number of higher ticket clients you know well, you’ll want to have some key points about the offer and then do tailored outreach to that list.

This turns client reactivation from something you do very occasionally when you remember to reach out so someone

…into a system that is baked into your business bringing you a boost of revenue month after month that you never would have seen if you hadn’t reached out.

That

Is the difference of having a strategic action plan and the systems that power it.

Whilst you can’t implement every little thing on day 1

Having the complete picture and working through a plan to implement everything step by step will give you a manageable set of tasks

So you can build out what you need without getting tangled up in all the tech or paying out for more things than you need.

Block some time out now and then get to work

I trust you’ve found this useful.

Would love to know your thoughts and any questions you have on this so feel free to drop an email to lianne@systemssavage.com

Lianne

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(Back to Dan now)

That was a BEAST wasn’t it!

Properly proud of Lianne; as well as become a complete asset in my world – she really does know her stuff

I hope you found it useful

😀

Coming up content wise we also have:

⁃ podcasting
⁃ Sales
⁃ Paid traffic
⁃ Content/imagery/getting noticed online

Plus waiting on a few more too

I’ve got a BEAST of a training this Friday 12-2PM UK time in the group

Myself, Lianne and Tega are going to talk to you about all things FB groups and online communities

(We are fairly good-ish at this…😉)

We will be covering topics such as:

– Growing a FB group
– Engagement strategies
– Launching a group (if you haven’t got one/want one)
– Monetisation and launching methods – without being a total plum

And plenty more

All I need from you to get involved is:

1. Block out 12-2PM UK time tomorrow and

2. Show up

See ya then?

D

PS please take time to thank Lianne for this; she spent ages putting it together and I think it’s fab