169 | Discovering the Most Profitable Tasks to Grow Your Business
Learn how to prioritize tasks, evaluate past successes, focus on long-term sustainability, optimize customer acquisition, and leverage collaborations.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE:
If you're unsure where to start when it comes to focusing on tasks that drive your business forward, this tactical podcast episode is for you!
Join Danielle as she shares five essential questions to help you uncover the most profitable action steps for your business growth.
What are you currently doing on a daily or weekly basis in your business?
Take inventory of your business activities and categorize them into tasks directly related to sales or profit, indirectly related, and administrative tasks.
What action steps have led to sales in the past?
Brainstorm and list previous activities that resulted in sales or gained new clients/customers, such as networking events, referrals, creative marketing campaigns, or partnerships.
What are you doing to contribute to the long-term sustainability of your business?
Consider both short-term strategies (e.g., pitching clients) and long-term strategies (e.g., growing your email list, improving SEO) to ensure a sustainable business in the future.
How do your ideal customers find you, and what is their process for booking your services or products?
Evaluate where your customers find you (website, Google, referrals) and streamline the booking process to improve conversions and avoid wasting time on ineffective strategies.
How can you get in front of more of your ideal clients through collaborations?
Explore collaboration opportunities with other businesses, such as pop-up events, email list swaps, media features, or guest appearances on podcasts or social media channels.
By asking yourself these five important questions, you'll gain clarity on the most profitable action steps for your business.
Start focusing on tasks that truly drive results and propel your business towards sustained growth!
DON’T FORGET ABOUT OUR BUSINESS RESOURCES HERE!
Get on the Waitlist for our Events HERE
Apply for 1:1 Coaching with Danielle HERE
Apply for our Business Babes Mastermind HERE
Connect on Instagram:
Have a Question & Want to be Featured on The Podcast?
transcript
[00:00:00] Danielle: If you are feeling like you sit down to work every day, you wanna focus on the things that are moving your business forward that are actually gonna make a difference, but you have no idea where to start.
[00:00:10] Danielle: I'm gonna share five questions that I want you to ask yourself, and this is going to be a tactical episode, so you're gonna want a notebook or pen. If you're listening to this on the go, I recommend it. You can listen to it now, but definitely come back to it and write notes because you're going to want to actually work through each one of these steps as I share them.
[00:00:30] Danielle: So let's go ahead and dive in. Number one, ask yourself what are you currently doing on a daily or weekly basis? So this is where you're actually going to take an inventory of your business activities. This is one of the most important things that you can do as an entrepreneur, and it's incredibly eye-opening.
[00:00:52] Danielle: The best way to do this is to keep a notepad by your desk and write down each task you do as you complete them within [00:01:00] the day. Once you have done this for about a week, I want you to actually separate these tasks into three different columns. The first column is going to be things that you think are directly related to a sale or bringing in profit to your business.
[00:01:18] Danielle: Example of this could be pitching a store to carry your products, pitching a client, having a discovery call with a potential client. The second column is gonna be things that indirectly produce sales or profit in your business. A great example of this is, Creating content. So say you have a blog or a podcast like me, or you have a YouTube channel, something like that.
[00:01:42] Danielle: You're posting on Instagram, you're updating your website, seo, all of that. Those are things that potentially could bring more people to your. Website or to your email list that are then going to potentially buy your product or service. So it's not [00:02:00] directly related to a sale or profit, but it's indirectly related to a potential sale or bringing profit into your business.
[00:02:08] Danielle: And then third, I want you to write in the last column there is putting things that you know either are not currently leading to sales. Or profit in your business or things you're not really sure about. I know that some of the things that you do on either a daily or a weekly basis are kind of more admin type tasks, but I want you to put it in that last category because there's some things that you are still gonna need to take care of in order to run your business.
[00:02:33] Danielle: So for example, accounting, bookkeeping, checking your emails, all of those things. But the reason that I want you to put that in a different category is because when I speak about focusing on your profitable action steps first in your business, the first action steps that you do when you actually wake up in the morning and you start your day, you wanna start with the profitable action steps.
[00:02:55] Danielle: Those more admin tasks, those should not be those first [00:03:00] priorities because, Those are the things that you could do at any time and they're necessary, but they also are things that you're probably right now filling most of your days with, right? So that's why I want you to put it in a sec, separate category.
[00:03:13] Danielle: The second question I want you to ask yourself is what action steps have led to sales? In your business in the past, I want you to brainstorm. I wanted you to take out a piece of paper and I want you to just jot down everything that you can think of that you've previously done in your business that maybe you've gotten away from that have led to sales in the past.
[00:03:33] Danielle: So write down all of those things you can think of. Uh, could be being a vendor at a trade show, going to a networking event, making a new connection. Asking for referrals from your current clients or customers doing a creative marketing campaign, maybe partnering with another brand and doing something together.
[00:03:52] Danielle: Brainstorm all the things that you've done previously that have eventually led to a sale or gaining [00:04:00] new clients or customers for your business. All right. Number three, what are you doing in your business that is contributing to the long-term sustainability of your business? So these examples of these things could be growing your email list, blogging, podcasting.
[00:04:19] Danielle: YouTube, whatever that is. Now, this is a really important one. I always encourage my clients to look at both the short-term and also the long-term strategies because both are important in the growth of your business. Of course, it's important to keep cash flow going, so there needs to be some short-term strategies that you're gonna implement.
[00:04:38] Danielle: Implement in order to gain clients and customers. So these are the things that we just kind of finished talking about, like pitching clients, going out there and actually actively getting business. But we also wanna look at the long-term strategies that we're implementing into our business that is going to help us create a really sustainable business.
[00:04:59] Danielle: So there are [00:05:00] some long-term strategies that will help you build a business that isn't here today, gone tomorrow. I think that a lot of. People have relied on short-term strategies to grow their business, and then it comes to a point where those short-term strategies are not working for them anymore. So I see a lot of people struggling right now because they built their entire business off of social media, but they weren't actually building in some of those long-term strategies.
[00:05:26] Danielle: And so now they're looking to, okay, what else can I do to actually build my business? So I want you to have in your strategy, in your business strategy, Those short-term strategies, but also long-term strategies. So I want you to come up with at least one way, at least one thing that you are working on right now that is a long-term strategy that's going to help you build your sustainable business that is going to be around five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
[00:05:58] Danielle: So working on the [00:06:00] SEO of your website, whether that be using blogging again. Podcasting video, whatever that is, growing your email list, right? Your email list is so incredibly valuable. That is a long-term strategy as well. The fourth question I want you to ask yourself is how do your ideal customers currently find you, and what is the process that they take in order to book your services or buy your products?
[00:06:28] Danielle: Okay, so think about that right now. Where are your current customers finding you? Are they finding you on your website? Google your blog, Instagram through referrals? And then how are they actually going through that process of finding you and then booking your services or buying your products? This is so incredibly important because if you realize that about 90% of your clients are finding you through Google or [00:07:00] through your website, yet you're spending two to three hours a day on Instagram trying to grow your social media following.
[00:07:07] Danielle: I want you to second guess that strategy where you invest your time is so incredibly important because our time is so valuable, right? We don't wanna be wasting time on strategies that are not helping us. I'm not telling you to quit social media, but I am. Asking you to reevaluate what your marketing strategy is and really understand what is going to fuel the growth of your business in a sustainable way that is sustainable long term.
[00:07:39] Danielle: The second part of that question that I mentioned is what the process was, is for people to buy from you. So if. Customers have to jump through a hundred hoops before they're able to complete their purchase. Your a purchase, sorry, on your website, or it's really complicated or it's clunky. If that process isn't [00:08:00] seamless, they're more likely to go with an A competitor instead.
[00:08:03] Danielle: So a profitable action step that you could actually take in your business is, in this case, is to simplify the purchasing process for your potential. Customers and clients. Number five is how can you get in front of more of your ideal clients? So this one is really exciting. This one is my favorite. It's super fun.
[00:08:23] Danielle: It's all to do with collaborations. You know how passionate I am about collaborations, and it's not just because it's this airy fairy like community is amazing and all these things. It is actually strategic. When you align your business and you're able to collaborate and connect with other brands and other businesses, think about it.
[00:08:44] Danielle: Instead of just using your own connections, your own resources, your own ability to reach the people that you wanna reach, you are combining that so you are doubling or tripling, or quadrupling your reach by [00:09:00] collaborating with another business owner. This is so incredibly powerful. So I want you to think about this and I want you to think about all the different ways and all the different opportunities that you have as a business owner to collaborate with other businesses and other business owners.
[00:09:15] Danielle: So this could include doing a pop-up event together, doing an email list swap where you highlight one another's business in your email list. It could be doing a product or service feature in a media outlet. So say for example, you're pitching media outlets to feature your products or maybe popular blogs.
[00:09:35] Danielle: Maybe you're doing a marketing campaign, a creative marketing campaign, where you're getting together with multiple businesses and you're gifting influential people with your products. Maybe it's getting featured on a podcast, being a guest on another person's podcast, or on their YouTube channel, or on their Instagram, right?
[00:09:53] Danielle: Think of all the different ways that you can connect and you can collaborate. With other entrepreneurs. So [00:10:00] those are the five questions to ask yourself to figure out your profitable action steps. Now I know running a business is a lot, I get it. And I know you feel like you have 1,000,001 things that you need to be doing, but I really want you to.
[00:10:16] Danielle: Think about what it would look like to start your day, to have your profitable action steps. Know exactly what you need to do when you wake up and start your day, and how freeing would that be if you knew exactly what you needed to do in order to move your business forward. Now, if you're still kind of struggling, you can send me a dm, find me at Danny Living Life.
[00:10:36] Danielle: If the link is in the show notes as well and just send me a message, I'd love to connect with you. I'd love to answer your question. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a ton of value out of it. I hope you took a lot of notes and I hope you actually dive into these questions.
[00:10:52] Danielle: I can't wait to chat with you in the next episode. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.[00:11:00]