How to start a new profitable business in 2023
Welcome to episode number 63 of The Determined Mom Show. Today we’ll talk about how to stay consistent with your business and four mistakes that will keep you inconsistent.
I want to mention that I have as one of the entry questions in the Determined Mom show community. What is your biggest struggle with marketing? And almost everyone says consistency. And the reason that it’s so hard to stay consistent because we have so much going on in our lives as moms and as businesses.
We do most of the stuff around the house. At least, I know I do. And then we also have our jobs, our businesses, and also watching our kids. And now we’ve become teachers with the pandemic. So definitely, we have just pulled in a million different directions. And if you need a consistent system and plan set up for your business, then being consistent with your marketing will be a.
Let’s talk about mistake number one, needing a marketing plan. At a minimum, you must know your four marketing Ps, which are your product, pricing, placement, and promotion. So knowing every single one of those things, mapping it out, and being very clear on those things, defining them, knowing exactly who you’re speaking to, and knowing their pain points.
All of those things are going to enable you to be more consistent. If you’re not sure who you’re talking to, if you’re not sure what you’re selling, you’re not sure what price it is, where you’re going to sell it, or how you’re going to promote it, all of those things will hold you back from consistency because knowing those things is going to be the number one thing that you must.
Number two is not having a direction; by the law, I mean a plan or a strategy for your business’s future and marketing. I have an amazing freebie for you to help you overcome this. And it’s a Trello marketing planner, and this planner is absolutely 100% comprehensive.
It encompasses everything you need to know to map out your marketing plan and create an amazing year-long plan. There’s also a printable inside the Trello board where you can print out a yearly plan. Just jot some things down. If you’re like me, you love to write on paper, even though most of the time I can’t.
With that said, it is an amazing tool, and I want to give it to you as my gift as a determined mom and show listener. It is going to change the way you view your business, and you view your marketing plan. So you can grab that in the show notes. There is a link to the landing page where you can grab that, which will help you overcome all of these.
Challenges. There needs to be a silver bullet for this. However, it is very, very easy if you have a template or know something that will allow you to create that strategy. Very important. So number three will be using something other than technology to your advantage. I will talk about my favorite tools I use every single.
The first one is called a quick list, and it is a customizable checklist, so you can send yourself or your VA or anyone a URL to a checklist you create yourself. You can brand it and do all kinds of really cool things with it. But this is what I use for my daily to-do list. I have it bookmarked on my toolbar, and everything I need there.
That list, I will now read to you my weekly lists of the things I do every day, and I can only move on to the next thing once I do them. This is paramount to keeping you consistent and ensuring you get those things done. So the first thing is prospecting.
I am sending 100 requests on LinkedIn as part of a side project that I have going on. The second thing is to work on a website that I am working on with my husband to further our interest in his home country of Cameron. The third thing is engaging with the determined mom community and posting and in and all those things, just connecting with members.
The fourth thing is promoting my freebie or whatever I have going on in my program in the group promo posts on Facebook. And the fifth thing is emailing Chamber of Commerce leaders to connect with them about my Google My Business program. And I also have any other added work or home-related events for that day.
I have it broken down into every day of the week and will add different things depending on other days. What I love the most about it is it tallies up how many things you have on your list for the week. So, for example, last week, I had 42 items. On my list, and I ended up, let’s see.
I checked off everything that I did. I completed 31 of my 42 tasks, so it’s amazing, and it gives you a little progress bar at the top and allows you to see how you’re doing each day. And each week. So it is important, especially if you are motivated by progress or accomplishment, for you to develop some system to keep yourself accountable.
The next tool is social B, my favorite scheduling tool. I could not do anything without this tool, and it is absolutely. Amazing. I can post to every social media platform I’m on, including Google My Business and LinkedIn pages. Only some platforms allow you to post to all of those different platforms.
I also love Canva, which I’m sure many of you love Canva, and you love it for all of the flexibility it gives you and all of the amazing tools and things. So that’s a no, Brainin. And my fourth one is fried camp, which will also lead me to number four, which is doing it yourself. Fried camp is the tool that I use to communicate with Kimberly, my VA, and she is amazing and takes care of my social posts, podcast, and Pinterest posting.
She does it all. And I could not do it without her. So thank you, Kimberly. I love you. And it is a amazing tool. Think of it as Trello, Asana, base camp, all of those tools wrapped into one. So it gives you a calendar view, it gives you a board view, it gives you a task view. Everything you need is in that one tool, which is completely free.
I couldn’t live. You can do the same things where you assign tasks, and they complete them. They can make them in progress. It’s very user-friendly, and I would only want to use something else for project management, especially with a team. So that is my other favorite one. Now talking about not doing it all yourself, I want to encourage you to find an accountability partner.
For a coach. Now, I say this because I had an experience this week where I worked with a sales coach and an accountability coach. I only worked with them for four days, and what I was doing, the presentation I was creating, improved so much that my husband even was like, wow, I have never seen you talk like that.
This is the first time I’ve seen that confidence. That is because they knew what I was capable of, and I didn’t. Okay. I always underestimate myself, and I accomplish crazy things. I know that, but we, as women and mothers, tend to underestimate what we do, and we think, oh, everybody must be able to do all of these things and accomplish all of these things.
So it’s not a big deal. It is a big deal. And when you have someone in your corner telling you that you’re doing a good job, that you know you’re on the right track, and that they’re keeping you accountable to your goals and milestones. That is an amazing catalyst for your business Now.
You might say, Amanda, I don’t have money to hire a coach. That is okay. I would like to task you with finding someone else in your industry or a parallel industry, just someone else with the same drive, vision, and goals for their business, and pair up with them and become accountability partners.
I have a business coach that holds me accountable. She is named Rachel Jinx, and she is amazing. You can check out her podcast and everything she does by Googling her. You will find that when you have a business coach or some accountability partner, having that and holding each other accountable and working together to lay out your goals.
Determining which tools you need and determining the next steps will be huge in keeping you consistent. You can only be consistent with having accountability, which is either accountability to yourself or someone else. So this is important. There is no doubt that this will be my favorite episode that I’ve recorded to date because so many of you need to know.
These simple things keep that consistency going. So what I do, I will tell you my exact breakdown for my week on Sunday. I plan out my week in my quick little list, and I have a link to preview that in the show notes so you can check it out. About a month and a half ago, I sat down with a notebook and planned.
My social media and content calendar through the end of October. Now it’s August, and it doesn’t seem that far away, but when I did it, it was about five months of content and planning, and you know, it was working in all of my launches, holidays, podcast episodes, and everything. So it was super duper helpful.
And then I went in, and I put it all into Frid Camp with all of the resources that Kimberly would. To post everything. She has complete access to my social bee and my Canva and everything. So then, that way, she can go ahead and take control of that. She will post everything. She’ll create graphics.
She’ll do everything that I need her to do without me having to tell her. And that’s another way that I can stay consistent. I have been more consistent since having this process. Than I have ever been on social media. My posts go out at 7 0 3 every morning—my podcast posts are at midnight on Wednesday.
Everything is like clockwork, and I cannot stress enough that I have a plan. I know what my direction is for my business. I am using the necessary tools, and I’m not doing it all alone. So those are critical aspects. Of being consistent, and once you have these things in place, you will be able to be consistent too.
If you have any questions about consistency or how I do anything I do, please get in touch with me at amanda@thedeterminedmom.com. Please sign up for the Marketing Planner on Trello, and it is an amazing tool that will help you map out concrete for your business for a year, which is amazing.
So enjoy that. And I am excited about this episode and seeing how it helps you create the plan you need, decide your direction, and then use technology strategy and the help of other people, whether it be accountability or just hiring and delegating. In closing, I want to share with you an idea of how much you can accomplish when you have a consistent schedule and consistency in your business, especially in those daily tasks like social media posting and engagement, and all of those things that suck your time.
I have, in the last three months, finished 11 college courses. And finished my bachelor’s degree and am working on my business. I am also taking on a full-time position as a marketing director at a company. And I’m also going to be, you know, still running my Google My Business portion of my business, my online marketing for mom’s portion.
I’m still going to be publishing this podcast. And it’s just a fantastic process to know you have control of your time. You have control of absolutely everything in your life. Seeing what we as mothers can accomplish when we set our minds to something is amazing. So don’t stress if you are feeling scattered right now or if you’re feeling overwhelmed with the kids, going back to school, becoming a teacher, all of the things in addition to your business.
But I want you to stop right now. Could you take a moment and recognize the accomplishments of the last? Five months since March, everyone’s lives have changed, and we’ve gotten a lot done despite that. So I want you to take a minute to recognize that in yourself as I did and know that you can accomplish anything.
You can organize your life. Into simplicity, and you can enjoy it. I hope you have an amazing week. This episode of the Determined Mom Show is brought to you by the Google My Business Master Course. This course will help you get into the top three search results on Google by learning how to manage your Google My Business profile properly.
Including optimizing exactly what you need to be posting every single week. The easiest way to increase your revenue in the Google era is to be in the top three. You’ll increase your website visits, your phone calls, and your requests for directions from customers who are searching for your business at the moment that they need to.
So this is such a valuable course, and you can access it by clicking the link in the show notes, or you can also access it inside of the online marketing for moms membership.