Welcome to episode 490. That’s right. Also known as the home stretch before we hit 500 episodes in October. We’ll actually do it later this year. I’m super duper stoked because, yay, 500 in October. But also we’re doing something pretty cool today. We’re kicking off a series about why Marketing 101 matters.
We’re actually going to do a month-long series called Marketing 101.
And stop. Like, I don’t want you to be like, “Oh, I’ve been doing this awhile. I don’t need Marketing 101. Stacey, I have listened to you talk about Marketing 101. I don’t need to know the basics.”
But I want to talk about this because here’s the deal. It is easy to be inundated with messages of scale, growth, change, and evolution and completely unplug from the basics. But the basics are the basics because they’re foundational because they are the piece that everything else is built on. They are the thing to come back to when things aren’t working. When things are feeling off. When things are feeling out of sync.
We’re in the second month of Q3, gearing up for Q4. For a lot of our clients, this is where they are booking a lot of their next-year revenue. They’re actually filling things like masterminds and year-long programs.
For us, I’m always looking at, great, what do I need to put in place to support the things I’ve set up and planned to do next year?
And for us, that means a real focus on getting back to basics. Getting supportive of clients and potential clients as they look at the investments they’re going to make next year.
I know it feels like, “Oh my God, it’s August. Stacey, settle down.” But how quickly did it become August? I mean, yes, this year has absolutely been the slowest one ever to exist. But we are in the home stretch. And Tara Newman said this, I don’t know where. In a call or a conversation or something over at the Bold Leadership Revolution. Maybe it was on her podcast. I’m not sure. She was like, “I’m going to celebrate New Year’s Eve when we put 2020 away.”. And I was like, “I’m with you.”. We generally do nothing. I’m for sure celebrating the end of this year.
And an unnecessary tangent, but as we look to the end of this year and we assess … Like so much of what we do internally at Uncommonly More in June and July. We’re really assessing what’s happened this year and looking ahead to what we want to put in place for the following year. As I look ahead to 2021 and I review 2020, I got some revenue numbers I still want to hit. I’ve got some profit numbers I still want to hit.
And so I’m getting back to basics and that really inspired me to reconnect us with the conversation of basics.
Because I think, again, so often we think that there’s something we grow past. And I’ve been in business for nine years. I’ve been an entrepreneur for nearly a decade. I have been marketing through social media since 2004, so 16 years.
And so it’s a thing. It’s a thing where our ego, I think steps in and goes like, “Hey, you’re beyond the basics.” And I want this next four weeks, I want us to really come in with that beginner mindset and I want us to reconnect with our basics.
The basics I’m going to talk about over these next few weeks, just to give you a little sneak preview, are reconnecting with those three questions: the what and the who and the how. And here’s the deal. Those are the questions we still use every time we go to launch something new. We go to build a quarterly strategy, we go to build out our content calendar for the quarter. Any of those things, we ask those questions again and again and again. You want to know why? Because they’re basics. So we’re going to talk about those.
We’re going to talk about delegating. Yeah. That’s 101.
What should you be delegating? What’s not worth delegating? What’s worth automating instead of bringing in a human? What are the different options for delegation? Where are we looking at potentially having more than one person? Like, that’s what we’re going to talk about. These are the basics we want to talk about.
And then finally, I want to really be talking about the basics of fitting all of our marketing pieces together.
So where do our social media and our email list and our podcast content and our guest appearances on other podcasts and our PR and media work and LinkedIn time and our referrals, how do all those pieces fit together? And these are the basics that I want us to be talking about.
Because here’s the deal, guys. These basics are a critical part of keeping us growing. I think so often we think about the basics as getting us going. I mean, it makes sense because basics are our foundation. They feel like, “Oh, well I did them at the beginning and I don’t need to worry about them now.” But the reality is basics are what keep us growing, keep us moving.
And if you look at 2020, and you want to see a change in 2021. Quite frankly, if you want to see change in 2020 because there is a lot of 2020 left, we do still have four months this year, then it’s going to come down to reconnecting with those pieces. It’s going to come back to reconnecting with your three questions, with your team and how they’re working, with how your pieces fit together and how you’re executing your strategy. And so, again, that’s what we’re going to be talking about for the next four weeks.
What I want to talk about today is why.
So up until this point, for the last few minutes, we’ve been talking about why Marketing 101 matters to you as somebody who’s been in the game for a while. What I want to talk about now is I want to talk about why you’re reconnecting with your basics right now.
And so I want you to take some time today and think about, and I’m not talking about like an hour and a half. I want you to give it five, 10, 15 minutes. Just sit down and really think about, grab your journal, spew thoughts into the voice app on your phone I don’t care, but I really want you to spend some time thinking about why you’re doing anything that you’re doing right now.
Seriously. Why? Why are you looking to launch a podcast? Why are you launching that group program? Why are you marketing your mastermind? Why are you continuing to podcast or do videos or write blog posts? Why are you investing in PR? Why are you looking at SEO support? Why are you doing any of these pieces?
Once you can reconnect with why, those questions we’re going to talk about next week, the who, and the what, and the how are going to be a whole lot easier to answer.
But also … And indulge me a little bit in a personal experience. This year has been hard for all of us. Universally. There’s been a lot that’s been really hard this year for me personally, because I am somebody who is extroverted, who drives in my business so that I can have a lot of fun in life. I am somebody who has spent the last nine years very intentionally building a life I really love. I went into 2020 stoked about travel on the calendar and investments I’d made and opportunities I had in front of me and fun I had planned and personal family trips. We were supposed to be in Europe this fall. We were taking Colin to France for Thanksgiving this year. That’s not happening. These things are just not happening.
And we all have that story. We all have that narrative of grief. But what I have found is, as I moved through this year, I got more and more disconnected from why I do this. Why I do the show, why I do this work, why I build this business, why I work the hours I work, snuggled into the corner of my bedroom at a wooden folding table with no real light since March has been my office.
I got really shut off from why I do this.
Because yes, a big part of the reason I do the work I do in the world is because I enjoy supporting clients and I want to help elevate really amazing high-quality coaches and service providers, and really help these women get their message and their movement out into the world because I’m fortunate enough to work with people doing really freaking incredible things.
But also I do this, spoiler alert because I make a really good living and that really good living affords me annual passes at Disneyland and vacations and all sorts of really fun stuff.
And so when you take away the fun stuff, you take away a big part of why I’m willing to work as much or as hard as I do, not to mention the fun stuff recharges me. So I can be really excited.
It’s funny, but the Launch Your Podcast challenge, the Five-day Challenge, it’s up on the website, which we launched in May, I think, came to me seriously on a ride at Disneyland. I was playing and my mind was open and I went, “You know what we should do?”
And I got off the ride and I Voxered Kelly, who is my right hand here at UM. You’ve heard me talk about. We really need to get her on the show, and liked brain dumped, just blah, blah, blah, all of the information into her Voxer. And she ran with it. She project-managed it, and we got it out, and she project managed me, and I got it produced and we did it. That came from having fun. And so that fun and that play and that outside stimulation really played a big part in my own creativity. And so yes, part of why I do this is to facilitate that so that I can … Like, it all feeds itself. It’s a circle.
So this summer, in July, I started looking ahead to 2021. And in June, when we were starting to look ahead to 2021, I had a really hard time thinking of anything. And at first I really thought it was the lack of play and the lack of creativity.
But the more I thought about it, the more I sat with it, the more I realized that the problem was not a lack of creativity so much as a total disconnect from why I do this.
Because yes, again, a big part of it is I like working with the people I work with and supporting them. And they’re doing really incredible things in the world. But a part of it is also supporting the causes I care about and investing in the political movements I want to see happening in the world.
But a really, really, really big part of it is I like having fun. And most of the fun I like to have is not free. I’m being honest with you.
So I had to really sit back and reconnect with why I was doing anything in my business.
And it was interesting. Reconnecting with that and looking at why I wanted to do some of the things that I had come up with as possibilities for next year, I did get excited again. I did get fired up about what was possible, A: in a post-quarantine world. I’m recording this in July, but as we shut down again here in California. But in a world where we can go back out in it and we can go in and explore and connect safely.
A: I want to still be here when all that happens. But also, even without that, even with the fun I’ve always had and the fun I imagined as I went into this year, I reconnected with the fun that is my work. I actually really enjoy my job. Recording this podcast with you guys. I really like working with my team. Getting creative with clients about how we can get their value and them out into the world because they’re an important part of what’s happening in the world.
And so I want to encourage you before next week before we talk about the three questions, which you already know, I want you to connect with why.
Why are you doing any of this? And it’ll probably be more than one answer. There might be a social change or social justice component.
It’s interesting, I was having this conversation with a friend of mine who is also in business, and she said that, “I want people to know there’s other options. I want people who are struggling to know that they don’t have to go from layoff to layoff,” because this person happened to start their business during the 08 economic crisis. And so a big part of why she does what she does, which is in no way related to helping people start businesses, is to model what’s possible. That’s been a big thing for me, too, modeling what’s possible for somebody who has the particular life experiences I have.
And so I want you to reconnect with why you do what you do.
Maybe it’s to inspire others, maybe it’s to keep yourself energized creatively. You know, honestly, I started my business because I had been a stay-at-home mom for two years, and the part of my brain that functions, when I work, was dying and it was killing me. I hated it. I like working. And so that was my why for a long time.
I think so often we get caught up in why being this really for other people, selfless, incredible thing. But your why can be that you like Disneyland and you want annual passes. You want that beach house. That new car. To be able to pay cash for that thing. You want and like to work. You like doing what you do and you want to be able to do it. So you do this thing. It can be lots of things.
It could be that you want to have a social impact in the world, that you want to donate to causes that are really important to you. It’ll probably be lots of those things.
But I think a key part of getting excited and staying excited and maintaining our momentum, especially after we’ve been in business for a while, is reconnecting with that why.
And that why is part of these basics that we’re going to spend the next few weeks reconnecting with, because these basics are what keep us growing. All right?
That’s it. That’s my show. I’m going to put away the soapbox. I will see you next week. We’re going to talk about the three questions to get clear on before you start building your next marketing strategy or launching your next thing or whatever the case may be.
But first you’re going to reconnect with your why. That’s your homework. I would love to see your homework.
If you’re on the email list, hit reply to the email and let me know. If you’re not on the email list, well, you could fix that, but you can also head over to Instagram or the contact page on the website. I don’t care as long as it’s not carrier pigeon, because I don’t do birds. Otherwise, I’m wide open. Send me a telegram. It’ll be real throwbacky. Do they still have telegrams? I don’t know.
Also, what’s interesting is in my brain, as I was saying, do they still have telegrams? My brain then went, “Do they still have AIM and ICQ?” Anybody remember ICQ? I think it’s called ICQ. It was like an IM service, instant messaging. It was around when it AIM was a thing, I know there’s no AIM anymore. Also, if anyone under the age of 30 is listening to this podcast, they’ve no idea. I’m speaking gibberish right now. I’m going to go feel real old. I will see you next week.
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