I have been trying all week to create some new content as a bonus give away for one of my mentorship groups. I had the idea of delivering the content in an e-book style format. It seemed like a simple idea in my head but I have since realised that if I wanted to do this properly this was going to be a mammoth task. It didn’t take me long to get bogged down in the details of styles and formatting and there was so much I wanted to say, that it felt that the short 20-page ebook was turning into a 100-page unwieldy beast.
I sometimes find that working to self-imposed deadlines help when I am writing so I tried that method this week, getting ready to publish whatever I had written by lunchtime yesterday. I promptly missed this self-imposed deadline. And I was in danger of missing all future deadlines. This project was not only taking way longer than I thought, it was stopping me from getting on with testing some new revenue generation ideas I wanted to get to this week.
After probably too much coffee this morning, I gave up and decided to have a talk with myself, just as I would if I was coaching a client:
- Coach me – What are you trying to achieve?
- Novice me – I am trying to deliver all this value to my clients
- Coach me – What is stopping you from doing this?
- Novice me – Creating an e-book is hard! And it is taking soooo damn long!
- Coach me – Is there another way to deliver this value to your clients that would take less time, cause you less angst and involve less coffee?
- Novice me – Well …. I could create a video series with the same value.
- Coach me – Stop drinking so much coffee and just flipping do it.
Coach me was right. Once I found myself being stopped from realising my goal of delivering value to my clients I should have asked if there was another way. Now that I have decided to create the video series instead, my time pressure has disappeared, and I can actually include more topics for the clients.
We should be asking ourselves this question when we are working on our sales and marketing strategy. What areas are we getting bogged down with that is stopping us from delivering on our strategy? And is there another way of delivering on that strategy?
Are you getting bogged down with building a website? What is the aim of the website, and is it really necessary? Maybe you can do away with it altogether. Trying to create a blog but each blogpost is taking you too long to write? Turn your blog into shorter Facebook posts, or a video blog. There is usually another, simpler way to get something done.
I am not talking about half-assing stuff or creating something that delivers watered-down value; I am talking about finding the best way to deliver the most impact to your prospects and clients, balanced with your least amount of effort and time.
What is stopping you today from achieving your target, and is there another way to get yourself moving again?