Show Notes

2021 was a difficult year for many entrepreneurs, even more so than 2020, and the general theme at the end of the year I was hearing was “I’m going to burn it down”. People were just over the struggles 2021 had brought and were ready to give up everything.

But is that really necessary, to burn it ALL down?

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Hey there. Thanks for listening and welcome to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you're looking to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale your impact all while staying true to who you are and the people you serve. This is the show for you. I'm Jennifer Tamborski, digital marketing strategists, fractional CMO, and founder of Virtual Marketing Experts. My team and I work with six and seven figure coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs who are tired of playing the guru game of one size fits all marketing. They're ready to create a business and marketing strategy that actually builds relationships with their ideal clients creates massive shifts in their business and rapidly increases their revenue. As your marketing matchmaker, I'm going to help you find the perfect marketing match for you. This show will teach you how to reach your ideal client, connect with your audience, build that perfect relationship and generate more revenue. All through a process I like to call dating your ideal client. Now let's go have some fun!

Hey there. welcome back to Marketing Matchmaker. We are in February of 2022. February is the month of love. In fact, when this episode is being released, it's the week of Valentine's day. I hope that you are celebrating love, whether that's love for yourself or love in a relationship love for your children or love for your business.

I hope that you're really taking some time to celebrate that, that feeling of joy and that emotion that we all get when we think about love. I actually launched last week, or the episode last week was about Dating Your Ideal Client. And that's something that I go over every February, because for me, marketing is all about building relationships. Business is all about building relationships, so Dating Your Ideal Client is really a natural progression of that. And I love to go over it in the month of love because we are focused a little bit more on relationships this month.

This week's episode, however, is a little different and still revolving around that same theme. So something that I saw towards the end of 2021, I've saw it with several friends, some colleagues some people that I even just follow on social media or in business in general. I saw this theme going on in the end of 2021.

And I don't know if this hit you or if you saw this, but I saw a lot of people saying this, I'm going to burn it down. I'm gonna burn my business down. It may have been something along the lines of, you know, it's just not aligning with who I am with what I wanna do with my goals, for my future, whatever the reason was it. A lot of I'm gonna burn it down. And I actually, this is a term I say a lot throughout my business.

I've said it probably every year, I've been in business and I've been in business for, I don't know, about 16 years. There comes a point every year where I'm like, something's not working in my business and you know, I'm tired, I'm frustrated, I'm overwhelmed, I'm overworked, whatever the thing is, that's going on, and I say, I'm gonna burn it down.

Here's the thing, though, when I say I'm gonna burn it down, I don't actually mean I'm giving up my business. I, what I generally mean is there needs to be a change. There's something going on that is not aligning with what I want my business to be with the success I want to have with the goals I have for my business and for my clients and whatever that is. And I think this last year I saw a lot of I'm going to burn it down, for a couple of reasons.

I think 2021 was hard for a lot of people. Actually. I think it was harder for business online business owners than 2020 was because when I look back at 2020, people didn't have a whole lot to do. When the pandemic hit, they were stuck at home, they were online, they were buying things because that's what they had to do. Like there just wasn't a whole lot going on. And then when things started to open back up and people started going back to normal, whatever that meant for them.

I think also people started getting a little burned out towards the end of 2020 and into 2021 on just being online in general. And things started to struggle a little bit in that. And then when it comes to marketing and business and in the digital marketing world, there were massive changes that happened in 2021 that really affected the cost of overall marketing.

So whether that was iOS 14, iOS 15, or whether that was Facebook getting called before Congress or, whatever that thing was that kind of scared or, or offended off some people, I think 2021 was a little difficult for some people. And so by the end of 2021, they were really looking at their business and going, is this really what I want? Is this what I want to do? Is it aligning with who I am? Are, are things working out for me or not?

And some made the choice to actually just burn their whole business down, to walk away from it entirely. Others made a choice to pivot their business so that it fit more of what they wanted in their life. And I think that it's really become a surprising statistic that 2021 actually had more businesses shut down than 2020 did. Kind of crazy. I know.

All of that is really to say that I think in February we get to kind of reassess our business and really look at are we still in love with what we have? And if we're not, is it time to burn it down? Now, if you followed me for any length of time, you know, that there are core pieces to the foundation of your business, that I talk about a lot.

The first being, what's that one thing that you do better than anyone else, that thing is what your business should be built off of. That thing that you get your client's results on should be your core offer. And every piece of your marketing and your business should really lead to that offer. Part two is really knowing your audience, who is it that you serve? And not just in a broad sense, you know, something like women who are 40 years old in a very micro sense, like knowing them down to what they're thinking, what they're struggling with, all of those things is super important in order to really be able to craft a message that they can hear.

And the last piece is knowing your numbers. And when I say knowing your numbers, I mean, something more than even just Facebook ad numbers, like understanding your campaign numbers is super important.

And there's more to knowing your numbers than that. It can include all of your KPIs. So all of those digital marketing numbers, whether that's SEO numbers or whether that's your Facebook ads or your email else, all of those pieces.

And beyond that, it's also about knowing things like your sales cycle. How long does it take someone to buy from you? How many touch points does it take before they're ready to purchase? And really how many people do you need to bring to your funnel in order to sell that one person. Being really aware of those types of numbers really helps you to assess the health of your business in an overall sense. Also being aware of your P and L your profit and loss.

And I think that may be one of the scariest numbers for a lot of business owners is knowing how much they're spending versus how much they're bringing in and whether or not they're in the profit, whether they're in the black or whether they're in their red. Being really conscious and aware of those pieces are super critical to how healthy your business is. And how healthy your business is, is really gonna determine a lot, not always, but a lot of the time it's going to determine whether or not you're happy in your business and whether or not you're in love with it.

When I talk about burning your business down, I really mean to look at it, to step back from your business, take a minute, and really assess all of the pieces in your business. Is the product that you, the thing that you're the best at is it the thing that you do better than anyone else and the results you get, your clients are amazing?

And if it's not, what tweaks can you make to make it that? Also the price point of your product service solution is critical important, because are you underselling yourself? Are you undervaluing what it is that you do for your clients? And because of that, are you not bringing enough revenue in to cover your profit and loss to be in the black and really have an established profitable business? That's really important to understand.

Also looking at it from your ideal client perspective; are you serving the people that you want to serve? Like the ones that are really going to be successful with what it is that you're doing? Sometimes I think business owners, especially in the coaching industry, step into it, wanting to help people, which is amazing. I did it. I wanna help everybody.

That is my goal is really to help coaches to grow their business. I love it. And I love working with that new business owner. However, from my perspective, there is a point in business when they're ready to hire someone in my area. When they're ready to hire out their marketing and their digital marketing, rather than trying to DIY it or do it themselves. And understanding what that point is, and that if they're not at that point, I am not going to be as successful in helping them because they're not ready yet is super important.

And I think that's also something that's important for every coach to realize there is a point where yes, you can help every person. And sometimes they're just not ready yet. So when I say to step back and look at your audience, I mean, really assess, are you targeting the people who are ready for you, who are ready to step into that next level of life or business or health or whatever it is that you are helping them with?

Because if you are not targeting the right people, you're never going to be successful. And the people that are coming into your business probably aren't gonna be as successful as they could be if they were ready when they started with you. And then knowing your numbers really becomes the critical piece of knowing when to pivot. Right?

Sometimes we can look at our business and understand that it is time to stop spending money over here and start spending money over here. Or we can understand that it's time to increase our cost of our product, service, or solution. Or knowing our sales cycle helps us to understand that we get to invest more into bringing in more leads, because we need them coming in the door in order to sell them at a specific point. Those are all pieces of your business that you can assess and really understand when it's time to burn it all down.

The other thing that I encourage business owners to do is step back and assess 2021 as an entirety. This is a great time of the year to take a moment to take a breath we're out of the holidays. We're out of that push of our new year's resolutions or whatever. We're really moving into the middle of the first quarter. So before you hit that second quarter, turn around and look at 2021. Look at what worked, what did you do incredibly well that brought in clients? What did you do that didn't work? We obviously want to do more of what did work and less of what didn't work and looking back, and really assessing that through the lens of your numbers can help you to really understand where you need to make changes in your business.

The other piece for me, that gets me to the point where I'm like, I'm gonna burn it down, is looking at where I'm exhausted. What am I overextending myself on? What am I doing that I should not be doing? When is it time to hire someone new into the business so that they can take on things that well, just isn't my area of expertise or are things that I can delegate to them. I think oftentimes as business owners, we spend so much time thinking and believing that we have to do all of the things in our business.

Reality is, there are people out there that can help us.

So looking at our business from that perspective, also what processes do we have in place that could use some tweaking and what processes do we need to put in to help with our customer experience, to help with, our lead generation, to help with all of those pieces that really run our business. Those are the kind of things that can help you to really decide whether or not it's time to burn it down. And it can also help you to fall back into love with your business. If you've gotten to that point where you're like, I'm out, I'm done this, this isn't what I want anymore.

One of the things that I know beyond anything else is that there is one key to being successful in your business, ending in your marketing. And that my friends is commitment. When you are deciding to make a pivot in your business, it is super critical that you commit fully to whatever that pivot is. Whether that's increasing your pricing or attempting a new market, or, you know, finding an expert to help you do whatever it is you need help with.

Being fully committed to that process of making those changes will help to be successful. The other thing I wanna encourage you to be fully committed to is your marketing because, well, let's be honest. If you are not marketing, how are people ever going to find you, right? You wouldn't know about McDonald's or Amazon or Walmart. If it wasn't for their ads, businesses live and die on their marketing. So being fully committed to your marketing, whether you're doing your marketing yourself, or you're hiring someone to do your marketing for you is completely up to you. And making the commitment to be consistent in your marketing will really help you to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact.

Thank You for listening to the Marketing Matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact connect with me at yourmarketingmatchmaker.com. I look forward to hearing from you.