The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 278: Ep 278: YOUR 2024 DAILY BUSINESS ACTIVITIES

Today, I am diving into daily business activities to help grow and scale your business in 2024. We are going to chat about some of the things that I do daily in my business that have helped me grow and how you can incorporate them into your business. I am also going to share some tools to help you accomplish your daily business activities.

YOUR 2024 DAILY BUSINESS ACTIVITIES

BY: MELISSA LIN

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast! Happy New Year, happy 2024. This is the very first episode of the year and I am so excited. We're going to dive right in. In this episode I really want to spend some time talking through what I recommend you focus on in 2024 for your business, regardless of where you are in your business. There are definitely some things that I recommend for every business owner that we are going to chat about as well as some of my non-negotiables in my business, tips to making this the best year yet, and so much more.

We're walking into 2024 ready to crush it. I absolutely love the beginning of a new year because it usually means bigger goals, bigger plans, bigger dreams, bigger everything. You continue to grow month after month, year after year, because so much is possible for you. This industry is so incredible because there is no cap. There is so much you can create for yourself, for your business, and for your family. If you're new in business, congrats, I am so excited for you. So much is possible. I've been in the industry since 2014 and it's definitely never too late to get started.

The Non-Negotiables of My Business

Before I dive into today's episode, I first want to share what I call the non-negotiables of my business. My non-negotiables are things that happen no matter what. As long as I get these things done I feel good; I'm able to step away if something else pops up. No matter what these happen, whether it's you personally, someone from your team, it's automated, or all three of those are definitely options. My first non-negotiable is supporting my clients. This is something that happens every single day. Supporting my clients is my number one priority in my business. I personally check in with all of my clients in all of my programs and support them all week. I actually hop into all of my client platforms every single day, two to three times per day. I'm in there, I have support coaches in there, and other team members there supporting clients as well. We provide lots of support because it's a huge priority.

Something else that’s important is adding in something to help you with the tasks I'm going to be sharing with you in terms of making sure they're getting done. I want you to utilize a tool that you either really enjoy using or you know you'll actually pop into and use. If you are somebody that loves handwriting into a blank planner and that's the thing that you're going to open up every single day to make sure you're getting these tasks completed, use that. If you're like me, I absolutely thrive inside of Google Calendar and my project management tool that we use in my business, Asana. Those are always open on my computer. Those are the things that help me get things done. If I have a planner in front of me, it is not going to get finished. It's got to be in my Google Calendar or my Asana. I definitely recommend having some type of tool to support you. We use Asana. We also use Airtable for a lot of things. We have lots of templates that we share with our clients in Asana, they can also use them in Trello, in ClickUp, any of those project management tools. Most of them have free versions that you can use. If those don't work for you, feel free to make your own Google Doc or an Excel file, anything that you're going to actually use to track what's going on in your business.

Using Your Time Efficiently

Let's get into today’s episode. Something I deeply believe is being efficient is so key. It is really important to make sure that you're actually utilizing your time wisely instead of just filling it with things to do to be busy. Many of us think that to be busy at work means we’re being effective and productive. This was definitely the case for me when I was in my engineering job. That's actually a general misconception. To be busy doesn't necessarily mean you're effective and to be effective doesn't mean to work all day in non-stop mode. I know when I was in my 9-5 I was not working all eight hours straight and I was filling my time with stuff that wasn't necessarily effective.

Business owners on social media focus on content creation and posting everyday. Some business owners in the beginning stages feel they need to make their website first and all of these big graphics. They're not spending much, if any, of their time on sales activities, money generating activities, in their business, which is what time gets to be spent on in the beginning stages. I would say 80%, if not more, of your business time gets to be spent on sales activities until you're at about $5-10K a month in your business. Then you can start to outsource some of these other activities so that you can really focus on bringing in those sales and starting to make your sales process more hands-off. If your sales process right now is solely dependent on you, then it's not very scalable. We want to be able to scale it in the future.

So, let's choose a few things for you to add to your priority list that are going to help you actually move the needle forward in your business. I wouldn't say this is necessarily something you need to add into your day to day, but I want you to always keep in mind whether or not the activity is going to help move the needle forward. If it's not helping you move the needle forward, especially if you're in the beginning stages, then maybe this is something that can be added to a running projects list. Really keep your priority in mind and add a few things that are going to help you move closer to your goal. For example, if your goal is to increase your income in 2024, you can focus on selling and getting in front of more people. If your goal is creating more time in your business, you get to start hiring team members and delegating. I want you to have a few of those projects in mind because we want to be thinking ahead. You don't want to just fill your day with things that aren't necessarily helping you get closer to your goal.

Daily Business Activities for 2024

Now let's get into the actual activities that I recommend for your day to day in 2024. The first, and this is actually a non-negotiable in my business, is adding some type of value to my audience. This could be a new podcast episode, which we release every single Monday morning. It could be one of our Fierce Business Q&A episodes that we host every single week. It could be a new caption, reel, or mini training. It could be repurposing old trainings or sharing my freebie to somebody who hasn't seen it or gone through it before. This is a huge negotiable for me because I want to help and touch as many people as I can, regardless of if they end up working with me or not. If I'm helping them, they can also help more people and that means a bigger impact. I deeply believe the bigger the impact, the more success will come your way. Your value is your pitch at the end of the day.

Selling is not about getting, it’s about giving. As a salesperson, as a business owner, your job is to create value. I create value every single day for my community. This is even something that you can do with some of your leads you’re nurturing by sending them podcast episodes, trainings you have, a blog post, anything. You want to be giving some type of value to your audience. I don't want you to look at some of these tasks as exchanging hours for dollars, I want you to look at it as creating value that people can use. It’s value that could help them in the direction of where they want to get to. I want to give you a few more ideas in case you're wondering what value looks like. It really can be anything. Maybe it's an educational value post or a motivational post. If you're in the health and wellness space, maybe it’s a free workout or meal guide. If you are a social media manager, maybe it’s some type of social media template. It could be a challenge, a training series, five tips to starting your business, anything that gives value to your audience. The goal is to be valuable because when you’re valuable that success will attract itself to you, I promise.

Value is so important every single day for a few reasons. It helps show your ideal client the value you can bring. I've had people watch my free Facebook lives and listen to free podcast episodes and sign more clients and increase their prices, all from my free material. So many come to work with me because of all of the incredible value that we put out there. They're blown away when they hop into our paid containers because we have so much more value in the paid containers, plus the accountability, and everything else that comes along with it. We're able to help them get a quick win with all of the value we have out there. Your ideal clients want to see that you can actually help them, and you can, so start putting out value and start giving them some of those tips and tricks to help him get from point A to point B. It also gives them a glimpse into what it could be like working with you. They want a little bit of that before they take that next step. They want to get an idea of what it could be like in your world. You would never go buy a car without giving it a test drive, value does something similar. Get some type of value out there today and as often as you're able to this year.

This next one is so important and also a huge non-negotiable for me– selling daily. We sell every single day in our business. I want you to start feeling comfortable selling more and more. You are a business and businesses get to sell every single day. If you are feeling icky or gross about selling, I want you to send me a message on Instagram. I have a few sales mindset episodes to help you with this. We get to feel good about selling because selling is serving. Getting in front of people and sharing how you can help them get that transformation they're looking for is serving them, it's helping them. In order to grow, in order to help people, in order to make that impact, in order to make money, you get to sell.

I know that this is one of the things that is a bit more difficult for most people because it is scary doing it for the first few times and it is a skill. Selling is a skill, it’s something you can learn and adapt into what feels good to you. There's so many different ways that you can sell to your audience. You don't necessarily need to hop on Instagram stories every single day and say, “hey, I’m a business, come work with me.” You can sell in many other ways on social media and in a way that feels good to you. This is something I love supporting my clients with. This could be sales calls, selling in the DMs, or selling directly through an email list. There are so many different ways you can do this. You get to be open to shifting some of the stories that you may have right now about sales.

We want to get you to a place where selling feels good because I promise that once selling feels good to you, it's going to be so much easier to actually sell. What we want to do is create the opportunity for somebody to actually buy from your business today. You cannot sell anything unless your audience knows what you have to offer. You can do this by adding in a call to action to your post, sharing client wins, providing value and content, sharing how to apply for your programs, or sending the links to purchase. Another way is by giving a description of your program and asking if it sounds exciting to anybody. If we're not out there actually selling, we aren't going to be able to bring any income into your business and to help people create a transformation. If you've listened to my podcast before or have spent any time over on my social media, you've probably seen me ask my audience how often they are selling. Most of the time they're selling once a month, maybe twice a month. If that is the case for you, I want you to start to bump that up. How can we start selling more? We've got to create more opportunities for people to buy.

More and more folks are coming into the online space every single day. That's okay because there's more and more people also coming into the online space that need you and your support and your guidance. However, they need the opportunity to actually buy from you over and over and over. If we're only talking about our offers once or twice a month, I guarantee your audience is not not aware of what you have to sell. I believe that we are actually selfish by not selling. We are doing a disservice to the world by not selling. So, share your offers, share how you can help me move from point A to point B. Sell, sell, sell and have so much fun with it too.

The next activity that I recommend you spend some time focusing on in 2024 is building relationships. This is relationships with new leads, old leads, and your current audience. Nurturing your audience is a big part of your sales process. Not everyone's going to be ready to buy from you the first day they find you on social media, and that's totally okay. It can take seven to ten touch points before they take any action. Ask your audience how you can better support them. Send out free trainings to teach them content that can help them. I want you to go and send out five messages to people who are consistently the first ones to watch your Instagram story or the ones who are always commenting on your content. Thank them for being part of your community and ask how you can better support them today. See what it is they’re struggling with at this moment and send them a podcast episode, a free training that you have, a template, a Google Doc with tips and tricks, or an older caption that you have that could support them with whatever it is that they may be going through. They are going to appreciate that so much and continue to be a loving community member of yours. They're going to be the ones who are out at happy hour with their girlfriends saying, “oh my goodness=, have you seen this person Melissa? She's always so helpful and always giving out the best stuff. You need to go check her out.” Your community will continue to grow if you spend a little bit of time nurturing your current community.

Also keep your lead tracker in mind. Lead generation is one of the biggest money-making activities you can do in your business. Fortune is also in the follow-up. Continue to check in with your leads and note when you want to follow back up with them so you don't forget. Something that we provide our clients is a lead tracker that shifts and changes colors when it's time to check back in. You can also create notifications based on the dates so that you don't fall behind. We utilize Airtable for this type of stuff, but you can also do this in Excel, Google Sheets, Asana, whatever platform you're using.

The next activity that I highly recommend is something I see so many entrepreneurs forget about. If you have your sales process mapped out, this is the one thing that's going to really help amplify everything. It's something that does take time, but I want you to be focusing on it now and it's growth activity. At the end of the day, most of our goals are to impact as many people as we can. In order to do that, we get to grow so that you can reach people. I want to get in front of as many people as I can every single day because I know I can help them move the needle forward. I want more and more people to learn about me and the resources I have for them. Take some type of action to help you grow your community every single day. It doesn’t need to be huge, but we do need to focus on it because the things that we focus on are the things that we move the needle on. It could be your email list or your audience size on social media.

A big focus point for many of my clients this year is growing their email list because it is one of the only things that we actually own. Early 2022 we lost our Instagram account and when that happens you lose all your followers, you don't own any of that. There have been so many different hiccups over the years where people were having a lot of issues with social media between Instagram accounts getting hacked and accounts getting shut down for no reason. Your email list is the only thing you own, so it's a huge focus point for a lot of my clients. It's something that we have actually added into their own KPI tracking in their business. At minimum, once per week my clients are focusing on email growth in their business. They're looking at the trend of email subscribers and taking action to add to it daily. They’re doing this by sharing their lead magnets, creating more freebies, doing more live trainings, inviting people into their Facebook group, and adding value everywhere. There are lots of different ways that you can start to grow your email list. Again, we get to be intentional about what it is we want to grow. At some level, I want you to be thinking about how you want to grow.

In 2024 I also recommend adding in more rest, more play, and tighter boundaries to help prevent burnout. I actually have podcast episodes about these things specifically, so if you're wondering how to tighten your boundaries, send me a message on Instagram. I have an episode that's really going to support you. This year in 2024 the number one priority for you gets to be you. As you give yourself rest and take care of yourself, you are going to be able to support others. I like to remind my clients, especially during big launches, their number one priority is self-care and taking care of themselves. They can't help anybody else until they're helping themselves and really giving themselves that care as well. One more thing I would add is to ask yourself, what does my business need from me today and what do I need from me today? You cannot take care of your business based on what you feel like doing. If I was to ask myself what I feel like doing in my business today it would probably be supporting clients and that’s probably about it. However, if I ask myself the question, what does my business need from me today? Then it would be a little different. It would be to support my clients, check in with my team, follow up with a lead, and to add some value into my business. If I were to ask what I would need from myself, the answer is probably a workout, taking an afternoon nap, watching an episode of my newest TV show, and maybe reading a little bit of my newest thriller book. So, very different things. I want you to differentiate the two and ask yourself both those questions. You get to fill both. You get to support your business needs. You also get to support your own needs as well.

We have covered so much today. We went into what I recommend focusing on in 2024 for your business, my nonnegotiables in my business, some tips for making this the best year yet, and so much more. We are already getting ready for next week's episode and I cannot wait to share it with you. We will see you in another brand new episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early next Monday morning!

Topics we cover include:

The Non-Negotiables of My Business

Using Your Time Efficiently
Daily Business Activities for 2024
And so much more!

Times to check out:

(09:29) Your non-negotiables

(12:58) Efficient vs Busy

(20:31) Selling

(29:46) Rest, Play and Boundaries

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