Ways to Boost Your Business in Difficult Times

Welcome to episode 90 of Dawn of a New Era, top 3% global ranking show. In this podcast, we talk about all things marketing, motivation, mindset, models, and money. These are the five core pillars of success that I believe that any business owner needs to really scale and grow their business in a positive way. With myself, Dawn McGruer, the business growth coach, I started my journey at the ripe old age of 21.

Now going into my 44th year, I have learned some pretty epic lessons. And in this podcast, we're going to talk about four ways to boost your business in difficult times. Every single business owner has experienced a time in business that wasn't nice, a time where maybe there were pressures on finances, there were stressful times because maybe a campaign or a launch hadn't driven the results that you desired. It's happened to us all.

But the great thing is that even with my most epic fails, and believe you me, over the past 20 years, I've had many, these have been my biggest learnings. And I want to share with you today four strategies that you can really use to lift your business. If you're finding it difficult because maybe you have cash flow difficulties, you're not pulling in clients like you used to. You're doing the same things, but you're not getting the same results.

Well, biggest lesson I learned was that you have to be dynamic. You have to have the ability in business to be adaptable. And what I mean here is, is that there have been times I have been doing something that was super successful, and suddenly the bottom just dropped out. Everything changed, and I couldn't fathom why, if I was doing something last week, last month, yesterday, that it wasn't pulling in the same results.

Well, it's because things change. The whole digital marketing arena is moving at such a fast pace that we have to be dynamic. But so are consumers. You know, consumers' demands, challenges, pains, things they need support with do evolve because the climate evolves and different things impact.

So we have to be ready to make that shift to push things along. In business, one of the things that I found super, super useful is if I am dynamic and I am adaptable, I can make changes, and I am prepared to even make changes to something that I've invested a lot of time, effort, money into. Why? Because if it's not working, something has to shift.

If you change nothing, nothing changes. Also, simplicity is part of this because this strategy means that if you see something and it just starts to take a dip, if you act fast and don't bury your head in the sand, believe you me, I've been there, I've ignored it, I've thought, well, if I just put more effort in and I do a bit more of this, it will change. But it didn't. It just got worse.

So change quickly and be prepared to try different things and be prepared for things to fail. The more I've tested, the better things have been, the better results we've got. Got. The more we've grown, the better we've become at attracting customers and converting them.

The increases in actual business profitability have all stemmed from being prepared to do different things, to adapt to the client, to adapt to the market, to adapt to the digital environment. The second strategy, it sounds simple. It sounds like we should all know what this is, but it's planning. It's the bit in business that people really fail to deliver on the detail.

If I gave one piece of advice to myself 20 years ago, it would be to plan, plan, plan, to really look ahead, to put a plan together. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to have specifics in there. Number one, you have to know what the goal is that you're trying to achieve.

You have to know the specific strategy, steps and actions and timescales that you're going to use to achieve it. And this all has to be broken down onto a timeline and allocated to resource and people. If there's a gap in resource, you need to identify that. You also need to put a budget together so you know how much you're prepared to spend to get the results that you have planned out in your goals.

As we get into this, you might start thinking, Well, that sounds, you know, great, but I'm really busy growing my business and doing this, and I've got too much to do. Stop. This is the most important foundation you will have in your business. If you don't have this, it's like putting bricks on top without foundations.

Ultimately, it will start to crumble, bits will fall away, and the strategy will not work. So planning is number two. Number three, cash flow. Even if you have really good cash flow, there might be times where you just want to plan ahead because you are not sure of what is coming.

So even if you can vaguely predict an uncertain time, it would be better to be protected with cash flow than not. So you can get lots of different things in terms of working capital for your business. You can use things like PayPal. You can use things like Stripe.

All of these amazing facilities that many businesses already have, have the ability to give you that working capital. Yes, there will be a small fee. Yes, you will have to repay your working capital when you take money in, and there will be a percentage deducted. But would it not be better to have that feeling, that cushion of working capital, than get to a point where you have to pay bills, you have to pay all sorts of different things, or you're stuck and can't grow your business because you've got nothing to invest?

Then do nothing. So cash flow is one of the biggest reasons that businesses fail. If you don't have cash, it becomes very difficult because if you can't pay for resources, you can't pay bills, and you can't invest in things like, you know, marketing, it becomes very tough and you get stuck quite quickly. To be sustainable and profitable, cash flow is great when obviously lots of clients are coming in and you have obviously a great funnel of people from lead going to customer and then the customer coming back, maybe referrals, all these lovely things.

But there could be points in your year that are perhaps seasonal, and what happens is, is that you need to plan for that. And one of the things you can do with cash flow is make sure that you have your reserves. So every single Friday, not every single month, look at the pot of money in your account. And the great thing is with bank accounts now, like— Like Starling, you can use pots to put in things like your tax, your VAT, your corporation tax.

You can put pots of money away for marketing, for unknown bills, and you can have these provisions ready so that you can pull on them at any time. But you at least have that sort of feeling and knowledge that they're there. Certainty, especially around money, gives a huge boost around confidence, and especially your marketing motivation and mindset will be paramount to where you are financially. The thing is, is when you are under financial pressure, it changes everything.

It changes your outlook. It changes the whole way you are showing up. And just by having that provision in place will be a game changer. Last but not least, number four, it's about marketing, but also most importantly, automation.

So always what I'm trying to do in business with my own and my clients is to cause what we call the ripple effect. The ripple effect is when lots of things are happening. It almost feels like that business, that brand, that person is so super visible, they're almost everywhere. It's like serendipity.

Everywhere you go, it's a consistent feeling of seeing that person showing up. They're getting visible, they're getting clients, and it feels in flow. We're automatically positioning that brand, that business in the top echelon. Why?

Because we're seeing them. We understand what they do. They seem to be very good at the marketing because guess what? They're everywhere.

Now that whole notion, that whole feeling comes from automation, and it also comes from doing things like adverts. You have to find a way of balance your marketing and also your resource. You could spend all day, every single day doing things on a digital to-do list, but you need to be laser focused in on only doing the specific actions. That actually have impact and actually drive towards your goals, building momentum each and every day.

Because if you don't, you will end up being a busy fool. You need to make sure that if you have something that's perhaps repeating each day, that you have a way of automating that in your business. You need to find ways of taking repetitive tasks away and making the customer experience, driving it in a digital way so that it's better for everybody.

You need to find a way of causing a ripple effect so you don't feel that you're in this constant cycle of creating content, showing up on social media, only to find that it's not driving clients. You have to focus in on what actually drives success, what is building and scaling your business. Now, we know that the three fastest ways to grow any business in any niche anywhere in the world are social media, email marketing, and also having a sales-first mentality. Now, built into that whole last point is that we know that if you have recurring revenue in that sales-first mentality, then it's definitely going to be the fastest, easiest way to grow a business.

Because remember, if you're adding in extra clients, it is the same effort to find somebody who is paying you each and every month as it is to find someone one time. It's the same effort regardless what they're paying. So think about how your business model is constructed, and does it actually work to drive the amount of clients you need to be sustainable and profitable? Is it actually achievable to get the amount of clients that you need priced at whatever your model is?

These are fundamental points, but they are key, they're crucial, and they are the way that you underpin your success, and you have the greatest chance of actually scaling and growing your business with ease. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and remember to subscribe and find me on all of the social channels too, so I can find out more about you and your journey and your businesses. Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era podcast, and for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.