I'm actually sitting here in my office and I have a pretty empty day. This led me to this weird place of not knowing what to do next and one thing I do know after talking with you guys for many years now with hundreds of episodes is that we are more alike than you might think…
When I realize I'm struggling with this, I usually have to remind myself I need to share those struggles because there are a lot of times when my community is listening and they think this is exactly what I'm going through and now I know what to do with it. So I'm sitting here and it's a Monday and I try to keep my Monday's extremely clear. Besides some morning team meetings I usually don't have appointments on Mondays. Today I have basically one thing in my entire calendar for about 30 minutes. So I checked everything off of my to do list and you know what I've noticed? Usually my days are so jam packed with back to back appointments that I don't really get much free time anymore. I'm filled with team meetings. I'm filled with contractor appointments, interviews, media pitches, writing content to hit a specific deadline. There's just so many things that I'm going back to back to back that sometimes I even look at my calendar and I think when am I going to eat lunch? When am I going to run to the bathroom?!
It's just not a good thing and I'm telling you that but what happened today was it was so wide open that I kind of felt funny. I don't even know how to describe it, I just feel like something's wrong. I'm not sure what I should be doing and the thing is because I've already checked off my daily to do's and my one thing that I was supposed to get done today and then my random list of little to do's…you know what I'm talking about, right?! I've checked my email, I did my Facebook Live I was supposed to do and now I feel like I have nothing left. I'm literally sitting here thinking maybe I'll just go outside for a walk or go get my nails done and then I stopped and I just kind of processed all of these thoughts for a minute and it made me stop and think this is obviously crazy. I have a million different businesses and things that I do. I've got children and family. There's no way that there's nothing for me to do.
So I'm like OK, how do I get out of this funk because that's what it feels like. So I decide I'm going to brain dump a few really impactful things that I'm responsible for in my business things that only I can do and that really need to generate a high value or a high return on my investment. So I start brain dumping and here's some things I came up with. I said message some of my top clients and recognize them or acknowledge them or just say, “Hi, I'm thinking of you.” A lot of people don't believe that people who DM back anymore is really the business owner. A lot of us think they're too busy. So here's what I would suggest and here's what I wrote down; audio voice message them or send them a video so they know for a fact this is me, this is not my team and I'm not outsourcing it. Most people really will say to me things like well I messaged you but I'm sure it's your team…so I want to make sure that if I'm doing something high impact that I really want people to know it's me. I thought that could be a really great thing to do.
Another thing I wrote down was reach out to somebody. This could be another business owner that I want to collaborate with or build a connection of some sort in the future. I'm not even sure what I would do with this person, but it's been somebody on my list I'm intrigued by them or I like their business and I just want to build a connection. That would be something I would not be outsourcing. It would be me doing this. Another thing is I kept thinking what are my main priorities? Well one of my main priorities is definitely creating content. I'm creating content after content, that's all I do. I thought OK, this could be something I could do whether that's a podcast or I'd jump on a live video or I do a prerecorded video, something like that. Another thing I said was brainstorm ideas to improve Foot Traffic Formula. So Foot Traffic Formula is our one thing when it comes to our product, it's our signature course. This would be something that would be very impactful, very high level that could definitely increase the bottom line when it's something that is our #1 selling product for the year, if that makes sense!
Then the next thing is record new content for that course. Not only am I brainstorming ideas but then I could actually take it another step further I could record and actually create it. So, here's me writing this down and now I have this huge list of all of these amazing things but I'm overwhelmed. I'm actually a little paralyzed of where do I go next? This is where I'm like wow, something is going on my head here but I realize this is just entrepreneurship. Two minutes ago I was like wow, I have nothing to do and then two minutes later I have so much stuff to do I'm not even sure where to start. That is normal. That is completely normal. I really want you to be OK with that but knowing that instead of being OK with being overwhelmed, I'm just going to look at that list and say, well, what could I really do next so I'm just going to do one. I'm not going to do 17 things right now. I decided that this is probably more common than I think. I wanted to share it with you.
Since one of my main priorities is to create content I decided to brain dump this all out for you. I literally just sit back and think, well how did I feel just two minutes ago when I was doing this or what was I thinking. So I created content from this and I'm recording this podcast so this doesn't really take a ton of time when it's in real time of me thinking it. Within the next 30 minutes or so I was able to record it, prep it, all of that and get this ready and get this out too. Well I just did a big task! Sometimes these overwhelming gigantic tasks feel like it's going to take your whole day but I have reserved an entire day, 9-3, for a task that had taken me about an hour before I've done this. This is where we have to stop and say stop being overwhelmed. Let's pick one thing and we decided that that brain dump was a really important thing. For me it took the pressure off. None of those things HAD to happen today. They were just really great things that would move my business forward and make an impact and then I couldn't outsource to anybody else. Now that podcast is checked off my list I can go back to the list and say, now what?
So the next thing I did, I wanted to reach out to this one person I really would love to have on the show. I'm inspired by her, I think we could be good collaborators and there's some really cool stuff we could do together. So I went on social media to message her and then unfortunately I got sucked in to Instagram for about 20 minutes and completely lost what I was supposed to be doing here. Then I started to justify those 20 wasted minutes and saying well I was looking at other businesses and I was getting inspired and I did see a few things and I did learn and it's like Stacy….let's backtrack for a minute here. Let's not make excuses that I work on social media so therefore that wasn't wasting my time. So we have to be careful because sometimes we start to justify what we're on Facebook for X amount of time but I really went on with an intention that I got sidetracked. That's the truth, right?!
You need to start to look at where you're getting sidetracked and how can we real it back in. It's not like I have to cry about 20 minutes on Instagram but I'm going to start to acknowledge it and go OK, maybe that isn't something I should be doing right now, maybe that's at the end of the day. Let's pop on versus not knowing how long I really can spend on it when I don't have another appointment. Does that make sense? I hope so! Then it was back to the drawing board of what I did and I reach out to a couple my clients and these again are top clients. Somebody that is going to be like wow, this was unexpected! Just something to really go above and beyond in a way that people don't think or necessarily expect for you to do. Now as soon as I'm done with this, the next thing on my list that I'm going to do is I'm going to go on a 30 minute walk. I need a little bit of a break. It's nice outside. It's getting into fall and our weather…who knows what it's going to turn like soon! So I'm going to take advantage of this weather. I'm going to go on a 30 minute walk but what I'm going to do while I'm walking is I'm going to brainstorm ideas on how to make Foot Traffic Formula even better. When I say better I mean how can I get my clients bigger results, faster results, without the headache of tech slowing them down or the confusion of marketing and how much to spend and what to do in all of that. I'm going on a mission of thinking of those things.
Then when I come back I'm going to then brain dump it all into a system where I actually have a meeting set up with my integrator on my team. We're going to have a meeting tomorrow, it's already been planned, it's on the calendar to basically discuss the Foot Traffic Formula. We will talk about the program itself, what we need, what we don't and remove things, what guests experts really would make sense for this program, how much support do our clients need and in what capacity we're going to be talking about. We did surveys this past year and just asked them a ton of questions! We're going to be reading all of their surveys and we have so many people that responded and give us such great valuable feedback. When people ask you to do a survey you guys, you have no idea how much that helps the business owner so thank you for that!! We're going to talk about what content is missing and some of those surveys are going to reveal what they wish this was in the program.
Now we have to be the gatekeeper of or the person that weed through and says yes this makes sense or yes it would be great but this is not the type of program it is. Then what content we need for video creation and things that I need to do and should it be in video versus a workbook and we're changing a lot, getting rid of a lot of our videos and making them be workbooks so they're easy to reference. One thing I realized is this is such a tangible thing and to say it really quickly, people start to brag how many hours of videos and all this stuff and we're like whoa…we want it to be as fast as you possibly can make it so this is just a few things that we're going to be doing.
Back to what my point with this is…I'm going to walk, brainstorm and if I come up with a couple of ideas I'll jot them down in my phone in the note section so I'm not going to lose anything that I say or I can Vox with a brain dump. This is great because if I'm walking I can just Vox it. My team knows don't check this, this is just a brain dump, but then later if they wanted to hear my brain dump they could go in as well and listen to it. So that's what I'm going to do. Now what's cool about this is I went from nothing to do, to overwhelmed, to one thing at a time and all of a sudden I'm getting done four of the big things that are super impactful, high return on my investment. I'm getting them done in this one day!
If this ever happens to you I highly recommend just taking some notes here to figure out how you can do this too. One thing that I decided I'm going to do is these little bullet points of things that are high impact for me. I'm going to write them down and put them where it's public and visible in my office. So if I'm ever sitting here with just 10 minutes or 30 minutes or 2 hours, I can look at that and go, I only have seven minutes but I could definitely reach out to somebody on Instagram but I can't get sucked in if I'm only there for seven minutes. So I get to keep this because this was such a good tool for me to really look at and observe what could I be doing to really move my business forward? Imagine if I just went to get my nails done. I've wasted so much valuable time for things that are truly going to move me forward! I'm not saying don't take a break.Maybe you're in such a well oiled machine with your business and you need a break then take it! But I'm not at that place. It's a Monday. I've just rested all week and I'm charged, I'm fired up. I haven't even had coffee and I'm ready to go!
It would be a shame to waste that when I don't really need a break right now whereas on Friday if I'm feeling like this and I want to take a break then it makes a lot more sense. So if you're ever doing this I want you just to stop. Be aware, just be conscious of what's happening, don't waste your time. You have too many big opportunities to grow your business and really keep coming with the mindset of one step at a time. If you don't know where to go next or what to do next in your business, be sure to get on the wait list for the next round of the Foot Traffic Formula! This program is a game changer. This is for people who already sell something but you want more customers. We aren't building products. We are building more traffic to your already existing products programs or service! This is going to be big.
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