5 things you can do during a slow period to set your business up for future growth

To set yourself up for future growth when things are slow is the best opportunity to work on your business rather than just trying to do busy tasks that make you feel like you're being productive but that don't have any long-term results on your business.

 

>> Click here to listen to the podcast on your app of choice <<

5 things you can do during a slow period in your business

My business didn't grow instantly overnight. It grew because I spent a lot of time setting myself up for growth and I knew that I didn't want to make myself busy with clients' work forever. So what I did was I intentionally carved out time to do these things both when I wasn't busy with clients' work and when I was busy with clients' work.

 

Invest intentional time and energy into growing your audience

Notice how I didn't say money – instead I said time and energy. You can still grow your audience organically but it doesn't come from one viral reel or one blog post. It happens with consistent effort over time, and it will feel slow at the start.

Just because it's not happening instantly doesn't mean it's not working. It takes a little while to build that momentum. Once you start to build your audience quicker, it grows faster. So when I talk about investing this time and energy into growing your audience.

Get really clear on who your ideal customer is, who the right person for your business is, and who the right person for each of your offers is because it's unlikely that you're going to have just one ideal customer for everything you sell in your business.

Once you know who that ideal customer is, you need to identify exactly what content to share that will help you to stand out from the clutter because there is so much content out there. You can't just build a following by sharing “live, laugh, love” quotes on Instagram anymore. It might have worked a couple of years ago, but now it doesn't.

The content that you share has to be remarkable content, because as Seth Godin says if you're not remarkable, you're invisible. This is the part where I think we get into our heads and we think that remarkable content has to be perfect content. When in fact, it can be imperfect content that stands out.

But then one day the traction will start to build that momentum that you want to amplify your reach by getting in front of other people's audiences. It's going to be a long, slow process. Now obviously one way to get in front of other people's audiences is with paid ads, but that costs money. And if you don't have the budget for paid ads, then you need to get in front of other people's audiences for free.

 

Start a podcast

Now I might be a little bit biased because I've been podcasting for four years and I absolutely love it. But I personally think that podcasting is one of the best ways to grow and nurture your audience. Now, when I say start a podcast, it can't just be a podcast for podcasts' sake. It needs to be something that is strategically aligned with your business goals.

One way where I see people going wrong when they start a podcast is they started because they want to build a personal brand as an expert that's completely interview-based. Where they are positioning their guests as the expert rather than themselves.

Make sure that whatever podcast you are starting is aligned with what you are trying to achieve in your business – that is the most important thing. There are a lot of podcasts out there at the moment. So you can't just look at a competitor's show and copy their format and hope that people will listen because if people are already listening to a podcast, why would they stop listening to that one and come and listen to yours instead?

You need to find your own unique angle and this is usually going to be at the intersection of your strengths and your experience and your knowledge and what your audience wants and needs from you.

Get crystal clear on your podcast topic before you even think about getting a microphone, before you even think about the technology, where you're going to record it and what intro music you're going to have. What do your podcast about and why should somebody listen to your show instead of the millions of others out there?

 

Do some audience and customer research

Your audience is the key to your content topics. The key to writing your sales pages, the key to selling well in a launch, the key to creating winning products that people want, is audience research.

Customer research also is great because it reveals your blind spots. Often, we don't know what we don't know. We make so many assumptions about the people we're talking to, the people who are listening to our podcasts, the people that we want to buy our courses, and the people that are reading our posts on Instagram, we make these assumptions about them and because we don't know what we don't know, sometimes we miss the mark.

By sending out customer research surveys, by reaching out to people, one-on-one we can figure out what these blind spots are and we can fix the holes in our assumptions.

How to do this audience and customer research? If you have an email list, create a survey and email them. Ask them some questions in the survey about their pain points and their frustrations, as well as what the dream outcome might look like for them. If they could wave a magic wand and solve whatever problem it is that they have. What would that outcome look like?

I know what you're probably thinking “nobody's going to complete a survey that I send them”. Okay. Two ways that you can ensure people complete the survey. Firstly, what I love to do is say that for each person who completes the survey, I'll donate $5 on behalf of them whichever charity I feel like supporting at that point in time, that's a really great incentive and the other way that I increase completion rates of these surveys is I keep them pretty short, no more than about five or six questions. If you have a social media audience, but no email list, you can create a survey or you can run a poll depending on which social media platform you're on. Or you can ask them to comment, or you can create Instagram stories, questions, and stickers. There are a lot of different ways that you can create that two-way interaction.

 

Get clarity on your perfect digital product idea

Now you don't need a hundred ideas, you only need one idea and it doesn't need to be a magic idea that nobody has done before. Usually, the best digital product ideas solve a problem or they deliver a transformation for a very specific, ideal customer.

One day I might record video versions and video lessons for the podcast launch plan. If people want that, then great I will evolve it over time. It doesn't have to be set in stone and I think that's a wonderful thing because it removes so much pressure. It means we can start taking action earlier rather than waiting to have this perfect idea that is never going to feel a 100% perfect.

 

Start creating your digital product

You don't have to finish creating it before you launch it. If your business feels quiet and slow at the moment, look at this as a really great time to work on creating that course, membership, program, ebook or those templates. They are an income-producing asset. They might not generate income immediately but doing this work is setting yourself up for future growth.

The businesses that I see being successful and having that really big growth are the ones that sacrifice a little bit of that short-term income because they have their eye on the longer-term picture. They know what that vision is and they are willing to invest time in those things. That gets them that long-term growth.

So the five things that you can do right now to set yourself up for future growth. Firstly invest intentional time and energy into growing your audience. Secondly, you can start a podcast. You don't have to start a podcast, but I personally love podcasting and it has been such a game-changer for my business. The third thing you can do is some audience and customer research. Number four, you can get clarity on your perfect digital product idea and number five, you can start creating your digital product.

 

Pin this?