7 pieces of bad business advice that are a waste of your time and money

There's so many business do's and don't's out there that it's hard to know who and what to believe. These are often based on the latest trends and don't *actually* move the needle in your business. In today's episode, I'm sharing 7 pieces of bad business advice that are a waste of your time and your money.

– Why thinking there's one “magic pill” for your business will only lead to you jumping around looking for that one thing that'll “work”.
– How having just one signature offer means that the lifetime value of your client is going to be low.
– How having too many offers will confuse your clients and make your business harder to streamline and systematise.
– The role of social media in your business.
– Why niching down is one of the simplest ways to shift who your business attracts and what this means for your audience.

 

 
Today I'm sharing seven pieces of bad business advice. There is no shortage of terrible business advice out there, but I thought I would narrow it down and share a couple of the ones that I think are particularly not useful. Let's put it that way. They are not useful in that they are potentially wasting your time, your energy, and your money, or sending you in the completely wrong direction in your business. 

So let's jump into the seven pieces of bad business advice that I'm covering today. 

 

#1: You have to start doing this and that…

You have to start doing reels. You have to start a podcast. You have to be on YouTube. You have to be blogging. Anybody that is telling you that you have to be in one particular place on one particular platform is bad business advice. There is no one magic pill and the reason it's so easy to buy into this bad business advice is because it's so easy to look for this magic pill to believe that there is this one thing that's going to be the thing that gets your business traction and it only leads to jumping around. 

It leads you to go from one place to the next constantly searching for this one thing that will work which is a waste of your time and energy because there isn't just one magic tactic, trend or platform that works. And if there was, everyone would jump on it and it wouldn't be effective anymore.

So instead you need to pick the platform or the platforms and the strategy that you can be consistent with as consistency. That's what builds traction and momentum. Not just chasing after trends, hoping that you'll be early to something or that something's going to land, it's going to stick and it's going to be that magic pill.

So if you can't be consistent with reels because it takes you three hours to edit one post, don't do reels. If you can't be consistent with a podcast because you can't think of ideas, don't do a podcast, right? You've got to work with your strengths. 

 

#2: You have to build your business around one signature offer.

Different people have different budgets, different ways of working, different problems, and different needs, and you can't really expect to pigeonhole everybody into one set way of working with you because they'll probably just go to a competitor instead. 

Now you might find that your ideal client has a problem that they need to solve before they'll be ready to work with you or maybe once they've worked with you and they've solved one problem, this opens up a completely new problem that needs solving. 

Generally, your lifetime value from that client is going to be very low and it's much easier to keep working with the same clients over and over solving new problems for them, helping them in different ways than it is to constantly try and reach new people and acquire new clients. So always think, how else can I serve my ideal client? 

 

#3: You have to have lots of offers to pick and choose from.

Like a little library of things that your audience can pick and choose from. And I know it's really easy to think, Oh, the more offers I have, the more sales I'll make, right?

Well, not necessarily, because if you've got loads of offers, it can be really confusing to your potential clients. They're going to feel overwhelmed. Potential clients also often don't know the solution to their problems. They are looking to you as the expert to tell them, Hey, this is going to be the solution to your problem. They don't really want to sit there and pick and choose between all of these different offers. 

And if they're not sure what solution is the right solution for them, they probably won't buy from you. Plus, it's also exhausting to run a business with a gazillion different offers. It's a lot harder to streamline the delivery process, it's a lot harder to put systems in place and make the whole thing just run as smoothly as possible.

 

#4: You have to niche by who you serve.

Niching down is one of the simplest ways to shift who your business attracts but you don't have to niche down your business by only serving one particular audience. There are different ways you can niche, three different ways.

For example, let's say that you have a restaurant. Now you could say, well, this restaurant only serves kids. That is niching down by who you serve and this is how many businesses niche down, right? Especially coaches, for example, coaches for overachieving women. 

Then the next way you can niche is by saying, well, this restaurant only serves Italian food. Now that is niching down by what you offer. So you're not trying to sell Italian food to somebody who's craving sushi. 

And then the third way to offer is niching down by experience. For example, we only offer a high-end experience. This way, McDonald's isn't trying to compete against Nobu. 

So those are three different ways that you can niche down but most people tend to look at niching as niching down by who you serve. And in some cases that will be appropriate, but in a lot of cases, you might be better off niching down by what you sell and becoming known for doing that one thing really well. 

 

#5: You have to show up on social media to grow your audience. 

If you are trying to attract clients on social media and relying on hoping that one day it's going to put your content in front of the right people, it's going to be a very slow journey.

Social media platforms want you to spend money with them on their paid ads. So their algorithms are making it increasingly harder to stand out and to reach new people and this means you can't just lean back and hope that the algorithm shows your content to the right people. Instead, you need to create some kind of visibility plan.

You need to do the intentional things that are going to get your brand and content in front of the right people and you're going to share content that makes them stick around and that nurtures them into buying from you. 

So you need to focus on creating remarkable content, intentionally getting that content in front of the right people and then getting those people to stick around long enough to know you, like you and trust you enough to buy from you.

 

#6: You have to post every single day to grow your audience. 

Doing this leads to sharing content that is just, Blah, it's unremarkable. And then you start to wonder why you can't stand out online. Now there is more content online than we could ever possibly consume in our lifetimes.

And AI and chat GPT have only made this even worse. So now it's no longer about creating content and posting because you have to post every day or something like that. Instead, it means sharing less content, but content that is remarkable and that AI couldn't actually emulate. It couldn't generate that.

Most of the time, this is going to be longer form content. It might be sharing perspectives that are unique. It might mean stepping into your role as a thought leader in your industry. Even if you don't think of yourself as that, even if you think you're too early on to be an expert, you still probably have some kind of hot take or some kind of unique perspective that you can share.

And that is what creates remarkable content and it might feel a little bit uncomfortable sharing these things because not everyone's going to agree with you but the right people will resonate and that's what we're aiming for. 

 

#7: You have to have “insert offer type” here. 

You have to have a low ticket offer or a high ticket offer. You have to have a mastermind. You have to be doing VIP days. You have to have an online course. There are people out there who have built businesses and built particular offers around teaching you how to create a low-ticket offer, a high-ticket offer, a mastermind or a VIP day.

As part of their free content, they are trying to convince you as to why you must have this type of offer. Otherwise, your business won't succeed and they're trying to tell you that this particular offer is the magic that is going to make everything work in your business, but there is no one magic type of offer that is going to be the magic pill. Different offers suit different business models, different containers suit different lifestyles, and different visions and different goals.

 

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