00:00

I watched the Tinkerbell movies for the first time when my daughter was quite little. And I don't know if this is a modern take on Tinkerbell. But the story goes, or certainly in the first movie, Tinkerbell becomes her fairy. And then she's assigned to her group of fairies, which is called the Tinker's. One of the things that she first noticed as she enters the group of fairies is that there's a lot of haphazard inventions and half finished things that the fairies have been tinkering with.

When we feel that things are wrong in our business, we can quickly jump into a reactive state of tinkering. We'll think that offers not quite right. So I'll make some changes, perhaps I'll lower the price at this thing. Maybe it's for a different type of audience. And maybe we need to change the messaging over here. And we think that by making these adjustments, we will improve our overall results. The problem is, is that when you make so many little changes, you do the absolute opposite. So in today's episode, I want to explore with you some of the negative impacts of this quick change this tinkering and what to do instead. Are you ready? Let's go.

01:28

You're listening to the Run your Business like a Boss podcast. Hello, and welcome. I'm Kristy Robinson, your host I'm here to advocate for you the business owner who is knee-deep in the messy middle. If you're tired of feeling stretched, overworked and overwhelmed, you're in the right place. My goal is to help you streamline systemize and create a strategy that enables you to step from stressed-out worker to the boss of your business. Now let's dive into today's episode.

Hello, boss, and welcome back to the run your business like a boss podcast.The first thing I wanted to explore with you is what are the negative impacts when we change too much too quickly. So the first one is that when you're making a lot of little frequent changes, you end up confusing your audience and customers. I know that I've felt like this, and maybe you'd have to where you've been online and someone that you've been following, you know, one month they're offering this one thing, and then the next month, I've got a limited time offer. And then the next month they're changing their signature programme or offer. The next month, they feel like they're taking a whole different path in terms of messaging, and you find yourself feeling a little bit confused by what they're offering, who they're offering it for, what do they actually do. And so that can be one of the things that happens when you change course too frequently, or you're offering too many different things all the time.

One of the most effective ways to nurture new clients is to build know, like and trust. And I'm sure you've heard that before. When you make too many changes too frequently, you actually do the opposite of know, like trust. So the thing is, is that in order for someone to get to know you, you need to be consistent with your messaging, you need to be consistent with your offers, you need to be consistently out there sort of talking about the same sorts of things, right? That just builds a little bit of continuity, it also gets people to know you, and certainly to trust you. And once someone gets to know you and trust you then comes the liking bit, right? So when you're making too many changes, you're actually corroding that ability for your audience or prospects to know like and trust you. So that's the negative impact of too much change too quickly.

Another confusion point that can come in is for yourself, right? So sometimes we make a lot of changes, we get into that tinkering mode, because we're trying to fix an underlying problem. And it's a little bit like that metaphor, throwing spaghetti at the wall. When you're doing that you you're sort of just watching to see what sticks, but you're not really giving it enough time to let things stick. So you end up tripping yourself up confusing yourself not really knowing what's working and what's not working, because there's too much change, nothing's working. And then you begin to doubt yourself. This is why it's so important that you're not throwing all the things out there at the one time, because you get confused, then nothing quite works, then that self doubt comes in. And that kind of links back to the episode that I spoke about a couple of weeks ago, around cultivating self-trust.

So these are a few of the different things I mean, there's so much more What negative impact when you make too much change too quickly. But just at a high level, those are the things that can negatively impact your business. So now that we know that it's not good for your business to tinker with your offers and your messaging and your nation, all the things, right, what do you do instead?

So the first thing that I want to say, before I dive into, I guess the three things because I want to keep it really simple. And something that you can action is, I want you to know that it's normal to want to make changes, right? And change is necessary, like business is evolutionary, it's iterative, all of those things need to happen. But change needs to happen in a much more considered way, a much more structured way, in order for you to really figure out where things fit and when.

So the first step in the process. And this will come as no surprise to you, especially if you've been listening to the show for some time now, is you need to build your strategy, you need to take your business or make changes from the ground up, rather than pulling in from, you know, perhaps maybe bright shiny object syndrome or advice from other people, or just a quick reactive task that you're trying to put out there to fix something, you need to create a strategy and really stop relying on tactics to drive your business and rather, start with the strategic piece, right?

06:17

So the strategy would be, first of all, starting with the key pillars of the businesses, which is what I call the bedrock, the vision, the mission and the values. I know I talk about this a lot. But it is so important to get those locked and loaded. And then from there really thinking about where do you want to take your business? What is your business stands for? I mean, this is if we're doing a full overhaul, of course, like if you're, you know, tinkering a lot. But even if you're thinking about what do I want to achieve in the next year? Or what do I want to achieve in this next quarter? Having a strategy around why you're looking to do it? How does it fit into your business? How does it fit into the big picture of your business, all of those things are so important, what that's going to stop you from doing is making reactive decisions, making quick changes in your business and really thinking about what it is that you want to put in place. So the first step is to build a strategy.

The second step is to have a plan, or a programme of work. So I use these pieces interchangeably. A programme of work is more around a project. But a plan might be you know, your 90 day plan, a month plan or a project plan, whatever is going to work for your business, how I use this in my business or with my coaching clients. So with my private coaching clients, we use a 90 day plan framework, which I call the plan on a page, which really helps my clients to pull down that big vision into the annual goal. And then of course down into the quarterly goal. For the business owners who are inside of the run your business like a boss Academy, we start with looking at their business model and more of a programme of work. And then we lead off with the 90 day plan. Having a plan will give you a really good idea about what you're rolling out when you're rolling it out and how you're going to roll it out so that it's not that knee jerk reaction. And this is where as I mentioned a little bit of go around just pulling down tactics rather than creating change in a more considered or strategic way. So having a plan is really important for you to know what you're rolling out when you're rolling it out and how you're going to roll it out.

The third piece is to take your time, there is so much pressure for us to react quickly. But I want you to know that when you change something in your business, it can take time to cement you might need extra work to get that messaging out there. But that consistency piece and that holding strong piece and really giving it a red hot go before you make any changes is going to stop you from tinkering too much, right? Really taking your time before you get the thing out to market. And when I say thing, I mean product, new messaging, new niche, insert, whatever it is that you're wanting to roll out, really thinking about what that looks like putting in that programme of work that we mentioned before, how does it fit strategically in your business? putting in the time to get that into place and cement? And then If changes need to happen, then absolutely take that refining process. But please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater terrible saying I know but you know what I'm talking about. You don't need to throw everything out. If something's not working, then you might need to make a small change. See how that fits. Wait, give that a go. But not changing things too quickly.

There is one caveat here. And I'll do another episode deep diving on this topic, which is the sunk cost fallacy where you're just got this one thing out there. And then you're just going good money after bad essentially, or good time after bad or good effort after bad insert that I don't want to go too deep into that, because I don't want to muddy the waters. But I am aware that you don't want to get too fixated on burrowing down onto something that maybe isn't worthwhile. But if you've gone through the strategy piece, you've got the plan or the programme of work, you've taken it out to market, you've tested it, you've refined it. That is really the place where you want to be rather than rolling things out thick and fast and changing things too quickly.

So this episode has really just been about helping you to consider, am I changing things too quickly? Could that be something that's going on in my business? Am I being clear enough? Am I being consistent enough?

10:59

Would I be confusing my audience? If I roll that thing out? How does that thing fit in with my overall business strategy. So just to get you thinking about what this looks like, especially as we're wrapping up 2022 And get geared up for 2023. My hope for you is that you've got that nice clear view on what next year is going to look like.

Now, if this is something that you feel like you really struggle with in your business, this is how I help my clients. As I've mentioned in the past couple of episodes, I have two programmes coming into 2023. We've got the business accelerator coaching programme, that's a one to one private coaching. I'm taking enrollments for that this month for next year prices increasing in 2023. However, all enrollments that happen in 2022, we'll have the current pricing but the price will be increasing next year.

And I will be opening the doors to brand new business like a boss Academy, which is such a great way to reset your business in the messy middle. If you enjoy that group programme setting. We're going to be opening the doors to that in February, the best thing you can do is join the waitlist now because you're going to have first access of the programme, so there are limited seats, you'll get first access to the programme. And you'll also have an early bird offer so you can stay in the loop for that by joining the waitlist, all the details are down in the show notes, grab those, check them out. I'd love to be able to support you.

Boss, thank you so much for joining me for today's conversation. I hope that this has given you a little bit of food for thought, especially if you have been finding yourself wanting to tinker with your business. I appreciate your time today. And as always, I look forward to chatting with you next week. Thank you so much for joining me if you enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving a review and if you're not already doing so connect with me over on Instagram. My handle is Christie Robinson underscore consulting and listen up. If you're keen to learn more about how I can support you to run your business like a boss, check out the website Christy robinson.com.au Thanks again and I look forward to chatting with you next time.