Balancing Quick Wins and Sustainability
Marketing and sales often get lumped into one category
I bet you’re wondering how is it you’re supposed to build a business for the long term when you also need money like, yesterday.
Through two different sales approaches, you can make sure that you’re injecting cash into your business now, while also making sure you’re setting up the foundation for a sustainable practice. We’re talking short-term and long-term sales approaches and how to balance both.
👉 And you know those terms marketing and sales? Yeah, we’re going to get clear on those too.
So if you want to better understand how to balance the needs of your business, then give this episode a listen!
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Learn all about the NEW version of Side Hustle Support Group:
Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey, Risers. Welcome to Episode 87 of Empathy Rising. Happy New Year! I can't believe that we are starting season three of this show and it is officially two years old. This is like the second birthday of Empathy Rising. And it's just crazy to me, that the show has been going so strong. It's like I've said a million times, it's my favorite part of my business. I love sitting down here with you guys and talking to you, sharing knowledge with you, and I really feel like this is where we build relationships, where we share, I share what's going on in my life and I just get to really be honest and open with you.
So if you're a longtime listener, I'm just so glad that you're still around and that you're still choosing to spend some time listening to this show. If you're new and you are just now finding Empathy Rising, welcome, welcome. This is the place where we believe that therapists can be more and do new and different things and don't have to settle for trading dollars for hours or having a business where their butt is solely tied to a chair.
The mission around here is never to take you out of mental health. I believe that the world needs good clinicians and we need good mental health care. But I also believe that you're not doing the best mental health care you can do if you're seeing 25, 28, 30, 32 clients a week. So I really see my mission as helping you choose and design the caseload where you feel is manageable and where you feel as you do your best work. And to supplement that with another income stream that brings you more time freedom, more flexibility, and just the ability to tap into some of those creative muscles that you don't necessarily get to use all of the time.
With all of that said, I'm so thankful that you're here! You'll be hearing some changes to the show as season three rolls out. I'm playing around with the idea of having some new music and playing around with the idea of a new intro and some different things. So over the next couple of episodes, you'll start to see those changes.
But as we're at the new year here, I just think it's really interesting for me to be reflecting on what's worked, what hasn't worked and there'll be some episodes coming out about that in particular. From what's worked in my personal life, what hasn't worked in my personal life, what's worked business-wise, what hasn't worked business-wise, and just coming off of 2020, man.
Like we still have some ambiguity. We still have some stuff going on in 2021. And it just goes to show that we never quite know what's going to happen, but I am looking forward to this year with just a little bit more optimism, a little bit more hope, I'm crossing my fingers that it all works out that way.
But I've been playing around with some visions, which normally you guys know that I'm the strategist, I'm the linear thinker, so being visionary is different for me. It's out of my comfort zone. But I'm excited to share those with you in future episodes.
But I think what we're really going to talk about here today is the idea of holding space for yourself for your long-term and some short-term plans. I think we can get caught up a lot in the short term, especially in our culture of instant gratification, but we're going to talk a little bit about, definitely having some short-term strategies for our online income streams and for our side hustles, but also making sure that we have the long-term in mind. We're playing a long game and can we have quick wins and can we have short-term wins in that long game? Yes, we absolutely can. We have to be focused on the sustainability and the longevity of our Side Hustles.
So that's what we're going to explore today. As a reminder, Side Hustle Support Group is open for applications for just another week. So if you know that 2021 is the year that you want to get your Side Hustle up and running off the ground, sustainably set up, making you revenue for the longterm. Go ahead and head on over and apply at MarissaLawton.com/side-hustle.
All right. So when we think about business, when we think about growing a sustainable business, there are two, there's a first distinction that we need to make. And one of those distinctions is the difference between marketing and sales. And then after we make that distinction, we're going to talk about two ways to think about this.
So marketing and sales are not the same things. They often get lumped together in one kind of category where we're just talking about revenue and what it takes to make money. But we need to be able to distinguish between these two things. Marketing is the process it takes to attract buyers and selling is the process of converting those buyers, of making actual money.
So a good way to think about this is marketing gets the customer to your door and sales gets a customer through your door. I heard a really great analogy, you guys know I'm not a huge sports person, but I heard a great analogy about this on another podcast. And I wish I could remember exactly which one it was, but they were using the game of golf to explain marketing and sales. Whereas, when you're starting to golf you set up at the T and it's often quite far, again my golf knowledge is not that great, but it's often quite far from the whole right. And the goal is to hit the ball as few times as possible to get it into the hole. So if it's a par four hole that means an average player should be able to get that ball into the hole in four shots.
If you get less than par, right? If you get it in three shots or two shots, or obviously one shot a hole in one, then that is better than par. If you get it in five or six shots or whatever, you are playing worse than par. The same thing can be thought of when we think about marketing and sales.
Marketing is all of the shots that it takes to get the ball to the hole. Sales is the putt at the very end that gets the ball into the hole. And like when you're a new or a novice golfer, you're not shooting par. You're not getting that ball in the hole in four shots. You're getting that ball in the hole in like 24 shots. And so as you become a better golfer, you may get to the point where you occasionally hit a hole in one. Even golfers like Tiger Woods or some of the others that I don't know do not hit holes in one every single time they hit the ball off the tee. It's just not the way that it works. They may hit it in fewer shots, but they're definitely not always getting holes in one.
So when we're thinking about marketing and sales, it takes several shots to get that ball close to the hole. Then sales comes in, and they need to work together because if your marketing is great and you're getting that ball really close to the hole and just a few shots, you still have to have sales working for you because you still have to be able to get that ball into the hole.
And vice versa. You could be really great at sales that once somebody is at that hole, they go in and you convert them really well, but you might not have enough people or enough potential customers getting close enough to your hole. And that's where marketing comes in.
So we're talking about this because it plays into your long-term goals and your short-term goals. So I'll make it make sense in a minute, I promise. But we need both of these things. We need to understand marketing and get better over time at marketing. We also need to understand sales and get better over time at sales. Okay.
So when we think about, that's the difference between marketing and sales. Now, there are two approaches to this. One is a hunting approach. Hunting is where you are going out and you are getting that sale. You're getting revenue, you're skipping a lot of the nurturing that it takes, right? You're skipping a lot of the marketing piece, the nurturing piece, and you're going straight and just walking up to people and saying, Hey, do you want to buy my thing? Hey, do you want to buy my thing? Hey, do you want to buy my thing? It's definitely more assertive and it definitely can sometimes be more aggressive. So when you are hunting down sales, you have one goal in mind, you have an objective and your objective is to meet that.
This is often why, maybe like car salesman is what comes to my mind, this is why they sometimes get a bad rap because it's like they have a quota to fill. And they're only, their only objective is to sell X amount of cars within the month. They have a quota.
The flip side to this, the opposite type of approach to marketing and sales is more of a farming approach. Okay. So rather than going out and hunting down the sale, you are farming and cultivating the sale. You're planting seeds. You are, well, before you even plant the seeds you have to, till the soil, you have to make the rows. I don't know why I use analogies that I know nothing about. Golf and farming, but go with me.
So you have to prep the land before you plant the seed, then you plant the seed, then you tend the seed and then you wait for it to grow. It's a much longer process. But it's much more about nurturing an audience and much more about nurturing the sale.
So these are two different ways to look at the process of marketing and the process of sales.
So don't get me wrong. I love a quick win just as much as anyone. When I was talking about hunting, I made it sound bad, but it's not bad. It's just a different approach. And there are times where we need to be more assertive and definitely make people, make it obvious that we have something for sale. Quick wins will often give you some motivation, right? Once you get that first sale, it's like okay, yay. I'm going to keep going. People actually want this. And it's also external validation, right? It keeps you going, it keeps you engaged so that you can get set up for the long haul. But you can't build a business, a sustainable long-term business, like a long-lasting business on quick wins alone.
Okay. What happens if you're only chasing quick wins is that you are going to exhaust yourself because you're never going to slow down and you're never going to settle down. So you're always going from one to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. If this guy says no, all right, there's always another one. There's always another one. So if you're chasing those quick wins, man, are you going to get tired really fast. You're going to literally burn out. Like you're going to get so hot and bothered and just so stressed and so frazzled that you will literally burn out.
The other thing to think about with these quick wins is it's harder to replicate. It's harder to replicate because we don't always know what contributed to that quick win. Why did that person say yes at that time? Why did that sale convert? And then, you're doing so many things at one time that it's harder for it to be replicable. It's harder to identify what was the actual catalyst for the conversion.
So where there are definitely times and places for more hunting strategies, for more going out and getting the sale, for more cash injections, we don't want that to be our only strategy. We want to balance the short game with the long game. We want to balance short-term wins with a long term strategy.
So as we're getting those first few sales, the long-term strategy allows us to capitalize on that validation and that motivation. So a quick win gives us the spark to keep going. Okay, this is working. I'm going to keep going. But if we keep going at that same quick wind pace, and if we keep instituting quick wins strategies, that's when burnout happens.
So what we need to do instead is channel those quick wins, channel that inspiration, that motivation, that excitement, that energy that the quick wind gave us. We need to channel that into long-lasting success. So we take the energy that it gives us and we put that energy into sustainability.
If you remember back to the end of season two, so a few weeks ago, I shared an episode about why I don't teach evergreen right away. And this kind of relates to that concept is if we are only chasing quick wins and we get a quick win, which is awesome, right? And we build too soon. If we build our funnels based on one quick win and we based on sporadic and inconsistent data, then we can channel that motivation, but we're channeling it incorrectly.
So this is why we want to have farming strategies as well. This is why we want to have strategies that are more about the nurturance, more about planting seeds and wanting and waiting, cultivating them, nurturing them so that they sprout over the longterm. The ultimate goal here is sustainability. The ultimate goal is building something that is going to be able to give you quick cash, give you quick revenue if and when you need it or want it, but also to have a foundation in place. To have something in place that is going to be long term.
So we have to go against the grain a little bit. We have to go against the cultural norm a little bit, which is instant gratification. And we have to be okay with delayed gratification. We have to be okay with things taking a little bit longer and maybe not always having the return be monetary. Maybe what we're gaining from that month or that period of time is not necessarily money. It might be more personal growth. It might be taking a look at some of the imposter syndrome or some of the perfectionism that's coming up and it might be dealing with strategies to overcome that so that the business is around for the longterm. So we want to think about not having it all right now.
Yes, we need some signs to keep going and we even need some revenue to be able to pay for things along the way. So those quick wins, those cash injections, that might be what you're paying for your email list software with, or it might be what you're paying, what you invest in some professional headshots done, or some lifestyle shots done so that you can have, be more competent when you're sharing your social media or be more confident when you're sharing your website or whatever.
So we do need those quick wins for the motivation, for the validation, also for the revenue so we can invest in the business and grow and be able to take it to the next level and have it grow as we grow. But we don't want to jeopardize the long-term potential for the short-term gains.
We can't only be looking at what's the, what is the next sale that I can make, or what's the next money that I can make. We also need to think about how am I setting this up for the future.
What is so great about this new version of Side Hustle is that Side Hustle does both. We now are going to combine short-term wins with long-term sustainability. So the idea is for you to be building the entire foundation of your Side Hustle over nine months. And we'll explore that through three phases.
The offer and the funnel phase, that's where you're getting really clear on what it is you're offering, you're validating it with potential actual customers and you're branding it so that it stands out in the marketplace and it has the feel and the impact that you want. But also the look that you want.
We then build the funnel for it. In phase two, phase two is set up as you're, really your testing phase. It's your traffic phase, where we are now using marketing strategies. So we're getting people closer and closer and closer to the hole, right? We've hit the ball off the T. We're using marketing strategies to get people to your waitlist.
So basically, that sets people up for, to be right there for you to putt them in. We're not doing sales yet. We're doing marketing. Phase two is completely focused on moving your ball closer to your hole.
Now, when I say that phase two is the testing phase. I say that because if we're hitting the ball, but it's like, Oh gosh, it's skewing off to the side. It's not going to the hole. We're not getting the end result that we need to get, we can fix it. We can fix it in phase two, we can make adjustments in phase two so that the ball is getting closer to the hole. So that what we are intending to happen is actually happening. All right.
And then in phase three, phase three is the launch phase. So that is literally sales. Now we're bringing out the putter and we were putting, it should be an easy putt into the hole because we've been testing and tweaking our marketing along the way and making sure that it is doing its job and getting the ball close to the hole. So the launch phase should be an easy putt, right?
So we're doing that over the long-term. Nine months is an investment of time. It's an investment of time on your end, and I'm investing in your progress. I want to see progress here. I want to see a fully built business at the end of these nine months. That is the long-term plan.
However, I recognize the power of quick wins.
I recognize the power of some short-term gains, right? They keep us motivated. They keep us involved. So this new version of Side Hustle also has short-term wins built-in, and these are the cash injections.
In each phase, phase one, phase two, phase three, there are two cash injections in each phase. Now, remember these cash injections are optional because if you were doing two cash injections in each phase and you were doing the entire, like the bedrock of the nine-month program, that would be burnout, right? That would be exhausting. So that's not the intention.
The intention is to first and foremost, get you set up for sustainability. Get you set up for longevity. But I know a lot of you don't want to wait nine months to see if this is working, to see if this is effective. Not only like for personal growth but for the money. We're doing this for multiple reasons, for the impact, and for the income. If you are building the bedrock over nine months, and then you choose maybe two of the optional cash injection strategies, you get to experience those quick wins. You get to experience the validation and the motivation from them. They're what gets you through that nine-month finish line. And they're also what gets you making some revenue before you're done with the program.
I hope that you've been able to see that A, there's a difference between marketing and sales, and B, there are different approaches to marketing and sales. Sometimes going for the sale is needed. It's fun. It's exciting. It's validating. It's motivating, but we can't build an entire business on a quick win. Vice-versa the long-term stability, the sustainability needs to be in place so that you're not burning out. But sometimes waiting for that, waiting for that to come to fruition can be discouraging or it can be, hard to wait for the gratification. So that's why Side Hustle takes this on from both standpoints.
There are hunting strategies. There are, the whole thing is farming, but there are some hunting strategies sprinkled throughout so that you really get to have the full experience of building your business. Building it for the longterm, building it correctly, if you want to use that word, building it for sustainability, but also let's get you some wins in there. Let's get you some cash injections. Let's get you some confidence boosters. Let's get you helping people sooner. It's not all about the money. Let's get that impact getting out there sooner.
And so I'm just really proud. I'm really proud of this new version of Side Hustle. And I think it's exactly what we need on the market, for people to not only be building these long-term side hustles, but to be having fun along the way, and to be getting that validation along the way.
So if you know that you want that long-term sustainable Side Hustle, but you also want to have the gratification that comes from knowing that you can inject cash into your business at any time, I would hurry up and apply for Side Hustle before applications close at the end of the week. When you enroll in Side Hustle, you're going to learn some hunting techniques while you are sowing those seeds for something that is going to grow with you over the longterm.
Remember to go ahead and apply over at MarissaLawton.com/side-hustle.
Alright, and until then until the next time we talk guys, keep on rising!
