BSB 93
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April: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and I have a question for you. Have you ever worked on a project or something that's really important to you and maybe your progress wasn't as fast as you would like? So, you start looking for problems. You start digging into that project and going, _"What is the thing that's keeping this project from really taking off?"_ Maybe that's your business or creative project. So you switch out of that creative mode and into problem solving mode to try to fix it. But then, you think, _"okay, maybe it's this"_, so you try this, but no results, and so you try something else and no results, and then you start looking outside of yourself and going, "_Maybe somebody else has the magic solution that will turn up the volume and get this project to take off again."_
Does any of that sound familiar? If you're a business owner or an [00:01:00] entrepreneur, then probably the answer is yes. It can get so overwhelming when you start looking for what could go wrong. And when you bring in outside perspectives, especially if you go to other business owners, they have an angle or product to sell.
You're going to purchase their product and support their business and try to apply the solution that worked for them. But I want to slow you down for a little bit. Because what happens quite often is that we end up trying to solve problems that we don't actually have. We just think we have, because we don't really have enough information.
I have spent thousands of dollars, to try to get some business projects moving, and sometimes I just end up killing them because they just never take off. If you're an entrepreneur, or creator, that's part of the process.
But what I [00:02:00] have found through years of business ownership and those thousands of dollars that didn't move the needle at all. I wanna talk about, because I wanna save you some of the same hardship. S ometimes the real problem is that you just don't have enough data. I'm going to use business funnels as an example.
If you have a product, a lead magnet, something that's supposed to bring traffic to your business, or if you have a creative project and there's just not enough eyes on your project, you may be tempted to believe that the product or project is not very good. Then you start looking for ways to tweak that product or project when the real problem was you just needed more eyes. Y ou just needed more data.
It's a numbers game, and you may not need to tweak that product or project at all. It could be a fine product. The problem is traffic, not the [00:03:00] product in this point. So if you start implementing the solutions and start thinking to yourself, _"oh, it's because what I'm doing is not good enough"_.
If you're searching for a job, you might think, "_oh, my social media isn't good enough_" or "_my resume isn't good enough_". If it's a painting, you might go, "_people don't like my work_". If it's a lead magnet, you might go, " _people aren't interested in what I have to say_". Do you see how this could get really convoluted?
It's especially important to bring some strategy if you find yourself in this scenario. Ask yourself these questions. Have enough people seen this product? That could be the answer could just be a traffic issue. If the answer to that is yes, that you've had more than 100 or 1000 people see this and they didn't buy it, then it's time to tweak [00:04:00] something.
Now you might be tempted at this point to sabotage and make major changes, so I want to caution you not to do that. Change one small thing and launch it again and wait for traffic. And this is the really hard piece because you don't wanna fix what's not broken. And if you go in looking at all of your stats thinking that something must be broken, you're going to start tearing apart things that are great b ecause you don't have enough data. I am not afraid to use myself as a role model or cautionary tale. And again, I have done this over and over and spent thousands of dollars and wasted years sometimes trying to make something work. I had a recent client who isn't getting the results that she wanted, and she's talking about doing massive change to her current offering, and I'm like, wait a minute, what if you just got more eyes on it first? And that can be hard if you're a business owner. You know, leads and traffic is the [00:05:00] most important thing, but you need the feedback. If you had the traffic and traffic is good, but there's no purchases, then yeah, ask for some feedback.
And we're afraid to do that sometimes is to email people and go, _"Hey, why didn't you buy this? What do you think about this?"_ But just be aware that people have a lot of opinions. Everybody's got one, but if you sense a theme on over and over, you're hearing the same things _"I didn't purchase because"_ then that gives you some valuable data.
It's really important not to take that data and make it mean that you are not good enough, or your product's not good enough, or your creation isn't good enough. You just take the data as feedback, not a personal criticism, and then make one small tweak, not multiple tweaks. Make that tweak. Launch again.
Get the traffic. Look at the data. Tweak again if you [00:06:00] need to. And sometimes it's just time and patience and eyes on your offering that make all the difference. But if you're feeling overwhelmed right now and really frustrated or defeated that whatever you're working on, whatever you're trying to do, whatever this goal is for you isn't happening fast enough, just dig into the strategy piece.
Do you need to give it more time? Do more eyes need to be on your project or product? Have you asked for feedback? Did you get feedback? Did you make any changes based on that feedback? Did you make massive changes that maybe you didn't need to? Or did you start with a single change? Launch again and be patient.
Get the data. It's so easy to look at problems that don't exist, and it's so important for you to have a strategy of what if I do need [00:07:00] to make changes? And that's common, and that's okay. But don't assume that your product or project isn't good enough and don't assume that you need to make massive changes or that nobody wants it because you're putting out that energy that's defeating your confidence, and you are killing the motivation before maybe even you gave it a good enough chance.
I just wanted to mention that in case you're in that same place where you're feeling overwhelmed by a lack of progress and you don't know what's wrong. These are some steps to help you diagnose if something is not moving as fast as you would like it to move in your life in any kind of way.
You might be frustrated, defeated, depressed. The reality is sometimes you may need to kill the project. You may love it personally, but if you're a business owner, your audience, that's not what they're coming to you for. So it can be a misalignment in that [00:08:00] way. Sometimes it's a tiny tweak that just needs to be made.
Other times it's a massive change that needs to be made. Really take the time look at yourself and what you're trying to do and go, _"What do I want to do? What do I need to do?"_ Is there a disconnect in that process? And am I willing to move on or get the feedback that I actually need?
Slowing down, tuning out other people's voices . Really look at the numbers, look at the project, do some of these problem solving steps and see if you can diagnose so you don't spend a lot of time and a lot of money trying to solve problems you don't have.
Or thinking that everything's a problem when it might just be a tiny thing. And that tiny thing might be patience and traffic or data. So look at it logically with data and ask yourself these questions before you get into a [00:09:00] spiral. I hope that was helpful for you because the voices out there are loud, but it's important to have discernment a nd really tune in to what you need, awareness, discernment. If you can brush up on those two skills and make them as strong as possible, that is going to be one of the most valuable things in your problem solving toolkit. Alright, my friends, if this really struck a chord with you, share it with someone you know, please leave a review.
I am so thankful for your support and I will see you next week. Goodbye.
