One of the challenges with running an online business (or any business for that matter), is that you’re never done.
There is always more to be done (or more you can do).
Just when you think you’ve hit a finish line there’s a new race to run.
You get your foundation built; your website is up, your branding is done, your social profiles look good, and you have products and/or services for sale.
Now you need to start marketing.
And creating content.
And emailing.
And creating a social media strategy.
Then there’s webinars, ads, lead magnets, funnels, conversions…
You get the point.
We launched this brand a little over two years ago and since day one it’s been “go time.”
As soon as we complete one thing, there’s another project or “to do” on our list. We get something re-done and then it’s time to add something to the mix. By the time you get done adding the new thing to the mix, you need to go back and revisit the piece you re-did.
Here’s the thing…
… that’s just the way it is, and honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like to take some downtime or have a little reprieve in between things, but once I’ve caught my breath it’s exciting to have “the next thing” to sink my teeth into.
It’s part of the game of Entrepreneurship.
Fortunately, we both love the game.
Here’s the crazy thing.
We (ahem, Jodi), is great about tracking and measuring everything. She’s created a very thorough and in-depth spreadsheet that tracks our sales and profits every month.
Things have slowed down a little the last couple of months because we fired the last ad agency we were working with. While we have organic sales every day (which was refreshing to see with all of the SEO and content work we’ve done), it’s not like running daily paid traffic.
We made a very conscious decision to step back and regroup after working with the last ad agency. We also decided we were going to keep the ads in-house (at least for now).
With our combined experience we’re better off doing our own creative (images, video, copy) for our ads. With the exception of a couple of ads, our own creative and target audience has always outperformed what the agencies created.
Time to turn the ads back on…
While I was working on the copy for our ads, I decided it might be fun to see how many planners we had sold and possibly incorporate that into one of our ads.
HOLY MOLY!
We had sold close to 9000 planners! ????
To say I was giddy is an understatement.
Like I mentioned above, we track everything monthly, but for some reason, neither of us had ever thought to run a TOTAL of our sales (not simply for the year, but since we launched the brand at the end of 2018).
We set a date to have our respective work done (one of the best things about having a business partner is sharing the load), hopped on Zoom, and went about getting our ads turned back on.
At the time of this writing, we’ve had our ads back on for a week and so far, everything seems to be going according to plan (we tend to err on the side of caution, so we’re letting Facebook do it’s learning and we’ll adjust accordingly).
Back to celebrating…
Celebrating what you’ve accomplished or how far you’ve come isn’t just about having some fun (although that’s vitally important too), it’s also about what it does to our motivation and performance.
According to Teresa Amabile from The Harvard Business School, “The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. Many of the progress events our research participants reported represented only minor steps forward.”
As much as we love the big wins, they’re not as frequent as the small wins.
When we created The Content Creators Planner we decided we wanted a 90-day planner for the simple fact it works (Google the power of 90-day goals and you’ll have more evidence than you need).
The 12-Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington is a great book to guide you on setting and achieving “more in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months.”
It kind of defeats the purpose of creating goals if you’re not going to acknowledge your progress and achievements.
Using Milestones
At the same time, not everything needs to be attached to a 90-day plan or be a 90-day goal.
With busy schedules and other work outside of The Content Creators Planner, a big milestone for us was getting our ads turned back on with new creative (a new video and new copy).
Our Creativity Published Newsletter was also a significant milestone when we launched it and here we are, 17 weeks later and it’s a core part of our business (that generates traffic and sales).
Both of these are simply “part of doing business”, but they deserve recognition and acknowledgment.
And sometimes, acknowledgment is enough.
Celebrating milestones, no matter the size, trigger dopamine inside that brain that keeps us going.
Whether you choose to “go big” with your celebration or you just take a moment to really take it all in… do it.
Take the time to honor where you are and what you’ve accomplished.
