We all know that feeling in business where you’re afraid to say no to an opportunity that equals money. You know it well…that desire to say yes to each and every person even if they aren’t your ideal customer. 

Money is the scorecard for business. It equals success. So, I should be saying yes to everyone, right?  

Here’s the reality ——> Business is always the long game. 

Your brand, your name, your reputation is all you have. If you start saying yes to sales that you can’t actually get an amazing result for because you made an exception or were afraid to say no…it’ll catch up to you and negatively impact your overall reputation. This, in turn, will hurt your sales, your business, and your ultimate success. 

Listen in for more details on why and when you just need to say no. 

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

I think it’s a great time to not be like, Oh, it’s the holidays, so people are so busy and my business won’t do as well…because actually for myself and for a lot of clients, November and December have the potential..and January…to be really good months.

You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 452.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great start to your week. I’m pumped because in three days the forecast in Texas goes from a high of 80 every day to 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So I am excited for that. If you guys know me, I don’t mind heat. It’s just like it’s November. And so I went for a walk the other day in the evening, and it was like 85 degrees out at like 6, 6 30 at night. And every neighbor that I passed was like, Hey, the weather is so nice out. And I was like, Yeah, it’s nice if I didn’t really say this, but in my head I’m like, If it was June, if it was July, it would be nice if it was 85 degrees out. It’s supposed to be cold, it’s November. I wanna turn my fireplace on, I wanna wear my Ugg boots, I wanna wear my sweaters.I think there’s so much wherever you grow up, you just crave that weather. So I grew up in Northern California my whole life, and by November it’s cold and rainy there and it’s raining and it’s a true fall winter season. And so I miss that and I’m super excited. It’s so wild in Texas how there can be these massive extremes where it’s like 85 1 day and then 55 the next such a swing. I’m not used to that, but I’m excited for that and excited to turn my fireplace on and hopeful that this season we actually get some fall in winter. Last year it was like 80 degrees on Christmas, and I was like, What is happening here? Not in Hawaii. All right you guys. So I just sat down and did my stillness practice before I started my day, which actually some of you have asked me, what is that?

What does that mean? Because I’ve shared it on here, how that’s been a commitment for me. And for the most part, I’ve stuck with it every day. And actually there was one day last week that I was really stressed. I was really behind. What happened was I, the day before, I didn’t really get to check my emails, so I went to bed feeling stressed because I was like, I knew there was a bunch of things that I couldn’t get to. I woke up feeling that way, and I almost started my day and was like, Today, I can’t do it. Today. I can’t do the stillness practice. And I was like, No, you know what? These are the days that you need it even more. And I still did it. And so for me, it’s been just a 10 minute meditation, and I used to use an app for a guided meditation, but lately I’ve been not.

I’ve done so many guided meditations that I can use tools that I have in the past. Also, some days I’ll throw in just sitting outside without my phone by myself. And it can’t also be with kids who are gonna interrupt you every minute completely by myself, just kind of thinking that also counts. So for me, that’s what I’ve been doing. But really the goal is something to calm yourself and calm your nervous system system and get back into you and think or breathe. Breath is such a huge part of it. So anyways, I sat down this morning and before sitting down was like, Okay my intention for this is what inspiration comes to me for the podcast. And if you’re a content creator, it works. Your subconscious has things that it’s like content is there and you just have to tune in and listen. So when you feel like, I don’t know what to talk about, or I don’t know how to record 10 videos of content, I’m gonna run outta things.

Just kind of be still for a minute or 10 and something will come to you, something really powerful usually. So what came to me this morning was sharing with you guys some strategies and specific tactical things that you can do to end this year strong. We have about two more months left of this year. The holidays can be a very busy time for a lot of businesses. I know for me, with Black Friday and all the things that happen in marketing, there’s a lot of push at the end of a year in a company to hit sales goals, to generate revenue, to capitalize on leads and audiences that you’ve built. And so I figured why not share with you guys? I have five different strategies that you can do and kind of incorporate towards the end of this year. And I think it’s a great time to not be like, Oh, it’s the holidays.

So people are so busy and my business won’t do as well because actually for myself and for a lot of clients, November and December have the potential in January to be really good months. And so that’s not really like the case. And so I challenge you if you are wanting to push at the end of this year and really see some growth and see some momentum, that is completely possible. And actually there’s a lot of opportunity. So I have some tactical strategies. These are all things that I’m doing. These are all things that I’m encouraging clients to do and are pretty easy to implement, simple but people kind of overlook them. So the first one is a strategy that you can actually implement in your marketing. And I think between now and the end of the year, almost every business could do a flash sale or a promotion.

And maybe that happens on Black Friday, maybe it happens after Black Friday, maybe it’s closer to Christmas, maybe it’s the New Year’s and you plan for it in the next few months, but likely you have spent time this past year growing your audience and increasing the size of your lead, your list, and growing your audience and growing your reach. And you have people who weren’t there last year who haven’t bought from you yet that you could capitalize on with a flash sale or a promotion. This is a great idea to create a cash infusion in your business and not have to even spend money on ads. Or if you do, it’s very small because it’s retargeting ads to your warm audience. So this is something that we’re encouraging most clients to do in helping them strategize in their business. And it’s what I taught in my Black Friday workshop last week, but doing some sort of flash sale or promo, maybe it’s an existing offer maybe it’s an extra bonus that you add to your offer.

Maybe it’s a new low price offer that you wanna launch that will be super easy to throw together and will create ideal customers for your main offer. Whatever it is, this is an opportunity to create extra cash in your business between now and the end of the year and capitalize on leads and an audience that you’ve built this year. And even if you’re going, Well, I don’t think I’ve built a huge one, even if it’s like 200 people, that’s still something that is still an audience of people who have not bought from you yet. So that is a strategy everyone can do. It doesn’t matter if you’re e-commerce service, physical product, it doesn’t have to be a discount. I taught this in depth in my workshop last week, but it can be Black Friday or it can be a different time. Doing this will allow you to create that cash infusion in your business, which is a really good idea to do between now and the end of the year.

Number two is a live launch or an event. And I do think that people overcomplicate live launches, you can do something so simple if you wanted of doing a training that people your audience doesn’t have to opt in for. And it’s like, Hey, I’m gonna do this training Thursday at this time, and here’s the zoom link, here’s the calendar link to save it. I’ll see you guys there. Here’s the outcome, here’s the promise of the training. If you show up something to just ignite your audience, and I especially making this relevant to the end of the year or to going into a new year, because what is almost everybody doing right now? They are coming to the realization that the year is coming to an end. Did they meet their goals? Did they accomplish what they wanted to? Are the person that they wanted to be going into this year, has another year gone by and they haven’t made progress another year coming up?

What are they gonna do? What are they gonna change? That is, for most people on top, of course, the holidays and for the stress that comes with the holidays or for others, like the joy, your audience is gonna be different. But there’s a lot of opportunity to create an experience that creates engagement. And it doesn’t have to be so complicated that it’s a three day thing that you know, have to spend all this money for or spend all this time putting together. It can be as simple as like, I’m gonna do this bonus training. I’m gonna show up for you guys. I’m gonna connect with you guys. Here is what we’re gonna talk about, and here’s my promise to you. If we do this training, if you come, you will get X, Y, Z. And so this is a little different than a flash sale or a promo because it has value tied into it.

So you’re showing up, you’re engaging, you’re building relationships, you’re creating an experience that’s free for your audience. This can be tied together with a flash sale or promo. You could lead the live experience into the sale or the promotion, or they can be separate. But between now and the end of the year, almost all of you could think about one experience that you could put together to reignite, to engage with your leads in your audience to show up to deliver value, and potentially even tie it into what they’re experiencing now, what’s relevant to them now at this time of year, This could also be something that you plan for January, but you start putting it together. If you’re in the health and wellness space, January’s obviously a really huge time, but so is December, how to not overeat in the holidays or whatever. There’s so much creativity that you can come up with to make something relevant and to serve your audience at a certain time that if you really just take a step back and connect with them, you’ll come up with something.

And so every single one of you, and even if you are a physical product, you don’t have to do a webinar, but what if you did an extra behind the scenes video or unboxing are you showed how your product was made or anything to create connection, to build the relationships, to create something fun, to create something engaging, and to ultimately just build that connection and create an experience because that’s what leads to customer. So all of you can plan something like that between now and the end of the year. Okay, the next three out of my five that I have for you guys are a little less tactical. Do a live launch, do a promotion, and a little more reflection based and focus more on your business. But they’re all things that I’m doing and encouraging clients to do. So the third one is to set aside time between now and the end of the year to actually think about your audience and how you personally likely, and not everybody does this, but likely sit down and kind of reflect on the year, what went well, what didn’t go well, what do you want for next year?

I think it’s a really cool exercise, and I’ve done this the last couple of years myself to think about that for my own audience and think about what is going to be coming for my audience this next year. How are they feeling right now? Are they, Cause for example, I know that you guys, if I was to reflect on 2022, and I haven’t done this exercise yet, but I can off the cuff, I can tell you a lot of you guys are feeling super burn out still. You’re feeling burn out from this year, from how much you’ve had to create content from how hard you’ve had to work, from how much pivoting has needed to happen. And some of you are afraid that 2023 is gonna be just like that. And so if I sit down and I have a reflection like that, what was this year for my audience?

Where did you know A, I see so many of them get frustrated. What were the themes I saw in any conversation I had this year? What did I witness? What is next year gonna be like for them? What are they afraid of for next year? What do they need going into 2023? That’s like 20 pieces of content and ideas for ways that I could serve people just from that. It’s also creating a realignment in connection to my audience so that when I go to create, whether it’s small like accordion, podcast episode, or big like a webinar or a live launch or a workshop or a series, I am creating something that’s perfectly in alignment for my audience where they are right now. And so taking time to reflect and say, What is my audience going through right now is step one, how are they feeling?

What do they want? What do they need? And then letting that guide everything else, my live launch plan, my promotion plan, my content my strategy, the way I show up, the ideas I create. All of those things, allowing that first step to then guide that. So that’s the third thing is everybody between now and this year, end of year can sit down and connect and brainstorm how their audience is feeling and what they really want and need going into the new year. And that will give you a lot of inspiration, creativity, and just overall connection. The fourth thing, these last two things are really specific to you and your business. And so this one is really specific to you as a ceo. If you are a ceo, which most of you guys who listen to my podcast are business owners, are CEOs. And that is between now and the end of the year defining, if you look at your goals, for me, I set annual goals that I have recently, frequently re-looked at, which ones did I meet, which ones did I not meet, which ones do I still have the potential to meet between now and the end of the year and the ones that I didn’t meet.

Sometimes things change. It is hard to plan out a whole year because things come up. I mean, from a business perspective, I did not go into last year thinking I was gonna shut down or this year thinking I was gonna shut down my done with you program and launch a brand new offer. But I needed to do that in the moment for my business. So goals also have to have some flexibility. But if you look at where you expected yourself to be at the end of this year, regardless of how you’re getting there, and you defined what are top three daily and weekly needle movers for me and my business between now and the end of the year, if I do these three things, and you could have two separate lists, If I do these three things every single week that are kind of bigger things and take a little more time and you’re not gonna do them every day.

And then if I do these three things every single day as more habit building, and they would, what are those things that are going to move the needle in your business and your life? If you wanna look at it from that perspective too, personal goals the most between now and the end of the year, because we only have all have the same amount of time between now and the end of the year. We have just less than two months. We have eight weeks left, so we all have the same amount of time. And if we all just keep doing what we’ve been doing all year, maybe we’ll meet all our goals, maybe we’ll, we’ll be where we wanna be by the end of the year, but maybe we need to make some changes. And I think it’s sometimes people, especially high performers, and I myself have done this where I’m like, Well, it’s almost the end of the year, so I’m just gonna keep doing this thing that I do that I don’t really wanna be doing.

And it’s not really the most productive thing, but I’ll just reset it in the new year. I’ll just reset the goals in January. It’s the same thing with, well, it’s Thursday and I fell off my workout routine, but Monday I’m gonna restart. It’s like a mental thing. So I think it’s really worth it to think about where you wanna be. And actually even going into next year, if you know, Hey, I really want to create more content, I really wanna show up for my audience more. Don’t wait until January to start doing that. Figure out what you could do now between now and the end of the year to start doing that, because then taking the next bigger step is gonna be easier come January. So two different lists, six total things. What are three things that between now and the end of the year, you could do every single week?

You will do every single week. And it’s going to be the biggest needle mover in your business. It’s gonna make, get you closest to your goal. It’s the non-negotiable. If you don’t do anything else, you have to at least do these three things. These are the most important things in your business. What are those things? And then what are your daily three things? And they can be simple. Don’t make it hard, don’t make it. You don’t have any time for this where it’s like they all between all of ’em. Take seven hours a day to do it can be literally as simple as making an Instagram story and showing up for your audience or writing a newsletter every week or something simple. It doesn’t have to take a ton of time. But if you sat down and said, What are the biggest needle movers that are gonna get me to where I wanna be in my business, in my life as a leader, et cetera?

What are those things daily and weekly? And then you’ve kind of reset your commitment between now and the end of the year and you’ve already reset your goals. And what’s gonna happen is those are likely related to the goals that you’re going to set for next year, but you’re getting a head start. And so come January, it’s not gonna be that hard for you to even take a further step and to do something even harder or next level as it relates to that. And then the fifth thing is really just a reflection. And I’m actually going to be doing a live workshop in December specifically for this, but is just setting aside time at some point and a good amount of time, a couple of hours to really reflect on what worked, what didn’t, plan your goals for next year. Be specific with how many leads you wanna add to your list with your sales, and really pushing your mind to be like, Okay, what really didn’t work?

Because I sometimes feel, and I do this myself, where if we answer these questions quickly, we don’t give ourselves the chance to actually really truly reflect and see what comes up and have that blank slate of paper. No wrong answer, what comes up? And just give yourself that time for reflection on what worked this year in your business and in your life. If you wanna go that route and include that. And also what didn’t and what was hard, and what do you wanna change going into next year, and what do you want to be different? What do you want to be better? Where are you uncomfortable? Which discomfort is good, but where are you uncomfortable to the point where you’re ignoring it and you’re tolerating it, but it’s not serving you? And then what are your goals for next year? And I think goals can be really over talked about and propped up on a stool because I don’t even think that the goal, the goals are important, yes, But how you’re gonna get there and what you’re gonna start doing and what you’re gonna stop doing is actually way more important to plan for the goals.

And I think the biggest mistake people make is they’re like, This is gonna be the year that I do xyz. And it’s like, But if you don’t plan out how, and come January one, or even like I said previously, starting now, what? You’re gonna start actions, you’re gonna start to take habits, you’re gonna start to implement the goals. You won’t reach the goals. And so I think that the habits and the actions are more important than the goals because goals do shift and change. You can’t predict everything that’s gonna happen next year, but you can look at who do you wanna show up as? What type of a person? What do you wanna stop doing? What do you wanna start doing? And where do you want the direction of your business to go? What do you want to stop doing in your business? What do you wanna start?

What do you wanna launch? What do you wanna shut down? What isn’t working? What isn’t serving your audience? What is busy work that you’re doing because you’ve done it for years and you haven’t ever re-looked at it? Like creating that space to really reflected deeper than just, what are my five goals for next year? So those are five things, five strategies that everybody can do. Doesn’t matter your business, Doesn’t matter what level you’re at, doesn’t matter what you sell, doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you do these five things and you will 100% and you’re year stronger than you are right now in today. All right, everybody, Thanks so much for listening. I’ll talk to you guys on Thursday.

Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh Marketing can help take your marketing to the next level no matter where you’re at today. We help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with Team Hirsh!

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